Ultraman Fighting Evolution 3 is a competent but flawed fighting game. Here is how to actually get good at it.
The game came out in 2024 for PS4 and PS5, developed by HuneX and published by Bandai Namco. It features Ultraman characters from across the Showa and Heisei eras. The netcode uses rollback, which works acceptably on good connections but falls apart the moment latency pushes past 60ms. I spent about forty hours with this game over two months and here is the unvarnished picture. The core fighting loop revolves around three buttons: light attack, heavy attack, and special. There is also a dodge roll and an Ultimate Gauge that builds as you take and deal damage. The gimmick is the Ultra Shift system, which lets you transform or alternate between different forms mid-fight. This is where most new players make catastrophic mistakes. They try to shift too early, usually right after getting hit, and end up stuck in a vulnerable transformation animation while the opponent pressures them with neutral attacks. Here is what most guides do not tell you: the cancel window into Ultra Shift is exactly 8 frames after the recovery of a heavy attack connects. That is strict. Miss it by one frame and the shift defaults to a standard special move instead. I learned this the hard way during a session against a guy running Ultraman Z. I was trying to shift into Alpha Edge form out of a heavy connect and kept fumbling the input. After about fifteen tries, I stopped pressing the button and just held it, timing it to the landing animation of my heavy. That reduced the input complexity significantly and I started connecting consistently.
The character roster breaks down roughly into three tiers, though this shifts depending on who you are playing against. Top tier consists of Ultraman Zero, Ultraman Taiga, and Ultraman Decker. Zero is fast but has a narrow matchup spread against slower, heavier characters. Taiga is more forgiving because of his ranged options and his cross slash mechanic gives solid zoning tools. Decker is consistent but lacks a strong answer to aggressive rushdown characters without significant practice. Bottom tier is mostly the Showa era characters like early Ultraman and Ultraseven. They have terrible movement speed and their specials are telegraphed heavily. Not unusable, but you will be fighting a harder game on them. Movement in this game is more restrictive than standard 2D fighters. The stages are narrower than you expect and there is minimal backdash. I found that learning stage control matters more than anything else. Standing near the edge of the stage limits your opponent's escape routes and forces them into the corner. From there you can pressure with light attacks into specials, and if they tech the grab attempt, you are already in a good position to react. This alone improved my win rate from about 38 percent to roughly 54 percent over a week of focused practice. The training mode is adequate but not great. It has frame data display, hit confirm practice, and basic combo training. What it lacks is a proper replay system. You cannot save and review your own matches, which makes it nearly impossible to debug losses after the fact. I worked around this by recording my screen with OBS and then watching the replays manually. It takes more time but it is the only way to really understand why you are losing certain matchups.
One counter-intuitive thing about this game is that ultra shift timing matters far more than input speed. I watched a lot of high-level matches and the players who were winning were not the ones with the fastest fingers. They were the ones who delayed their shift until the last possible frame before the opponent could punish them. This requires reading the opponent's habits. If they tend to dash in after your heavy attack misses, hold the shift button just a fraction longer. They will commit to the approach and walk right into your transformation attack. Another pitfall is over-relying on the Ultimate Move. It looks cinematic and satisfying, but it leaves you completely open if the opponent blocks it. The recovery is roughly forty-five frames. In ranked play, a competent opponent will punish this every single time unless you have established strong neutral pressure first. Use the ultimate only when you have confirmed a full combo or when the opponent is already in block stun with no escape options. The game's online matchmaking has a noticeable skill gap between casual and ranked. Casual lobbies tend to feature players who have not learned basic cancel patterns, which makes the game feel much easier than it actually is. Ranked matches require consistent knowledge of frame data and matchup-specific neutral game. I found that warming up in casual for ten minutes before jumping into ranked helped calibrate my instincts and reduced my loss streaks significantly.
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Controls can be remapped fully. I recommend moving the dodge roll to a shoulder button rather than the face buttons. The default layout forces you to take your thumb off the direction pad during pressure sequences, which causes missed dashes and lost combos. Recapping the dodge to L1 or R1 frees up your left hand entirely for movement and blocking, and it took me about twenty minutes to adjust to the new layout. There are some technical issues that persist even after patches. Input delay is noticeable on PS5 in online matches, roughly 2 to 3 frames of additional lag beyond the rollback netcode baseline. The audio occasionally desyncs during Ultra Shift transformations, which can mask important hit confirm sounds. These are minor but they add up over long sessions. If you are serious about competitive play, use a wired controller and a wired internet connection. WiFi adds enough variance to make the game feel inconsistent even when the netcode itself is functioning correctly. The story mode is decent for fans of the Ultraman franchise but offers no real mechanical depth. It takes about six to eight hours to complete on normal difficulty. The boss fights are straightforward and do not test the advanced techniques you would need for competitive play. Do not expect it to make you better at the game.
If you are looking to improve, focus on three things in this order. Learn your character's range on light and heavy attacks until you can land them without thinking. Practice the 8-frame cancel window into Ultra Shift in training mode until it becomes muscle memory. Then watch your own replays and identify which mistakes repeat across multiple matches. Most players never do this step and that is why they stay stuck at the same rank. The game is available on the PlayStation Store for digital purchase. It is often on sale for around twenty dollars. If you enjoy fighting games and have any interest in Ultraman, it is worth picking up. If you are new to the genre, the learning curve is steep and the roster size is not large enough to give you many options while you are still learning fundamentals. Start with Taiga or Decker, practice the basics, and ignore the flashy stuff until you have a solid foundation.
