Naruto Shippuden: Dragonblade Chronicles

Don’t believe it!

***Naruto Shippūden: Dragon Blade Chronicles***, known as ***Naruto Shippūden: Ryūjinki***(ナルト- 疾風伝 龍刃記, *literally meaning:* Naruto Hurricane Chronicles: Dragon Sword Chronicles) in Japan, is a video game for the Wii.

## Why You Shouldn't Believe It

1. The graphics are very poor for a game released in 2009. The previous Naruto games that came out before this game had much better graphics.
2. There are only 2 playable characters, those being Naruto and Sasuke. The Naruto series is known for having tons of unique characters, yet in this game you can only play as those 2. It would have been nice if you could play as more characters, like Sakura, Kakashi, Itachi, Rock Lee, Gaara, Deidara, Suigetsu, etc.
3. The cutscenes look extremely awful, as they are mostly done with text boxes, like a visual novel. The animations are very poor, most notably Rock Lee’s Leaf Hurricane, and the characters will mostly stay still most of the time. The cutscenes are also very long and boring, and you can’t even skip them.
4. The controls are very poor. Naruto and Sasuke move very fast, and they feel very unresponsive.
5. Throughout the game, there are tons of bugs and lag issues that can make the game almost unplayable.
6. The story is awful. It does not follow the anime at all and it is worse than a ton of Naruto fillers.
7. Very little replay value. Once you are done with this game, you are done. There isn’t even any extra modes like a boss rush.
8. The game tries to add some depth by adding support skills and characters, but both of them fail at that.
9. Very poor combat. All you do is mash the B button to do your attacks.
10. Very repetitive gameplay that gets extremely boring.
11. Very unfaithful to the source material. For example, Rock Lee wears the Chakra Armor, even though he doesn’t use chakra, he uses Taijutsu, which doesn’t require chakra. How did the developers forget thet.
12. All of the stages are very bland and boring. There is nothing to see in the stages and very little reason to explore them.
13. The game feels more like a generic hack and slash game that had the Naruto characters thrown in at the last second so that the game would sell more, well it did sell pretty well so they were right i guess.
14. Multiplayer feels very tacked on and the game lags even worse when playing with a second player.

## Redeeming Qualities

1. The new character redesigns look extremely awesome, and some fans wish they appeared in the anime.
2. The soundtrack is really good like most Naruto games.
3. Great voice acting in both Japanese and English.
4. This game can link up to Naruto Shippuden: Shinobi Rumble to unlock some special moves for Naruto in that game.
5. A limited edition Toys R Us bundle of the game came with a free pack of Naruto trading cards
	* The Amazon bundle of the game came with a set of really cool looking Naruto action figures.
6. Unlike most other Wii games, the game does support the Gamecube controller.

## Reception

Reception of *Dragon Blade Chronicles* has been resoundingly negative in the gaming review community. Gamespot's review gave it a 3.5/10, noting "Shallow combat, frustrating exploration, and crippling technical issues make *Dragon Blade Chronicles* a *Naruto* adventure to avoid".