Naruto Storm Connections Is A Waste Of Money 

The removal of tilts also hurts because some of them were genuinely cool little utility moves that can't simply be converted into a jutsu. They were a tool for keeping the opponent guessing in neutral, not a direct damage dealer or combo tool. Removing Itachi's crows was criminal, IMO.

Funny of you to assume that bandai namco cares or even listens to what we say

Imagine adding Simple Controls in a game where you already use one button to attack

The fact that the Naruto and Sasuke fight from storm 3 isnt in the game is criminal

Storm 2 still has the best story experience (based on time of release). It did a very good job of balancing gameplay, cinematics, and capturing the feeling of the manga.

Baryon Mode Naruto being an awakening that you can only use for all of 10 seconds was the biggest let down for me, then they doubled down and gave him a negative status effect upon depletion of the awakening, you can never fully savor Baryon mode because by the time you open up your opponent the awakening timer is over AND you are negatively effected at the end, it's a slap in the face

The fact that Anko & Kurenai were only been support characters in Storm 1 is criminal.

Globku had me shook when he brushed past the cutscene story mode nonsense 😂 that was EVERYONE’S least favorite thing to ever happen in this genre.

This will be a great $20 pickup when it inevitably goes on sale in a couple of months

Its sad that most of this doesn't matter cause people will buy the game anyway just cause it is Naruto and be like you shouldn't complain because its been 7 years since storm 4. This is why as a community most anime games be half baked.

the worse thing is that they gave jigen isshiki's cubes...jigen was NOT able to spawn the cubes because it requires more chackra and power

It bugs me that for their last game, CyberConnect didn't do the DBZ Kakarot treatment for Ultimate Ninja Storm. A fully traversable Naruto world would be so dope, imagine being able to run and jump around villages like you could in Ninja Storm one. It's pretty damn disappointing.

Tbh you perfectly summarized the most important flaws of this game, good job

If they treat BT4 with the same disrespect I’ll cry 🤦🏾‍♂️

The day this game was announced I knew it was a waste of money

I learned about most of the battle system changes before the game came out and was excited to play it with my cousin online, I even had him teach me more of Storm 4 since I never really clicked with it, only to then find out that it was impossible for us to play together in connections, which is just baffling.

Touching on gameplay, they made it even more spam oriented than Storm 4. You can now counter for free whereas before it cut some of your Chakra bar for a short period of time. Also it doesn't look like your supports do anything mid fight anymore like charge guard or strike back. Like you said, for everything new in the game, they took out something else which makes zero sense

The substitution is sooo F-ing awful! i have to always chase after people only for them run away the second i hit them.there is no way of forcing opponents to engage with you until they feel like it. that terrible re-dubbing and removed storm 1 ultimates was the final straw

I’ll never get over how each Storm game has been a technical downgrade since the first one. Coming from removing free roam, clashes ,wall climbing and QTE in battle in Storm two. To remove side combos and all of that in Storm three to have those never make a come back in the « Final Storm game » in four. Really highlighted how CC2 went for quantity over quality in regards to this series over the years. The last game I bought from them was Revolution and I don’t plan on playing anything they create anymore.

Finally someone being honest.

I agree with everything you just said... I bought the digital deluxe edition and its the first time I really regret spending that much money on a game...

I am fine with the combat changes, but you're right. The game lacks too many things in terms of online and offline and is not worth the 60 bucks. Hopefully it goes on a deal some day or the devs fix some things and add more. Like, I really want to buy it but 60 bucks is almost all I have so whatever, guess not

Unpopular statement that I can't help to make: Naruto Storm Connections looking a lot like the present franchise - a massive disappointment.

You nailed all the problems with this shitty cash grab of a game. Its absolutely baffling how they managed to take multiple steps back since storm 3 with all the new technology. We will probably never get a proper storm game with Create-A-Ninja, not in our lifetime.

imagine if people like you weren't looking out for us, we would just have shills like afrosenju and globku making everyone think this is the best game ever just to get views.......this game is the laziest storm game ever released in fact its a downgrade from storm 4 in every way

Idk why ppl are saying CC2 had 7 years to develop this game. We don't know when productions even started. But based on the product we got, and when the first announcement and trailer dropped, which was around 8 or 9 months ago, and the history of Generations and Revolution taking 1-2 years after the numbered games to come out, I'd guess they had 1-2 yrs at best to make this game. Was probably hella rushed too since they likely wanted to release it within a few months window after the planned Naruto anniversary anime episodes (which got delayed, btw) and Boruto manga's return. This is just my speculation of course, but behind the scene, it feels like one big mess.

