Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3

Rating T

Score 8.5/10

Follow the adventures of Naruto Usumaki and friends! This game is only available for the PS2.

If you have played any Naruto games, you know what kind of game to expect. It’s a fast paced ninja style fighting game. The first thing you’ll notice about this game is how smoothly it plays. Even in the most active of cut scenes, the game still stays perfectly smooth.

Speaking of the cut scenes, performing your “Ultimate Jutsu” will trigger cut-scenes. Most cut scenes will surprise many, since most look amazing. Before a battle, you can set a player’s jutsus. They may be useless to anyone who isn’t a fan of Naruto, but fans will love to set their favorites.

In the middle of a battle, you’ll see Chinese symbols appear from doing just about everything. This may seem random and stupid, but it suits the mood of the game exactly.

Other than the excellent battle mode, there is a story mode. Instead of explaining a small adventure of the whole Naruto series, they’re included the whole series. Of course, this results in some major confusion, since they also explain the reasoning of every adventure with minimal detail. Fans of the series, though, will easily be able to spot key scenes from the show.

There’s also an Ultimate contest, in which all the Naruto characters participate in a contest for a special prize. The story mode is jumping from battle to battle when the Ultimate contest is running, open to exploring a Naruto world filled with characters from the series, ready to talk, trade items, or to simply battle. This feature plays like an RPG, since your character can level up, improve status, and have custom jutsus. For a fighting game, this feature is surprisingly limitless! Of course, Naruto can run up walls, jump off them, jump from building to building, and destroy objects with ease. In an adventure game, this would be a very limited world; but because this is a fighting game, an add-on such as Ultimate contest is acceptable. Too bad both the story mode and this feature are extremely short.

This game is the quick and easy way to learn the world of Naruto! Fans owe it to themselves to play this game. There are enough new features in this game to make even proud owners of Ultimate Ninja 2 want to purchase Ultimate Ninja 3. Want a fast paced ninja style fighting game? Look no further.