Narutimate Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2

This floating palace of doom is 99 stories tall

The single-player campaign Narutimate Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2, takes place in the Fortress.

This floating palace of doom is 99 stories tall, and each story contains several rooms and stairs.

For instance, when you take the stairs up from the third floor, you'll find that there are two or three rooms between you and the stairs up to the fifth floor.

In all likelihood, the two or three rooms in front of you will be blank. This means you need to "summon" a room through which to travel.

To do this, you need to use a room-summoning scroll. At any given time, you have four of these, and when you use one, it's replaced by another at random.

Here are the types of rooms you will be able to summon: battle (a single match against a CPU opponent),

pop quiz (a three-question quiz on Naru lore), clone room (three-card monte), shadow possession (button-press mimicking),

tree climbing (branch-dodging test of speed), and amusement room (slot machines).

It's not exactly what you would hope for in a floating palace of wonder and excitement.

Here's the worst part: The castle has 99 floors, and you generally have to play through two or three summoned rooms on each one.

Even worse, winning or losing in a summoned room has no bearing on the plot.

The only thing your performance in a summoned room affects is the number of ninja points you get, and these are used to buy screenshots,

audio tracks and the like from the bonus area. This makes the mini-games seem frustratingly pointless.

The only rooms you need to make sure you complete successfully are battle rooms.

You aren't playing as just one person; you're a whole four-person team of ninjas.

So if you lose a match, the next ninja steps in and resumes the fight.

If you intentionally lose four fights in a row, the game Narutimate Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2 asks you if you want to choose a new difficulty and then restarts you at the beginning of the match you just lost,

with all of your ninjas completely recovered.