Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution's Mission Mode (the story) consists of a series of fights that follows Naruto as he prepares for the Chunin Exam finals and goes all the way to the end of the search for Lady Tsunade (the soon-to-be Fifth Hokage). Most of the fights in this mode have some special win condition like using only Taijutsu or beating your opponent when their health bar is flashing, or finishing them off with a particular move. Overall, there are 19 missions that will take you through the show's story, but like most anime-based fighting games, most of the story is lost, so unless you are already familiar with the events, you might not know exactly what is going on.
By working your way through the game, you will eventually be able to play some 20 characters including Itachi (Sasuke's brother), Kisame, Might Guy and Tsunade. Then, of course, there are the old standbys like Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, Rock Lee, Gaara, Orochimaru and Jiraiya. What I liked about this game's roster is that it doesn't try to fit in every single character that has had some part in the series. I like having variety, but I prefer few, but deeper characters as opposed to many similar and generic feeling ones.
Playing through the game's story not only unlocks characters to play as, but also Mini-Games (found in the Menu option of the same name). My favorite of these games was the Shuriken Throw where you aim with the Wii-mote to fire shuriken at pop-up targets. Each miss takes points away and each knock-down adds points. This was just a good bit of fun and a nice distraction when I got frustrated because I wasn't meeting the win conditions.
As you would expect, Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution also offers both Single-Player and Multi-Player modes that let you go head to head with either CPU or human driven enemies.
Training is just a mode that lets you practice with a particular character and set your opponent A.I. to various levels of interactivity. This has been seen in many other games and there isn't really anything to mention here except for the fact that the game doesn't offer a mode that lets you familiarize yourself with the game's various control schemes in a more structured manner. What this mode does offer that I'm pretty sure I haven't seen before is a one-button reset. If you are practicing a particular move because you need to be able to execute it in Mission Mode (the main reason I came to this mode), then being able to try out the move, and immediately tap a button to reset the world made it really easy to get a lot of practice in instead of waiting for the character to fall or for you to finish the wrong Jutsu.
While the gameplay has quite a few gems in it, there is a lot about it that really doesn't feel polished. Whether it is the quick Mission Mode or the lack of help as far as learning the various controls, something just doesn't feel quite right about it.
