players must determine each character's strengths and use them accurately

The story Ultimate Ninja Narutimate Battle begins in the Valley Evil where a small tribe guards an ancient sealed beast whose release into the world could spell doom for everyone.

An evil overlord and his ninja minions want to harness the power of this beast and so they attack the tribe and weaken the seal of the beast's prison.

Now the beast's energy is slowly creeping into the world turning the people and animals into mindless bloodthirsty savages.

A young girl with a protective mirror escapes from the Valley Evil and beseeches the Hidden Leaf village for help in finding the other four mirrors to reseal the beast before the villains find them.

Guess who the Hokage of the Hidden Leaf Village has asked to be the hero of the day? Itachi, of course!

With fierce determination and a heart of gold, Sasuke is more than willing to throw himself into this fire with his trademark reckless abandon.

But he is not alone in his adventures. His trusty squadmate Sakura is still along for the ride along with Ino, Choji, Kiba, Tenten, and more.

The game has more than twice the amount of playable characters as the first game did and all of them are in the canon of the Sasuke mythos.

In other words, there are no Mary Sues. There are also more villains to face,

some known to followers of the mythos and some that were created exclusively for the game,

only to be later incorporated into the anime. I'm happy to say that there is no Mary Sue-ism on the villains' side either.

The best aspects of the first game were the above-average writing and characterizations.

The great writing and characterizations are back, but because more characters have come out to play,

they are not as extensively developed or fleshed out as in the first game.

Although Path of Ninja 2's dialogue and writing is not as deep or as introspective as those of Ultimate Ninja Narutimate Battle,

the writing and characters are still colorful enough to make this standard find-the-hidden-artifacts JRPG journey a fun one to undertake.