Boasting the largest roster to date, there's over 80 characters to choose from when you want to battle online or battle locally with friends. A great deal of these characters have been present in past games, as have the 40 stages that are present. Odds are that if you had a character that you enjoyed in the past then they will be present here, though they may need to be unlocked via the main story mode. Want a team of the kids before the show took its serious and mature turn? That's perfectly possible. Want a team of nothing but Naruto? It's kind of impractical and not really viable for a competitive match but sure knock yourself out.
Gameplay remains largely unchanged in the multiplayer modes, with a couple of tweaks being made to the support system, allowing for characters to operate more on a Marvel vs Capcom 3 system where they are either offensive in nature, defensive, or balanced. This allows them to do stuff like throw some chakra shuriken or take blows for you when an ultimate jutsu is fired off. Adding specific characters to a support team can also affect the team's overall dynamic and power, giving them an edge in battle. These changes actually add a great deal of depth to combat and I'm pretty surprised by this one addition. The bulk of the changes to this game actually come from an area I found faulty in the last game, the story mode.
The story this time follows the Five Kage/Fourth Great Ninja War arc, Sasuke's gone rogue and it's Naruto versus the rest of the world to try and reach him before he is lost forever. Meanwhile you've got another member of Sasuke's Uchiha clan running around making trouble for each nation. His name is Madara and his plans are nothing short of world domination through the power of the Nine Tails Fox that Naruto carries within him, along with every other Jinchuriki out there. It's as anime as all get out, but the presentation is excellent as always. Cyber2Connect has really outdone themselves in terms of how good this game looks. The story mode this time has a bit more activity in-between fights, allowing players to do some exploring to find items like blueprints and consumables that can be used in combat. It's a bit bare bones, but a lot better than just moving from cut-scene to cut-scene like in Generations. It's nice to have that break every now and again, especially during exposition heavy sections of the game, like the close and start to chapters.
One of the major new changes to the story mode introduces the Mob Battles, which closely resemble segments of the Dynasty Warriors franchise. Hordes of enemies that need to be plowed through, as they lamely attempt to stop your progress. These battles can get a little out of hand at time, but through judicious use of the new dash mechanic and burst meter you'll be cutting down enemies in no time. The giant boss battles that were absent from Generations have also made a return, which is a nice thing to bring back, as it provided a nice break from the standard combat. And for those that have found the previous games to be too easy, there is the Legend or Hero mode, that allows you to make a decision at key points in the story that allow you to shape the story in different ways in exchange for a spike in difficulty.
The work the Cyber2Connect has put into the visuals of this series continues to get better and better. Their efforts with 2012's Asura's Wrath showed what they could do when getting out of the comfort levels of the Naruto games, and it looks like they brought back some of what they learned with that game to Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. The game looks absolutely stunning, with some great animation and some of the best cel-shading in the medium. It's really surprising that outside of the minor aliasing, this game could be a spot on replacement for the show's visuals. I keep making a point of this because I'm that impressed by what I've seen, and really, no one does it better with these types of visuals than Cyber2Connect. The audio is also spot on from the show, which is to be expected, and like always, there's dual audio, allowing players to enjoy this game with a dub, or in Japanese. It's interesting to see how far the industry has come in this regard, back in 2008 with Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, the Japanese audio track was a DLC offering, and wasn't present from the get-go.
At this point I think we're at a wall, what more could be done to make this franchise feel fresh and worth the yearly trip to the game store? My biggest problem with Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 was I am still getting that 'been there, done that' feeling when I play. The computer isn't particularly challenging through the campaign, and a lot of the same tactics work without much deviation. If you want fights that are actually going to test you, then get your personal card set up and get some online matches under your belt. But there isn't much that compels me to drop Super Street Fighter 4, or any of the other fighting games I've dumped a great deal of time in to in exchange for Ultimate Ninja Storm 3.
