Shinobi Striker Developers' Letter #10 Is Here! The 7th Anniversary is Just Around the Corner!!

It's time to determine the world's greatest ninja in the Ninja World League!
Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker is an online multiplayer game where you go head-to-head with other ninja in fast-paced, acrobatic battles to vie for the honor of being crowned the strongest of them all!!

Greetings to all you ninja out there!
This is the Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker Development Team.

We're proud to announce that Shinobi Striker is nearing its 7th anniversary, and it's all thanks to your love and support!
We couldn't be more grateful!

So, in our 10th Developers' Letter, we'll be sharing details about the newest character joining the fray, Kakuzu, along with information on the 7th anniversary campaigns!

We at the development team are pleased to present the key visual for the 7th anniversary!
It features player avatars standing side-by-side with the infamous "immortal" duo.

We'll be introducing the jutsu employed by the new character, Kakuzu, along with weapons and costumes equipable by the avatar so make sure to read until the very end!

Kakuzu is an offensive Heal Type who excels on the front line and specializes in close-quarter fights thanks to the use of his healing Ninjutsu, his fission beings that can fight independently, and his ability to revive even after being defeated.
Here's a rundown of the Ninjutsu for our immortal warrior, Kakuzu!

Ninjutsu 1 - Fire Style-Wind Style: Rare Folly

This is a ground-targeting Ninjutsu that deals damage via the fission beings born from Earth Grudge. Using this Ninjutsu summons a fission being that attacks using Fire Style, and additional input brings forth a fission being that attacks using Wind Style. The fission beings automatically attack nearby enemies and disappear after a certain amount of time passes, or they take a certain amount of damage. Plus, if you summon two fission beings close to one another, you can even make them combine and unleash a blazing inferno, just like in the original series!

Use the combined fission being and take advantage of its high health and damage to protect your base and stop enemies in their tracks, or summon it from a safe distance to maximize damage output! Make use of this adaptable Ninjutsu to best serve your current situation! Keep in mind that the fission beings will disappear after taking damage and enemies can guard against their attacks. Work together with your fission beings to turn the tides of battle in your favor!


Ninjutsu 2 - Earth Grudge: Stitch

This is a recovery Ninjutsu that makes use of Earth Grudge's tentacles to sew up wounds.
Using this Ninjutsu heals all allies in the area, plus when you hit with a Normal Attack, it will gain a healing effect if it knocks the enemy out. In addition, if you are knocked out while this Ninjutsu is active you will enter a "preservation state" in which you regain all of your health before it rapidly starts depleting. This state will be removed by knocking out an enemy.


This recovery Ninjutsu is characterized by its ability to heal while dealing close-range attacks and the preservation effect that activates after getting knocked out! The recovery amount immediately applied by unleashing the Ninjutsu is rather subdued compared to other recovery Ninjutsu, but you can heal even further by landing close range attacks on foes. Plus, you can also recover health during the preservation state, allowing you to remain on the frontline of the battle! Looking at it another way, your HP recovery will be hampered if you're unable to stay on the front lines, so make sure you know when to activate this Ninjutsu!


Secret Technique - Earth Grudge: Final Shot

This Secret Technique allows the user to unite with their fission being to charge into enemies, launch them in the air, and follow up with a powerful ranged attack.
After using the Secret Technique, the user's Normal Attacks will be replaced with tentacle-based attacks for a period of time.

This is a simple, yet powerful, Secret Technique that implements a charge attack! While the natural inclination is to surprise nearby enemies with this attack, we also recommend combo-ing off of other techniques that restrict enemy movement. Plus, this technique allows the user to use Earth Grudge's tentacles for powerful combos. The Normal Attack is changed to a mid-range attack where the tentacle is fired out of the user's hand, whereas Strong Attacks are changed to an area-of-effect attack with tentacles striking out at nearby foes. While in a combo, the user gains super armor, allowing you to attack aggressively just like a Defense Type.


Kakuzu will be available for use in the free update, so look forward to using him on the battlefield! By purchasing the Special Ninjutsu Training, your avatar will be able to use his Ninjutsu!
What's more, the reward for this Special Ninjutsu Training also comes with the weapon "Kakuzu's Monstrous Arms"! It truly captures Kakuzu's unique fighting style, so look forward to it!

