Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3

[Odin'sLaw]

Oh I love Steve Blum. He's fucking Taskmaster. Dude has amazing range, and before weaboos start talking shit, I'm sick of hearing the same Japanese VA sounding the same in every show. Chouji-Renji? Sasuke-Uuryu? Get the fuck out.

There are good VAs and bad VAs and repetitive, small-talent VAs in every nation. Sometimes I feel like the TFS guys are better than some of the authentic NA and JP VAs sometimes.

Taka has an amazing range i bet blum and taka could make any anime game or audio book sound amazing, also i hate the jp raikages voice, Raikage should have a deep tough sounding voice not some high pitches ball smashed voice :/

[Souj]

fyi, "over 80 playable characters" really translates into "about 30 playable characters with each character having 2-4 different variants."

and nowhere near as many gimmick boss battles and epic QTE moments in this game as there were in 2, which I mark down as a negative.

[Rokku]

fyi, "over 80 playable characters" really translates into "about 30 playable characters with each character having 2-4 different variants."

and nowhere near as many gimmick boss battles and epic QTE moments in this game as there were in 2, which I mark down as a negative.

I think most people were aware that was going to be the case. Unless you count variations of characters, I don't know that they could pull a really interesting roster that went too much north of 45.

Second part is pretty disappointing though.

[Souj]

Adventure mode is just really short. I'm maybe 6hours in, and I'm near the end of chapter 8 of 10 chapters(I'm skipping most of the cutscenes and talking) and the world map seems extremely pointless. You walk from one section to another, fight two fights, then walk the same exact section again and fight some more battles then walk the same exact section yet another time and fight some more battles. As I said, I'm nearly on chapter 8 and I've only run into 2 quests. One was just getting all items for the weapon shop and the other was another collectibles mission that you can only complete by playing through the game. (There was two more, but they're literally just completed by just talking to those NPCs).
Granted it was annoying how much wandering around the world map you had to do in 2 and Generations, but cutting it back this much, there was no reason for them not to just cut it out completely.

The gimmick fights thus far from where I'm at has been; 3rd v Ninetails in the prologue. and Naruto v Ninetails in his training arc.
The big battle royal type thing where you're fighting multiple opponents at once is just lame and boring. all you basically do is mash on square until you build enough meter to do your special.
They seemed to have replaced a lot of the "gimmick fights" with fights where you seemingly travel back in time. Like Naruto v Sasuke, and Kakashi v Zabuza. Throughout the fight the game puts on an ole-timey film filter and your characters are younger versions in older environments

As for the actual regular fighting itself, it seems basically the same as Generations except now your assists also have a lifebar and you can Ring Out people. Though against the AI I haven't been able to either kill one of their assists nor knock them out of the ring.

I had one devastatingly horrendous framerate issue, but it only happened once and have had 0 problems with it since I'm assuming it was a fluke.

[Odesseiron]

Stuff

Thanks for all this info. Was gonna buy it soonish, but I think I'll wait til it gets cheaper. The gimmick fights for me 2 games ago used to be the shit. Then they got rid of them, now there's only a couple. Should have worked more on those than adding all those variants of characters.

[Xno Kappa]

The feels in some of these cutscenes are freaking epic lol.

[Souj]

ok, so here's a big change to gameplay I just discovered.
With a regular melee combo, you(not your assist) can knock an opponent up in the air and you can chain a jutsu to it.

[Lucavi]

I swear, this series is exactly like the Budokai Tenkaichi series was: 3 initial versions, each adding more characters than the last (mostly forms), the third game went overboard with a metric ton of characters (good ones, though, like FUTURE GOHAN) and each version adds one or two fighting concepts to spice things up a bit.

Not that this is a bad thing; I fucking loved BT3, and this game seems very cool this time around. The music, from what I've heard, is out of this world, and the gameplay is very smooth. I'll most likely pick it up on discount and dig into the vs. mode again.

[Souj]

well, last chapter was full of gimmick fights. Madara v 5 kage, Naruto v the 6 jinchurichi, Naruto v Tobi & 6 tailed beasts.

Character select screen is full, but I never unlocked the 4 Edo Tensai'd Kages or the 2 9tailed twin dudes or the 7 swordsmen
I didn't think you'd get to play as the twins as you only fought them in that battle royal type thing and the 7 swordsmen were that way as well, but you actually fought the Kages 1v1 and they had full movesets and everything.

I still have 3 side missions to do, but it doesn't look like they have anything to do with those kage. and also the character select screen is full so either they aren't playable in the game, new character screens appear, or they turn out to be just some previous character's alt form.

(edit; the edo kages are not playable, which is really fucking lame. Really wonder why as you fight them like a regular playable character in story mode...)


so lame they throw in so many duplicate characters and older characters who weren't in the game, but keep out some of the cooler guys from the ninja war.
Like Chiyo. goddamned puppet people.

middle of the bottom row is assist only characters. each of the Kage's two bodyguards


and what's with dub/sub changing around the order of names? Sometimes it's especially retarded.
Young Naruto's Ultimate is the Uzumaki combo and in the japanese audio, he says U-ZU-MA-KI. but the english subtitles says NA-RU-TO

and had some more frame rate issues. Only happens at the start of battles, but its enough to seriously throw things off.

