Just pre-ordered my copy today. I'll be getting it on Wednesday, and am all kinds of excited from the good feedback that I've been hearing from this thread. I'll probably be playing it non-stop from the second I get it.
Does Hokage Naruto have a different move set / Ultimate Ninjutsu?
I'm interested to hear about how Naruto, Hinata, & Suigetsu play because I'm looking forward to trying them out. Also, does everyone have a unique Ultimate Ninjutsu in their Awakening Mode, or just some characters like the first game? Also - who has your favorite Ultimate Ninjutsu in this game?
Neji: I really enjoy playing Neji in this game, just like I did the first game. He's pretty much a close-range fighter as can be expected. His moves are fast and now he has the wind-palm moves in his arsenal, giving him a bit more range (and it looks friggin awesome). His 64 palm rotation is his primary jutsu and can pretty much deflect anything while its active, a useful shield whether you're using Neji or just have him as a support character. His awakening mode activates Byakugan, and can drain a full chakra bar in one full combo. This means that they dont have access to replacement jutsu and so you can beat the hell out of them providing you are good enough.
Naruto: Naruto pretty much plays how you'd expect him to play, and if you've played the demo then you already have a decent idea. His combos all look pretty flashy, involve a lot of clones, and most of the time end in the use of a rasengan. Uses rasengan as his main jutsu. Hold down the button and you charge an Odama rasengan instead. While in sage mode your primary move is the rasenrasengan (or named rasengan barrage in this) which works pretty much the same way. Your ultimate move to start with is a simple rasengan, with the appearance of the one-tailed chakra cloak. Once you've played a bit more, this can be changed to the Rasenshuriken, the one you cannot throw. Sage mode's ultimate is the thrown version.
Awakening for naruto goes straight to his 4-tailed cloak, which is insanely powerful. So far I've only found one way of surviving it, but even I get taken down by it from time to time. He has chakra gun that fires four extremely quick long-range blast with a pretty huge blast radius that do a hella damage. If your playing online, you will get obliterated by this. Sage mode, awakens straight into the 6 tails. Very similar to the 4 tails. The blasts are much bigger, much quicker and more powerful.
Suigetsu: I was a bit disappointed with Suigetsu unfortunately as I was really looking forward to playing as him. His moves are decent and his water projectile-based chakra move can follow them pretty well and move fast. Unfortunately his melee combat is relatively slow as he hurls the executioners blade around. His ultimate has him disappear in a wave on the ground that hurtles toward the enemy, a decent hit rate as ultimates go really. In his awakening mode his left arm beefs up and his combos become very very different, involving a lot more water. He's also a lot quicker like this.
All in all, not a terrible character but probably could have been done better.
Hinata: Hinata is very similar to Neji in terms of her melee combos, allbeit a slight bit slower. She uses 64 palm-guard as her primary move which is a lot like Neji's version, very very good at block pretty much all attacks, and can keep the enemys combos off of you. In her awakening mode she gains the twin lion fists, and uses them very well. They suck a lot of chakra out of the enemy and deal a fairly high amount of damage, as well as changing her moveset.
Questioonnnssss.
Hokage Naruto's moveset is the same as Sage-mode's. Again its literally just a pretty nice costume change.
Something that you may not like X, but is balancing nonetheless. Awakening modes are unable to use an ultimate. Instead the majority of the time they have a different moveset, and they deal roughly 3x as much damage. This is a big step-up from the very minor buffs that awakenings gave in the first game. They balancing feature in this, is that no person in their awakening can be hit by either an ultimate jutsu, or a grab move. Nothing can break up the battle pace while somebody is in ultimate mode really.
My favourite ultimate jutsu. Hmmmm thats a pretty hard one. I love all of Sasuke's. Due to his different forms, he has three in total. Chidori true spear, Kirin and Amaterasu. All look pretty decent.
I will also say that I LOVE Minato's ultimate which involves him firing the enemy away with a big rasengan, throwing his kunai and appearing behind them to hit them with another rasengan.
I am now primarily using Akatsuki Sasuke/Kabuto/Yamato as my main characters.
AND PAIN IS OUTTA THERE! Took me a little more then one night, but then I can't say I skipped all cutscenes, this is the first time the English dub covers most of these events so I was interested.
You know whose awesome. ASUMA. When I was fighting with him in the storyline, he was crazy fluid and practical. I agree with Gin, Suigestu seems slow and awkward. Kinda disappointing. I'm still probably gonna main Sasuke.
Maxing out the storm gauge has one new purpose (one that I rarely use, as I dont string together combos when fighting. Its not my style).
