CHV Lives On

Just started playing Naruto: Narutimett Hero recently.. Has a pretty decent story mode (in which I practice my limited Japanese) that unlocks hidden characters as you complete it with the different characters.
I love how you perform supers! First, you hit triangle to charge, then try to land a normal attack on your opponent. If this attack is successful, you enter the super sequence. Basically, a combination of keys appears at the bottom of your screen and you have to punch this out as fast as you can. If you do it right, your super will continue to the next level. If you fail, the super ends short.
The real clincher though is that while you're trying to enter your sequence, your opponent also has a chance to "break" your super by entering his/her own combination! So it becomes a race to see who can get the keys in first.. at lvl 3 supers, the final level is about 8 keys or so, so it does get quite frantic! It's really funny playing vs modes~
Anyways, still have a lot of characters to unlock.
And missions to complete. (I'm only doing C-level missions.)
If you can get a copy of this, and you like the anime, you'll have a good laugh... MRk MRK n FnK Mz

I don't know japanese, nor is my PS2 modded. Do tell more :P 'Cause I'm all over Naruto right now.
Ren

I pretty much figured out the menus by myself. It's only a fighting game, so it isn't really that complicated! Oh.. the auto-save thing kinda shitted me at the start because I accidentally saved over my 3hrs+ of gameplay real early on. But you live and learn.
Just finished a session then actually, managing to unlock all but one of the characters. The starting 6 are: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Shikamaru, Kakashi and Rock Lee. By finishing story mode with any one of those guys, you unlock Neji. Finish Neji's story to unlock Hinata. Then as you complete story mode with the unlocked characters, you get Haku, Zabuza, Gaara and, finally, Orochimaru.
Even though heaps of characters aren't selectable, they do make appearances as back-up characters. In matches you can pick up 'support' items which calls a team-mate to help you out (ie: Rock Lee calls out Gai-sensei).
It has a mission mode, where you complete fights under various conditions to increase your Ninja rank. It starts off pretty easy, stuff like 'win with 50% or more life' or something.. Later on you get some really hard ones like 'no jumping, guarding, supers allowed!'
In the matches themselves, you can kinda teleport between the foreground and the background.. only square is used for attacks, with directions + square bashing giving some combos. R2/L2 is guard, but if you time it just right you can do a replacement technique and pop up behind the enemy.. very handy.. also, certain combos launch- you can launch your opponent into the air, then teleport above them to smack them down by pressing towards + square. The airborne enemy can do replacement techniques though, so sometimes you get into these teleport battles with both players trying to get behind the other! It's pretty cool~~ to prevent that from going on forever, the timing gets tighter and tighter with each replacement technique. I think you could probably do it about 5-6 times max.
It's got heaps more gameplay than i thought when I first played it! Some of the stuff is so complicated.. tech'ing out of combos, or using replacement jitsu at the right time etc..
hehehehe.. talking about it makes me wanna play again! haha~ need to complete more missions and get stronger!!
MRk MRK n FnK Mz