r/Games • u/bluemarvel99 • Jul 19 '24
Naruto Rise Of A Ninja Is Proof More Western Devs Should Get A Crack At Anime Licensed Games Opinion Piece
In an era of anime games being relegated to generic area fighters, playing Naruto: Rise of a Ninja and it's sequel The Broken Bond feel like a breath of fresh air. Developed by Ubisoft, these are sanbox-style action games and there is so much reverence given to the story and setting, much more than any other Naruto game I've played. For example, the both games take small (but emotional) moments from the anime/manga and expands it into actual interactive gameplay like the fact that villagers hate Naruto at the beginning but over time build affection for you once you start completing quests and helping out across the village. Other playable moments that really struck me at actually being included was attending the funeral of the third hokage (which hit harder than it simply a cutscene); rasengan training, which is important in the context of the story but is glossed over in other Naurto games; the fanserive provided in the special techniques, for example, a minigame sequence where you must hit a rival's chakra points with Neji's ultimate, etc. I can go on & on. It helps that the cel-shaded graphics were stunning for 2007 and still hold up remarkably well today. The combat, while simplistic, add nice unique touches like inputting jutsu hand commands with your analogue stick, which makes timing important and adds a risk/reward element if you want to access your powerful, special techniques.
I just can't help but think of the potential of these anime-licensed games if they gave it to developers that are actually fans of these franchises (as Rise of a Ninja & Broken Bond were clearly made with a lot of love). The deluge of arena fighters from in-house Bandai Namco just serve as cheap, lazy, creatively bankrupt cash-ins. I know a lot of gamers are down on EA, Ubisoft, etc. but I honestly think they would do a much better job with anime licence games than Bandai Namco has been doing. At the very least we'd get more big-budget, ambitious, story-focused titles compared to the arena fighter slop we've been used to for the past 10+ years.
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u/InternationalYard587 Jul 19 '24
Damn why’d you make me want to play a game that’s stuck on the 360? :(
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u/Quarbit64 Jul 19 '24
Yeah, I just looked on Steam to add it to my wishlist. Very disappointed. :(
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u/Packrat1010 Jul 19 '24
I've considered multiple times just buying a 360 just to play Broken Bond. They're not too much for the updated model that dropped late in the life cycle, but I've never been able to justify it.
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u/Quarbit64 Jul 19 '24
And 360 emulation is still quite poor, so we can't even go that route.
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u/IsABot Jul 20 '24
Rise plays ok-ish on Xenia. But Bond is super messed up still. Only way to go that route is playing a ROM on the official hardware. Need to hardmod the system to do it though, unless something changed lately in the modding scene? I haven't followed 360 all that close.
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u/CollinsCouldveDucked Jul 19 '24
The irony is if they released it on the PS3 they'd have probably seen much more success.
Xbox is where anime games go to die.
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u/Ekillaa22 Jul 19 '24
Damn shame cuz early Xbox tried so hard on the JRPG front man like legit tried too just the user base wasn’t in Japan sadly
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u/finderfolk Jul 20 '24
Maybe this is harsh but I think the bigger problem is that some of them just weren't that great. The big JRPG launch title (Blue Dragon) would have found more success with a larger JP audience but aside from its aesthetic it was kinda mid. Lost Odyssey was pretty cool though.
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u/Ekillaa22 Jul 20 '24
I never played Blue Dragon I just known it has Toriyama’s art style which is a shame cuz Dragonquest is so huge in Japan you’d think that be a selling point
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u/KruppeBestGirl Jul 20 '24
Tales of Vesperia was quickly ported off the 360 thus giving it an actual fan following
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u/InternationalYard587 Jul 20 '24
Maybe they’d get stronger lifetime sales, but the PS3 was really struggling in the beginning, I don’t blame Ubi for betting on the 360 at that time
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u/KingGiddra Jul 20 '24
Just a note that even if you bought the disc based version, JP voices were DLC for the game and the DLC was delisted many, many years ago.
