Game review: 'Storm Connections'

Two and a Half out of Five Stars

By Michael Leek
Sports Editor 

Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is a video game I was excited to play, but ended up extremely disappointed.

Storm Connections is the seventh and final installment of the Ultimate Ninja Storm series first appearing in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. Connections was released on Nov 16, 2023, for the PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows.

The game is based on the long-running manga and anime series Naruto/ Boruto. I am a huge fan of the shows and the previous games, but Bandai Namco dropped the ball on this game. 

Concerning the story mode, there are two different stories you can play through. There is the ‘history’ mode, in which you can play the major moments in the Naruto and Naruto Shippuden storyline, and there is a new story you can play through that is original to the game.

Both story modes could have been more impressive. In the history story, game makers missed key battles and reused old images from old games and shows. The original story was not bad, but I was uninterested in the characters and, again, the boss fights were lackluster compared to the previous games.

Gameplay-wise, the game added a few new features and a couple of tweaks to the mechanics. For example, you can continue combos in situations you previously couldn’t, and they added a second jutsu instead of a tilt.

Where I thought the game would exceed was in the gameplay, specifically the online battles. It did not. There was no spectating mode for tournament play, and there was nothing new in terms of online battle.

You can either play ranked matches, unranked matches or a tournament and endless style of matches where you keep playing until you lose.

All of these things were in the previous games.

One of the things Connections did well was expand on the already huge character roster. The characters that were added were fun to learn and play with online.

The $59.99 price of this game did not feel appropriate. It does not feel like a full new game but rather a DLC expansion of the previous game.

I give this game a 2.5 stars out of five. There were more negatives I found in the game than positives. There was not enough new content for the paywall and the developers did not listen to the community and add things that we wanted.

If they add DLC to this game and improve on the online battle features I would love to revisit this game, but as of right now I do not enjoy it enough to return to it.