The character models in UNH 3 is indeed smoother and there’s less jaggies noticeable, but the character animation is jerky, like it was made with less frames. Most PSP games run at 30fps, but UNH 3 looks jerky even when compared to other PSP games (worse still is the fact that its predecessors ran at 60fps). We’re assuming that similar to the latter Bleach Heat the Soul games, the FPS was cut down in order to accommodate more complex visual effects. Except that’s not the case here.
UNH 3 seems to have skimped down on the use of transparencies and FBO effects, resulting in some effects – particularly Kakashi Hatake’s Mangekyo Sharingan super – looking a little bit rough around the edges.
But gameplay is still king, right?
Not so in this case. As mentioned above, the character animations are herky-jerky, resulting in combat looking disjointed, not flowing as smooth as the moves in UNH and UNH 2. This is made worse by two things: first is that even with the lowest handicaps, the characters do way too much damage and you can find yourself winning a match after several normal attacks, wondering what the hell happened. Next is the 4 way matches, which makes things even more chaotic – but not in a good way. Matches can get too disorganized that you won’t even be able to hit the character you want with the move that you want. Those thinking that this will give you a Super Smash Bros. type game with Naruto characters will be sorely disappointed.
The only praise I can give this game is the updated roster. You lose out on all the pre-timeskip characters (no Young Naruto vs. Young Sauce-kay, sorry) but you get previews of characters that will be important in the future, like Obito (in his comedic Tobi persona) and Kabuto in his slightly snakey-wakey form. Sadly, the poor combat negates whatever benefits the updated roster may have.
If you really want an enjoyable Naruto fighting game on the PSP, you should go with Ultimate Ninja Heroes or Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2. If you want an updated roster, you can go with Ultimate Ninja Impact even though it’s not really a fighting game (it’s a 3D crowd brawler, but you can set up one on one matches between characters, so yeah. It will scratch your Naruto fighting game itch.)