A full storm gauge means you can activate what I'm gonna call a Tri-attack (since I dont the actual name). Doing this runs your character and two supports at the enemy. If you connect then your two supports will each get a combo off on your opponent and then you will hit them with your ultimate jutsu. Its the highest damage dealer of the game. I must say I curse quite loudly when I'm hit with it because it really does take a hellla health. I haven't yet got used to using it, since I pay little attention to the storm gauge.
I found that Suigetsu is very sluggish with his attacks on the ground but is an absolute beast with aerial combos. So far my favourite characters to play as are Naruto, Asuma and Lee. I'm still only about halfway through the game because I was bumrushed by real life, but so far the combat is highly enjoyable and the boss battles are truly epic. The only real major downside is the tedious trek between missions. Lots of running around and backtracking through the same corridors.
Yes the story mode is a bit long. Imagine a Final Fantasy game with all the random encounters taken out. Just a fuck tonne of running with fights dotted about.
I dunno about Suigetsu see. His initial melee attacks are indeed sluggish, but I realised I'm not the melee type. His water dragon jutsu is very fast (in comparison to the old water style moves) and pretty damn accurate. I wait for an opening and attack and I found Suigetsu very good at this. His ultimate has a good hit chance too, not to mention his awakening changes his melee in such a way that it turns him around completely.
Yamato/Suigetsu/Minato. Using these at the moment. Have barely lost a game so far with them.
I'm finally gonna find out tonight when I get off work, since it's out in the US now. I'm hoping that they're not sold out 'round here, so that my buddy'll be able to pick up a copy too, and we can mix it up online.
So I picked up a copy last night, and played through the first couple chapters, and some local multiplayer before I crashed.
I just completed Chapter 2's first appearance of 4-Tails, and saved outside Orochimaru's hideout. The only trophy mission I didn't S-Rank right off so far was Gaara's. I still can't find where to go back and replay them, but I don't really care at present. It seems like there's a lot of interesting things to do in towns, but I'm WAY too focused on just playing through everything once to get all the people to just focus on the town, and the more RPG-ish element. I really like how this game is less of a cliff-notes version of the story than the first one, and you get more character interaction, cutscenes and focus on the storyline. That alone is helping me understand the move away from a free-roam Konoha into a more oldschool-type game.
Holy Moses, combat is different. It's faster, and more fluid, but a little less show-y. My buddy came over to get his copy (I picked it up for him, cause he was in class). We played quite a few team multiplayer matches, haven't tried the single ones yet. I've tried out Naruto, Hinata, Sasuke, Shikamaru, and Guy. Absolutely NOTHING so far has made me laugh more than starting off a battle with Guy's "Dynamic Entry" ninjutsu (first time playing as him, and it was against Kakashi). The balanced support characters are AMAZING, particularly Hinata is my favorite I've used so far, and that's not just because she's one of my favorite characters.
So far, I'm super pleased, and can't wait to get and try out some more characters!
Ok, I was a little worried it'd do the "lol Konoha got blowed up so half the stuff you can do is now gone." Now that I know that's not the case, I'm gonna get through as much as I can. Also - what's with the Character's <3 meters? Does that actually do anything for you?
So, the Naruto/Sasuke fight was pretty amazing, I really liked that it had a Flashback to the old battle between 1-Tail Naruto & Cursed Seal Sasuke. It makes me wonder if there isn't some sort of code to use 1-Tail Naruto, because it's moveset in that fight is modified to work with the mechanics in the new game. Vermillion Rasengan is altered, and works like the other Ultimate Jutsu now.
I had a tough time with Kakuzu and actually lost the first time, because I kept trying to attack him after pulling him from his big black mass when he goes all firey red. Everything else went pretty well. I missed the Sasuke/Itachi Secret Event by 1 star, and still haven't found the scroll to let me re-try it. Also A-Ranked the last boss fight, so I'll have to re-do that as well at some point to get the S-Rank.
Now that I'm into the "wandering RPG" portion of the game, I'm really enjoying it. There's lots of little things to do, and I'm really liking how much it feels like there is to do, and it's not repetitive, like the first game. I've caught 6 birds, got everyone but Kakashi, Chouji, Hinata, & Sai at 4 stars (Sai doesn't send letters, and the other three have been travelling with me, so they didn't either). I unlocked
Hokage Naruto & Killer Bee last night, and I'm expecting to get Taka Sasuke, Minato, & Lars tonight. Still haven't unlocked the fragment mission yet though.
On to the multiplayer.
In Team, when you choose teammates, it's got a set of orbs for each character. I'm assuming that these correspond to the Attack/Balance/Defend aspects of the character, and they total up together. Some of them also have titles for characters with connections: Naruto/Hinata - Secret Lovers, Sasori/Deidara - Artists, Kakuzu/Hidan - Zombie Brothers, etc. I can't really tell how this is supposed to work for strategy, though it seems that there is a specific trick to getting people who will help you the best for your combat style, and the manual doesn't have ANYthing on it.
