First things first, this game is now known as Full Burst for the rest of this review. Somebody really needs to tell Namco Bandai that adding more words to the title doesn’t make anything more awesome. But if you think giant inexplicable Japanese style explosions do then your in luck.
Full Burst is a rerelease of the original Ninja Storm 3 which boasts enhanced visuals as well as a ton of extra content like costumes and a new challenge mode. The main story has some extra stuff added but in large remains the same as the original, aside from the visuals. For those who aren’t particularly familiar with the Ninja Storm universe, like me, the first few hours on Full Burst will likely be a very confusing ordeal.
But if you stick with it you will eventually know the characters well enough to make what little sense there is to be had from Full Burst. The main thing to know is that a set of impossibly powerful Ninjas join forces to combat an even more powerful foe. There’s lots of reanimating of the dead, almost-flight-jumping and of course big balls of energy emitting from fists.
As a fighting game Full Burst certainly stands out from the crowd. There aren’t any complicated combos or tricky timings to learn but rather Full Burst makes it incredibly easy to perform moves often reserved for cut-scenes. For instance pressing “triangle” will enable you to use “Ninjutsu”, draining “chakra” – your source of power that functions like a mana bar. Once activated the actions you perform become much more powerful but will use up “chakra”. If you press “triangle” twice and then press “circle” you will perform your character’s “ultimate Jutsu”.
It keeps things simple and allows battles to instead concentrate on being fast paced and exciting at all times. I honestly thought it would get dull without any advanced moves or techniques to learn but the constant back and forth during fights keeps things interesting. It’s actually quite refreshing but those looking for a more “traditional” fighting game experience might be disappointed.
Blocking is rarely much use and often I found staying mobile to be a much more effective fighting technique. Which is great because it lends itself very well to the overall style of the game. However if you press “L2” at the right time when under attack (which for a refreshing change is a window not measured in milliseconds) you will replace yourself with a lump of wood and teleport behind your foe. But you can only do it 4 times and then you have to wait for a bar to refill. Considering it’s the only way to stop an enemies assault it can occasionally be pretty annoying when you’ve run out and just have to take it.
Because of the limited dodges and the simple but awesome looking fight system I had some concerns about how the end of the game would play out. For a majority of the game you feel you’re on equal footing with your foes and as you get more powerful so do they. The fights often don’t get too much more difficult but there is certainly an escalation to everything so that by the end there are at least 2 explosions and 5 teleports every second.
And then it started. Some enemies essentially stand there blocking constantly waiting for you to attack. So your first combo is stuffed and then you both dance around dodging until you run out and in classic style the bosses combo will break yours but yours can’t break his/hers. And a lot of the late game bosses have some range to their attacks meaning you have to advance on them quickly, which is only really achieved using Chakra. So when that runs out you’re more or less completely stuffed.
And then in the last chapter I found that Full Burst stressed me out to breaking point. Enemies have at least twice as much health as you, reach on their melee attacks and no need to actually win. The fights become incredibly unbalanced and stick to that old classic method of creating difficulty – irritating enemies.
This is not the era where we expect a boss to sit there following a set pattern of moves as we bide our time and wait for our chance to attack. But that’s what it boils down to in Full Burst in the last chapter or so. It’s a shame and meant that when I’d finished my whole experience was tarnished. To come so far and then spoil it with a few lousy bosses is such a shame. At one point I had lost too much health in the first section of a boss fight that it made the remaining sections almost impossible and I needed to redo it from square one. Restarting from a checkpoint I had to do 3 or 4 fights before I got back where I was. Luckily I did it the second time but a checkpoint after the first section of a boss fight rather than after it is absolutely ridiculous.
Even on one of the very last bosses new mechanics are introduced with a big pop-up telling you the buttons, letting you play for 30 seconds and then another popping up to tell you some more buttons. Romping around as giant beasts essentially just plays as a slow fight with less abilities at your disposable. It unnecessarily breaks the action because for most, if not all, of the boss fights the standard fighting system would have been just fine and often be much more exciting.
Playing through the main story is quite different from most fighting games. It’s not just a simple set of fights with a boss at the end but instead is very strongly driven by narrative. In fact a playthrough will take about 20-30 hours which is incredibly long for a beat ‘em up. However a vast majority of this time is cut-scenes. I enjoy cut-scenes and often miss games like older Final Fantasy titles where the cut-scene was something to look forward to but they can be overdone. The problem with Full Burst is that a fight might last about 10 minutes but then you might be watching literally 1 to 2 hours of cut-scenes.
On the other hand the cut-scenes look great and after I had at least some idea of who everyone was and what all the words meant they where pretty fun to watch. But the balance between watching and playing is definitely wrong, at some points even becoming boring. After 30 minutes of people repeating the same thing over and over you just want some gameplay.
For a heavily narrative driven fighting game Full Burst is generally very successful although at times it seems to forget it’s a game and gets carried away telling a story. It’s accessible enough for people who don’t know the TV show but I never felt it was simplified or avoided dealing with major plot themes. And there are a massive amount of characters to choose from to. Some are only slightly different from each other but with this many on offer it doesn’t matter. I highly doubt that anyone would be wanting for a bigger roster.
Full Burst adds some great enhanced visuals and an extensive challenge mode for those who want to come back for more. Until the last section of the game I had great fun with Full Burst although the stress the end caused me almost ruined the previous 20 or so hours and reminded me that some games just refuse outright to change with the times. For those who’ve already played the original Ninja Storm 3 and aren’t interested in the challenge mode there isn’t much on offer to bring you back.
Reviewed on PS3. Available on PS3, XBOX 360 and PC.
