Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 Review

Mar 21, 2008

You have to feel for Namco Bandai. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 marks the company's third game in the orange jumpsuit franchise in just about two years. Although the titles have been well received, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja showed up on the Xbox 360 in October and critics fell all over themselves to compliment it.

The title was Ubisoft's first crack at the franchise.

Apparently learning from what gamers like, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 continues with its franchise-defining combo system and Chakra attacks while combining its main single-player mode with some free-roaming RPG elements a la Rise of a Ninja. Although it doesn't reach the heights of the 360's Rise, Ultimate Ninja 3 is a step forward for the PS2 series -- albeit a baby one.

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Here's where I'd usually say something like "If you're just joining us" or "If you've been living under a rock" and then give an all-too-short explanation of who/what Naruto is. I'm not going to do that here. This is the third game in this series. You should know all about Naruto's orange jumpsuit, the Hokage and ramen. Forty-one characters and twenty locales from the popular anime (folks such as Sasuke, Anko and Choki) pop up in the game and are playable in the title's handful of modes.

The fighting system from Ultimate Ninja 2 -- which has you relying on circle for attacks, square to throw items, X to jump, and triangle for Secret Techniques -- is intact and still has you pulling off all sorts of combos for moves such as Clone Jutsu and Jumping Shadow Strikes, as well as tapping buttons in sequence to dish out maximum pain in cinematic cutscenes. What's different? Well, you can now turn your characters into massive representations of themselves with Summoning Mode and the joystick-spinning combo finisher that ate away so much of the skin on my palm is gone (Thanks, CyberConnect2!).

However, the big changes come with what you can do in the modes.

At first glance, the setup is pretty much ripped right from Ultimate Ninja 2. A random character stands at the right side of the screen and chats while you rifle through familiar modes such as Vs. Duel (you against an offline friend or computer opponent), Iruka's Training (practice), and Tanzaku Market (trade in the Ryo you've earned for videos, figures and more). However, mixed in with the traditional fare are Ultimate Contest, Hero's History, and The Break Room.

Ultimate Contest is the main single-player mode in Ultimate Ninja 3 and is a mix of old and new. When you start the event, you're cast as Naruto and entered into a Hidden Leaf Village competition to find the best fighter. Basically, each fighter has a colored crystal and they need to fight each other in a winner-take-all battle. After a preliminary round and a semi-final, the two people with the most crystals face off to find a victor who will get to pick a new rule for the town.

Obviously the match mechanics -- including specific win conditions, although they're way easier than in the last game -- we know and love make up the battles for the crystals, but finding those fights is where the free-roaming adventure parts pop up. In between battles, Naruto will be deposited in town and be able to run all over the map looking for trouble and talking to characters. There's a radar that lets you know where fighters are, a map that allows you to jump from the village to the training center to the woods, and an inventory you can fill with purchased goods such as potato chips, medicine and more. You'll need to give people items to get them to fight you, you can smash pots to find some Ryo, and there's even a first-person mode where you can hurl shurikens at stuff.

However, from the mode's menu screen you can also monitor how Naruto and his friends are evolving. See, you're earning experience points as you win battles and those values are being automatically applied to your attack, speed and four other categories. Beyond that, you can jump into the customization option and select what Jutsu moves are armed as well as which ultimate move Naruto (or whoever you're editing) is packing.

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I'm sure that all sounds neat for the Naruto nuts out there, but although I appreciate the mode, I found Ultimate Contest disappointing. To begin with, those RPG values really don't make anything feel different. The Naruto I finished the game with didn't feel any more powerful than the Naruto I started the game with. Beyond that, Hidden Leaf Village is pretty much deserted. There's only a handful of people (who say next to nothing) milling about the streets, there's some awful pop-in, the sets look really bland, and the camera always seems to swing in the opposite direction of where I want. The fighting's fine and the story's told well enough, but it seemed like pointless busy work to have to run -- poorly -- from red radar dot to red radar dot to enact fight scenes. After you've been crowned champion, which should only take a few hours, you can come back to the mode to go out on an impressive number of missions for characters in town, but most are pretty simple and they all involve you struggling with the camera in the desolate environment. You can also restart the main story with your previous experience intact.

A few hours of story-driven gameplay probably sounds like a disappointment to Ultimate Ninja players, but there's actually another option for those looking for some ninja kicks with heart; it's called Hero's History. When you pick the part, you'll get to play through one of four Naruto storylines (Genin Training Arc, Leaf Destruction Arc, Tsunade Search Arc, and Sasuke Retrieval). Although they don't tell every detail of the events, the arcs give you little pieces of the story and then have you brawl in the battles that define the path. It's a lot like the Ultimate Road mode from Ultimate Ninja 2 that gave you cutscenes and stories -- Hero's History even switches which character you're playing as to tell the story from multiple perspectives.

The final addition is the Break Room, which is simply a collection of three mini-games you'll run into during Ultimate Contest. Tree Climbing has you racing up the side of a giant arbor against a friend, computer or just yourself while dodging branches and picking up powerups. Nice Guy's Exercises are some button-tapping push ups and other competitive yoga-style moves for you to try and master. Tenten's Target Practice Dojo is probably my favorite from the trio. Here, you'll face off against an opponent and see who can hit the most targets with his or her trusty shurikens. Dummies pop up with a face button on them, and it's up to you to hit the button before your opponent and get your ninja star into the target first.

That gives you a pretty good idea of what's waiting for you when you plunk down $40. The combo-based fighting is still fun for awhile, but it's also still simple. I felt like I was just mashing the same combos over and over and not really relying on any skill. The game still looks good -- maybe even better now that the super-move cutscenes have more stuff happening in them -- and does an excellent job of capturing the colorful craziness that is a Naruto cartoon, but the Ultimate Contest maps siphon some of that quality away.

Closing Comments
If you played the first two Naruto's and didn't get sick of the voices or the combat, there's a lot to like here -- plenty of unlockables, new mini-games and new moves. I think the Ultimate Contest is a step forward for the value of this PS2 franchise, but the blandness of the town, simplicity of missions and annoying camera hold it back from being anything special.

In fact, that can be said for Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 overall; the game's a step forward but far from a leap.