theman61890's Full Review: Naruto: Ninja Council 3 for DS
The first Ninja Council game was just simply horrible in every aspect of the game. The second game of the Council series was really a major improvement over its predecessor. The third game for the Nintendo DS was decent, but Nintendo did not really improve on anything, actually they pretty much took some steps back in some of the areas of the game. Overall, however, it was still an all around solid game.
Story 2/10
This game has no story whatsoever, I still do not understand why the Naruto Ninja Council games does not incorporate the vast Naruto story into the game. Anyway the game does have some mention of the story when you have to fight the demon villain Orochimaru, but that is essentially it. The game does not have a concrete story since there is no real story mode, and the mission mode, the main mode, really goes all over the place.
Graphics 5/10
The graphics are okay, but they are relatively the same from the GBA games. The character models all seem the same from Ninja Council 2. All of the backgrounds are still the same, with little to no improvements. This would not be a bad thing considering the graphics for the first two Ninja Council games were excellent. Seriously though, I have seen what the DS can do graphically, example Super Mario DS, and this game really did not use the full capabilities of the Nintendo DS.
Anyway one improvement that has been made is that animations look better. Each character now has four different Jutsus, all whom are rendered to perfection when they are compared to there show counterparts. Overall the game still looks vibrant and detailed, but considering it was a DS release it could have easily been much better.
Sound 9/10
The sound was greatly improved over the last games. The biggest improvement is that this game actually has voice overs which were really non existent in the first two Ninja Council games. Naruto talks plenty in this game, along with the other subsidiary characters. Everyone in the game sounds like they do in the show, simply great voice acting.
Another improvement is that the game has great in game music. They actually use a bunch of actual Naruto themes from the sow in the game. Also each boss has their own music when you play against them. There are some real upbeat catchy songs here. There is no point during this game in which you would not hear any music, which is definitely a great thing.
Gameplay 8/10
When you click the touch screen the main menu appears. the game has four modes whom are mission, party, settings, and record mode. The mission mode is similar to a games story mode, the bulk of your playing time will be here. Th e party mode is the multiplayer function, the records is essentially your records, and the settings is indicative a games options.
Similar to the other games, this game has really easy controls. The L button makes your character teleport, R makes you block, A makes you jump, B makes you run, Y is the common attack button, X throws weapons, and start pauses the game. There are also some touch screen functions, but will get into that later. The learning curve is about ten to fifteen minutes.
Mission mode is the story mode of the game. In this mode you will play many missions, all whom are different, in some you will save a cat in others you will have to fight incomparable demon characters. You can play through this mode with an assortment of characters. This game has about two dozen playable characters such as Naruto, Sasuke, Chouji, Shino, Tsunade, and etc. After selecting your character you can select a mission. After completing a mission you unlock more until you have unlocked a grand total of 64 missions. Missions are D,C,B,A,S ranking, with different difficulties. When you first start the game you could only do D ranked missions. After beating D you go on to C and etc.
Now onto touch screen usage The game really does not utilize the touch screen for many things which is really a shame. The touch screen is really just there to help you summon some attacks. Like when you use Jutsu you must tap the symbols that are in the touch screen. Also you use the touch screen to use various scrolls, which are objects that can perform magic. The pink scroll is used by touching the pink fire on the scroll, the summon scroll makes you draw a line from left to right of the screen and the Tenketsu makes you tap flashing symbols that flash in the touch screen. This is essentially what the touch screen is basically used for throughout the entire game.
When you start VS mode, or "Party" Mode you are given 3 different modes for battling.The first mode is to see how many enemies you and the opponent can kill in a given time limit. The second mode is a scroll collecting mode, you traverse a land area to find more scrolls than the opposition. And finally there's a battle mode. You and a human counterpart battle it out with a very nice roster of characters until one person is unable to continue.
The Settings mode gives you two options in which you can change. You can change the difficulty from easy, medium and to hard. And you can save or delete your game from here. The records mode basically has all your game info, such as all of the things you have collected and the battles you have won.
One thing that made the worth playing is the immense amount of unlockables. You can unlock more missions, more modes, and a ton of new characters. Overall you can unlock upwords of about twenty characters. And you can also unlock two image galleries which are used just to see some cool stills from the television show, every Naruto game has a gallery.
Replay Value 8/10
This game has a longer replay value than recent Naruto games. In this game the missions will take you atleast 6 hours on easy, and on hard much longer. You will also play through the missions more than once to unlock all of the characters there are in the game. Also the Party Mode adds a couple more hours o playing time, but the lack of modes, such as a tag battle, just limits this feature.
Overall i recommend buying this game since the gameplay is really good. Dont expect the best graphics sine they have been barely update from the games before this one, also the sound has been improved tremendously. Overall a very solid game indeed, BELIEVE IT!
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