Like previous Summoned Animals, there are 3 kinds of Ninja Tortoises with different effects. How about giving a chance to a companion who's cool as a cucumber?

Summoning: Ninja Tortoise is scheduled to be added to the game after the late-September maintenance.
Keep an eye on the official X (formerly Twitter) account to get more details on the schedule!
https://twitter.com/Narutovideogame

Let's take a look at the new items that were added to the Scroll Appraisal!

Healing Type Weapon - Enchanted Sword "Ghost" (SS+)
This is the weapon wielded by the female avatar in the 7th anniversary key visual! Use Strong Attack to don a mask and enter a unique enhanced state. While in this state, you'll lose a set amount of health and your defense will be reduced, but in exchange your attack will increase, you'll be able to inflict harmful effects on your foes with a special combo, and you'll be able to stock buffs onto yourself. If you're able to complete the combo to the final sword-sheathing attack while stocked with buffs, you'll create a healing area to recover the health of nearby allies. Show off your prowess with this highly technical weapon.

Attack Type Weapon - Slashblade "Yellow Flash" (SS+)
This is the weapon carried by the male avatar in the 7th anniversary key visual! This brand-new SS+ weapon is inspired by the kunai used by the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze! With it, you'll be able to faithfully mimic not only the Flying Raijin Jutsu and Rasengan, but even the incredible quickness that earned him the title "Yellow Flash of the Leaf"! Use Strong Attack to unleash the Flying Raijin Jutsu and get a taste of true high-speed movement!

SS Costume: Celebratory Outfit: Fiery Sky

This is a special outfit to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the Ninja World League!
The black undertone of this outfit is accented by golden trims and further enhanced by the golden flames of the overcoat. It carries effects that decrease your Secret Technique and Ninjutsu cooldown times, and increases your max health along with the amount of health you can recover. We recommend equipping this outfit to a Heal Type that fights on the front line, due to its ability to maximize Ninjutsu output and enhance recovery effects. Of course this outfit also works with any other type you may want to equip it to, as well!

Defense Type Weapon: Darui's Long Sword

This new weapon is inspired by the man known as the right hand of the Fourth Raikage, and later on as the Fifth Raikage himself! This weapon not only allows you to mimic Darui's powerful Lightning and Water Style jutsu, but also his Kekkei Genkai that allows you to combine the two into his Gale Style jutsu! While you'll be unable to fire off rapid Gale Style attacks in succession, it does have a long range, allowing you to interfere with the battle from a distance!

Attack Type Weapon - Scientific Ninja Tool "Ashura"

This is a weapon in the form of arms that you can use in battle after infusing chakra into the gadget on the arm. During your combo, you can rapidly strike with multiple arms and form signs to unleash Rasengan or Fire Style jutsu, allowing for a truly unique fighting style. Try it out for yourself and overwhelm your enemies with all your attack possibilities!

Ninja Tool - Uchiha Shuriken Jutsu "Lightning": Tri-Shot

Thank you very much to all those who took the time to answer our Shinobi Striker survey the other day! From the survey results, we saw that there was a lot of interest geared towards improving or reworking past Ninjutsu and Secret Technique Ninjutsu. In response to the survey results, we'll be going over the following three topics: Secret Technique Ninjutsu reworks; Heavenly Hand Power and trap type Ninjutsu/Ninja Tool adjustments; and buffing past Ninjutsu along with power balance adjustments. This explanation is a little long, but please bear with us.


・Secret Technique Ninjutsu Reworks
Once again, we'd like to thank you for all your responses to our previous Shinobi Striker survey! When looking through the responses, we noticed a lot of players had requested balance adjustments in the form of buffing or reworking past Ninjutsu and Secret Technique Ninjutsu.
For this update, we decided to focus on reworking "Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu" as many users had specifically requested it, and it was one of the Secret Techniques that had seen the least amount of action lately.

We've identified that the issues with "Particle Style: Atomic Dismantling Jutsu" stemmed from its low accuracy and the lack of commensurate satisfaction or reward for actually landing a hit on your foe. To remedy this, we've adjusted it so that it fires a large boulder that restrains enemies upon use, and increased the explosion radius upon contact with an enemy. With these changes, we've increased the reward incentive for unleashing this jutsu and made it a more powerful Secret Technique for Healing Types.

