Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 closes a series that has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, and it closes it loudly. CyberConnect2 developed the fighter and Bandai Namco Entertainment published it in February 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows through Steam. It covers the final arcs of Masashi Kishimoto’s manga, from the founders’ duel to the Fourth Shinobi World War. It is the sixth and last main entry in the Ultimate Ninja Storm line, following 2013’s Storm 3 Full Burst. It was also the first Naruto game built for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and the first to carry Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese voices in the West.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
A roster of 106 fighters
The roster is the headline number: 106 fighters pulled from the Naruto universe, duplicates included. Naruto (Part 1) and Naruto (Six Paths Sage Mode) are separate slots. Characters from The Last: Naruto the Movie (2014) and Boruto: Naruto the Movie (2015) fill out the edges.
The fighting keeps the series’ 3D arenas and brings back wall-running, absent since the original Ultimate Ninja Storm. The change that matters is that one fighter can hold the wall while the other stays on the field; the older games moved both up to keep the battle in check.
- Swap between three fighters mid-battle, with a shared life bar
- Share Awakenings and Ultimate Jutsu across switchable characters
- Break weapons and armor in free and boss battles
- Inflict elemental damage, including fire that burns away clothing
The option to select one of three fighting types, introduced in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution, was removed. Ultimate Jutsu and the Awakening system return in its place.
The Fourth Shinobi World War
The story mode opens on the death match between Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha, the founders of the Hidden Leaf Village. Decades later, the Fourth Great Ninja War pits the allied Shinobi forces against Akatsuki, and Naruto Uzumaki reveals that Obito Uchiha leads the organization — the best friend his mentor Kakashi Hatake believed dead.
Obito and a reanimated Madara wake the Ten-Tails. Sasuke Uchiha, uneasy in his hatred of the Leaf, has the first four Hokage brought back to learn the village’s real origin, then joins the fight. Kakashi overpowers Obito, who absorbs the Tailed Beasts and becomes their vessel. Naruto and Sasuke strip the beasts back out. Madara then revives himself through Obito’s body, takes the beasts including the Nine-Tails’ Yang half, and mortally wounds Sasuke.
Obito and Sakura Haruno try to revive Naruto; Kabuto Yakushi heals Sasuke. Hagoromo Otsutsuki, the Sage of the Six Paths, appears in their dreams and hands them new powers. Black Zetsu, the true supreme leader, betrays the weakened Madara and revives Kaguya Otsutsuki. Kakashi and Sakura join Naruto and Sasuke against her.
That is a lot of plot, and it is the point. Storm 4 exists to put the manga’s ending on a console, and it does so without flinching from the mess of it.
What the wall-running fix buys
The wall-running fix is the smartest thing here. Letting one character stay on the ground while the other climbs turns an arena into two planes, and it gives the 106-fighter roster room the older games never had. The shared life bar on character swaps is a real cost, not a free tool, and it keeps the three-fighter team from becoming a get-out-of-jail card.
The elemental damage and armor breaking are thinner. Fire that burns clothing off, doused by water or by running fast enough, reads more like a demonstration than a system. It is the kind of feature that shows well and then stops mattering.
The story mode is the reason to buy this one, and also the reason it wears. CyberConnect2 is adapting the densest stretch of a very long manga, and the boss fights carry the weight the cutscenes cannot. Quick time events and hack-and-slash sections break up the fights, but they are interruptions, not additions.
Where Storm 4 lands is as a farewell that knows what it is. It is the last main installment, and the game arrives as a studio’s closing statement on the series rather than a reinvention of it. The Awakening and Ultimate Jutsu systems returning intact is a correction, not a step forward.
What separates this from Storm 3 Full Burst is not the roster or the arena — it is that CyberConnect2 finally had the ending. A licensed fighter lives or dies on whether the source material was worth the adaptation, and this one had Kishimoto’s last arcs to spend. The wall-running was.
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