Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles--the first thing to come to mind when I booted the game up was "thank god it's not another fighter." I admit I'm as much a fan of the all-flash-and-no-substance anime fighter genre as anyone else is, but after a dozen of 'em have passed by my desk it's easy to appreciate my level of frustration in having to float through another uninspired DBZ: Budokai clone. This newest adventure into anime fighting eschews the traditional, and instead finds inspiration in an unlikely place.

Fall 2005 saw the release of a handful of brawlers, one of the most popular among the nerd set being Namco's Urban Reign. It featured a fairly deep fighting system (for the genre) that took inspiration from Tekken. Another major hallmark of the game design was the small, arena-like stage design built more for a story than for free roaming.

As you can probably figure by this point, Naruto: UC borrows quite heavily from Urban Reign. The game throws the titular hero on a journey around a small map filled with random encounters and storyline related gameplay. Missions are usually fairly sensical, with early examples being delivering a cart to a city while defending it from rogues... But then you get to the point where the plot gets a bit out there. Again, as an early example, Naruto is tasked with finding a sort of candy which will help a friend. He is allied with a fairly rotund fellow ninja who specializes in crushing enemies. When you finally get the candy, of which only one can be made (natch), the fellow ninja is jonesing for it. He gets so lustful for the item that he turns on you, threatening to kill you for it. Of course, chances are that the core audience won't really care about the plot, though.

However, they will care about the annoying save system. The game forces players to save after every battle, without any real sort of prompting beforehand. Although most will probably read the friggin' manual for themselves and figure this out, it's more than likely that Billy Narutofan will hop into the game, assume that an auto-save will keep their progress, and leave utterly disgusted when they finally get beaten and lose all their progress. It happens, believe me. It happens.

Progress is not only measured in the amount of plot you drill through, but also the amount of customization you can throw into your character. By way of collecting and buying items, it's possible to throw new abilities and traits onto characters to make them even tougher.

That aside, Cavia makes leaps and bounds towards making a legitimately good anime licensed title. Instead of taking the cheap and easy way out, they made a solid game with a little bit of replay and a lot of fun inside. Even though it's not without faults, Uzumaki Chronicles should do well enough to ensure that Cavia gets a little more time and money for a sequel that should make fans very happy. Until then, I'm just going to kick faceless enemies in the face a few more times.