"I sure do love playing a slideshow, It reminds me of the history mode cutscenes!" HAHAHAHA I love that!

I would’ve rather they keep gameplay the same & put dev time into making a story mode similar to storm 1 with free roam, boss battles, and jutsu clashes. I still think it would be amazing to have a free Roam story mode covering all of naruto, shippuden, boruto, and timeskip boruto. The fact they did not even port over all the boss fights is odd & lazy

I'm sad that they didn't adapt any of story from Boruto. They don't even have any of the Boruto era genin besides Team 7. Where's Shikadai, Chocho, Inojin, and Sumire? Where are Urashiki and Code too? Pretty big omissions. There's so many stories they could have adapted too.. The Last movie, the Sumire/Nue arc, the Sarada Oneshot with Shin Uchiha, the Mitsuki Oneshot with Log, the Boruto movie, the Chunin exams, the Mitsuki disappearance arc, the Bandit arc, all the stuff with Ao/Kawaki/Kara/Delta/Jigen, and Code/Eida. The production values on the anime aren't too great. It would have been amazing to see Ninja Storm levels of polish and visuals. Seeing all this stuff as shorter stories could have gotten people into Boruto too :\

If you own Ultimate Ninja Storm legacy, or trilogy with storm 4 then there's really no need to get this game, heck you're probably better off with those ones.

10:00 online also has this weird glitch where your character customization gets swapped. Yesterday I played matches where somehow my opponent was wearing the items I put on my character (and mine were gone) and sometimes I'd be wearing the items of someone I fought previously or matched with and then the new person I would fight was wearing the items I actually put on MY characters. This game has so many weird bugs. Some characters don't say their lines in ultimate jutsus. Shurikens have no sound effects when you throw them (sometimes not even when they clash). This game is disgustingly unfinished and undercooked in almost every way

I would have honestly been happy if the History Mode would have simply been the Ninja World Timeline from Storm 3 but with the actual bossfights from the previous games. That is what has always annoyed me about it in Storm 3 initially. I dont play online, besides Storm 2 which required it for the Platinum(coincidentally the only mainline game that does that, hmm i wonder why). I still believe the older Storm games are the gold standard for a Storydriven Anime game. It is legitimately a goldmine they could do this with any longrunning Shounen franchise they wanted and bring in way more money than a high quality storm game costs. But considering how CC2 acts i doubt those would be any good nowadays.

Also tilts costed no chakra and were OP for some characters. They made the change to prevent spamming free jutsu.

Finally someone whos not blinded by nostalgia that sees it for what it really is, i hope the game flops they need to do better

It's been like 7 seven years since the last storm game. Why even release this if it was going to be a cheap ripoff? It's not like they were in any rush to fill a trend or anything.

Who the hell was using the chakra shurikens to begin with?😅 that's the best change. Removing tilts, that's the big issue

Finally! an honest review from an actual naruto fan, you get my like & support sir, great job

It's also crazy how we still can't use Sage Mode Naruto without the red cape or Madara with Hashirama on his chest...

God, I remember playing Storm 2 way back. It had it all (or most of it all), open world exploration like you had to physically travel from A to B (Example: From the hidden leaf village to the hidden sand village) and you could find items along the way, tons of side missions... heck even meet Lars from Tekken. But now after Storm 4 it's all click next to get to next fight or watch a cutscene.

Eveything you said is true. One thing everyone should realize is we are not the target audience for these games. These games are for young kids or casual fans who watch Naruto and just want to play as their favorite characters regardless of how “good” the game is. Personally I enjoy the game cause I’m simple and just love fighting games. They fixed the biggest issue for me from the last games which was I couldn’t connect combos. This is enough to keep me entertained but I understand why hardcore naruto fans hate this game

I can’t believe they removed tilt as I tried that on Ryujinx and was like wow.

i cant spam tons of fireball now with Shisui or other Uchiha characters and thats broken lol. i'd say this is the balance i needed in storm 4. And all characters now felt unique to each other by not having an option to select the same jutsu variation that has to the other character.