For some reason, I haven't gotten very good at using the 4/6-Tails. He's powerful, but I tend to stick at range, and I think I should close in and attack up close. It's tough to tell what the Awakening Modes are good at because they don't last very long. I wonder if there's an option for the Awakening Mode Battle in this like they had in the first game, because I haven't found it yet if there is, and that would be really helpful...
On a related note, fighting against Temari with Tenten as a support character is pretty tough. Tenten seemed kinda awkward/useless as a support character until I fought those two and realized what she's for. It's especially tough if she's also got someone like Choji to toss you away, because Tenten's mines make it almost impossible to rush her if she's got her back to the edge of the board, and her ranged attacks are crazy good. Totally not my fighting style, but it's one of the best random CPU match ups I've fought against.
So, I started playing this game on a whim again this weekend, and after blowing almost all of the accomplishments in the main game, and from some ensouragement from my little brother, I have subsequently convinced myself that I am going to get the Platinum trophy for it, because I don't have any, and I'm pretty damn close to getting this one.
I started playing online last night, and I'm doing... ok. I've got a Win/Loss ratio of ~ 20/18, so I'm getting the hang of things. I figured out that player rank & BP doesn't matter as much as a Win/Loss ratio. That'll tell you about how good anyone is as a good rule of thumb. I've got 30 wins and 2 losses left that I have to get to complete the online-related titles, (but it'll probably take 60 battles if current trends continue).
Aside from that, I've got.... a LOT of in-game fighting to do. , and a couple other miscellaneous things to do, but I like the fact that it's not feeling like I'm grinding at something, because I honestly really enjoy this game, and I'd forgotten how much fun the combat is.
That all being said, has anyone here gotten all or even a good amount of the titles for this game?
(1/28/2011) I still need:
• 11-49: Play 30 matches as every character except normal Naruto, and 4th Hokage (& Lars).
• 67: Replay all of the main game battles.
• 74: View all the obtained Story Segments.
• 76: Complete all the special objectives in all the Main game battles.
• 82-84: Win 30, 40, 50 ranked matches online (currently at 20).
• 86: Lose 20 ranked matches online (Currently at 18).
Update:
(2/4/2011) I still need:
• 11, 13-19, 22-35, 37-34, 36-38, 40-49: Play 30 matches as every character.
- No longer including Sasuke, Karin, Orochimaru, Kankuro, Temari, Ino, & Chouji.
001 Shinobi: You should get this one automatically towards the start of Ultimate Adventure 002 Striking: Perform a combo of at least 40 hits (any mode) 003 Ninjutsu: Win a battle with the final blow being a Ninjutsu attack 004 Ultimate Jutsu: Win a battle with the final blow being an Ultimate Ninjutsu attack 005 Bond: Win a battle, with the final blow being a support character's attack 006 Fox Spirit: Win a battle while using an Awakening 007 Bare: Win a battle with less than 5% of your health remaining 008 Iron-Clad: Win a battle with a perfect victory 009 Overwhelmingly Victorious: Win a battle in 20 seconds or less (Free Battle is best) 010 Ramen-loving: Fight 30 battles as Naruto Uzumaki 011 Peaceful: Fight 30 battles as Naruto Uzumaki (Sennin Mode) 012 Uchiha Clan: Fight 30 battles as Uchiha Sasuke 013 Taka: Fight 30 battles as Sasuke Uchiha (Akatsuki) 014 Sparkling Maiden's Heart: Fight 30 battles as Sakura Haruno 015 Root: Fight 30 battles as Sai 016 Taijustsu: Fight 30 battles as Rock Lee 017 Byakugan: Fight 30 battles as Neji Hyuga 018 Fully-armored: Fight 30 battles as Tenten 019 Nara Clan: Fight 30 battles as Shikamaru Nara 020 Akimichi Clan: Fight 30 battles as Choji Akimichi 021 Yamanaka Clan: Fight 30 battles as Ino Yamanaka 022 Inuzuka Clan: Fight 30 battles as Kiba Inuzuka 023 Aburame Clan: Fight 30 battles as Shino aburame 024 Hyuga Clan: Fight 30 battles as Hinata Hyuga 025 Jinchuriki: Fight 30 battles as Gaara 026 Precious Junior Student: Fight 30 battles as Kankuro 027 Older Sister: Fight 30 battles as Temari 028 Masked: