YMMV / Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3

• Anticlimax Boss: After taking down the former Jinchuuriki and their Tailed Beast forms twice, Tobi himself is laughably pathetic by comparison. Of course, this is only from a gameplay perspective. Story-wise it's not anticlimactic in the slightest.
• Awesome Music: Many tracks.
  • Darkness Captures the Flash will give you chills.
  • The theme for the Mob Battle OST.
  • Bond of Snow Tears when Kakashi fights Reanimated Zabuza. Easily the Saddest track on the OST.
  • Seeking Answers, where Naruto fights Sasuke, is another sad track.
  • With The Shinobi World At Stake, the Five Kage vs Madara.
  • Great Beasts and Roaring Kurama, Naruto and Kurama vs 6 Tailed Beasts.
  • The Final Showdown, Naruto vs Tobi.
  • Become a Pillar Which plays during Konan's death, is too beautiful and sad for words.
• Best Boss Ever: Every boss fight in the story mode is awesome and memorable but the last two big ones against Tobi and Madara, are truly a marvel to behold.
• Breather Boss:
  • The Gedo Statue. Its attacks are slow and easy to avoid, you're reduced to just simple combos and the one QTE segment at the end is very short. It is a welcome break after the chapter's opening battle saw you running a gauntlet of Zetsus and Kakuzu under time pressure, followed by the Gold and Silver brothers, and the fight with Reanimated Asuma.
  • Out of the Tailed Beasts in the final battle, the Five-Tails seems the easiest. It's possible to stun-lock him out of almost all his attacks with the Tailed Beast Bomb.
  • Could also apply to the Six-Tails, during the two times you fight him, none of his attacks will reach you if you're far away enough, allowing you to sit there and spam projectiles.
• Breather Level: Chapter 8 is very short, only consists of three fights (well, one and one Sequential Boss) and the one boss the Raikage is basically just a regular battle with Quick Time Events. (And for the second fight you're in permanent Super Mode, making it a joke) It comes in between the Marathon Levels that are Chapters 7 and 9, and after Chapter 9 you're thrown right into the Final Chapter with no time to save.
• Broken Base:
  • Some of the events that differ from the manga such as Darui's boss fight which many call BS and the made up ending that downplays the villains. Also, Hinata, Neji, Kiba and Shino having almost no appearances in the story bothered several fans.
  • The Ring Out feature. Your supports can catch you before you fall out of the ring, but one fall and you lose the battle. The fanbase is quite divided on the matter. Not all stages use it though, so it's essentially an optional feature. Unfortunately, this leads to...well, see below.
  • And now the Edo Kages, Kinkaku, Ginkaku and the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist are NPCs. Could be fixed via DLC though, but nothing confirms it or deny it.
  • The fact that there are six pre-Time Skip characters, mainly spawning from a misunderstanding wherein CyberConnect2 said not all pre-Time Skip characters would return, misinterpreted as saying there would be no pre-Time Skip characters at all.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • It's easy to notice that the stages that use the Ring Out feature are rarely picked online.
  • Online character selection in general as well. 80+ characters to choose from, but you'll see a lot of people just using the Uchiha characters (The Masked Man, Itachi, Madara, and EMS Sasuke especially.)
• Fake Difficulty: The fact that the Nanabi is constantly floating makes it impossible to hit it with most regular attacks.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Tobi's "The Masked Man" incarnation. This video elaborates. One could argue that the "Awakenings being cancelled by Ultimates" mechanic was implemented mainly so he wouldn't become a playable SNK Boss.
  • Kiba is also this due to a glitch that makes his opponent unable to move after substituting out of his combos. Even without the glitch he breaks guards incredibly quickly, his awakening ability is very hard to dodge, and his dash overrides a lot of attacks because Akamaru dashes with him and it counts as a hit.
  • Both have been quite nerfed in the Full Burst update. Masked Man's jutsu are much more delayed, and Akamaru stops attacking the moment Kiba is damaged.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Killer Bee was a bottom tier character in Storm 2 simply due to that game's Substitution mechanics favoring slow, strong attacks over lots of fast, weak ones like his. (A long string of fast attacks gave the opponent more opportunities to Substitute out.) As of this game, Bee has just the kind of slow attack that would've helped back then in Sharkskin. Of course, the new Substitution mechanics make this a moot point now.
