Review #192: Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 - Full Burst

 The fourth Ninja war begins....!

 'nother year, 'nother Naruto game. As disappointing as Generations was, this is another numbered entry which means CyberConnect2's putting effort into the game again! Picking up where Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 left off, UNS 3 covers the beginning of the Ninja War... and kinda ends on a decidedly non-cannon ending.

 Firstly, Story Mode is back and plays just as UNS 2 did, you take control of Naruto, mostly, as you move around the world of Naruto and follow the story... or fulfill side objectives. This time around, the story is very linear, most roads being blocked off until you clear the Main Story of the game. As linear as it is, it's very slow-paced, with some cutscenes lasting more than 30 minutes... but I'm OK with that, as it does a better job at telling the story... kinda. The first chapters of the game are fairly faithful to the story, but the latter ones, the Ninja War ones, feel much more rushed, a ton of fights missing, including Chiyo(Who is a playable character in the game!) or simplified, like the fight between Mifune and Hanzo or Darui vs the Silver and Gold brothers. Some battles also let you choose between 'Hero'(Normal) or 'Legend'(Hard), which is usually just a different spin on the same battle, since the outcome is the same. I didn't much care for this, I guess it adds some replay value, but I could've done with just a faithful adaptation of the events.

 One of the most beloved things about the Storm series are the Boss battles, and they are back and as impressive as ever. True, they boil down to glorified QTE scenes, but they are done so incredibly well that in this case, I don't really mind them. Also introduced are 'Mob Battles', battles against many weak enemies, which are fairly alright and a nice change of pace. UNS 3 also introduces 'Secret Actions' which are triggered by doing some particular action... there's only three of them(technically 4) in the game, five counting the Full Burst episode, which makes me wonder why even bother with this gimmick if it's gonna go so underused. And as previously mentioned, the game actually has a 'fake' ending in which the bad guys run away(seriously) and peace is restored, it actually left me with a sour taste in my mouth, in this case I would've preferred a 'To be Continued...' to it.

 After you finish the Story, you can finally roam at your leisure and take on and complete sidequests. There's a ton of side activities, from the multiple 'Ninja Timeline' fights or taking the other route on the main story battles to the various quests given by NPCs(Or PCs not on your team), and while it does offer a lot of stuff to do, it doesn't come without flaws. The first issue I've with this is that quests seemingly pop up at random or only after finishing other quests, which means a lot of walking around hoping to run across characters in need. The world is kinda extensive and Naruto isn't the fastest runner around, which can make it a bit tedious. There are some characters that can instantly transport you to other places, for a fee, but there's only about... six of them, not nearly enough, so there's gonna be a lot of walking, back and forth, particularly to clear some of the quests that require finding NPCs... or Zetsus. Lastly, and the thing I despised the most, every now and then a quest will change your 4-man team, but when the quest is over, you will be left with only Naruto, meaning that it's back to the Leaf Village, then walk aaaaaaaall the way to the Hokage's house and reform your team.

 There's both offline and online VS, naturally, you can have Tournament battles, Challenge Missions(There's a 100 of them!), unlockable Survival and Practice. It's pretty clear that as far as things to do go, there's a lot, it seems CC2 wanted to make amends after Generations' weak offering. However, there's a disappointing lack of characters. The revived Kages that you fight in the game, which have their own moves, aren't playable, nor are the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. It's not like the game was overflowing with characters, it may appear so if you look at the character select screen, but there's many versions of the same character. Plus, for some reason they reduced the combo attacks to 3. Yes, they actually removed moves from characters, and while these 'combos' don't really affect the viability of a character(Since your only attack button is circle, and the only thing they change is how the combo ends), it screams of laziness when coupled with the non-playable characters, as if they wanted to make characters faster so they removed moves.

 Other changes include the addition of  'Instant Awakenings', which is just an excuse to allow you to play as KTS Naruto without having to lose over 60% of your health bar. Some character, mostly the ones with generic blue-aura awakenings, have this feature, which allows you to enter Awakening at any time by flicking the right analog stick, and it lasts until your chakra bar gets reduced to about a fourth of its original size(Don't worry, as soon as you exit Awakening, it begins to increase in size) or until you cancel it flicking the right analog stick again. Characters with Instant Awakening felt slightly stronger than the others, Instant Awakening cancel is too strong a tool! Some characters also had their awakenings tweaked with "awakening actions", which are used with R1 and L1(Which means if it's a team battle, you lose access to supports) and vary depending on each character. It's a good addition, just a shame not everyone got them...

 One puzzling new addition are the Ring Outs. Why a Naruto game needed ring outs is beyond me, but you can't turn them off and they can only be done on certain stages. I'm pretty sure nobody asked for this feature, and it happened so rarely that it barely affected me, besides some 'broken' skies(Yes, hitting an enemy against a 'wall', which isn't really a wall, makes the sky 'crack'. It looks hilarious.), but it certainly wasn't needed. Ultimate Jutsus have also been slightly altered, by defeating an enemy with one will make an anime-cut in appear during the animation. It's very jarring, as it brings the Ultimate Jutsu's animation to a halt, put a sepia-colored anime image on the screen while your character says a line, and then continue with it.

 The presentation is top-notch as per usual, smooth animations and excellent character models. Stages are a bit simple, but true to the show. They actually outdid themselves this time around with little details, like how the Kyubi's cheeks jiggle when you hit him, it looks pretty neat. I've never been a particular fan of the UNS soundtrack, but there's some good pieces in this one which fit pretty well the mood of the scenes, particularly the more dramatic or depressing ones.

 While I spent most of this piece complaining about it, I still liked the game, quite a lot. It's fun to play at a casual level, there's a ton of eye-candy, there's a ton of stuff to do(Most of it involving fighting, naturally). It's a much better game than Generations on almost every account, but there's some things that just left me asking "Why?". Why remove combos? Why add Ring-Outs? Why the anime cut-ins when defeating an enemy with an UT?
 8.0 out of 10