Again, Spoilers, this goes over the campaign, roster, and a few other things so turn back now before you start reading if you have yet to experience the game or if you just want to read on something.
Anyways, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, after finally playing through it, it was good for the most part but sadly it has a few issues in some areas and mainly the first playthrough is among the biggest, anyways I'll break it up into roster, gameplay, campaign, and other stuff.
Note: there are a few NaruSaku moments in this game I felt I should throw in, its actually a little funny. They are at the bottom of this post, so skip there if that is what you want to see. Again there are spoilers in this review so even then turn back now if you want to save the experience for yourself.
Roster: This is a really good thing but it has a couple issues, 80 characters and 7 support only seems like its too good to be true but there are that many, sad thing is a few of these character slots are occupied by some of the same characters. Not all of these are bad, I mean in an example back in UNS2, there was both Naruto and Sage Naruto and Sasuke and Taka Sasuke. They did have different fighting styles and their own strengths and weaknesses. Again in UNS3, they expanded this but we have at least 4 Naruto's, and 4 Sasuke's this time. 1 of them for both sides is a part 1 incarnation. The characters which repeat are Naruto (normal, sage, 9TM, part 1), Sakura (normal, part 1), Sasuke (shippuden start, taka, EMS, part 1), Kakashi (normal, childhood), Obito (tobi, masked man, war rinniegan tobi, young obito), Killer Bee (normal, Sharkskin after kisame's death), Gaara (normal, part 1), Hinata (normal, part 1), Rock lee (normal, part 1), Kabuto (normal, Snake powered), and Neji (normal, part 1). Altogether that means these 11 characters occupy 28 slots. There are differences with some like alternative fighting modes and the part 1 forms but its not really something all that enlightening, I mean Bee himself literally has little differences with his standard and sharkskin styles, I felt it was a crime to make this take a roster slot rather than just make it an alternative fighting style or special.
On the good side of things, many characters have alternative specials which do their same damage but just altered for visual effects like standard Naruto uses the rasenshuriken but can switch to the 9 tails rasengan before the fight starts. Many characters also have alternate costumes in their same slot, most of the costumes are wartime for the konha 11 of edo for many of those kabuto revived. The best part of the roster though were the newcomers, Mifiune, Duari, Hanzo, and the jinchurki are fun. Many people take the jinchurki or war tobi for online, I enjoy Mifune, he can wreck a lot of stuff. Ay, Mei, and Ohnoki all appeared in generations first but they are nice too. It was nice to have the entire cast basically. The support characters are where it fell a bit short though, we wanted many to be playable but the 7 support characters include mainly the kage escorts (minus Temari, Kankuro and Duari) from the 5 kage summit. This includes Aoba, Fuu(Yakamna clan), Tourne, Ao, Chojuro, both of Ohnoki's grandchildren, and Cee.
The roster does at least have the majority of the cast from both part 1 and 2, mainly part 1 guys were reanimated but it remained good. Overall the roster is around an B+ range, it has a lot of characters but a few too many repeats. The part 1 ones were included because of other reasons.
Gameplay: The most important part, the gameplay. This is a fighting game and it has a good flow to it, in simple 1-1 or team battles, the gameplay is good. Most characters have differences, its good. There are differences in how they attack, the damage, range, and speed of many techniques differs for each character. Those with roster repeats have differences if they have some other fighting mode or part 1 or younger incarnation. Most characters are divided between melee (majority of the roster) and ranged (like Shino, Tenten, or Deidara), this simply means you can throw punches or shuriken faster. The basic fighting elements remain, melee, throw, shoot, unleash jutsu (some instant like Sakura's blossom clash, others chargeable like rasengan or lightning blade). The dynamics of the fighting system do allow for many tactical approaches though, especially with support enabled. As support, characters use their basic or signature jutsu to strike the opponent. Plus the addition of life for your support characters makes it better, if a wide range attack hits them, they can be knocked away. Support mainly brings more of the battle system, especially with ringouts enabled, they can sacrifice themselves for you. The balance, offense, and defense remains. When support is used enough you build your team gauge and then they can act with you, offense will join you in pummeling the oppoent and defense will act as a human shield. Balance does this equally but nothing specialized. Certain characters can be paired together for improvements in these stats (team 7, masters and students, akakstui, jinchurki, female only, kages, ino-shika-cho etc). The substitution power is also changed, it has its own meter so to avoid attacks you either need to try dodging, blocking, or using support. You only get 4-5 substitutions max and need to wait for a refill during the match. One of the best new additions is environmental cover, its good for those battles against ranged characters (Deidara is again just too evil with those bombs). Awakenings are in too and have changed as well, both players can enter awakening, its not an easy win, you can be grabbed (certain people and hit by ultimate jutsu) but there are 2 types, standard when your life is low and instant but instant is only a one time thing and it reduces your chakra meter and you instantly exit it if you use up all your chakra. Both awakenings have an upside and a downside, basic does not reduce your chakra meter but it takes time to reenter it again and you need to be around 50-40% life. Instant is quick and even mid combo, but its a big gamble and you only have 1 shot.