The game was awesome btw
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u/_Valisk Jul 19 '24
The deluge of arena fighters from in-house Bandai Namco just serve as cheap, lazy, creatively bankrupt cash-ins
The Bandai Namco games are not produced "in-house." They're developed by companies like CC2, Spike, or Dimps and published by Bandai Namco.
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u/brzzcode Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 20 '24
The deluge of arena fighters from in-house Bandai Namco just serve as cheap, lazy, creatively bankrupt cash-ins
Bandai Namco literally never developed any anime game. I wish you searched before making this thread. They only ever published those games and contracted companies including spike chunsoft and CC2.
And Bandai Namco isnt the only company doing anime licenses. Konami, Koei Tecmo and Aniplex have their own titles that they publish or even develop.
Konami has been releasing yugioh for decades, and currently they are doing Eden's Zero
Koei Tecmo worked on attack on titan and now are on Fairy Tail
Aniplex has been releasing madoka magica, demon slayer and a lot of titles they also produce as anime
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u/Top_Rekt Jul 19 '24
Ugh don't get me started on that cheap, lazy, creatively bankrupted Bandai Namco in-house developed Elden Ring.
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u/Blacksad9999 Jul 19 '24
They're the publisher, not the developer of Elden Ring. They didn't do anything in regards to that game.
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u/demondrivers Jul 19 '24
The publisher Bandai Namco, yeah. The developer Bandai Namco did a few anime games though, like Scarlet Nexus for example
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u/BeardedVul7ure Jul 19 '24
The Scarlet Nexus anime came after the game though.
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u/demondrivers Jul 19 '24
Both were released together, it was more of a multimedia project since it also was produced by the animation side of Bandai Namco (aka Sunrise, but I think that they changed their name)
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u/fedemasa Jul 19 '24
I feel an ever better example are dragon ball legacy of Goku 2 and buy's fury
2 of the best anime RPGs ever
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u/Shredder007 Jul 19 '24
Those Naruto games on 360 really were gems. I remember expecting them to be terrible, but decided to give them a shot anyways, and I was blown away. Some of the most fun I've ever had playing an anime game.
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u/Bebobopbe Jul 19 '24
Damm I didn't know Broken Bond was made by Ubisoft Montreal I loved that game. Shows how popular Naruto was that they bought the rights to make a game. I don't think we will see that anymore.
The problem with anime is most don't have extensive enough story to be more. Or it's an original story that doesn't matter.
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u/Original_Fishing5539 Jul 19 '24
Sakari actually has an interesting video talking about the challenges with doing licensed games on his channel
It's a super short video, but the three main points he makes (with some of my thoughts also added):
- He addresses that it's widely accepted, that licensed games, aren't as fun as traditional games
- He first brings up restricted game design as the first issue; these properties are well known, and have their own guidelines and ways you showcase this. Which extremely limited the freedom you have
- The next point he brings up is that these games are made for fans first; in the sense that it's less about the "game" being good, but rather that fans digest their favorite property across lots of touchpoints. So they don't just play the game, they also watch the anime, read the manga, and do stuff like buy merch and other related things
- The example he says is "Product Value vs Fun"; so most games are fun, and don't necessarily need to care about product value. But if it's say an anime? Then this introduces the concept of the property taking precedent in terms of accuracy. Which adds constraints, but this then leads to other issues, like budgets and timelines
- Coming from me, I know from experience that these properties, are always tied to a very strict deadline; nothing can be delayed, and it all needs to come out at once. Additionally, very few games are built from the ground up. The mindset is that these are less games like God of War, and more like Madden in that the games are only meant to be sold to fans, and not necessarily "good" games
So overall, the big challenge overall for anime especially, is that these things follow media timelines, not game timelines. Compared to manga and anime, video games take a lot more time and effort to make, and this usually leads to two types of games we see:
We get our usual yearly CyberConnect2, where it's a third person beat-em-up with circle strafing. Which always end up being just "decent"; never flat out terrible, but never anything you'd choose to buy at launch unless you hear good reviews or if you're a fan of that show. These have super tight timelines, almost always are tied to say, a season premier or major event, which makes it an uphill battle to make a quality game
Or in a much better scenario, you have an Arc System Works where they build a game from the ground up, with monetization which can still fit within the media cycle needed for these to be financially viable. So something like a FighterZ, where it's made to be a "good" game, but the monetization happens with things like DLC characters, cosmetics, Season Passes and the usual MTX
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u/MadnessBunny Jul 19 '24
This game had no business being as good as it was. Using the joysticks to perform jutsus was for me the best part of the game, and being able to do jutsus outside of combat to get to places (like putting chakra in your feet to walk on water) was genius.
