REVIEW: ‘NARUTO x BORUTO Ultimate Ninja STORM CONNECTIONS’ Is A Reentry Point

The Naruto anime series is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and to celebrate, developer CyberConnect2 Co and publisher BANDAI NAMCO has the next installment in the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm arena-fighter series, which will allow players to relive the anime through arena battles and iconic moments. Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections boasts a gigantic roster of 130 characters with tag-team options available that build on the relationships that the characters have in the series. I’m not going to lie. This game is very much like the ones before it, particularly in how it is handled. That said, when looked at as a celebration of Naruto, that’s where it succeeds.

While the mechanics of the fight themselves when playing in the normal format of controls remain pretty much the same as in the past, this iteration of the series offers up winning finishing moves and the all-new anime cinematics, allowing players to relive selected scenes (a lot of them are truly iconic) from Naruto’s childhood time training until his final battle with Sasuke. As an arena fighter, Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is simple, but as a way to reenter a beloved series years after you left it? Well, it’s perfect.

The nostalgia is captured in three ways. The first is through unlockable cinematics that happens when you finish a battle as the victor. Based on the composition of your team—say you chose Guy and Rock Lee—you’ll get different animated scenes that are based on the relationship between your team.

This encourages the player to play as different combinations of players and rewards fans of different pairings. This is especially the situation when you know the relationships between characters, which allows you to play out things you’re itching to see. Additionally, while the 130-character roster does heavily involve variants of the same character, those variants do unlock different animations than the others. This is especially important for characters that have been around since the first episodes of the franchise to where it is now.

While the different character combinations can be experienced in the multiplayer of the games, the real meat of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections‘s nostalgia comes from the single-player stories available in the History Mode and the original Special Story created for the game. For the former, you play through defined episodes of the series, including the Genin Training Arc, Chasing Sasuke, Arrival of the New Age, Akatsuki Riot, The Fire Kage Summit, The Fourth Great Ninja War Part 1 and 2, and The Last Battle. While the assumption for these scenes was more akin to the most recent Dragon Quest games where there are anime stills to retell the moments, Ninja Storm Connections has fully animated and voiced cinematics.

However, there is a twist in History Mode. In the game, the actual history has been lost, and you must fight through battles and arcs to reveal and reset the timeline’s moments. To introduce this, the player starts a battle between Sasuke and Naruto. The scene itself reads as if the roles of the Shonen rivals have switched, and it makes the mode worth continuing through. As you fight through the scenes, you can complete different win conditions in order to unlock new outfits and more. It also adds a bit of challenge in a relatively easy game.

For many of us, Naruto was a part of our childhood, and being able to revisit that and fall in love again is a unique experience that can connect us to the newer generations who are fans of Boruto as much as the first generations. As a starter for either a series or a reentry point, the way that the game integrates anime moments big and small packs a nostalgic punch. That said, if this is a series that you’ve been playing since release or even the last couple of games in the franchise, there isn’t much new here.

When it comes to fighting games, a high skill ceiling can often make it hard for newcomers. That said, the implementation of simple button mapping allows the game to be accessible to those who have never played a fighting game or those who have been out of it for some time. This greatly reduces the difficulty of the game, and on PC makes the advancing, attack, and finisher all to just one button. This allows you to string together combos with little to no issues. Holding the button will allow you to use it for different effects as well, which changes things up just slightly.

Much simpler than, say Street Fighter 6‘s Dynamic Control scheme, it is appreciated from an accessibility perspective or when you’re working your way through the story and playing against characters you truly don’t want to put much time into. While keeping the regular scheme allows the challenge to be maintained for the veteran players, the Simple scheme makes Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections a special kind of reentry point for fans who have been away for some time.

An arena fighter like others, the game isn’t trying to fix what isn’t broken. Existing fans of the Ninja Storm franchise and other anime fighters will have a fine enough time. That said, Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is perfect for any fan of Naruto as a story because it allows players to embrace and play through prolific moments not only in stellar finishing move movies but also through its two story modes.

As an anime fan who hasn’t watched Naruto in almost a decade and has never seen beyond one arc of Boruto, this game made me excited for the franchise in a way I honestly hadn’t felt in a long time. But my view of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections as my own reentry is a subjective point that the game’s mechanics don’t necessarily do enough to overtake the nostalgia and stand on its own.

While taking advantage of the series’ anniversary does work as a way to bring in new players to the fighting game franchise who may not have played before or bring in those who tapped out but are looking for a way back in, I have to ask: What do folks who have been playing ever consecutive game gain from this entry into the series? The answer is that the joy that this game sparks is going to be entirely dependent on how much you’ve played before, what you’re looking for from the fighter, and genuinely how much you care about individual characters.

Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is available now PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC.