Finished Naruto: The Broken Bond. As a whole a very interesting experience. The original Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, was very much a sandbox-esque adventure that followed the very first major story arcs. Had cutscenes lifted from the anime. Solid controls, a ton of mini-games and the likes. The only major grip I had was with combat. The characters you fought were insanely difficult to beat.
Naruto: The Broken Bond has several hub-worlds that are seperated by tree jumping sequences. Characters like Shikamaru, Neji, Choji and Kiba play a much larger role. You can recruit them into your team, tagging them into a fight and use their unique skills for tons of quests. Speaking of quests, besides the main story quests, there are so many things to do: hunt down wanted ninjas, fishing mini-games, fetch quests, games that you'd find in carnivals and a couple of random encounters in the wild. Sadly, though, while everything was a major improvement, story was the only thing that was lacking even though it did touch upon two major story arcs: the search for Tsunade and Sasuke's Retrieval Arc, much of the plot in-between filler esque BS (one the main story missions with Choji is all about figuring out why his favorite potato chip maker was producing sub-par products).