The only reason why I’m considering buying this is to play on active servers again. I just gave up on storm 4 cuz it’d take over 10 mins to find someone

Along with that is what seems to be a glitch in local tournament and league where if you have two people playing in it, player 2 gets switched to being player 1 when fighting computers.

The redub is actually AI, it's not the voice actors faults themselves. There's still some digging going on, and while I wouldn't say the game is worth the price, I've S ranked all the story (both for Naruto and Boruto) and I can at least say the combat in this game feels better than in storm 4. The storm 4 infinite staggers feel way more consistent, and the fact that so many characters now have infinites as well makes me happy. People really waste their subs so fast in online it's crazy. I either get matches where people barely use their items, barely counter, don't use their loops & jutsu properly, or I have matches where I get diffed and learn something new. I like the OG Boruto story but wish it had QTEs and that the two new characters were actually playable but hell, even tho the DLC has been data mined you never know. CC2 said they plan to support this game with consistent updates, and the online feels incredible.

Just wanna check you on the 7 years of development claim you made in the beginning. The claim makes no logical sense considering: - They would have had to have been working on connections during the dlc cycle of storm 4 and the development of the road to Boruto dlc - After the release of Storm 4 Matsuyama(the lead developer at CC2) quite literally said that they had had no plans of releasing another storm game - Heading into the 2020s CC2 had 3 other games in the pipeline (technically only 2.5 depending on your view of the jojo's game) and considering how much dna storm and demon slayer share it's safe to say that at least a decent portion people that worked on storm were working on demon slayer - BTS leaks of connections + the actual trademark only came out in 2022 All this together we can probably say that the development of Connections would have only truly started either during the development of Demon Slayer hinokami chronicles or after it's release Obviously I don't work at CC2 or Bandai but it's kind of disingenuous to state that connections started development immediately after storm 4

I like how you can get punished for simply existing in this game and can’t get out even if it’s a mechanic I feel that it shouldn’t be so easy to break guards or track half across the map

"That's about it for gameplay changes." You literally forgot about the main gameplay change. It's literally in the title too. Lol "CONNECTIONS." You can connect combos, jutsu, grabs, etc, together for much, much longer combo strings.

Really sad to hear this, but hope they make "advanced" controls so you can have your tilt and charka shuriken back. They could easily just make up and down jutsu

"Had 7 years to develop this game" I don't think it works like that...

I got the collectors edition, and I understand what you’re saying but I’m just so much of a Naruto fan that I was still excited to receive it 😂

I'm thinking that they're working on Storm V as we speak, and they needed a game to take us between Storm 4 & Storm 5 in the meantime. Cuz it'll either be called "Boruto 2 Blue Vortex: Ultimate Ninja Storm 5." Or they'll "Naruto x Boruto 2BV: UNS5" Cuz the Naruto name is jus too well known. But whatever it's called, we aren't seeing Storm 5 till at LEAST 2 Blue Vortex is over in the manga.

Thank you bro. At first last year, I was excited. However , once it came out. I realized I’m not spending money on this. I’ll watch it on RU-vid .

As a fan of storm and playing online matches I love the game as fresh new way of playing. However if your care more about offline and/or just a more casusal fan you're better off getting the storm collection and 4.

What you didn’t mention was how is the online gameplay past storm games always had that major lag but did the fix that ?? Is it easier to play online

Wait so i don't understand, chakra shuriken is a second jutsu, and tilts are like a third jutsu? Or how does it all work? It's sad really, tilts gave some characters so much identity

Nice review, I was wondering if this was my moment to enjoy the story mode on one single game, seems that that's not the case. Shame on you Bandai :c

bro storm 4 like 13$ rn n connections 80 im gettin storm 4 fr

the only way these companies will stop releasing these half baked games is if your average person stops buying them then defending them because they bought it. luckily, i’m starting to see people get tired of the BS that they keep pulling so i’m slowly starting to see a change in sentiment

I thought it was watching a video on a 100K+ YT channel. Great quality and review mate! I've subbed.

I really wanted to buy it just to play online but I couldn't push myself to. It really is just 10+ character DLC with a filler story. Not worth $60 and you know characters like Isshiki or Borushiki or updated Kawaki will just be the next DLC.