[Souj]

oh and you know that thing they were boasting about with taking two seperate paths that would drastically change the story depending on your path? complete and utter bullshit.

Maybe 5 different times during the story mode your given two choices: either the "Legend" path or the "Hero" path. My first time through I picked all Legend. I'm starting to play through again and picking Hero path, but they have all been exactly identical thus far. Oh and the perks for picking either the Legend or Hero path is that if you choose Legend, you get "Legend points" and if you pick the Hero path, you get "Hero points." The points are just experience points that let you unlock more subweapons. The divided the subweapons into Legend and Hero categories(you still have to unlock/find/ and buy subweapons the same way you did in Generations), so it limits what seubweapons you can use. Well, it would, if every fight didn't give you equal hero and legend points at the same exact time with the exception of the fights that make you choose a path, but the exp it gives you isn't all that much so you wont be far behind even if you only did choose one path over the other.

And I was wrong about the adventure mode having a bunch of quests. It even has the relationship system Generations had. Except you apparently can only really start these quests after the main story is completed so instead of being able to do side missions between the main missions (you know, the reason they tend to be called SIDE MISSIONS in the first place), you now have to purposely spend time just aimlessly wandering around the big map that is 90% empty.

Honestly, there's no reason for this game to exist right now. Generations didn't come out all that long ago and they just did not add enough.
There are only 9 (8 if you exclude Darui) new characters in the game and most of the older characters have the exact same move sets and assists.
I really have trouble wrapping my head around why they included the 4 Edo Tensai'd Kage, going so far as to make the AI able to use them with a full moveset but make them unplayable to players. Also; Game doesn't include the Itachi & Sasuke V Kabuto fight.

I'm spending time in VS now and there are a very few people who have different attacks. Like younger naruto's moveset is the exact same except for his normal Jutsu, and Hidans assist is different. Hidan's combo only continues on from the first hit if he connects with something, otherwise he just stops. Perhaps a justifiable nerf, but that's why I liked him!


They made the odd choice of putting up an onscreen prompt when someone is going to be killed by an Ultimate Jutsu. And when you do kill an opponent with an Ultimate, you have to sit through a little 3 second cutscene that happens in the middle of the Ultimate Jutsu's cutscene.

Okay, so I really don't get what they are doing with this character select setup.
Example; there are 4 different narutos to select from, which I understand as they each have minor (some more minor than others) differences. And out of those 4 Narutos, a few have alternate costume, which again, makes sense since it's only cosmetic in change.
But then there's people like Choji. There are two different Choji boxes yet the ONLY difference is that one has a green vest.
I said it before, but I have no idea what they were doing with this roster. They added in so many redundant characters, but took out so many others from Generations. Though it makes sense that some of the people they took out were young versions of people like Ino, Shino, Ten Ten, but then they kept in people like Kimimaro and Chiyo.

[Ayn]

I pretty much agree with a lot of your opinions there, Souj, and it's why I've held off on the game.

Sometimes I wish they'd just combine some of the characters into a single (or, when warranted, two characters) that have a more diverse moveset. Yeah, I get wanting to do regular Itachi and Edo Tensei Itachi, but why not just have a regular Itachi with a wide moveset, and have his Edo Tensei look be an alternate costume? I just don't get it..

Hell, even Sasuke can be condensed into one, or at most two: Pre Mangekyo Sharingan (focusing more on Chidori/Lightning/sword techs) and Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan Sasuke.

It's just silly.

[6souls]

[Souj]

well, if anyone here actually bought the game besides me on the ps3, I'll be on for a little while messing with characters and such. Just send an invite.

[Souj]

So playing some more regular matches, I'll reiterate some old stuff and bring up some new stuff about the new changes to the mechanics.

Ring Outs; Played a lot against highest difficulty AI and haven't had a single ring out yet. Never happened even in story mode.

Assists can take damage and die off now. If they take 6 hits from Jutsu (from you or your assist) when they are on the offensive but not when they are guarding you they lose one of their 6 health bars. Unless you plan on purposely taking out an opponent's assist, I don't see it making too much of a difference, but I can see people building teams with that in mind.

There are now two different types of Awakening, but each character only has one type.
There is the original awakening that you can activate by powering up your chakra to the max. Works same way as it did in Generations.
The new Awaening is activated simply by moving the right analog stick (on the ps3) and is not dependent on HP or Chakra level. In this mode, your maximum chakra bar goes down so the longer your in it, the less maximum chakra you have to the point where you wont even be able to use a Jutsu and once the Awakening wears off, your chakra bar does not immediately go back to normal, but slowly raises back to its normal size. This mode seems really inconsistent. You always lose your character assists while in this mode, but only most characters actually gain new attacks that replace the assist characters. Young Hinata for example, does not gain any new special attacks. And some character's mode have other penalties as well such as Lee who loses health.

IMO the biggest change is that you can now Ultimate Jutsu Awakened opponents. Upon landing an Ultimate Jutsu on an Awakened opponent they are immediately taken out of the mode and hit by the jutsu. I forgot to see if you can grab them as well, so not sure if you can and if it snaps them out of Awakening as well.

