Ninja Storm Connections was a game I wanted to like, I wanted to have some fun from since the very idea of a Naruto game where it covers the titular character's life as a kid all the way up to the final battle with Sasuke on the Valley of the End with all of the Boruto content being optional since well I think Boruto is a cash grab and you got to pay me to watch it but besides that, I primarily played the Ninja History Mode and everything about this mode is hastily put together and lazy. It might be harsh to judge the game primarily based on this, but this was a big reason why I played Storm Connections, but due to reasons I will state later, the execution is severly lacking.
Before I start heavily criticizing the game, I won't call the game outright "bad" since I got to the end of the game at all and rolled credits on this mode and if I were to rank this game out of the CyberConnect Ninja Storm games I played, I would say it's better than Storm 1 and Generations but not as good as Storm 2-4.
With that out of the way, everything about this game is hastily put together, copy and paste rush job.
First thing I notice right away about the Ninja History mode is that it's very cheaply made, there's no in engine cutscenes like in Storm 2-4 instead it's actually still images from the Naruto anime with voiced narration and occasional voice lines from other characters. What's worse is that not all of the chapters and "episodes" are voiced adding even more to the "cheap" nature of this mode. I wouldn't mind major events being skipped over especially since I wouldn't want a war section to be even longer but the lack of geniune production values in this mode just adds to how poorly put together it is.
If that's not enough, I was going to commend this game for having the setpieces, QTEs and bosses unlike Storm 1 and Generations but there is just one big problem:
Most if not all of these are reused from past Storm games. This might not be a big issue if you didn't play Storm 2-4 originally but since I did when I got to Kakashi boss post timeskip, I was like, "did I play all this before?" Some bosses like the Kakazu fight is even removed and if just a generic one on one fight. This just adds even more to rushed hastily put together nature of Storm Connections.
The biggest kicker to all this is that the game is just way too easy for about 95% of the game, I'm not asking every game to be super hard but due to the easy difficulty especially if you choose to play the tutorial is that fights last less than 5 minutes 95% of the time. So what you will be doing is engaging in fights that last less than 5 minutes than watch 10-15 minutes worth of cutscenes, and this is what this mode will consist of. On top of all this, the game pulls a Wonderful 101 and CC2's Demon Slayer game and you can die as many time as you want but get a worse rank making death trivial which adds even more to the easy nature of the game, all though a part of me thinks this could be a blessing in disguise since I can get the game done faster. As a whole, this mode is basically the Bouncer minus everything that makes the Bouncer hilariously bad but endearing since that game is about 1 hour for the average first time through while my play time for Ninja History was 11 hours for me and 6 hours if you look up longplays. If you skip the cutscenes, it's even shorter.
However what's the final nail in the coffin for me is the fighting mechanics along with the easy difficulty. The fighting system of the Storm games have never really been "deep" but I always felt at least with Storm 2 and 3, they at least broke up the pace with exploration and beat em up sections. With Storm Connections, the specticle is reused from past games and most off the fights consist of is mashing circle, then pressing triangle and circle to a special ninjutsu or ultimate attack, and then occasionally pressing L2 to a substitution move to break out of a combo in case if the meter is full to do 4 times. You can pretty much do all these tactics to win every fight in the game and if you don't care about ranks, you can keep doing this.
The only exception to this is bosses but once again, if you don't care about ranks or 100%, you can keep dying until you get their health down to zero.
Overall, this game is very much the definition of a chore, I wanted to play this since I already played Storm 2-4 already and I wanted to play something "new" but instead this was just a greatest hits collection of games I would rather play instead. I wanted to find some good in this game and this mode in particular but instead, I was just bored throughout most if not all my playtime and was just happy when I rolled credits. The game is mediocre and forgettable as mediocre and forgettable can get. It's shocking licensed games of this quality comes out in today's day and age.
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