I think one of my biggest gripes about the game out of the many is that it’s incredibly disappointing that the Boruto era adults of the main cast still have the EXACT same movesets since Storm 2. Sure they get a second jutsu and some of them (Sakura) have gotten a new ultimate but my goodness at least change up the adult versions of the characters. Kakashi Boruto era should have a completely different moveset, they literally took part 1 Kiba as the model for Boruto Kiba, and everyone is just way too stale and stagnant at this point with no new moveset

love Naruto, but never played a game from this series! Should i get Storm 4? Any good please?

I'm just glad for a new game and I am happy that at least they added lots of new ultimates and you're now able to use two ninjutsu if you don't like it maybe they will change up some stuff later if not such is life they finna make money regardless if it's not for you that's ok you could always play storm 4 again. I hope you have great day btw

The game feels like a mod the new characters don’t even feel new just like Indra ashura are just naruto and sasuke with different move sets and kawaki kind of plays like jugo the cutscenes in combos are also very lazy for a 2023 game that cost almost over 100$

Im so glad you brought up how unrepresented characters are. Picking any character from the original Naruto series is almost a death sentence in these games and I hate it. They feel so boring and terrible to play compared to the other more recent characters. I was hoping they would at least give them new merit to being picked. Maybe give them new ultimates or *something* to make them feel like they weren't just ripped from storm 1.

My gripe with the storm series is the over simplicity gets old fast and the fight is in decoy management all characters eventually feel the same just different animations which is cool if ur a fan but gets old fast especially since theres no "good" naruto media to hype up anyone to want to experience playing in that world

It is very difficult to determine what we want. Some desire new gameplay, some desire unchangeable gameplays.

If I remember correctly, Ultimate Ninja 3 had the 2 jutsu thing, but they also allowed you to choose what jutsu you wanted to pair with each other. They also had more than one ultimate. Also, yeah, I agree with the moveset & copy characters. Also, I'll say this Kaguya was done so dirty, moveset, ultimate, and jutsu wise. Truthfully, I wish they'd expanded on the create your own ninja aspect, that's not shinobi strikers. It's weird that they haven't expanded on this more or made a RPG. I imagine if Bleach( or Saint Seiya ) did a new game, they'd have a create your own character, etc, and some decent fights with maybe an rpg twist. Saint Seiya needs a new game. I said what I said.

I think the only thing that needs to be noted is that CC2 didn't have "7 years" to make this game. They don't own the license, they are being contracted by Bandai Namco. Which means what likely happened, is they were contracted to start working on this game, with a very short window of time(probably somewhere around a year), and with a limited budget. All of this falls on Bamco, who didn't provide them with time/money to make a good product. Though, it's also likely CC2's willingness to accept the work(or need to pay rent/salaries) that Bamco keeps coming back to them.

"More fast paced" is the complete opposite of my problem with it. Anytime I'm playing Story mode, it's painful to fight the AI. They do nothing but run for 95% of the match, which makes doing certain completion quests (Like 15-20 hit combos) borderline impossible without either killing them first, or triggering a quick-time cutscene.

I haven't touched a Storm game since the second one (the disc actually corrupted somehow and became completely unsuable so my trust dropped considerably) but considered trying to catch up recently after noticing how many more there were. It sucks that there's so many cons to the latest entry and that my girl Anko still got shafted. The character clone slots are also really bad, I am disappoint.

The fact that they took out the tilt move and replace Chakra shuriken with another justsu kinda tells me that they made this game easier for people cause no one could figure the controls out in mid battle.. me personally they made this game a spammers paradise , in other words they made it worse... then on top of that, for online u can't even play singles no more like wtf... no tournaments no endless. Smh

It is worst part I have to grind to get the skins and kakashi can’t do water dragon again

I feel like modern media in general is becoming so highly monetized that it's taking away from a lot of creativity from projects. A lot of games are being rushed out for the sake of a quick buck micro transactions all of that stuff instead of just focusing on the gameplay its so crazy.

Can't believe I've been waiting over a decade for them to make Chojuro and the other support only characters playable and yet not even becoming the current Mizukage was enough for them. Meanwhile, Kushina still has one of the most misogynistic movesets I've seen in a game in a long time.

