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The Lowdown
Pros: A few more characters, some new moves and the four player support
that fans of the Naruto Gekitou Ninja Taisen series will love.
Cons: A shallow single player mode, makes this game a multiplayer affair.
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
 Purchase
at Lik-Sang
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Naruto fans have been eagerly awaiting the next version of the Gekitou
Ninja Taisen series. The first Naruto game offered much needed 3D
fighting action to the Gamecube line up. Gekitou Ninja Taisen 2 offered
something unique, 4 player support and a huge line up of characters. The
jump from Naruto 1 to Naruto 2 was huge. In comparison the leap from
Naruto 2 to Naruto 3 is one small step for Konoha. Does that mean Naruto:
Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 is not worthy of a purchase? Of course not. It's
still a solid fighter even though it may not have the depth of say Soul
Calibur 2 or it's cousin Naruto: Narutimett Hero 2.The single player
mode in Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 takes place right smack in the
middle of the chunnin exam. After a brief training session with Iruka
you're off and fighting. The first match that takes place is the classic
battle between Sakura and Ino. There are 24 set matches to complete the
story, which takes you all the end of the Tsunade, Orichimaru and Jiraya
fight. Most of the battles have the simple requirement that you beat
your opponent. Although some have some interesting requirements. For
instance there is a battle between Tsunade and Naruto where you need to
finish the battle with Tsunade's finger flip attack. Another battle
forces you to finish using Naruto's Rasengan attack after a two hit
combo. The objectives are clearly outlined before the battle, so you'll
at least know what you have to do. Between each mission there are
cutscenes that enlighten gamers about the story. They're told with
static characters and voiceovers instead of in game graphics or animated
scenes. All of the story sequences have full in game voiceovers that
were done by the original anime team so they sound good. However, even
though they sound good they don't look great. The main characters in
each scene are almost lifeless. The excellent story just isn't told in
an entertaining way so you'll most likely skip through the dialogue to
get back to the fighting.
You're likely to complete all 24 missions on the day you pick the
game up. The single player mode is really short, but this might actually
be a good thing. For whatever reason Tomy has the game set up so you
can't unlock any characters until you beat all of the missions. The
initial roster has ten characters: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Jiraya, Neji,
Shikamaru, Iruka, Kakashi, Chouji and Rock Lee. Naruto 3, like most
fighting games, are best as multiplayer games. The small group of
characters the game comes with will drive gamers to complete the story
mode to gain the ability to unlock characters ASAP. After completing the
story mode you can purchase characters from Anko's shop at the price of
2000 tails for some characters and up to tens of thousands of tails for
others. You'll get about 10,000 tails for beating story mode the first
time around so you have a lot of work to do. It is kind of an uphill
battle to get more characters. You'll need to spend a lot of time
repeating the story mode or fighting with the characters you have to
make a decent sum of money. Another option to make some decent money is
to unlock and play the Shadow Fighting mode. In this mode you'll battle
shadow fighters that can drop a good chunk of money. Even though Shadow
Fighting can potentially give you the most money, it gets really boring
to play. If you can suffer through a bit of boredom, you'll receive the
reward of playing with more characters. There are a lot of characters to
play with including, the Third Hokage, Temari, Kiba, Garra, Itachi and
Anko. Tomy couldn't please everyone with the roster .There are no sound
ninjas (except Orichimaru), Kabuto, Shizune, Azma, Kisame or random
fighting guy from that scene that you love in this game. Overall there
are enough characters in the game to keep it interesting.
The core fighting system of Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 is the
same as the previous games. You move around with either the D-pad or the
analog stick, B does a standard attack, Y throws, and A can do jutsus.
By pressing a direction like back or forwards on top of a button you can
do different moves. There are a whole bunch of different techniques from
the series incorporated into the game such as Shino's bug throw, Naruto's
kage bushin uppercut, Jiraya's spiky hair and Lee's Konoha whirlwind.
Even though there are special attacks you'll be doing the most damage by
doing four button combos. You can also opt to make you're own
combos, but the fighting system isn't as fluid as most fighting games
are. Causing damage, taking damage or blocking will fill up you chakra
meter. When your chakra meter is about 40% full you can do the
replacement to evade an attack by tapping L or R and if you have a full
meter you can do a super attack. If you're not familiar with the series
the replacement technique moves your character out of harms way and
right behind an enemy. Doing this technique takes chakra, but not
as much as it did in Naruto 2. Don't be surprised to see an opponent pull
the technique right after you did yours. This time around each character
has two super moves instead of one. You can only do a super move when
your chakra bar is completely full and it takes up all of your chakra.
