The meat of the game is in a mode called the Master Road, which picks up with Naruto returning to Hidden Leaf Village after an absence of two-and-a-half years. He barely has time to fight a few sparring matches before his friend Gaara is kidnapped by the evil Akatsuki organization. The story of the subsequent rescue attempt and what follows is spread out across the seven chapters that make up the Master Road. This will all be familiar territory for Naruto fans, but the story is told so incoherently and throws so many characters and clan names at you that players unacquainted with the source material will be lost. The occasional dramatic animation sequence livens things up, but the overwhelming majority of conversations take place between static character portraits that oddly stand side by side and stare out at you even while speaking to each other.
