Probably the best in the series, but repetitive and annoying aspects keep it from truly being great.
However, the flip side of this is that the story feels rushed and major chunks are left out. In addition instead of catering the mini games and side quests around story elements from the show, they end up having mainly random side quests that are fairly generic. One has to question if anyone at Ubisoft has actually watched the show. In addition the actually story elements feel rushed as well, and the main quest can be completed in around five hours. The brevity is not a problem in and of itself, but as you can imagine 80 episodes are not meant to be condensed that much.
The gameplay itself has both pros and cons. The free roam in the city is rather enjoyable and at first the side quests are actually fun. In addition they allow you to upgrade your character. Alas they are not varied enough and number one to many. They of course act as filler to make the game longer, in which I assure you they succeed. But retrying some of the harder mini games over and over again gets very tiring very fast.
Although with the exception of the ninja races the other mini games are fairly interesting. They include finding Konohamru in a hide and seek game, delivering ramen to customers, and the always amusing love lorn ninja game in which Naruto must perform sexy no jutsu for love lorn ninja scattered through out the game. Alas the one sad note about this game is that after completing it, you are no longer able to watch the cut scenes for level 2, and 3 sexy no jutsu, which is by far the best.
The fighting gameplay though I believe is where this and other naruto games like UC fail. Essentially they act just like regular fighters, but whats the point in that when this game is trying to move from being a fighter. In addition most of the fights are repetitive, and one must question the difficulty setting of the enemies. A medic ninja is imo the hardest fight of non main storyline characters, and in fact the fights against fodder chunnin and medic are far more difficult than any story line fight. This game would be better served if the sand box style was left but the fighting was changed to a more DMC/GOW style of combat.
Just some few minor notes on the fighting aspects of the game. You can use the various jutsus that you learn in the game, although they can be quite hard to pull off. And a side note on narutos clone jutsu is that its especially hard to pull off. First you must build your chakra and actually implement the jutsu. Then you must hit a set of buttons you assign to actually do the respective hits. However the timing on this is so precise, the average person will probably give and not bother using it in an actual fight. Additionally, an added feature is Memo clips. Unlike ramen which can be used in between fights to heal you, memo clips act like lives and if you fall in battle you are brought back. You get between 3-8 secs to tap A and replenish your life bar. Once used up you have to pay the Hokage to revive them. Another side note, once the game is beaten and your are left to do the side quests the Hokage is gone so no more memo clips other than what you have left are available.
In addition to story line fights there are also various characters including Kakashi, Sauske, Iruka, and Sakura that you can fight whenever you want in the village to earn money to buy goods and equipment. Kakashi is in fact a Achievement which I believe is one of the more challenging ones in the game. His level will adjust to yours so really it does not matter how strong you get his level will adjust. Although I imagine any gamer whose fairly skilled will eventually get it. But a tip on this fight: Kakashi seems to be the easiest to fight when you have you life and chakra sealed, so I might recommend fighting him then.
From a technically aside from some glitches the game is fantastic. The cell shaded art style looks great, and detail put into the Konohana map is quiet thorough. The music fits in nicely, and like I have expressed before the cut scenes with actually clips from the anime are really enjoyable. The only real desirable would be further expansion of the city to allow you to say scale the mountain with Hokages' faces or actually enter buildings but that is something that can be improved upon in a future game.
There really is not much replayability factor other than the multi player options. You can either enter fight mode story which basically is just regular bouts like a fighter. Or you can enter Forest of Death exam where you face off on xbox live to earn a variety of achievements. Although I will say unless you are an extremely skilled fighter or have friends to boost with you have zero chance of getting most of the online achievements. In the forest of death basically you have to win five straight matches. One single loss and back to start. And for the achievements you have to do this around 10-15 times with different characters.
But all in all for the first title in what looks like a promising series the game plays just fine. And especially compared to the dregs that are your standard anime fighter this game really shines.
Side Note: Sequel to this game is Broken Bond covering up to episode 135.
Story: 10/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 8.5/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Replayability: 4/10
Collector's Value: 2/10 (somewhat common)
Overall: 8/10
Recommendation: you can probably get this game from around 10 to 12 dollars if you look hard enough and I would recommend buying it for that price. But you could just as easily rent it as well.