ARTICLE

Naruto: Narultimate Hero 3

By Spencer . December 26, 2005 . 5:33am

aka Naruto: Narutimett Hero 3.

Naruto: Narultimate Hero 3 is the latest in the 2D Narultimate hero fighting series. Unlike the Gamecube, Geiktou Ninja Taisen games, the Narultimate series is a mix of Street Fighter II and Smash Brothers. CyberConnect2, the brains behind the game, bring a Naruto game with more of what series fans want. Brand new characters not featured in any game, an expanded RPG mode and improvements on the basic fighting system.

While the game does boast an RPG mode, story mode and thousands of collectables Narultimate Hero 3 is all about fighting. If you played any of the other Narultimate Hero games you should be able to jump right in Narultimate Hero 3. You can execute basic combos and attacks with the circle button. Adding a direction plus circle results in different moves, such as down and circle for a low attack. Press X to jump and if you press it twice you’ll jump towards your opponent. Pressing R2/L2 allows you to block, but if you time your button press you’ll do the replacement jutsu. This reversal takes you out of harms way and puts you behind your opponent, which is perfect placement for a combo of your own. Square throws your selected weapon and use L1/R1 to rotate between your weapons. You start out with basic throwing weapons like kunai or throwing stars, but on the battlefield you can pick up additional arms. Explosive kunai, demon wind shuriken, and makibishi (ground tacks) can all be yours by hitting training dummies on the stage or other pieces of scenery like plants. A couple of new items like the poision mist bomb and a kunai tied to a shirt (think Shikamaru) which releases a hail of kunai in the air mix things up. However, Narultimate Hero 3 removes the partner attacks from the second game. You can use triangle to charge your chakra, which lets you perform cinematic custom moves called “ougis”. After you charge your chakra, you’ll glow and if you hit your opponent with an attack while glowing the screen will switch to an ougi movie. Ougi’s give you close up views of custom moves like Naruto’s rasengan, Sasuke’s lion combo and Itachi’s Hyakki no Sounen. Unlike Naruto: Narultimate Hero 2 you only have one ougi per character. In the past gamers complained about how the Narultimate series ended up being a button mashing battle too often since players were dependant on using multi-level ouigis. CyberConnect2 listent to their fans and downplayed the ougi mechanic. Also this time around you can choose how you want to battle with your ouigis, you can set the battles to be random button press (combo), rotating the analog sticks or straight button mashing.

With less ouigis Narultimate Hero 3 puts more emphasis on long winded combos and juggling. Now you can easily score a 30+ hit combo, if you string together a ground combo, followed by a launching attack and finish up with a chakra special. Some characters like Tayuya from the Sound Four and Ino are combo machines that can easily rack up fifty hits in a row. Each character comes with two chakra based special attacks. By pressing up, up circle or down, down circle you can activate a signature move like Kakashi’s nin-dog Chidori combo, Kiba’s Gatsuuga or Neji’s Kaiten. Each character also has an extended combo attack, which makes a great multi hit finisher. If you’re playing as Sasuke you can use his combo finisher, which knocks the opponent into the air like the lion combo, but instead of kicking his opponent back to the ground he uses the fireball jutsu as the last move. Sakura has a double teamed combo move where her and inner Sakura bounce an opponent back and forth. Most characters also have a special move to close in large gaps of distance. Naruto’s rasengan is perfect for this and so is Gai’s Dynamic Entry. Kimimaro has an awesome long range move where he jumps in slashing with his bones and finishes off with the Dance of the Larch. While each character has a unique move set you can customize which moves you use in combat before any fight if you choose customize. Customizing allows you to select which ougi you want to use. Should you pick Naruto’s Nine Tails Rasengan combo, which sucks up all of his chakra or should you use the Gamabunta summon? The choice is yours. Furthermore you can even select which chakra attacks you want to have in battle. You can use the preset attacks or select skills from other characters. This way you can have Sasuke breathe poison mist like Shizune or have Hinata pick up Rock Lee’s Konhoa Whirlwind.

There’s another major change in Narultimate Hero 3’s battle system. Some characters have multiple modes. When you use some maximum chakra ouigis you can transform your character into a more powerful version. For instance Rock Lee’s Drunken Boxing Ougi changes Lee’s fighting style to drunken boxing. He gets new attacks like a diving headbutt and a move where he walks on his hands to do a flurry of kicks. Rock Lee also picks up brand new chakra moves in this form like an all new drunken boxing combo. Of course Naruto and Sasuke also have second forms they can transform into. Naruto can morph into the glowing red nine tails fox, which has a furious Nine tails combo and a souped up rasengan. Sasuke’s cursed seal 2 transformation gives his a more powerful chidori and a new air combo. All of the sound four: Jiroubou, Kidoumaru, Sakon, and Tayuya also have level 2 cursed seal transformations. You’ll also get to try out Choji’s butterfly transformation where he gains a powerful chakra punch and all new combo attacks. The transformations are cool, but they’re hard to pull off. You’ll need a full chakra bar and an opponent who’s not paying attention so you can land the chakra attack.

