Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst

Fighting games are a staple of the gaming industry. They’re easy to pick up, hard to master, and somehow even more fun to watch if you’re watching professionals. With so much history, it can seem like that’s a formula that’s impossible to switch up with effective results. Party fighting games are great, but they sometimes haven’t been the next step forward that players have been wanting. Instead of adding more fighters to the ring, they’ve wanted greater dynamicity in each fight. Fortunately, Naruto: Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 Full Burst takes the usual formulas for fighting, tweaks them a bit, and then pushes them to new heights.

Each battle feels unique, the fights never get stale, and it stays true to both the anime and manga to great effect. If you’ve been looking for something new, exciting, and somewhat challenging, UNS3 might be exactly what you’re looking for.

True to Form

There are some similarities between this game and other fighting games, namely the Soul Calibur and Dragonball FighterZ series. Like Soul Calibur, all the mainstays of fighting are there – the arena setting, movesets, combos, and everything in between. Dragonball FighterZ was monumental because it used aerial fighting arenas and of course many of the tropes from the anime/manga itself. UNS3 does a fantastic job of bringing the hard hitting, emotional aspects of anime fighting scenes to life. Not only does this game control cleanly, which I’ll discuss a bit more next, but it also has the same heart the fans of the series will greatly appreciate.

Each of the fighters have their own moves that bring out the aspects of their character in an honorable way. The art direction, sound design, and overall graphics need to be appropriately praised for how they represent the vibes from Naruto while also inserting a new flavor to the series. UNS3 also presents a major upgrade from previous installments. The others were fun in their own rite, but UNS3 perfectly captures what was great in the first two regarding overall design, especially the UI for menus. It’s a small change but makes a huge difference for new players and the game’s navigability.

Epic Battles

This game wouldn’t be complete without the dramatic gameplay. Ulitmate Ninja STORM 3 delivers on all fronts by ramping up the excitement factor. Regular battles are fun filled adventures that are well paced and enable you to hone your skills. The boss battles are on another level. They not only challenge you to think on (or off) your feet, but they’re creative, innovative, and have some great direction.

Bottom Line

Compared to the second installment, the character roster has been greatly expanded upon and gives tons of opportunities to experience some of the best battles in the series firsthand. Plus, the new setup allows for some real strategy to be employed during each fight. The only real drawbacks for this game is that beside online play (which is virtually nonexistent as of 2021), the game can be relatively easy but is quite poor optimization for PC players.

Pros:

• Effective art direction/graphics/sound design
• Unique battles true to the series
• Adequate roster, boss battles, and setups

Cons:

• Online is defunct and overall difficulty is low
• Poor PC controls without a console controller