this is a game with an interesting premise but a botched execution: i like the idea of shadow losing his way while trying to recover his memory and desperately following his new family while trying to remember his old one. however, i dont think this is a game worth investing your time in unless you thought to yourself “what if sonic heroes only had shadow and the controls were worse and also guns?” The level design leaves a lot to be desired, although there are some fairly well-designed tracks like the cyberspace level. The gun gameplay and the hedgehog gameplay dont mix all that well either. The thrill of being able to decide whether you want to be a good samaritan or an evil manlet also starts to wane when you realize you have to get all ten possible endings just to get the actual, canon true ending and the hero / dark missions usually amount to searching the levels for items or killing a specific enemy type, something the rail-like levels really arent designed for. that being said, this is probably the last mainline game in which Shadow is written fairly well, as it predates the days of SEGA deciding his only character trait is “moody” and that he hates everyone. The soundtrack also slaps, as usual. And of course we can’t forget shadow is a home of sexual 🏳️‍🌈

(See my other nuns reviews for context.)
Unlike the other two, I bought this one new and for more than £2.50, so you know I wanted it real bad.
It improved even more from nuns3, no more overworld, exclusively timeline based, choices and changes felt fun and kinda meaningful. Animation looked cool as all hell, these games translate the art style into 3d so well it boggles my mind. Game play was fun and over the top, it's not balanced by any means but I didn't really care. (Seeing as they fixed in this one the Deidara spam tact that my housemate always did when we played against each other..)
Also my boy Boruto is there, in dlc, but he's there and from an actually good anime, unlike his dad. Just great game all round, hate that I love it.

(See my review for nuns2 for more context.)
This game was a straight up improvement of the previous one, loved the timeline, liked that there was less of the overworld stuff.
So. The Hero vs Avenger fight. I have never enjoyed quick time events as much as I did in that fight, ever, theyre SO good. I replayed that fight SO much, fuck it made me care about Naruto and Sasuke, wtf!! The secret ending you can unlock?? Kino. Naruto reaching for his hand and thinking about holding it but not being able to?? The anime could never be that good. It wishes. These games are the only way to experiance Naruto, I said it.

This game made me have a Naruto phase in my fucking 20s. I never cared for Naruto as a teen, thought it was crap, saw this game for a quid in cex and thought itd be haha banter. I live tweeted me playing it, accidently genuinely enjoyed the story and characters (GOD the nuns games are better at telling the story of naruto than the show) and ended up drawing my weight in Naruto fanart, dragging my housemates and friends with me, convincing a friend who liked Naruto as a kid to DM a Naruto d&d canpaign which I am in, and for said campaign we all made Naruto OCs with Boruto era kids. I'm in Naruto hell and it's all because this game (and the next 2) is so much better than the anime it is based off of.

I don't actually know how to articulate how much this game means to me, or how good I think it is. I played it very close to release, after playing the 2 prequel games, and didn't really know anything else about it. As someone who had recently dropped out of uni due to mental health and was desperately afraid of having to go back to a rural area in the middle of nowhere, somewhere with not many other lgbt people, where my parents lived, when a family member I was close to had recently passed away, it really hit hard. Mae reacted and did and said things that I felt and thought, I saw the ugliness in the way she acted in a way I hadn't noticed in myself. The characters are so real and playing this game felt like a weird American twisted up version of my life events written and shown in a beautiful way that life never is. I can't rec this game enough, please play this. If I could rate it higher than 5 stars I would.