The first Path of the Ninja was a decent RPG that took the Naruto characters and led them through the history of the series, retelling stories that fans were already familiar with. Path of the Ninja 2 is overall a much-improved game, including a brand-new story, 30 characters, and an online battle component. It isn't perfection, but it's an enjoyable time.

Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 takes place somewhere after the battle between Naruto and Sasuke, but before the time jump in the series. The villains of the game are three individuals who are looking to release the Spirit Beast, whose tendrils of hate are changing everyone across the land. Naruto and the rest of the Hidden Leaf ninja are given the task of finding the five mirrors meant to seal the demon away, and so off on their journey they go.

Nine Tail vs Second State

In terms of twists and turns and memorable moments, the story of Path of the Ninja 2 is pretty lacking and follows many of the RPG conventions that have been used for years. For instance, Naruto needing to gather five mirrors from across the land is the same plot device used all the time, though just replace mirrors with some other object. The three villains also aren't very memorable, as there are no ulterior motives behind why they want to release the Spirit Beast (or even a single reason why), and two of the villains will be fought several times over, only for them to beat you with one major move so that they can live to fight a day. Why didn't they just use that move to begin with and waste me once and for all?

Path of the Ninja 2 is also a pretty short game when it comes to beating the single-player game, as it only clocked in at around eight hours for me. Eight hours isn't a bad time for an adventure game, but I'm used to my RPGs being a little longer. One of the reasons the game is over so quick is because characters level up at an insanely fast speed. On one hand it's good to see a game bypass much of the wasted hours needed to level characters in able to put up a fight, but at the same time more story and adventuring could've been added to supplement the time.

The game controls like you'd expect and are pretty common for many DS RPGs. You can use your stylus to make Naruto and the gang walk around and select attack options, but it's a little less responsive than one would like, so you'll be better served by using the D-pad and face buttons of the DS. In battle you'll be able select attack options, as well as defend, use items, use jutsus, switch with an alternate character, and change position on the 3x3 grid so you're either on the front line, middle, or back row. Meanwhile, you'll get money, items, and experience for killing enemies, which you randomly run across in the field while walking around. You can then buy and sell items, weapons, and equipment at stores in the different villages.

The game does offer some unique controls, though a few are more gimmicky than anything else (these moments don't happy too often, thankfully). A few of the more gimmicky moments include having to blow into the microphone to light a fire and needing to shout "Guts" to get characters to jump. Yelling at the DS is one of the most embarrassing things, so be sure you're alone for the three to five times the game forces you to yell. On the brighter side of things, the controls to power up and use jutsus are handled much better and are actually fun. In order to power jutsu abilities up, you'll need to do things such as spin a disc in a circle, quickly slide the stylus on the screen as much as you can, or slide the stylus enough to make it fall into a specific zone.

The game also allows a fair amount of customization, letting players be able to craft their team to suit their style of play. First up, choosing a team leader can offer advantages such as increased strength and lower defense, the ability to gain more items in battle, and things such as recovering health while you walk around. The second way in which you can customize your characters is by equipping Ninja Tags, which give you the ability to equip new jutsus and improve stats such as improving defense, attack power, or resistance to certain energies like fire.

Choji and Crew

The game features a lot of characters that you can customize, some of which you have to unlock through the game's multiplayer mode. If you just play straight through the single-player game, however, you'll still gather almost all the Hidden Leaf ninja (minus the higher ranked ones like Kakashi, Guy, etc) and the three Sand Village ninja too. It requires a little trial and error to see just who is worth anything, but chances are good you'll pick your favorite characters from the series and use them almost exclusively. In a weird turn of events, however, once the game is done and you continue leveling your characters for multiplayer battles, you'll find you can't automatically use the Sand Village ninja. As someone who used the Sand Ninja and Sakura as my main team, it was disappointing to find my killer team now suddenly defunct, simply because I beat the game.

Besides the single-player adventure, however, the game also has a multiplayer component, which allows you to take teams you've spent time customizing and leveling and use them to battle against other people across the country. Beyond the bragging rights a win will net you, winning a battle will also get you a collectible card, representing the state where the loser is from. The collectible cards are then used to unlock such things as different characters. The system works pretty well, though it sometimes takes too much work to unlock some of the more interesting characters, and if there aren't a whole lot of people playing, you could find yourself playing the same people over and over, never winning a new card to show for your work.

The game is okay when it comes to the graphics and sound work. Characters are pretty good and have a decent amount of battle animation, but battlefields and the different areas of the world to explore are pretty boring and generally lackluster. Meanwhile, the sound effects are merely okay, as is the voiceover work, which only amounts to two or three lines recycled ad nauseum during the battles. The music does a little better under scrutiny, but even then it is still not amazing work. If you wanted to completely mute the game, for example, you wouldn't be missing anything important.

As both a Naruto and RPG fan, I had an enjoyable time for the amount of time it took to work through the game's story. I liked the increased amount of characters and ability to customize your team, but really they're just cardboard as none of the characters change or grow as the story progresses. While enjoyable for fans, non-Naruto lovers will find little reason to pickup Naruto: Path of Ninja 2.

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