Clash of Ninja 2’s Broken Characters
After beating this game years ago for the Gamecube, I decided to play it again, only to realize I had completely forgotten how poor the game was in nearly every design aspect. Not only is the dubbed dialogue atrocious, characters saying lines from the anime that others did and overall the only redeeming quality being its cell art, the worst part of Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 is the fact that characters are badly balanced in terms of strength and abilities. Four characters in particular stand out, two that are incredibly strong when they are not supposed to be and two that are pushovers when they are the show’s top dogs.
Fair Ninjas that are Overpowered
Iruka Umino: He’s my favorite character from Naruto and I love using him in single player mode, but I do so because he is so hideously overpowered that I can knock out every round with barely any damage and no KO’s on my behalf. This is a problem, not only in the mechanics of the game play, but his character as well, since from the original manga and anime, Iruka is a low-level ninja and a schoolteacher, not this unstoppable force of back-breaking roundhouse kicks, no matter how wicked it is.
Sakura Haruno: With Clash of Ninja 2 taking place at the beginning of the story of Naruto, any fan will be able to agree that within Team 7, Sakura had the greatest hang on her chakra but was without a doubt, the weakest link in terms of physical damage done. In the game however, she is incredibly fast and hard to catch, while packing some mean punches. It’s great to use her, but fighting against her with a character like, Sasuke for example, the character with superior strength and jutsu at this point in the story, she can knock him out in just mere seconds.
Top-dog Ninjas that are Weaklings
Sasuke Uchiha: I’d have thought the developers would severely overpower him, out of any character, but I absolutely dread using Sasuke in a fight. There is nothing notable about his fighting abilities and in order to use his jutsu you have to be practically standing on top of the enemy because he kicks completely vertical instead of outwards, allowing any target to merely take a step back and avoid any attack with ease. His fight with Gaara and Kankuro was only managed because the health bars were rigged to deplete more HP than usual, which is why I was able to keep my head during the battle.
Kankuro: While he is not the strongest of the sand siblings, that title given to Gaara without hesitation, he is still an incredibly impressive and frightening character. The entire point of Kankuro in the game is to use his puppet, Crow, which will all be long range attacks, leaving Kankuro unscathed from afar. However, this is not the case. His defense is easily broken and then with his hands busy controlling a puppet that is doing nothing to damage the enemy, he can be attacked and knocked out in no time. Frankly, Crow is a stronger character than Kankuro and that just isn’t right.
A game with no story whatsoever that is depending on the joy players receive from single player or multi-player mode should have characters take on both interesting abilities and faults, which is what makes playing fighting games fun and not frustrating. Iruka should have a superior strength, but he should also have a known weakness, which he does not and Sasuke should just have a single strength in general, not ‘eh’ abilities and a broken jutsu.