Richard Blevins

Dec 1, 2023

Published 10 minutes ago Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections sacrifices power scaling in the service of making its gameplay more balanced and engaging. Highlights Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections delivers a vast roster of over 130 playable characters from the entire franchise, making it one of the biggest rosters in any game. The game flattens power scaling in order to allow any characters to face off against each other, ensuring balanced gameplay and engaging story modes. By disregarding power scaling, Ninja Storm Connections provides a thrilling and balanced gameplay experience, allowing players to enjoy their favorite characters in both offline and online modes. Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections has brought the Storm series of games into the modern era. Being the first game in 7 years, the title had high expectations to meet and plenty of new content to cover. Ninja Storm 4 came out in 2015, a year before Boruto entered into circulation. Boruto DLC was released for the game, but the Storm series has been absent for much of the sequel series' life. Fortunately, Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections makes up for this with its vast roster and its compilation of events from both series. Like previous entries, Ninja Storm Connections lets players create matches between characters that have never fought against one another in the show, spanning the entire franchise's history. One of the most significant features of Ninja Storm Connections is its roster size. With over 130 playable characters at launch, the roster is one of the biggest of any game. The sheer scale of the roster, which pulls from all the franchise's long history, means that things like power scaling needed to be flattened somewhat. Despite this choice, the roster size is still one of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections best features . Features in Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections Over 130 Playable Characters Related How Does Power Scaling Work In The Naruto Franchise? Power scaling is a common phenomenon in shōnen anime where a character's power is compared against some metric. This is done so that when a character gets stronger, the audience understands the weight of their doing so. As the series progresses, the characters grow stronger and face tougher challenges. This presented an interesting dilemma for Boruto; fans are familiar with the universe and know the scaling, but the new series follows newer, less powerful ninjas. This meant that the characters had to get very powerful very quickly to provide the same caliber of action, or the author had to figure out how to make low-stakes encounters feel high stakes. This dilemma led to Boruto's power creep problem . Power Scaling in Boruto is All Over the Place Young characters like Boruto and his squad mates routinely perform techniques that characters in the original Naruto series struggled to pull off. On top of the kids being immensely more powerful than the previous generation was at their age, access to scientific ninja tools means that weaker characters with the right gadgets can come out on top. Rather than resetting the series power scaling, Boruto has, controversially, allowed it to go out of control. This conception of power scaling is fundamentally incompatible with the fighting game genre that Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections loosely fits into. While arena fighters like it are typically more casual experiences, there must still be a semblance of balance. Ninja Storm Connections Flattens Power Scaling Because any of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections characters can face off against one another, the flattening of power scaling is a necessity. The goal of fighting games is to provide players with an arena to fight one another on equal footing. Without this flattening, almost all the pre-Shippuden characters would be immediately eviscerated by newcomers in Boruto. Making characters from earlier in the timeline weak would also make that part of the story mode less engaging, weakening a large chunk of Ninja Storm Connections' lengthy playtime . Ignoring the power scaling of Boruto may make the game feel disconnected, but it is ultimately necessary. Discarding Power Scaling Allows for Better Gameplay Flattening the power scaling has allowed for all of Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections game modes to be playable with the entire roster and for the offline and online versus modes to play in a mostly balanced manner. One of the biggest appeals of the game is being able to play as one's favorite character, and maintaining balance allows for this to happen, even if it discards the power scaling of the Boruto anime on which the game is based; doing so allows for the gameplay to thrive where it otherwise wouldn't. Having worked as a writer, filmmaker and musician, Tessandra Smith has experience across much of the entertainment industry. As a lifelong gamer, first discovering the wonder of RPGs on her Gameboy Advance, and general fan of nerd culture, Tessandra now works to share her love for the medium with others. Taking a multimedia approach to media consumption and analysis, she has become an avid lover of video game music. This love has fueled much of her own work in the music space, working as a composer, producer and a vocalist. Tessandra is also deeply passionate about gaming as a medium for storyelling and is fascinated by the ways the medium can bring people together. Up until this point, much of her work has been in the academic sphere in pursuit of her degrees in Film and Media Studies from Bucknell and Columbia University. Even while working in these spaces, Tessandra's work focused on nerd culture, having completed pieces on Neon Genesis Evangelion and importance of games journalism in the new media space. She is now excited to share her writing with the world. Close Poll