Combos are a little more complex now. During a combo and pressing a directional input will result in different combos and if you knock an opponent up into the air you can now chain jutsus to it, meaning you no longer need to rely on an assist such as Tsunade to knock an opponent in the air for you- granted its still easier to actually succeed doing it that way.

most of the characters are the same as they were in Generations, but there have been a few changes here and there. Though the only ones I've really noted thus far have been; Hidan's assist being nerfed, requiring the first attack to hit to continue on with the combo
Young Sakura's assist being buffed- Her trip wire now gets dropped right in front of the opponent.
Jaraiya may have been made a little faster. I don't really remember and I don't have Generations anymore to check. But he seems to be not as annoyingly slow to me anymore.

[Diomer]

So playing some more regular matches, I'll reiterate some old stuff and bring up some new stuff about the new changes to the mechanics.

Ring Outs; Played a lot against highest difficulty AI and haven't had a single ring out yet. Never happened even in story mode.

Assists can take damage and die off now. If they take 6 hits from Jutsu (from you or your assist) when they are on the offensive but not when they are guarding you they lose one of their 6 health bars. Unless you plan on purposely taking out an opponent's assist, I don't see it making too much of a difference, but I can see people building teams with that in mind.

There are now two different types of Awakening, but each character only has one type.
There is the original awakening that you can activate by powering up your chakra to the max. Works same way as it did in Generations.
The new Awaening is activated simply by moving the right analog stick (on the ps3) and is not dependent on HP or Chakra level. In this mode, your maximum chakra bar goes down so the longer your in it, the less maximum chakra you have to the point where you wont even be able to use a Jutsu and once the Awakening wears off, your chakra bar does not immediately go back to normal, but slowly raises back to its normal size. This mode seems really inconsistent. You always lose your character assists while in this mode, but only most characters actually gain new attacks that replace the assist characters. Young Hinata for example, does not gain any new special attacks. And some character's mode have other penalties as well such as Lee who loses health.

IMO the biggest change is that you can now Ultimate Jutsu Awakened opponents. Upon landing an Ultimate Jutsu on an Awakened opponent they are immediately taken out of the mode and hit by the jutsu. I forgot to see if you can grab them as well, so not sure if you can and if it snaps them out of Awakening as well.

Combos are a little more complex now. During a combo and pressing a directional input will result in different combos and if you knock an opponent up into the air you can now chain jutsus to it, meaning you no longer need to rely on an assist such as Tsunade to knock an opponent in the air for you- granted its still easier to actually succeed doing it that way.

most of the characters are the same as they were in Generations, but there have been a few changes here and there. Though the only ones I've really noted thus far have been; Hidan's assist being nerfed, requiring the first attack to hit to continue on with the combo
Young Sakura's assist being buffed- Her trip wire now gets dropped right in front of the opponent.
Jaraiya may have been made a little faster. I don't really remember and I don't have Generations anymore to check. But he seems to be not as annoyingly slow to me anymore.

This is probably a stupid question and likely something I didn't scrolled past, but do you know how to do the secret actions (not factors) in the main story? I know some icon comes up in the middle of the screen, but I haven't been able to get one past the first.

[Souj]

oh yeah, Secret Factors. Another pointless thing they added since there's only like 3 fights I think that have them...
After you beat the fight, if you go to the ninja timeline, in the details for the fight it'll tell you what you have to do. The only two I remember off the top of my head are;
Prologue fight, 4th v Masked Man Have to chakra dash into him.
Zabuza v Kakashi there are two. When you are having the "flashback" during the fight, you have to use a a jutsu during the same time frame that Zabuza is using his. The second is you have to substitution one of his jutsus. Don't remember if that had to happen during the flashback or not, but pretty sure it was during.

oh and just fyi, for all the complaining I do about the game's roster choices and stupid game mechanic decisions, I still think its a decent game. It's better than Generations, but the problem is that it's not $60 better. If you didn't buy Generations, I'd say definitely get the game. If you did, you'll probably want to wait until the game drops in price.

[Odin'sLaw]

oh and just fyi, for all the complaining I do about the game's roster choices and stupid game mechanic decisions, I still think its a decent game. It's better than Generations, but the problem is that it's not $60 better. If you didn't buy Generations, I'd say definitely get the game. If you did, you'll probably want to wait until the game drops in price.

luckily i didn't get 2.5 so i will be looking forward to this once I've beaten tomb raider

[Rokku]

This is probably a stupid question and likely something I didn't scrolled past, but do you know how to do the secret actions (not factors) in the main story? I know some icon comes up in the middle of the screen, but I haven't been able to get one past the first.

Look at the icon itself, pretty self evident. A dashing character is a chakra dash, ninja scroll is ninjutsu, etc.

[Souj]

Look at the icon itself, pretty self evident. A dashing character is a chakra dash, ninja scroll is ninjutsu, etc.

It gets a little more complex than that, as I had posted above.

[Rokku]

It gets a little more complex than that, as I had posted above.

I never had any issues with them following the icons. Some of the conditional ones might be a little obtuse, but they're all pretty easy.