I finished playing through this last night (in one sitting pretty much cause I was loving it) the SP campaign was about 11hrs or so with some tough battles, but most were easy. The damage modifiers the AI gets can be a little crazy (+80%), but nothing was impossible.
I
really really like the lack of QTE and boss fights. It makes the game feel like a really nice focused fighting game. The pace of the fights is smooth and fast, with no butonmashy cutscenes getting in the way. Cutscenes are handled like SF4 and SFXT, so theres nothing to prolonged.
I've played all the CC2 Naruto games, and this is definitely my favorite. It feels like a refined version of everything from the beginning up until a nice set up (if they choose to do another with this style, I hope they do). With the assists and more focused pace, the game feels like a speedy mix of a melee mvc3 with the smoothest animation I've ever seen in a fighting game. No doubt, this game has the prettiest animation I've ever seen. It's not that its amazingly better than the previous versions, but now that all of the gameplay is based on responses from the button presses and not predetermined whatever, it just flows so naturally well.
The anime cutscenes are clean and nice for the most part (some look off). They go through a lot of content through a lot of perspectives, so some may not like how some big moments are brief while others are touched on multiple times. I also really liked some of the other stories, and all of them having intro/outro cutscenes plus full dialogue was really nice. The are 3 in particular that are really cool fanservice stories that I'm sure some people have been looking forward to seeing.
I wasn't expecting more than just a rehash with some new characters, and its like they took out all the stuff I didnt want and finally made a fighting game that captures the pace and feel of the anime perfectly.
I guess I am alone in being happy that they didnt put any QTE in it at all. its what I always wanted and now I finally have it. It'll be interesting to see how it holds up as far as online goes, but SP and training mode took me away from SFXT and SC5. good job cc2!!!!
Man, no more Adventure mode OR QTE battles? I've been looking forward to this game for a long time, but I'm 80% less excited now...
Is there ANY unlocking single player mode?
all the characters are unlocked through SP. I actually like the story mode a lot this time versus the other games. Seeing all the different perspectives is a really good idea.