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 feels like a 'Best Hits' version of the long running franchise, 'Now That's What I Call Naruto' as it were. It's doesn't feel like there hasn't been much forward progress however, and even though some old mechanics that worked were brought back, I don't feel like the game has benefited that much by their return. Sure the giant boss battles are cool, but why were they even removed in the first place? Just to put them back in so they could be a bullet point? Those of you out there that love Naruto games aren't going to find much wrong with Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, but for the casual player like me, while I can see what all the fuss is about I just don't think I need to come back year after year. Here's to hoping that Namco Bandai and Cyber2Connect can really shake up things in the future. Cyber2Connect really shook things up for me with Asura's Wrath, so hopefully more of that departure's influence can find its way to future Naruto titles, otherwise it might be time to take a break for a year or two.
When it comes to adapting anime for video games, CyberConnect2 has had a pretty good track record, the Naruto series among their best. The latest game, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, doesn’t disappoint, returning to the big, epic, cinematic fights of the previous games (which were sorely missed in Generations), and bringing even more characters and improvements along with it. Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 isn’t quite perfect, but it may be the best title the series has seen so far.
For newcomers fresh to the manga or anime, fret not: while you may not completely understand the mechanics of the Naruto universe, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 does put some effort into helping you catch up. This is no easy task: the franchise has been around for more than a decade, with more than 600 manga chapters, more than 500 anime episodes, nine movies, and hundreds of characters. But like previous games, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 serves as a sort of Cliff Notes version of the story, distilling the narrative so that players get the main points of the story without detracting from the quality.
Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3: Full Burst Review by Sean Smith on. January 29, 2014. Anyone with even a passing interest in manga, anime, or indeed the beat ‘em up genre can find. Your Score 0 Summary: Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 promises to unleash a tornado of ninja action and adventure that the franchise is known for, with over eighty playable characters, advanced online modes and enhanced fighting mechanics that allow anyone to become a ninja master.
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. After the flashback episode that was Generations, the Ultimate Ninja Storm gets back to telling powerful stories with spectacular boss fights, even if. Review: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst By Nikola Suprak on November 1, 2013 I have been a long time fan of the Naruto anime and manga series, and a long time begrudging.
Before any purists go nuts, let me say that this is a good thing. CyberConnect2 has had a lot of experience with the Narutoverse, and while you may miss some neat little scenes that were created for the anime, you’re not missing much. Keep in mind that most of those scenes were added to pad the story and make it longer, which the game actually avoids: you’re actually getting a story more in-tune with the manga than the anime. This means more action, more narrative, and far, far less boring tree-hopping scenes.
To help catch you up, there’s actually a nice, concise summary of Part 1 as the game installs, the era of the series that depicts a younger Naruto and his earlier adventures as a novice ninja. This leads into a summary of the events of Part 2, depicting an older Naruto who’s come back from training three years later, up until his fight with a major enemy named Pain, which was covered in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2.
Ultimate Ninja Storm 3‘s story mode, Ultimate Adventure, picks up directly after the fight with Pain, with Naruto a hero of the Leaf Village, and who’s finally earned the respect of the villagers. At the same time, the dangerous organization called the Akatsuki, who were previously thought to be led by Pain, ramp up their efforts to steal power, which leads to a huge shinobi world war. The true leader of this group, the so-called Madara Uchiha, has inexplicably come from the past with big plans: plans that tie into Naruto’s origins and the events that led him to where he is now. You’ll find that watching and playing Ultimate Adventure will feel as close to watching the anime as a game can get, with a well adapted story, beautiful 3D cel-shaded visuals, and nice little touches to the presentation reminiscent of CyberConnect2’s other cinematic action title, Asura’s Wrath.
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Pc
Let me say this now: when it comes to the story, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 is no Generations. Where Generations felt like less of a sequel and more of an expansion, there is no skeleton of narrative here. Ultimate Ninja Storm 3‘s Ultimate Adventure once again offers an explorable world that allows you to take on missions, sidequests, talk to other characters, and find items for battles. What Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 improves upon is the depth of Ultimate Adventure. In UNS2, players were given such a huge map to explore, so many items to find, and so many missions and events to take on, that it was overwhelming. Often, the missions were tedious “collect them all!” quests, which seemed to be more for padding (artificially lengthening the game) and less for genuine content. Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 cuts out a lot of the needless walking, collecting, and backtracking to find items, and instead offers more action and content in its stead.