Graphics: They are nice, its very anime styled after the anime obviously, this is short and simple, it looks good. A+
The best part about this general gameplay is the customization it allows, there are a good deal of options like support is immortal, no ring outs, environment cover, etc. My friends and I enjoy basic awakening no instant. The gameplay itself is very good and retains a good amount of stragety. One thing on the characters each is how many have different ninja tools, they are not used as much in campaign but in this, many characters have some things like explosive tags, defense boosting pills, and more. Its like a loadout and a special reserve for your character, but these are expendable items. I loved this in UNS2, it could get someone off you and give you a moment but I really wish it was like we could build our own loadout from these items like in the campaign, I would have liked to bring all the exploding tags I wanted online. Overall the gameplay is an A to me, there are a couple small issues but it has a good flow, its a simple control fighting system but it gets deeper with its combo and support movement.
Camapgin: The ultimate adventure mode otherwise as its known, the story follows the nine tails attack for the prolouge, then goes through the aftermath of pain to the 4th ninja war, however the manga is still going as is the fight with tobi so the furthest it goes alongside is the fight against the edo kage, then it splits off into the non-canon zone. Its a long game too. This mode in some ways is good and bad. You know the story, it follows events like the 5 kage summit, Naruto begging the raikage, Sakura's confession, the team 7 reunion, training with bee, etc. The story follows much of what we already know, just small stuff rearranged. There are about 10 chapters, 11 if you count the fragment.
This is where I consider the campaign to be weaker though, its mainly because of the war, this forces you down a linear path and reduces exploration. Unlike its predecessor, you were free to explore between arcs, like after reuniting with Sasuke in UNS2, before the hidan and kakuzu arc, you were free to roam the leaf village and go to the sand or so and take care of side events if you wanted. UNS2 had many side tasks which made it fun, you could get a part of some other ninja and have them take request fights instead of Naruto. These side quests included friendship events, item hunting and gathering, talking and choosing, finding cursed copies of people. These all exist in UNS3 as well but you cannot do any of them UNTIL YOU BEAT THE WAR. The thing this, you do not go back to the leaf village until the war is over, once you leave for the turtle island that is it, you are gone till you kick tobi's butt. We need to suffer one playthrough before we can have the freedom to roam. You experience many places in the first playthrough but others open up later on (like the leaf training ground and sand village) basically you are correlated in the first playthrough but after that the overworld is fully opened. This is sadly when the ultimate adventure begins, when you are free to accomplish all event requests and task. Thankfully this is the time when you can go to the kage mansion and choose 3 others aside from Naruto to do stuff with oh and its worth mentioning that your other 3 teammates can be the kage, any of them, plus he support only guys. There is also a main quest to power a frog statue and get chakra copies of characters like Jiriaya, Orochimaru, and so on so they can join you too (the frog says they are invisible to all others but Naruto so yeah you can have tobi, Hidan, and Madara copies running around the leaf village with Naruto but this is for gameplay elements and people who like those others.
Unique to the adventure mode is mob battles, the hack and slash mode, its very basic and simply but has a few problems. Its not encountered often but you end up facing many samurai and zetsu. The main battles that take this are Sasuke's 5 kage summit attack, the 7 swordsmen fight, and Obito's six paths of pain. It can be an issue when you try to lock on merely by the right stick and when you subsitute, others just interrupt. If there was a break free mode, that would have made dodging much better but its not there. Mob battle is acceptable but can be a hinderence in some cases.
