Now that we’re finally free of tutorials and info dumps for now, we’re free to explore our pause menu and items.
Hitting the Y button gives us a reminder of our current objective-Taking Nazuna to Tsunade.
The X button takes us to our menu, with 8 options:
- Items- This lets us look at, see the descriptions of, and use or throw out our collected items. There are three item categories, Use, Examine, and Valuables. Use is where the immediately usable items go, Examine is for the items we can’t use outside of a fight or other specific situation, and Valuables is for plot important item we can’t touch at all. Right now we have 3 Food Pills (for healing Stamina), 3 Chakra Pills (for healing Chakra), and the 3 Competition Pills we earned earlier. They temporarily raise Attack power in battle.
- Equip- This option lets us change weapons and armor for our characters. Based on the equipment we’re using, the character’s stats will be increased by a certain number. We have three slots for each character, a weapon, armor, and greaves. All the weapons get a letter rank based on how effective it is in each position in a fight.
Naruto has a Ninja Sword, ranked highest on the Front lines, decent in the Middle, and crap in the Back. It boosts his ATK by a good 14 points, which meant his natural ATK would be a far lower 26 instead of 40. And this is why having good equipment at all times is helpful in this game. He also has Hidden Leaf Chainmail on, boosting his DEF form 25 to 41 at the cost of lowering his speed from 33 to 28. I like that the game keep this information on hand as you switch equipment instead of making you manually count the stat benefits. His Hidden Leaf Greaves boost his AGI from 16 to its current number.
Sakura has a Shuriken equipped as a weapon, with the same stats as the sword, but it only boosts her ATK up ten points to 33. Her other equipment is the same as Naruto’s.
- Formation- This gives you the option of pre-positioning your team on the battlefield , setting the places where each character will start out. You can freely experiment with different formations and read about their effects. You need at least three people to make a proper one though, so I’ll wait until I have enough.
- User- This lets you view and change your Wi-Fi battle settings.
- Jutsu- This lets you use jutsu outside of battle, usually healing or teleporting move. This still wastes chakra though.
- Ninja Tag- A new function to this game. This is where the customization system kicks in more. Using the NIN stat, you can equip special cards to characters to increase their stats and resistances, teach them new jutsu, activate buffs, and cause other in battle effects. Each card has a price to equip it, and if you don’t have enough NIN left over, you have to get more by leveling up or reorganize your cards. It’s like memory on a computer.
- Status- This is an overview on each character you have, from their stats, to their jutsu learned, to their equipment, to their ninja cards in use. This also shows their Morale stat, something that increases the effectiveness of the ninja’s squad leader ability. Each character has a skill that activates when they are designated Squad Leader. This can be set in our next option.
- Member- This lets you select your team. The first three slots are your main characters that fight, and the last slot is the Alternate that can be switched in. A character only gains EXP in battle if they are on your team, even if it’s just the Alternate slot. You can select Squad Leader on here too. Naruto’s ability increases Attack and lowers Defense. Sakura’s gives us free Stamina at a slow rate just by walking around.
Alright, let's move on to the actual village. Next to the gate on the left near a tree is an item crate, containing 1 dose of Chakra Chinese Medicine Pills. These are permanent stat boosters, like the vitamin items in Pokemon games. I like to use them when a character hits level 99 (the max) to increase their final stats. A character can only take a limited amount of each kind until they refuse to eat any more. As the name suggests, this increases maximum Chakra.
You can talk to the gate guards if you want, but they don't say anything particularly interesting. The one on the left talks about the Y button though.
Walk though the gates and the first building slightly to the right is Ichiraku Ramen. Inside the stall, two guys are eating while the Ramen guy mills around behind the counter. This served a purpose in the first game, but there’s nothing important here now. The customers occasionally change as the plot goes on.