Most of the time super moves do enough damage to make it worth draining
all of your chakra. Super moves are those signature character techniques
you've seen on the show like the Lion Combo, Desert Coffin, Frog summon,
the Shadow Bind and the Chidori. To do your basic super move just press
X, doing the second move can be a bit more tricky. Some characters like
Jiraya can do their second super by pressing down and X, Ten Ten needs
to be in the air to do her second super, but for Naruto to do a Rasengan
he has to be at 10% health. Lee has it even tougher, to do the lotus you
need to press down and X twice to unlock two gates. After this Lee's
life bar will begin to drain rapidly and you can finally do Lee's second
super attack. Lee like Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi have the ability to
"transform" and get a new set of moves. By pressing down and X Sasuke
and Kakashi can unleash the sharingan to copy moves and do a different
super attack. Naruto can switch into Kyubii mode by pressing down and X
after his life bar is down to 60%. In this mode his chakra automatically
regenerates, which does throw off the game's balance a little bit.
The real gameplay problems are packaged with Naruto 3's over hyped 3
player mode. Fans of the series were pumped about 3 on 3 battles, but
that's not exactly what you're getting. Once you select three man mode
you'll pick a series of three characters, they don't have to be any of
the assigned teams. Then you'll go into a one on one fight with each
character until either you or your opponent runs out of characters.
There isn't any real six player fighting and you can't switch characters
mid battle. This isn't so bad, but the way Tomy set up the three player
damage system is problematic. In combat normal attack damage is lowered
to about 50% for all moves except the team combo. You can do a team
combo with a full chakra meter and when an indicator covers appears
below your life meter. The damage the team combo does is determined by
who is in the team. The preset teams in the series like: Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura,
Hinata/Kiba/Shino, and Jiraya/Orichimaru/Tsunade deal way more damage
than say a random team of Garra/Lee/Haku. This gives players who pick
one of the teams shown in the series a huge advantage. On top of that
every team has the same team combo, there are no special combos like
Ino-Shika-Cho or anything else like that. You'll see the same animation
of an enemy getting launched into the air, hit a few times by the second
character and then hit back to the ground by the third character.
For those of you who opt not to play three man mode you can still
play your basic versus mode and the four player mode. Both of these
modes are the meat of the game. Your standard two player versus mode
works like any two player mode you'll fight best of three rounds to see
who is the victor. The four player mode is just like the two player
mode, except with two more people. Tomy has made sure to capitalize on
one of the best features of the Gamecube, 4 player support. The four
player mode has been tweaked a little bit from Naruto 2 where at times
sloppy hit detection would result in a missed move or a false hit. Hit
detection seems much better this time around. One thing that still might
bother gamers about four player mode is that you fight on a line instead
of freely moving around. You can still side step, but you can't dash
circles around an enemy. Even though, the four player mode is a hit
among fans of the series and fighting game lovers.
Besides the storytelling the graphics in Naruto 3 have been improved
a bit. You've got crisper cel-shading, more textured backgrounds and
fluid animation. The new special attacks look great, you can see the
difference in the amount work put into the new ones in comparison to the
older attacks. More of the presentation work was put into the game's
soundtrack. Instead of reusing the songs from the second game, Naruto 3
got a complete overhaul. All new music that ranges from Jazzy beats to
Asian fusion graces the game. Most of it sounds pretty good and keeps
with the pace of the fighting.
Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 has a big name to live up to. It may
not have everything that it looked like it would with three on three
battles, a huge character line up or even a better single player mode.
Still, Naruto 3 is an good fighting game that fans of the series
will get a kick out of. The subtle differences
make Naruto 3 feel like an expansion pack of the second game. Bottom
line Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 isn't
revolutionary, it's evolutionary.
The game has some pretty language heavy menus. If you can't read
Japanese you'll need to check out a FAQ on how to beat the missions and
how to purchase characters. On the other hand the versus mode should be
easy enough to understand.
US Bound?
Almost a zero percent chance this will be released in America since
the anime isn't here.
Overall
There is nothing critically wrong with Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen
3, it has some extra characters, an extended mission mode and four
player support. Although we'd like to see some gameplay improvements,
character balancing and a deeper single player mode in the fourth
installment.
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