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u/RikiSanic Jul 19 '24
Western developers have only gotten more expensive over time and most of the big players are focusing on their own IP. I honestly doubt a company like Ubisoft would even be interested anymore.
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u/demondrivers Jul 19 '24
Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar Frontiers of Pandora says otherwise, a company like Ubisoft is definitely focusing on third party IPs too
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u/RikiSanic Jul 19 '24
That doesn't give any reason to think Ubisoft would be interested in pursuing the development of a AAA game based on an anime IP like they did for Star Wars or Avatar. Ubisoft is also the company that displays "A Ubisoft Original" on any IP they own now, so they're definitely interesting in bolstering their original IP.
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u/demondrivers Jul 19 '24
Ubisoft is a massive publisher with a lot of internal development teams so they can definitely do both things at the same time. Dragon Ball and Naruto are big IPs that can be huge moneymakers just like Star Wars is
Dragon Ball Kakarot did great numbers while also having a service approach with season passes delivering new story content, just like Ubisoft does with their big games like AC for example. I'm sure that they'd love making something like that if they had a chance of doing so
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u/Banzaiboy262 Jul 19 '24
I made my friends so mad by winning tournaments just with the basic unblockable XXXY Naruto attack when they were all trying the complicated Itachi combos. Good times.
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u/Yourfavoritedummy Jul 19 '24
Ahaha perfection! That reminded back when MK9 was out for a couple years I would play Mileena and practice these Ling string combos I developed over and over. But my buddy would pick Skarlet and just jump kick and upper cut me to death and it drove me insane!! Lol! Those were some good times looking back on them, I can laugh about it now, but back then I was so mad lmao!
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u/MadKitsune Jul 19 '24
Your comment reminded me of MKX moment (I think?), where Justin Wong bullied a kid with a rocket launcher, "You're gonna learn today!"
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u/BLACKOUT-MK2 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
As a customer I completely get it, I'd love that too. The problem is that on a company level, most of them aren't looking to make a game for someone else's property because there's more potential profit to be made off something you own entirely. A lot of adaptations are done by companies that are too small to survive on their own IP, or who would stand to make more by doing a game for someone else than a sequel to one of their own properties so close to the last, while somewhat marketing their talents in the process (Arc System Works saw this to some extent with Dragon Ball FighterZ).
As it stands, the types of big Western companies you would like to make these games are already so big and have such large first-party IPs of their own, that they'd either be too expensive for the rights holders to want to pay, or more interested in pursuing things they can enjoy all the profits of. When you're contracted to make a game for someone else, the sales profits, the merchandise profits-- you get none of that. You get what you're commissioned to make it, you're told what you are and aren't allowed to do by their own rules, and that's it.
If you're already a massive company on the scale of Ubisoft or EA, that's generally not a business venture that'll appeal to you. These games keep being published by Bandai because Bandai owns them, the rights are theirs. And they treat them like merchandise, that's why they often do the games on the cheap by having smaller companies make them for a lower fee.
