YMMV / Unreal Tournament III

• Awesome Music: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Breather Level:
  • Arsenal, the first Liandri mission, depending on the player's choices, is set between the draining 4-on-7 Torlan Leviathan mission at the end of all (but one) of the Act II: With Caesar's Coin paths and the similarly unbalanced 4-on-6 Dusk Warfare match at the beginning of Act III: The Liandri Conflict.
  • Also depending on the player's choices there's the 2-on-4 Gateway mission at the end of Act III: The Liandri Conflict, which may be set before the Islander Necris mission, the first of the Necris invasion act. You and Othello against 4 Liandri bots don't seem much, especially with how big the map is, which is what sets it apart from the other 2-on-4 instances (Diesel from Act II: With Caesar's Coin and Deck from Act IV: Calculated Losses).
• Complete Monster: Necris High Inquisitor Akasha commands both the Necris and the Krall in a campaign to impose her invulnerability upon the universe. Described as one who "slaughters civilians for a living", Akasha led the Twin Souls massacre that killed the friends and family of Reaper and his sister, Jester. Orchestrating more bloodshed that carved horrific swathes through Taryd, Reaper eventually corners Akasha in her chambers on Omicron 6. In the ensuing firefight for the fate of the universe, she mocks him about the ease with which she murdered his family. Ruthless and bloodthirsty, Akasha caused far more damage in the war than any other faction.
• Contested Sequel: See Critical Backlash and Misblamed below. Aside from that, the rather contrived Excuse Plot explanation for many of the Tournament mechanics, such as Deathmatch to wear off regenerator (that allows respawning) capability and capture the FLAG (Field Lattice Generator which powers a different type regenerator) doesn't win favors of many people. The Real Is Brown in contrast to the rather colorful Unreal Tournament 2004 maps is also criticized, despite the game features improved graphics, still fast paced action, and well balanced, although formulaic, weaponry.
• Crazy Is Cool: Bishop. The guy recites Bible passages while popping heads off his enemies!
• Critical Backlash: Sure, it isn't Unreal Tournament or Unreal Tournament 2004, but Unreal Tournament III has received a lot of unfair misblaming for what it isn't rather for what it is.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Bishop, mainly because he's voiced by Nolan North and for his Warrior Poet personality.
• Epileptic Trees: Debates are still on about if he's the same Othello as the one who was in the Thunder Crash team in the past Tournament games.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The game upped the projectile damage to UT99-levels while giving players a more limited moveset (gone is the dodge-jumping from Unreal Tournament 2004 and the multiple jump options and attacks from Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict), thus turning players into glass cannons and weapons into more dangerous versions of their past selves, with glaring exceptions such as the Stinger Minigun.
  • Due to how out-of-place vehicles and turrets are in fast paced deathmatches, the Darkwalker in DM-HeatRay and the turret in the map DM-Deimos also count as this. HeatRay in particular has no AVRiL on sight to counter the Walker, unlike Deimos.
• Gameplay Derailment: A lot of people complained that the vehicles derailed the fast gameplay of UT3, even when vehicles aren't available in common gametypes. (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag... well, there's just two exceptions, but still...)
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of the Bonus Pack 2 maps from Unreal Tournament 2004, AS-BP2-Jumpship, retells a story about a squad of Izanagi soldiers infiltrating Liandri space and hijack a jumpship in order to be able to make space jumps without the need of a gate. Fast forward to this game, and another Izanagi team, the Ronin, hijacks a ship in order to jump to Necris space.
  • Akasha's first line in the final match. Until the free reboot, the series wouldn't see another installment for a long time.
  "My patience for games has worn thin"
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The map AS-Glacier from 2004 is about an Axon squad infiltrating an Izanagi facility in order to steal a powerful tank. Izanagi was guarded by the N.E.G. Elite "Thunder Crash" force. As in... the same team that Malcolm leads. Three years later Izanagi, still with Malcolm leading one of their teams, get the chance to take revenge on the Axon.
• Misblamed: Although often referred to as a flop, and even one of the biggest failures in videogame history, in reality only the PC version sold particularly poorly on its initial release. The console versions actually sold pretty well, and even the PC version began selling a lot better (albeit at a significantly discounted price) when it was brought to Steam. Unfortunately though, even the console versions got overshadowed by the likes of Halo 3, which led to impressions that the series was yesterday's news.
• Obvious Beta: Shortly after the first retail release, the GUI was shown to be incomplete, with "GUI Breaking Bugs", especially hitting the server joining features and lacking essential features. There was also a bug where the game didn't save your progress on the campaign. Although all of them are currently fixed, they still made an impact on the game's first impression when it was released.
• Older Than They Think: The Variable Mix of the background music has its origins in Unreal (and Return to Na Pali); in that game there's a section of the music packages for exploration and another section for the combat scenes, a feature that's replicated for this game.
• Player Punch: In the final battle, you'll receive three "Ronin X down" messages. And then, in the final cutscene, a Necris soldier drops a mortally wounded Jester in the floor. Cue Reaper swearing revenge against Malcolm.
• Polished Port: The Playstation 3 version of the game is widely regarded as one of the finest PC-to-Console ports that has ever existed. Even though the game is capped at 30 FPS, it still contains the same amount of features as the PC version. To top it all? It has official third-party mod support, which means that all of the customization that is possible in the PC version is also possible on the PS3 version.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • For all of its faults, UT3 did something right in improving the normally useless Bio Rifle with particular emphasis on the alternate fire's newer properties (instead of a big glob which splitted in smaller globs and was a regular source for suicides, it is now a bigger glob but which can stick to a player which is fragged with no splash damage, problem is, of course, landing these shots require practice against very high moving targets).
  • Some vehicles from 2004 got hit with this, particularly the Hellbender, whose main seat can now fire against enemies (in 2004 it was just a driver's seat without anything else to do), the Scorpion which gained a new and more useful projectile type instead of the normally useless bolas along with new boosting and self-destructing capabilities, and the SPMA, whose camera has been freed of the axial lock of its 2004 counterpart, making it more useful.
• The Scrappy:
  • The Stinger Minigun was surprisingly downgraded from its previous iterations, as the Alternate Fire is now an useless big shard whose main purpose is... to attach the cadavers to a wall. Not to mention the primary fire being even more weakened compared to previous versions.
  • For players who liked the ''2004'' iteration of the Manta, which allowed players to be carried on its wings and turned the dummied Vehicle CTF mode onto "Manta CTF", the fact that players on the wings of the Manta would get sucked and killed was a downgrade.
  • The Scavenger is the Scrappy of the Necris vehicles. A mostly useless vehicle whose only rescuable features are a faster speed than most vehicles along with jumping and crouching modes with a weak attack and a mostly uncontrollable ball mode.
• That One Level: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The general reaction towards this game, going farther as splitting the mod community, with model/skin makers annoyed at Epic's screwing around with custom skeletons. Unreal Tournament 3 is still moddable although the mod community isn't as large as it was with Unreal Tournament 2004.
  • Someone parodied it with a complaint generator.

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