I went back to go through these games recently and decided to finish this one properly since I left this one behind when I saw the mission system forced you to do side content to continue the main story and only played the other 3 Storm games instead.
And it's been both surprisingly better and worse on certain parts than I expected, easily the worst story mode of the entire Storm collection, this game has a total of maybe 5 or 6 cutscenes if you're being generous, with all of the story telling happening in text paragraphs during loading screens before the actual fights, but the 3 fights that have actual cutscenes are also possibly the coolest looking adaptations of those fights in any easily accessible Naruto game.
It's just a shame because 3 fights with cutscenes in a game that covers the entirety of pre time skip Naruto is just very very little and this leaves a lot of the build ups and smaller cooler moments completely out.
With that out of the way, there's tons of side content, so you have choices on what to go through to continue the story mode, since the Story is locked behind mission XP, which you can only earn by doing side content, the exploration in the open world is fun enough, collecting materials to do random fetch quests in the open world also doesn't get too old thanks to the game being fully achievement hunted in about 10 hours, achievement hunting is far from 100%'ing as actually all collectible achievements only go up to you collecting 50% of each collectible, which I was more than happy to settle for as getting actually all of it seemed to be a grind fest that'd require you to do way more than the game offers in terms of unique content.
It's a fun game to actually play, but it's hardly the best way to experience these arcs of the story and it's massively overshadowed by all 3 other Storm games after it that nail Story telling beautifully.
And it's been both surprisingly better and worse on certain parts than I expected, easily the worst story mode of the entire Storm collection, this game has a total of maybe 5 or 6 cutscenes if you're being generous, with all of the story telling happening in text paragraphs during loading screens before the actual fights, but the 3 fights that have actual cutscenes are also possibly the coolest looking adaptations of those fights in any easily accessible Naruto game.
It's just a shame because 3 fights with cutscenes in a game that covers the entirety of pre time skip Naruto is just very very little and this leaves a lot of the build ups and smaller cooler moments completely out.
With that out of the way, there's tons of side content, so you have choices on what to go through to continue the story mode, since the Story is locked behind mission XP, which you can only earn by doing side content, the exploration in the open world is fun enough, collecting materials to do random fetch quests in the open world also doesn't get too old thanks to the game being fully achievement hunted in about 10 hours, achievement hunting is far from 100%'ing as actually all collectible achievements only go up to you collecting 50% of each collectible, which I was more than happy to settle for as getting actually all of it seemed to be a grind fest that'd require you to do way more than the game offers in terms of unique content.
It's a fun game to actually play, but it's hardly the best way to experience these arcs of the story and it's massively overshadowed by all 3 other Storm games after it that nail Story telling beautifully.