Boss battles remain the highlight of this game, the animation becomes so good and the quick-time events combine the action you do most of the time. Not all fights are simply beat them up, some give you unique fighting styles like Choji facing the Gedo Statue and Naruto facing the 6 tailed beasts in one fight. One thing that makes these fights a little better is the ultimate descion system, it does not impact the story but allows fights to be approached in different ways, such as when naruto faces the nine-tails you can accept bee's help or go it alone, another one is the 7 swordsmen with Sakura, Kakashi, Guy, and Lee. All ultimate decisions give you hero or legend points these points impact the gear of certain sets you can equip, the power and number of those gear types, hero is the easy route legend is harder. In this example you can split up the swordsmen, play as Sakura against 1, lee goes against 2, and the guy against 3 mob battle style. This gives you a refill on life as you take on different character each time with the previous coming as support. However cause you split them up, this is more battles and you face many Zetsu along the split up swordsmen. If you go legend, you play as Guy with all 6 at once and Sakura and Lee as support. Bright side? No zetsu. Both paths lead to the kakashi vs reanimated Zabuza battle.
All boss battles have secret factors you can earn by getting enough quick time star points, put these in fast enough you earn them and it helps your battle rating. Some fights have secret actions which need you to trigger a special action to earn a bit extra for the secret factors. Secret factors are just memories and a few other things reflecting on the characters in that battle. Nothing much but adds to the atmosphere of the fight. Some of these include Naruto and Sasuke charging at each other with their jutsu or Kakashi copying Zabuza's water dragon.
Overall in ultimate adventure, one thing you will love and hate are the amount of cutscenes, literally chapter 4 the birth of naruto is only a fight against the 8 tails then 45 minutes of the birth of naruto and sacrifice of his parents. I was pissed at the amount of length for this but the music and story will just do you in and make you smile and cry at times. If it were not for the accursed music being so good in this game I would have honestly been annoyed with it. The story is good and the amount of emotion in it over so many things will keep you in it. The first playthrough can be desreibed as an interactive movie.
One thing which is very nice about ultimate adventure is once you beat a chapter, you can go back immediately to it by the ninja world timeline right on the pause menu. This lets you go to any individual battle of any chapter and also includes some key fights from part 1 and first half of shippuden. Some fights include Naruto vs. Neji (hence the part 1 forms), Sakura vs. Sasori, Lee and Gaara vs. Kimimaro, and a few more. Doing timeline events can help you earn more and at the same time for those who wanted to earn more for the legend or hero points, take the alternative choice in the ultimate decision, and try to earn the a or s rank achievements/trophies. Its good to earn certain items only around for certain fights and earning more of the timeline. The timeline is accomplished by beating certain fights (Guy vs Kisame), getting bonus conditions in a few, and exploration after the first play through.
The adventure mode is mostly good and forces you down the story sadly at first but it has a lot for its story and a lot of emotion, it makes the manga look like nothing, EVEN KISHI PRAISED THIS GAME!. The game acts more like a game after winning the war. The ending is simply best described as "Curses foiled again, I'll get you next time Gadget!!" But if it were not for this path, we would not have gotten 2 incredible final boss battles in this game. Its basically bland at the start but the climax and emotion and epic scale of the fights against Madara and Six paths Tobi make it amazing. The after request stuff takes a while but its for those who actually want it to be a game at this point and not just running around fighting people.
Overall the campaign has its high and low points but its mainly good and an interactive movie/anime at first rather than a game. If it were not for the emotion, music, and story it would have driven most people away. If you have the patience for this first playthrough and then discover the openess of the world in the free mode after the war is beaten there is a lot to take care of, get 3 of your favorite characters and you don't even need to use naruto, just the 3 who accompany him, naruto can be your permanent support character if you wanted and if you were tired of playing as him by now (it is funny that the tailed beast bomb becomes his fixed ultimate jutsu after the end of the game and even battles against simple friends show him blowing up the whole valley of the leaf village).
If you have the patience for the modes after the campaign you will get a lot more out of the game too, it you are a competionist like me. I would give the campaign a B-, its very good with its story, it drove me to tears at some points like the death of Minato and Kushina but also made me angry for the long cutscenes and lack of exploration like UNS2. You should not lock players out of a certain mode because of a story event. After beating the game there is a lot to do, friend requests, their friendship levels (you have friendship levels with literally everyone even the kages and their support in the other villages, basically those still alive), explore the other villages, (mist is the only one unavailable), wanted list quests (UNS2 had cursed idols who copied certain people, this time it is zetsu leftover from the war trying to cause chaos), there is a lot to do. Not to mention the general store Bandai in the leaf has many other things to collect like ninja info cards, titles, and all sorts of extras.
If you want the most out of the game, suffer the first playthrough, enjoy the story, then play as you want, many other things unfold with naruto's friends and people giving you requests, new areas open up, it makes it great. Otherwise I would give the campaign a C rating only if you play it once. Otherwise enjoy the freebatle and online, there will be certain characters who may be cheap or OP but its totally flexible. I mean just the other day I used part 1 Sakura and beat up mighty badass Madara, Tobi, and Minato, thats the beauty of the videogame world, the power of individuals from the main story does not matter. Madara even has some of the strongest moves, it was funny to see him whooped by part 1 Sakura.
