Its hard to believe that its been a decade since Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was released. In the eyes of many people Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was one of the last Naruto games that achieved mainstream success in countries like America. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was a game that improved upon its 2013 predecessor in a variety of different ways. In Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 better gameplay than its prequel mainly because the combat felt smoother and more fluid. Along with improved gameplay Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 had a more in-depth roster which contained more than 100 different characters. One of the biggest attractions about Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 included the story mode and the arcs that it covered in relation to both the anime and manga. The story mode for Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm focused on Fourth Great Ninja War along with story arcs like Madara’s Rise to Power, Obito Uchida’s backstory and how he became the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki.

The story for Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 also contained moments when Team 7 united along with the iconic Final Battle between Naruto and Sasuke at the Valley of the End. The game also sees Kaguya Otsutsuki emerge as the main antagonist alongside Madara Uchida and Obitio Uchida who were primarily responsible for causing the Fourth Great Ninja War. The battles in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was fast paced and unpredictable allowing players to swap characters mid-battle. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 featured each character’s special moves and techniques with several being able to utilize Sage Mode. Naruto Sppuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in February 2016 and since then in managed to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide since its release.

The crazy thing about the Naruto Shippuden series is that the manga ended in 2014 and the anime had officially finished in Japan back in 2017. The Naruto Shippuden anime series in America did not finish until around 2024. However, by the late 10’s-early 20’s the Naruto series had significantly declined in popularity compared to where it was between the mid 00’s-early 10’s. While Naruto Shippuden is still culturally relevant in both Japan and America the video game series had gone downhill following the release of Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 in 2016. When Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 came out felt like the Naruto video game series had reached its peak in terms of storytelling and gameplay.

Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 truly felt like CyberConnect2’s best Naruto game mainly because successors within the series like Naruto X Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections from 2023 failed to achieve the same level of mainstream success. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 felt special because it felt like an end of an era type of video game. Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 represented the climax of the Shippuden series and American fans got a chance to experience it way before the English Dub finished in the United States in 2024. By 2016, the English Dub for the Naruto Shippuden series was still far behind and hardcore fans were mainly following the story through the Japanese manga. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was arguably the best fighting of 2016. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 is also one of the few good things to come out of 2016 and deserves to be remastered for current generation game systems like PS5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch 2.