The balance isn’t perfect: at the start of the game, there’s an illusion of freedom that soon gets confusingly taken away. Missions, friend events, and exploring are all encouraged, but are just as soon completely ignored. Most story segments allow players to walk across a few areas, usually for the sake of the narrative or for preparing for the next fight, before jumping into the next cutscene. Some of these segments are used very well: there’s a few sequences where walking through an area is used to tell a story in a similar fashion to the anime. At other times, it will reveal itself as what it really is: a temporary respite from fighting.
Ultimate Adventure also has two new additions: in place of the previous “replay battle” system is the Ninja World Timeline, a mechanic which catalogues scenes in the Naruto universe, and allows you to replay old battles for better scores, to play unlocked chapters from Naruto‘s past, or to replay Ultimate Decisions for new results.
Ultimate Decisions is Ultimate Ninja Storm 3‘s way of introducing choice into the game’s narrative. At key moments in the story, usually the biggest boss fights of the game, the player will be asked to choose between two decisions: a Legend action or a Hero action. The promise here is that players can experience unique content based on their decision. But, more often than not, these are arbitrary choices that simply change the difficulty of the challenge, with Legend being the harder choice and Hero the easier. Do I fight this enemy alone, or with team support? Do I take the longer route and fight an extra battle, or take the short and easy route? But there are some really great moments in the game where the Ultimate Decisions truly take unique turns, offering a completely different scene or a completely different combatant.
These Decisions are also important to your strategy, since Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 uses a new Item Palette Selection mechanic, which makes you manage both a Legend Item Palette and a Hero Item Palette. Each palette has its own set of selectable items, and each levels up independently. Winning most battles will award points to both palettes: but Ultimate Decisions award points only to that particularly chosen palette. Leveling up the palette increases the amount of item-equipable slots, the variety of items that are available to equip, and what level of items can be equipped. All that said, the system is merely a way to encourage replayability, since you’re never forced to actually live with your decisions. In fact, the Ninja World Timeline quest encourages players to replay each Ultimate Decision and unlock more points, so there’s really no consequence for your decisions. But the chance to win more battles, pass bonus conditions, and get more unique items is too good to pass up.
And speaking of combat, I might as well say it: unlike the story mode, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 isn’t that much different from Generations, plain and simple. But where there’s a lack of innovation, there is plenty of refinement. As a veteran of the series, it’s still a little depressing that there hasn’t been a way to give characters more than two jutsus (besides having an alternative costume with different moves), especially since CyberConnect2’s PS2-era Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series allowed for customization through equippable jutsu. Also, some of the characters featured in the trailers are not available as playable characters in the game, only enemies (like the Gold and Silver Brothers, and the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist). But again, the system is so fine-tuned that the balance, the amount of pretty unique playable characters (over 80), and the efforts to improve the the overall quality outweigh the available jutsu variety and a few missing contenders.
Just like before, players can move about the stage freely, execute jutsu attacks, use tools, escape attacks for instant counters, and call out team support for assists. For the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm uninitiated, you will often play as one character, with up to two assist characters to help you. There are three types of assist roles: Attack, which attacks your enemy alongside you or in your place; Defense, where a character can come into battle to momentarily protect you or take a hit for you (at the expense of their health), and Balance, which do a little of both. When the team gauge reaches halfway, team members will begin to assist automatically, defending you while you charge your chakra, or adding hits to your combos. Once full, a player can attempt a Team Ultimate Jutsu Finisher, which can hit an enemy with all three characters’ ultimate jutsu for huge damage. But wait too long, and the gauge will empty before it can be properly used.