Overall the game is good, a few issues here and there but it captures the story so well and the animation is incredible espcially at boss fights. Certain moments should drive you to cry, I cried at Kakashi vs edo Zabuza, it was a tearful music they played. The fighting system is good and with around 50 actual different characters, the fighting system is good. This is a great game for in the same room as friends and online, it does have a big community of online players too. There are ranked and player matches so you don't need to worry about being outdone by experts. Many characters have different learning curves but all characters can be earned by story or just playing vs. enough (you can earn all 88 characters in 20 mins according to saiyanisland.com from something they set up.
So there you have it and thats its. Enjoy it or not, I've beaten the main story and did a bit on the free roam after the first playthrough but the fighting aspect of the game is good.
Overall the game to me is around a good B+, story, graphics, music, and gameplay are great, roster is mostly good, ninja timeline gives a bit of the whole series. Main issues are the forced first playthrough path and some character repeats which are really unneeded.
The NaruSaku Moments: Yes there are a few, aside from the confession, there are many instances in this game which make Sakura concerned for Naruto. You can talk to her after the 5 kage events and return to the village, she will say "What you said about you and Sasuke.... no.. its nothing." Referring to the event that they may both die in the fight.
There is a late cut scene in which Sakura, kakashi, Gai, and Lee, will be overwhelmed by Zetsu but guess who rescues Sakura again? 9T mode naruto! And he leads them.
The ending when Naruto wakes up and returns to the village, Sakura gets first attention at him and well its not implying NaruSaku but naruto feels a wind as his parents push him towards a crowd but cause Sakura is at the center of this, it gives her more focus in this scene.
In requests after the main story, there are 2 requests I found which are both a little funny and related to NaruSaku.
One request is called A maidens battle, Sakura, Ino, and Hinata are debating who has the best personality and it gets funny you get an ultimate decision between Sakura and Ino's outspoken personalities or Hinata's shy personality. Hero is Sakura and Ino, Legend is Hinata. Now don't think this means anything bad or imply s anything for Hinata being on legend, its a game and its non-canon. Both paths in this one give you the same amount of points for your items. I chose Hero (Hero items are generally better anyways), lets you skip a battle and get more relation with Sakura and Ino but negative on Hinata. Siding with Hinata results in a fight against Ino with Sakura as support, all you get is Sakura and Ino being jealous and Hinata happy.
I chose hero because well it made a funny scene and made Sakura and Ino appreciate Naruto, hey I don't have much against Hinata but she got down, besides Sakura and Ino are convinced Hinata had the best looks and they get upset if she has the best personality. I was rather just being fair, give Hinata the looks, give Sakura and Ino the personality, besides I like my girls with personalities.
Another request is from kakashi he wants to fight Naruto, but then out of nowhere Sakura wants to fight him too. Naruto is torn over who to help, Sai comes in a suggests to he will take the one Naruto does not. You have another ultimate decision, to do sai's way or fight them both at half power with shadow clones. Hero is sai's way legend is on your own with facing both at half power. The result is you can get one with better relationship and lose some on someone else or get both. I did legend this time to help both. The fights were not hard but with it guess who naruto sent the clone too? kakashi, and it vanished without Kakahsi knowing. Real Naruto faces Sakura, and once he beats her, she thinks to herself, she is kinda jealous of his new power but is happy for him and all he has done, she says to herself 'Naruto I'm happy and proud for you." and what she says to Naruto "I'll get better, we are on the same team afterall." So she just hid her feelings here, it was short but kinda sweet.
Hey! That's my job!
Just kidding. Great review. I agree with you. There are some other NS tidbits and side missions you forgot, but since you didn't do all of it, I understand. I'm not done with the game but story mode I am. I think what they did for Kakashi vs. Zabuza was like a sorry gift to the fans for not having this moment in Storm 1, so this is their redemption so to say. I did like how Naruto singled out Iruka and Sakura as people who he dears the most and then acknowledge everyone else is now his friends. Can't say Sasuke because well, he is in work according to Naruto, so this make sense. You can say NS got stuff from main and side missions while NH is in side missions. SS, well, it's only in chapter 2 and then, no more. It's like I said, CC2 does like Hinata like a fan, but still acknowledge NS as the endgame pairing. Check out the old games and you'll agree. I'll speak on the review on today's podcast.