Fight 30 battles as Kakashi Hatake 029 First Hokage: Fight 30 battles as Yamato 030 Hot-Blooded: Fight 30 battles as Gai Maito 031 In Training: Fight 30 battles as Asuma Sarutobi 032 Reanimated: Fight 30 battles as Chiyo 033 Mount Myoboku: Fight 30 battles as Jiraiya 034 Fifth Hokage: Fight 30 battles as Tsunade 035 Seeker: Fight 30 battles as Orochimaru 036 Subordinate: Fight 30 battles as Kabuto 037 Little Brother: Fight 30 battles as Suigetsu Hozuki 038 The Curse Mark: Fight 30 battles as Juugo 039 Clumsy: Fight 30 battles as Karin 040 Older Brother: Fight 30 battles as Itachi Uchiha 041 Renegade: Fight 30 battles as Kisame 042 Upperclassman: Fight 30 battles as Deidara 043 Human Puppet: Fight 30 battles as Sasori 044 Way of Jashin: Fight 30 battles as Hidan 045 Human Wallet: Fight 30 battles as Kakuzu 046 Strongest: Fight 30 battles as Tobi 047 Beautiful: Fight 30 battles as Konan 048 The Real: Fight 30 battles as Pain 049 Punster: Fight 30 battles as Killer Bee 050 The Fourth Hokage: Complete 30 battles as Minato 051 The Main Character: Finish 'The Bell-Stealing Drill' (Ultimate Adventure) 052 The warring tribe's: Finish Chapter 5 (Ultimate Adventure) 053 Novelist: Fight against Pain as Jiraiya (part of the Ultimate Adventure story) 054 One Who Walks The Way Of The Ninja: Finish Last Chapter 055 Eight Tails Hunter: Finish Fragment 056 A fresh new ninja: Complete the 10 trials (Ultimate Adventure) 057 A hardworking ninja to the core: Not sure exactly (part of the Ultimate Adventure story) 058 One Who Overcomes Darkness: Defeat the cursed doll that looks like Orochimaru (Curse Doll request mission) 059 Once who excels in everything: Complete all the events (see 'Conquered all events' trophy) (Ultimate Adventure) 060 Full Marks For Friendship: Play through the story 061 Well-off: Buy something in a shop 062 Rich: Spend 500,000 Ryo 063 Very rich: Spend 1,000,000 Ryo 064 Part-timer: Open the shop menu 30 times 065 Poster Girl: Open the shop menu 60 times 066 Store Manager: Open the shop menu 100 times 067 Directly-controlled: Fulfil the bonus condition in every battle in the 'Challenge Main Battle Again' feature of the Hokage's Room post-game. You can track these, they are the red stars shown underneath the rank listed next to each vs battle. (Ultimate Adventure) 068 Medical: Eat 10 bentos (Ultimate Adventure) 069 Capricious: You have to be in lucky state (pray at one of the statues), and find a winning ticket in one of the little signs you can knock over to reveal objects in Konoha. 070 Earnest: Collect 30 Empty Can items. You can find these in the little signs you can knock over to reveal objects in Konoha. (Ultimate Adventure) 071 Sly: Collect 30 Pachinko Ball items. You can find these the same way as title 070. (Ultimate Adventure) 072 The Hidden Village's: Unlock Hokage Naruto 073 Second Hokage: Get the Ninja Card which has a picture of the Second Hokage on it (you get it from the card shop in one of the packs) 074 Third Hokage: Watch all of the Story View videos in the Hokage's Room post-game. You don't have to go through the whole scene, you can skip it by pressing the start button. As long as the '!' symbol next to it disappears, you're good. 075 Student: Watched all Ultimate Jutsu videos in the Collection menu. You don't have to watch the whole video, you can skip them with circle. As long as the '!' symbol next to it disappears, you're good. 076 Mid-Mission: Replay every battle in the 'Challenge Main Battle Again' feature of the Hokage's Room post-game. This goes hand-in-hand with title 067. (Ultimate Adventure) 077 Trusty: Caught 5 birds 078 Naive: Investigated 50 mushrooms 079 Discreet: Use 20 Warp Scrolls (you can buy them from the Item Shop) (Ultimate Adventure) 080 Certainly Victorious: 10 ranked wins online. 081 Explosively Advancing: 20 ranked wins online. 082 Dojo Breaker: 30 ranked wins online. 083 One's Own Ruler: 40 ranked wins online. 084 Omnipotent: 50 ranked wins online. 085 Underdog: Lose 10 ranked matches 086 Survivor: Lose 20 ranked matches 087 Ninja: Earn 10,000 SP
, and a couple other miscellaneous things to do, but I like the fact that it's not feeling like I'm grinding at something, because I honestly really enjoy this game, and I'd forgotten how much fun the combat is.