Similar to previous Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) titles, this game is played by listening to the music and hitting the up/down/left/right arrows when they hit the outline at the top of the screen after coming up from the bottom. This may be done with an Xbox controller or a DDR controller (dance mat). If you miss steps, your health goes down, but if you time one correctly, the health bar in the upper left slightly goes up. Each individual arrow gets a rating on how close the timing was.
Game Mode is the main mode of DDR Ultramix 3. It plays similarly to the version in the arcade, where a song is picked at a certain difficulty (beginner, light, standard, heavy) and is played through. If you run out of health before the song is completed, the song ends and you fail it. After the song, you get a rating depending on how well you did. Game Mode may also be played with two pads instead of one. Some songs also support an Oni difficulty mode, which may be as difficult, slightly less difficult, or slightly more difficult as the heavy difficulty. While selecting a song, the order of the songs can be changed by default order, alphabetical order, speed of the songs, artist order, and banner order. When holding down A to select a song, there are ways to modify the song before playing through it, such as changing the speed, direction of the arrow flow, and other modifiers.
The goal of Attack Mode is to knock your opponents down to the bottom line. Getting a combo of a certain five arrows in a row will create an effect during the song to help you or hinder your opponents. In Bomb Mode, everyone passes around a bomb which will explode after a certain amount of time, and last one standing without the bomb wins. Quad Mode is similar to Game Mode, but the player uses four pads at once. With Sync Mode, everyone must press the arrow at the same time to get through the song. Getting a Good or lower on any step will immediately end the song.