Next building to the left of Ichiraku is a simple building with blue kanji as a sign. This is a Ninja Card Shop. Inside is a generic guy who explains the four kinds of Ninja cards: Ninjutsu, Status, Resistance, and Special (the other category). The other customer inside is Shino, who approves of Ninja cards and their usefulness. Can’t do anything with him right now. Next to the entrance is a free item with a Hidden Leaf Style Ninja Card. This card takes 10 NIN to use and allows a character to attract hits in a fight, protecting an ally. I only have 500 Ryo, so I can’t buy much here. The store currently has some cards with healing jutsu, basic stat boosting cards, basic status resisting cards, and basic elemental jutsu attack boosters, a healing jutsu booster, and a card that increases the chance of Hidden leaf Style activating.
Next store to the left is a flower shop with a generic pretty looking woman and Ino running the counter. You can’t buy anything here, despite Ino really wanting me to buy something. Or seduce Naruto. Not entirely sure with all the hearts in her dialogue.
Going north from Ino’s shop leads us to a couple of NP Cs (one who says he loves ninjas), and a stone wall and a gate that reads Hyuga in Japanese. An old man confirms that the house inside belongs to the Hyuga clan. We can only walk up to the front porch and yard though, which is disappointing. Last game, it was just a wall, so I guess this is a step up. A couple of kids are playing there, and one mentions Hanabi (who never shows up in this game). Another Item chest in the left corner of the yard has a Family Secret Ointment in it. This is the best healing item in the game, and they’re impossible to buy, so don’t waste them. They replenish your entire team’s Stamina and Chakra back to full.
Directly above Ichiraku Ramen is the Equipment Shop. An NPC explains weapons a little more, saying that characters can only equip certain types, and that each type has its own advantages in certain situations. Tenten is also hanging out in here, psyched about you buying weapons. This store sells a basic version and an ungraded version of Swords, Fans, Shuriken, Kunai, three different Senbon, a Sickle, and a Pole weapon. Naruto can only equip Swords, Shuriken, and Kunai, while Sakura is the same but can use a Fan in place of a Sword. For Armor, we can buy the equipment we currently have, and an upgraded Chain Mail and Weapon Greaves. Neither character can use the Weapon Greaves though. The store at the bottom right of the Equipment Shop is the Item Shop. There are two items behind the counter you can get: Versatile Pills and Chakra Pills. Versatile Pills are used to revive characters in battle. The store sells Stamina, Chakra, Versatile, Competition, Steel (for defense boosting), and Wind (Agility boosting) Pills. There’s also a Escape Scroll (flees battles), a Substitution (boosts dodging), a Fire Style, Water Style, Lightning Style, and Wind Style Scrolls. They are generic elemental attacks that cost no chakra. And then a ton of other status healing and expendable weapon items that I can go into detail with later when I find some. I will buy 2 Poison Manuals (heals poison status) though, because they’re cheap.
Above that store is a Chestnut selling shop, which is an item that heals slightly (Sweet Chestnuts) or can be thrown for damage (Spiky Chestnuts). Unsurprisingly, Choji is inside. Next the shop is an item box with free Sweet Chestnuts. And if you go up the nearby stairs, you can enter Naruto’s house. Inspecting the fridge says that the milk is expired, but by the bed is an item: Cup Ramen, another healing item. The other room in his house is the training room. You can read his training schedule on the wall if you inspect it. The other poster is a crossed out picture of Sasuke. Oh if only he knew Naruto had a poster of him…. Looking at the scroll shelf nets you a free Escape Scroll.
To the left of Naruto’s house is a BBQ restaurant with some NP Cs eating in some of the stalls and tables. You can read their special on the wall menu, Beef Ribs. In the bottom right corner is another chest containing a Toothpick, another expendable throwing weapon. And I think that covers all of the first third of Konoha. Yeah, there’s two more sections. This place is freaking huge.
And since it's late, I'll finish the rest up in the next installment. I don't want to do a huge wall of text. Not a wall of text bogger than this one, at least.
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