  • Also this game wraps up the story with a promise that the war would resume later after Kurama dried up all his chakra. As the following arcs would show, it was almost the opposite where Kurana was nearly limitless chakra once properly bonded with Naruto, feeling jarring with how much the rest of the war relied on Naruto's deep, deep wells of chakra.
• Superlative Dubbing: Lip Lock aside, this game has some of the best dub voice work in the series.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Look at Storm 2. Now look at Generations. Now look at Storm 3, and see how unfair it is to even compare Generations to what Storm 3 is. The game improved on Awakenings, boss battles, interactive battles from Storm 2 made a return with aplomb, and the cutscenes themselves were Moments of Awesome. It's very difficult to find a true complaint about this game.
• Tear Jerker: Some of the story battles. In particular, Naruto vs. Sasuke, in particular the Hero-side flashbacks to their final pre-Shippuden fight and the fight's theme.
• That One Boss: MANY.
  • Deidara. This applies to pretty much every Storm game he's been featured in, but Deidara is nearly always the boss that gives the player a hard time. Particularly the time you're forced to fight him as Kankuro: fighting a long-range expert with a puppet master is...disorienting to say the least.
  • Chomei. Difficult to get a hit on since he's flying, and unlike most Bijuu, he actually dodges Kurama's Tailed Beast Ball more often than you would expect.
  • Also the real Madara Uchiha, particularly on the legend path. He's one of the few AI opponents in story mode actually smart enough to sub out of all your combos, he has ridiculous range and damage, and after you knock off 3 health bars you have to do a StarFox-esque segment where you fly around dodging his many, many, many projectiles while hitting him with shuriken. It's undeniably awesome, but also frustrating.
  • The Second Mizukage is an absolute bitch to fight. He loves spamming projectiles from afar and they come out really fast in immense amounts at a time. He also loves spamming Jouki Boy up close, knocking you away from him to give him time to charge up and spam more projectiles than before. Yes, his trollness extends to even the games.
  • Sage Mode Kabuto is ridiculous. The first part of the fight is pretty manageable, but during the second part of the fight where he is in perma-Awakening status and loves spamming the different abilities of the Sound Five. Namely throughout the fight when he uses their signature moves, and near the end where he starts using them in tandem with each other. All of his attacks really hurt, including his chakra-shurikens, and they have ridiculous priority and hit-boxes. He also tends to sub out of most of your attacks including during animations where you normally wouldn't be able to substitute. And if that wasn't enough, he's got more defense than most characters with a whopping six health bars, giving him more health than the final boss (if you're not including the multiple battles of the final boss as one health bar).
• That One Level:
  • The "final" level, from the fight with Madara to the final fight with Tobi. Please note this is where 'Restore Your Health and Retry' becomes an option. That should speak volumes. (Note that doing this will lower your battle rank. Good luck S Ranking these fights.)
  • The extra challenge missions of the Full Burst expansion qualify as this. They're not that difficult if you're skilled at the game or pragmatic enough...but then there are the evade missions that involve starting your health at 1%, losing health if your chakra drops below 50%, and not replenishing your sub meter. While still doable, it's a pain in the ass.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Not to much plot, but the way battles and chapters are handled in the story mode leaves a bit to be desired at times.
  • Sasuke's fight with Danzo is a normal battle and not a boss fight despite how difficult it was for Sasuke in the story. The game could have made the fight a Mind Screw fight where Danzo spams Izanagi to trick the player, forcing them to run through a variation of a Marathon Boss while trying to find the real Danzo, with perhaps Karin assisting in some manner. As it stands, it's possible to go through the entire fight without the infamous Sharingarm reveal, yet the scene that takes place afterwards implies Danzo exhausted all his eyes anyway.
  • The Second Division's battle against the White Zetsu army could have been used to get you even more acquainted with Mob Battles and we could have even gotten an Edo Tensei or two thrown in for a character of your choice to fight. But no, it's completely glossed over. You don't even enter the battlefield.
  • Sai's fight with his reanimated brother Shin was also cut, a huge shame since that was a major source of Character Development for him. Surely they could have squeezed one more character into the roster...
  • The Ultimate Decision in which Naruto must say whether he prefers girls like Hinata or like Sakura and Ino. If you choose Hinata, you get to control her in a duel against...Ino instead of Sakura. Looks like CyberConnect2 didn't want to go all the way to the ultimate Naruto Ship-to-Ship Combat. Although considering the possible repercussions (which would have been much worse than they already were at the time of this game's release), maybe that was for the best.

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