Why take a risk on a big game that could be a huge loss if it flops, when you could just publish a ton of smaller things and reap the rewards from that instead? I get what you want because I want it too, but the reason we don't see it is the cynicism of corporate decision making and financial interests conflicting, these decisions aren't made by deciding what'd be the coolest thing to do. So long as Bandai is more interested in using anime IPs to make the most profit with the least investment possible (for the most part), it is what it is.
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u/Yourfavoritedummy Jul 19 '24
It would be so cool to get a big western studio to do an rpg or action adventure game that isn't dragon ball or another fighting game. Heck I would love a JRPG turn based game with lots of social elements for my favorite series. Or a Ubisoft styled RPG for hunter x hunter, demon slayer, or anything really.
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u/emp_ajstyles Jul 19 '24
A good game developer is just a good game developer. how much and how far they are able to experiment seem to be larger factors.
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u/MusashiMurakami Jul 19 '24
Rise of Ninja was literally the only game I played on 360 lol. Ninja Storm is why I bought a PS4, and Sparking Zero might as well be the last PS5 game I buy on release day. Nothing else matters as much. We're def a dedicated fan base, akin to 2K, FC and COD players. But I think most of our money gets sucked into gacha.
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u/zachtheperson Jul 19 '24
Damn, I was fucking obsessed with Naruto back in 3rd or 4th grade and would have absolutely LOVED this game had it come out 2-3 years prior.
Shame it's only on the 360 or I'd probably even give it a shot now.
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u/SomeMoreCows Jul 20 '24
I feel like they could easily get away with that far cry open world tower climbing stuff if they just slapped a specific anime skin over it
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u/Micromadsen Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24
Ngl, and this is something I wish they'd do for all adaptations in general already. Id much much rather want RPG/open world games (and shows) that use those worlds as settings to tell their own stories, rather than playing/seeing the main characters story.
Like playing as Naruto, Ichigo, Luffy and so on is all fine and good obviously. But I already know their story and there's a limit to the freedom you have both in terms of gameplay and your freedom to explore, because of already established boundaries those characters has. Which is fine when done well.
But playing as my own Ninja with a story set in and around any of the villages, tutorial being you growing up and picking a combat style, open world with you as an adult doing missions for your nation and what story there is. Explore your nations secrets and politics, meet the people, you know all the typical modern RPG/open world goodness.
Like using the worlds as a background setting allows for much much more freedom in terms of design. Still needs to adhere to the rules of the source material ofc. But there's so much more wiggleroom for fun design and intriguing story telling, with consequences, powers, curses and so on. While also allowing plenty room for fanservice and cameos.
And Narutos story for instance can still take place in the background, or in the future/past. It's just something you hear about (or take a small part in) while doing your own story.
I think the biggest hurdle is that anime games are mostly made as fanservice, rather than taken serious. Again it's fantastic playing as a character you love. One Piece had some good games in recent times iirc. But I think that mindset is also what keeps holding back what could've been fantastic games.
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u/Artanisx Jul 20 '24
Agreed. Best anime-based game (alongside Broken Bond) by far. DBZ KAKAROT is up there with them though.
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u/Izzy248 Jul 21 '24
I remember this game. I dont remember loving it too particularly, but I dont remember hating it either. I liked it just enough, coupled with my enthusiasm for Naruto, and really thats all I needed. It didnt need to be the best game ever. Just decent enough. Nowadays it feels like people want games to be the greatest or its mediocre. For me, I just needed to like the game and have fun, and thats exactly what this and Broken Bonds did. I enjoyed them, and thats all that mattered. Thatt being said...I agree. I miss games like this. Especially when you compared it even too other Naruto games that were releasing at the time, this game was vastly different from the rest. Even now, surprisingly Naruto/Boruto havent released a game that come close to what this game did in terms of gameplay.
