"Building on the same game with little results"

Bloody Roar took a deviating step from the norm of human fighters with flashy moves or special techniques that made them super-human and stepped into the realm of surreal fighting and character dynamics. Through two games on the original Play Station, Bloody Roar built and built each time getting better as all sequels should, and finally ended up on the PS2 with nowhere to go but up.

Unfortunately, where the game should have taken a turn for the better, it stayed on the road of minimal changes and slightly tweaked up visuals and a somewhat better sound track. Placing you in the middle of a Animorph crisis, you take control of one of ten characters looking to find answers to a mysterious sign that is seeming to wipe out all of the ''Beast-men'' that roam the Earth.

-Visuals 9/10-

The best feature of Bloody Roar 3, is also the least desired. Giving you smooth characters to choose from, the battles go off in a fluid motion, leaving nothing much to be desired in this aspect. Every character is drawn to near perfection, and ever move comes off in a stunning way. Speed is an issue here, as some of the battles go so fast, that your eyes can't keep up with what's really going on, so you may either administer a vicious butt kicking, or get one yourself and not realize just how it happened.

-Audio 6/10-

Probably the most annoying announcer in history is back in this game, cheerfully listing off the fighters from the character select screen. One liners abound, you'll find that each character has something witty to say after each fight, even though it may seem pretty stupid to listen to it more than once. In game, you'll find that the usual assortment of grunts, groans and heavy hits are here.

The music sound track is a cross between heavy metal and dance music, that can be either taken as a good accompaniment for each battle, or as a headache waiting to happen. It does clash sometimes, but for looping, there really isn't much of that considering that the battles take all of twenty seconds to finish.

-Control 6/10-

Taking a page from the Street Fighter series, every important special move is done in SF fashion with a directional pad motion and then a button press. The game allows you to use the analog stick to compete with but, if you're smart, you'll just stick to bruising your thumbs on the directional pad instead of using the ultra loose analog stick to bust out your combinations.

-Game Play 6/10-

As was said before, with each sequel, you're supposed to add in some new option or function to make the game stand out from the predecessors. Unfortunately, you're still duking it out in a one on one battle to a best of three rounds fight. You can take into effect that there have been some new moves added, such as the Guard Break and a couple of new special moves for each character, but you'll find that this takes alot of getting used to and the learning curve isn't user-friendly.

As with the other Bloody Roar games, this one takes weeks of practice, and I suppose that this is the feel that you're supposed to get, in that you're supposed to spend all of your time on the game to master it, but again, with the way the learning curve is set, the appeal lasts all about two weeks and you're looking for a new fighting game to test out.

Multi-player options aren't really there, limiting you to your general one on one battle against a friend. The stages are pre-set, and the secrets really aren't there to keep your interest up for more than a month tops just to find them all out. With that aside, possibly one of the better features is that you have a new character that can literally kick the crap out of anyone that you go against with plenty of well timed button mashing tactics.

-Overall 6/10-

Bloody Roar 3 isn't a step up from the others, but a same level game with just a couple of tweaks in the sound and visual departments. Although there are some new characters, and the stages are rather well done, you'll find that there is nothing different here than what you've seen in the other games of the series. For fighting game fans only, this one is worth a rent, and save your money for the next Tekken.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/31/01, Updated 08/31/01