You nailed everything right on the money, this game was a waste. I like that they made tilts easier and combos easier. But adding adult kazekage gaara, temari, and kankuro for them to have the same exact moveset pissed me off. So lazy. And no quick time event boss battles like in the old ones for the story mode, no strike back guard or secret technique protection anymore either from allies. It just feels so stale and lackluster compared to storm 4.

Im fine with the Game. But i hope that more dlc characters are coming like Toneri, urashiki, ishiki, konohamaru, Code and more.

Always good to get reviews b4 spending/ wasting your money. It's on sale but I'll wait for another price drop. Thanks

Another thing that probably only pisses off me specifically is that, like Storm 4, there is no Japanese text option for the PC version. Storm 4 I could at least kind of understand since it was from 2016 but now in 2023 with worldwide releases and almost every game having all the languages supported on every version it's just nonsensical. Even more nonsensical is that before the game released the Steam page actually did say there was going to be Japanese text and the store page was also entirely in Japanese, but now with it releasing that's all just completely gone and it's nowhere to be found. Granted, I never bought the game so it might be in there but if it is, the store page doesn't say it.

Not being able to leave ranked lobbys is not a bad thing tbh. You shouldnn't be able to cherry pick your opponents if your fighting for a rank. That should only be possible in casual matches. Cyberconnect is the only developer who ever gave the option to choose ranked opponents. No one else does this.

Im certan that theyre using review bots because on steam connections went from mostly negative to mixed in less then a day

for me its the face that they changed the character switch to using an entire character bar instead of half. also i was really hoping this game was going to be on a new engine or at least have upgraded/updated graphics. idk if anyone else noticed but the ring match 2/3 icons are pixely af

if its my first naruto game in years should I buy it? I want to catch up with the boruto story and I like 130characters

you know what's sad 90% of people in the comment section bought the game.

Animations, UI and graphics look worse than storm 4. Having more colour doesn't mean good graphics.

Is this a good game if youre just looking to chill and play the "free battle" mode like a fighting game and not really care about the lore? (i did this in storm 4)

Y’know, I never really got into Naruto, and only played Storm 4 for its story mode (genuinely pretty fun!) and just to goof around with friends in local pvp. Seeing how this iteration of the game was handled though, I hate to see how it was handled. You Naruto fans deserved better…

I've been a fan of the Naruto and the Ultimate Ninja games since the first 1 on PS2, and seeing how gross and cash grabby the games have grown over time makes me really sad over the years... I was grossly disappointed by Storm 4, and now even more with Storm Connections.

this game feels more like a beta test that cost $60

Did you get your refund? They told my friends they couldn’t refund him cause he played to many hours and that was like in the second day

I agree with this interview 100%. On ps5 though I did find a legit way to game share witch means it cost $30 per me and my friend. And I found a way to sguaruntee a match up with my friend, although it’s meticulous. Involves a lot of factors including the benefit of being a gifted rhythm musician who can count the 0.4 seconds of lag between ps plus voice chat to hit the match button at the exact same time. But it does work lol. But I shouldn’t have to do that. I agree.

I personally am happy with the product overall can't wait for the dlc content to be coming out.

Honestly I don’t think it’s a waste of money as long as there are enough players playing the game so that a player could have find a match. I can understand why it’s disappointing but some of its new additions make it really fun in my opinion

that's what i feared, the fact the hidden leaf ninjas in boruto version have the same moveset of the previous series

Screw this game I rather just play storm 4. More people will start to play storm 4 again anyways. Since this storm connection came out. I rather wait for storm 5 thanks for showing me the truth behind this game.

I literally have the torrent downloading right now...for free

Actually we always had 2 jutsus. One was just a tilt and now they got rid of it so we have the same amount of jury’s as last time

One thing about the game is that the CPU becomes very aggressive and do a lot of random crap whenever the team attack becomes avaliable for you. This happened to me everytime on normal, hard, and very hard mode. In Storm 4 you have a good chance of using it but in Connections the game will stop you no matter what until the bar disappears.

I was waiting to buy this game but I'm glad I fell into the habit of reading game reviews before I make any purchase. Everyone was hyped over Baryon Naruto only to find that it is only an awakening. Thanks.