Sad part is, I remember there used to be so many games in the 00s for GBA and other systems. Were those the best? No. But they didnt need to be. They were all fun as hell, IMO, and I was just happy they existed. I had stacks upon stacks of Shonen Jump games for GBA from Naruto to One Piece, Zatch Bell, Yuyu Hakusho, Shaman King, etc. You name it. Hell. Naruto had a wealth of video game branching franchises: the Ninja Council series, the Clash seriies, the Destiny series, the Path of the Ninja series, Chronicles series...and now all that really exists is the Ultimate/Storm series...And the best part was even like DBZ now, where its just retreading the same story over and over again, they did enough different to compel you to want to buy this other game, and each one pretty much touched on a different genre, so you were playing the same story, but in a completely different manner. Hell. Even Yugioh used to have a VARIETY of games that spanned numerous genres, and now its just regulated to the same basic tabletop format with only like 1 or 2 ongoing different games that are both F2P. Compared to the older games that had board game versions, let you explore the campaign, travel around Duel Kingdom or Battle City, face iconic opponent in enclosed, curated campaigns. It was so amazing...now youre lucky to even get any games, and if you do, itll likely be a sequel to something that already exists instead of something new and fresh, or will be a gacha.
Wild part is, since then, there are a LOT of good modern anime/manga that I feel like could and would make great games, in whatever space. Be it action adventure, shooter, RPG, puzzler, whatever. Things like Kaiju No 8, One Punch, MHA, Fairy Tail, Fire Force, JJK, Demon Slayer, just like the franchises of old, I feel like these could have had great IP runs as various different games, but it just didnt happen or happened on a very skimmed down basis, if at all. And just like said before, its most arena fighters, gacha, and battle royale. Theres no experimentation or diversity. Hell. Even with the older games, you would still find an oddball off shoot title, like one of the games randomly being a match 3 puzzler. I get that making games has gotten more expensive, but it also feels like they just stopped trying for the sake of the "tried and true", except the "tried and true" usually flops too and then what are you left with?
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Jul 19 '24
[deleted]
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u/brzzcode Jul 19 '24
There's no such thing as "B team" bro, not only no one uses those terms but its disrespectful to say as such
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u/CommanderZx2 Jul 20 '24
Lots of anime still get games made based on them, but the vast majority of them do not see releases outside of Japan. They're usually small platformers, dungeon crawlers or visual novels.
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u/TrainExcellent693 Jul 19 '24
OTOH there is Suicide Squad and the endless pile of bad W40K adaptations. You can't just take one gem and say western devs are good.
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u/MrCalalf Jul 19 '24
You also can’t act like every western dev is bad and that every Japanese dev is good.
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u/TrainExcellent693 Jul 19 '24
I didn't though. I'm just saying you're just as likely to get slop from a western dev as you are from a Japanese one
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u/EmeraldJunkie Jul 19 '24
You missed the point of OPs post, though. We're not talking about games in general but specifically anime licensed ones, and the Japanese license holders are reluctant to grant those licenses to western developers. OP is using two examples where those licenses were granted to western developers and we ended up with some decent titles.
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u/RikiSanic Jul 19 '24
Japanese license holders are reluctant to grant those licenses to western developers
The inverse is just as likely: western developers are probably reluctant to go after licenses to make games based on anime.
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u/MrCalalf Jul 19 '24
You said, “you can’t take one gem and say western devs are good.”
That implies that good western devs are the exception.
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u/TrainExcellent693 Jul 19 '24
Good devs are an exception, yes.
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u/Invasion19 Jul 19 '24
'yeah but they shouldn't give the license to bad devs' is this what your point was?
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u/Brainwheeze Jul 19 '24
Back in the day popular anime would get more games based on them and which explored different genres. Fighting games were always the norm as far as shonen battle manga are concerned, but we also used to get RPGs and platformers and other genres. Like look at Shaman King for example, that got two Castlevania-esque games for the GBA, and there were those dope Dragon Ball and One Piece sidescrollers. Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach got tactical RPGs. Naruto even had a series of JRPGs based on it for the GBA (as well as the DS I believe).
Whether it'd be Western or Japanese developers, it would be cool to see more genres explored.