In addition to that, we've also reworked "Heaven Concealed" in this update, which was lacking its own distinct flavor. We've adjusted it so that it now drops a second meteorite after activation. Its attack performance remains the same, allowing users to experience the thrill of saying "What are you going to do about the second one?" before unleashing a powerful attack that can't be defended against, just like that famous scene from the original work.

We'll be working proactively on making more adjustments from here on, so look forward to future updates.

・Heavenly Hand Power and Trap Type Ninjutsu/Ninja Tool Adjustments
In this update, we've decreased the cooldown time of "Heavenly Hand Power" and made it so that trap-type Ninjutsu and Ninja Tools that couldn't be guarded against now can be. Our intention behind this update is to provide the players with countermeasures so that they can defend against "Heavenly Hand Power" and trap type Ninjutsu/Ninja Tool combos.
Builds that paired Ninja Tools such as "Paralysis Seal" or trap-type techniques together with "Heavenly Hand Power" required a bit of set up, but resulted in overwhelming combos that left the enemy unable to evade and led to easy knockouts. The fact that these combos were unavoidable and had little counterplay made this a pain point for those on the receiving end.

With this adjustment, trap-type Ninjutsu/Ninja Tools can now be guarded against, so the defender has time to guard when they see the windup animation for "Heavenly Hand Power" and defend against the worst of it, while possibly even throwing in a counterattack. To mitigate this loss of power, we balanced "Heavenly Hand Power" by lowering its Ninjutsu cooldown time.

Since these are pretty big changes, we will continue to observe the battle data and make further adjustments as they are needed.

・Individual Adjustments in the 2.65 Update
In this update we made various adjustments to the power balance of Ninjutsu and Secret Techniques.

A big change we made was to the Ninjutsu "Sage Art, Wood Style: Shinsu Senju Veritable 1000-Armed Kan'on & Chojo Kebutsu Artifacts of the Buddha!" We tripled its number of attacks and increased the tempo of the strikes, making it easier to use as a search-type Secret Technique by attacking specific locations.

We also made improvements to "Baryon Tail Breaker" which was difficult to use in close-range combo situations, "Lava Style: Dissolving Jutsu" which had some difficulties as a ranged Ninjutsu, and "Hidden Jutsu: Daikokuten" which had a lower damage output and number of hits than desired, as well as other slight improvements to a wide range of Ninjutsu to put them in a better spot than they were in before. Conversely, we made some adjustments to rein in the power on "Rasengan Connection", "Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu", "Six Paths Chakra: Rebirth" and other Ninjutsu that stood out for being a little too strong.

In regard to "Kurama Link Mode", "Cursemark Second State", and other form change Secret Techniques that confer long-term beneficial effects, we felt that their influence on battles was a little too strong, so we reined in the damage dealt by their additional input attacks.

Also, we added an effect to "8 Trigrams 128 Palms" that disables the use of Substitutions on hit, increased the defense radius of "Sand Shield", greatly decreased the cooldown time of "Magnet Style: Gold Dust Great Burial", and made various other adjustments. You'll be able to read about these adjustments at a later date via a notice or in the in-game patch notes!

We plan to continue making additional changes to the types and Ninjutsu mentioned in this letter as we monitor the impact of these adjustments on the battle environment and user data.
We hope you continue to enjoy fighting in the Ninja World League!

In the previous Developers' Letter, we spoke of our plans of further optimizing the game.
We are continuously striving towards optimizing the game, and in this update we have managed to optimize how data is loaded at the start of battle. We have confirmed decreased loading times and increased stability in the game.

We will continue to focus on optimization in order to facilitate a more enjoyable experience going forward.

Thank you for reading until the end!
This update will go live on 8/21 (JST), and Kakuzu is set to join the battle on 8/22 (JST), so you only have to wait a little bit longer!

Shinobi Striker would never have made it to its 7th anniversary if it weren't for all you ninja participating in the Ninja World League. We here at the Shinobi Striker development team have resolved to do everything we can to match the effort and dedication you poured into the Ninja World League, and will try our hardest to maintain and update the game to keep it fresh for everyone.

With that, we bid you farewell. Let us meet again in the next Developers' Letter!