Remember the battle where Naruto fights Garra in his giant Shukaku form? Or when Orichimaru summoned the giant snake Manda? Now you can live out these battles in Narultimate Hero 3. When the fight is a tiny fighter against a mammoth beast the rules of the battle change. When you’re playing as the beast you can’t move. Instead you sit back and throw huge clumps of sand if you’re Shukaku, breathe fire if you playing is Jiraiya’s summon Gamabunta or do lunging snake bites if you’re Manda to attack the player. The summoned spirit also has a defensive attack to push the opponent back into a corner. The other player needs to close in on the giant and do jumping attacks to defeat it. While these fights look cool and were one of the most anticipated features of the game, they end up being a huge let down. Instead of being an exciting David versus Goliath battle, the fights are boring because both players end up doing the same moves over and over. If you’re the giant all you can do is try to fix the opponent in the corner with ranged attacks. If you’re the tiny player it’s double jump, three hit combo, rinse and repeat.

In Narultimate Hero there are a couple of ways to start fighting. You could select versus mode for quick two player battles. Or play through key Naruto fights in the story mode. There are preset fights like Naruto versus Haku, Sandiame versus Orichimaru all the way up to the search for Sasuke story arc. At the end you’ll engage in a fight between Nine Tails Naruto and Cursed Seal Sasuke just like in the TV / manga. Here’s one great thing about Narultimate Hero 3, you can unlock almost all of the locked characters from Narultimate Hero 2 just by playing the Naruto story mode. No tricks, no hoops to jump through and there’s not thirty hours of playing just to unlock Zabuza again. This was an absolutely brilliant idea because most players want to play with a large selection of characters and don’t want to spend fifty plus hours just to play the same characters from the past games. This doesn’t meant there isn’t a lot to unlock, there’s still plenty of characters like Nidiame (the second Hokage), Asuma, Kurenai and the Golden Flash aka Yondaime (the forth Hokage) that you need to unlock in the Naruto RPG mode. Also in the RPG mode you can purchase more ougi scrolls to further customize your characters and teach each character new moves.

The RPG mode was one of the strongest points in Narultimate Hero 2. You spent a fair amount of time going through the story where Naruto is searching for Tsunade. Since the TV series is in filler mode, Narultimate Hero 3 opts to create a whole new story for the RPG mode. Set before the Sasuke saga, Tsunade announces an event where it’s Jounins versus Genin. You start out by hunting crystals, which you can get from battling fellow ninja or by searching around town. Scratch the fighting part, because a bulk of the first event is spent looking for small gleams of light, which represent crystals. The story in the RPG mode just isn’t that interesting and there are way too many interface problems that make it taxing rather than fun. For instance you can just walk to another area. You have to press triangle, load the menu screen, select map, load the map screen, then point to the area on the map to load the next area. It’s a tedious process just to visit a new screen. Walking around Konoha village isn’t any easier. Instead of having a set path for Naruto to walk in, everything is in full 3D. This allows players to run up on walls and perform dramatic flying leaps from rooftop to rooftop. While this is entertaining for about five minutes, beyond that it’s a nuisance to find houses on the roofs. The RPG mode does get better as you continue the game. Each of your characters will level up and become more efficient in combat. You’ll gain more moves and unlock new characters. The experience is far from terrible, but CyberConnect2 has shown they can do a better job than what we ended up getting.

What it comes down to is that Naruto: Narultimate Hero 3 is a fan’s dream. You can play as almost every character who made an appearance on TV. The game is still looking sharp with the manga style graphics and awesome ouigis. All of that is great, but its details like the addition of Hinata’s ultimate defense move from one filler episode and Temari’s weasel summon that all make the game even more appealing to die hard fans. If you can dream up a battle you’ll be able to do it in Narultimate Hero 3.

Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 3

You can easily pick up the versus mode and the Naruto story mode without understanding any Japanese. However problems are likely to arise in the RPG mode when you’re trying to figure out the goals and if you want to use customize your characters with different ouigis.

US Bound?

The Narultimate Hero series is making its debut in the US in 2006. However since Narultimate Hero 3 is so deep in the story it probably won’t be released for a long time.

+ Pros: CyberConnect2 listened to its fans. They removed the long winded super attacks, added in a bunch of all new characters and extended the combo structure to make Narultimate Hero 3 a more competitive 2D fighter.

- Cons: The RPG mode, which was one of the strongest points in the Narultimate series, is weak compared to Narultimate Hero 2

Overall: If you’re into Naruto you can’t go wrong with Narultimate Hero 3. The sheer amount of content in the game and how it uses the license so well Naruto: Narultimate Hero 3 is bound to be a fan favorite.

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