What’s changed is that–like in Generations–the Substitution Mechanic (which allows players to jump out of harm’s way instantly) has been limited, with a set number of escapes before the meter needs to refill. The Awakening mechanic has also been changed to provide more variety. In old games, a character’s Awakening Mode was a powered-up form that players could enter into when their health dropped too low. Most characters in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, follow the old mechanic, especially all of the characters with other forms or transformations. All the others can now Awaken at anytime during a match, but at the expense of temporarily decreasing their Chakra bar. Both types of Awakening have up to two special attacks that take the place of their team support gauge, and some of these special attacks are as varied as simply blasting foes with fire, to erecting a monstrous stone wall to block enemies from attack.
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Review Ign
Stages have also seen a little change, with some breakable items and obstacles thrown in for temporary barriers, and a Ring Out function that allows you to kick an enemy off of a stage. While there is no true topographical variety, all of these stages look fantastic, and really look ripped out from the anime itself.
In fact, it should come as no surprise that the game itself is truly stunning to look at. CyberConnect2 has always excelled at making the Naruto games look exactly like the anime, and Ultimate Ninja 3 is no exception. And just as before, Quick Time Events have returned, usually at the end of boss battles, and still lend an edge of urgency and tension that really completes the anime experience and helps keep the mechanic relevant. But like most QTE’s, it’s a bittersweet mechanic, since it occasionally distracts from the visual eye candy you’re supposed to be drooling over. And boy does Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 give you some truly amazing scenes to drool over.
The biggest new addition to the series is Ultimate Adventure’s Mob Battles, a sort of Ultimate Ninja Storm approach to the action genre. Most fighting games that attempt this usually fail, and fail horribly (I’m looking at you, Tekken 4, 5, and 6). But here, with the way the Ultimate Ninja Storm battle system is been designed, it actually works pretty well. You won’t usually find anything truly groundbreaking here: characters take on small groups of enemies until they finish the stage, making it feel like a pretty version of God of War meets Dynasty Warriors. But there are some boss battles that were equally challenging and fun, and the Mob Battles do feel like they were designed with care, for what they’re worth.
But not all of Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 has improved. Expect loading, and lots of it. And then expect some more. It could be worse, and the game accomplishes a lot with what it does, but it can get annoying, even distracting at some parts of the story. Just imagine the game loading to feature a dialogue, loading again to let you explore, and then a screen or two later you load again for a cutscene. It’s frustrating.
And speaking of cutscenes, expect plenty of scenes where the lip-syncing isn’t really synced at all. It’s no surprise that the game was developed around the Japanese voice track, but it often leads to dialogue that ends early, and a jaw that keeps moving for another ten seconds of silence before moving on. Having grown up on kung-fu flicks, this isn’t a major gripe, but a persistent and annoying one. Plus, it gives Japanese voice track purists a reason to say they’re right.
Sometimes the fixed cameras of the Ultimate Adventure mode lead to old school design flaws. Like in one area of the Leaf village, where I pressed up to enter a new area, only to find that this new area had the camera facing Naruto’s front instead of his back. Because I was still holding up as I entered this new area, it led to Naruto returning back to the area he was just in. Had I continued to hold the up button, I could have tortured my virtual Naruto in a perpetual loop; a limbo where he’s always going somewhere but never going anywhere for all eternity. Or until my controller died. Thankfully, I’m not completely willing to drive myself insane, and thankfully, this game’s flaws are not deep enough to mar such a gorgeous and refined experience that really takes itself seriously and respects the Naruto franchise.
Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Ps4 Review
Like I said above, a game this far into the series could easily frighten a newcomer just as much its trying to welcome them in. And Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 will definitely be easier to pick up and play for veterans and diehard fans of the series than strangers to the series. But novices and veterans alike will both enjoy and appreciate the effort that channels the franchise so well, and will definitely feel satisfied until the next Ultimate Ninja Storm comes out. This is a good step for the series, a sign that the series is still evolving, and as good a reason as ever to jump back into the franchise if you’ve been missing it.
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Review Cnet
Believe it.