Battle Arena Toshinden 3

"Wait a minute...what in the heck happened here?"

Battle Arena Toshinden 2 was a pretty strange experience for me. It had the makings of a good 3-D fighting game, á la Tekken and Virtua Fighter, but lack of replay value and cheap, unpolished graphics took away from what it could have been. When BAT3 came out, I was anxious to see if Takara/Playmates Interactive had done any better. Well.........

GRAPHICS: This category is a strange bird, indeed. There are two different graphic settings in which you can play Battle Arena Toshinden 3...you can play it in standard 30-frames-per-second-mode, or you can speed it up to 60-frames-per-second. If you have the 30 FPS mode turned on, the backgrounds look sort of decent, but the character models look generic and blocky. If you turn up the speed to 60 FPS, then you get all of the fast-placed gameplay of Virtua Fighter 2, without such ''annoyances'' as smooth graphics or detailed backgrounds. I certainly believe that it would have been in Takara's best interest if they had found a way to incorporate both into the game, and not having to sacrifice one attribute for the other.

SOUND: Okay, so maybe you won't wince at the sound. In fact, it's actually pretty good. The soundtrack is right on par with the previous game's tunes, containing a good mix of rock and classical music. Some of the characters even speak in English when they shout out their attacks (and victory taunts), which is a relief, considering that most fighting game characters always seem to talk in Japanese (even the so-called ''American'' ones!).

CONCEPT: It's a continuation of sorts to Battle Arena Toshinden 2, but it still feels like more of the same. Fourteen fighters (three new playable characters added from Toshinden 2's roster) are ''invited'' to join the third Toshinden tournament, and face off against a new enemy. Every time you finish the standard ''Arcade'' mode with a character, you can unlock a new fighter to play as. This certainly sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately, most of the fighters that you unlock are near carbon-copies of the fighters you had just beaten the game with, and are barely as useful as their original ''heroic'' counterparts. Some of their reasons for becoming part of the Toshinden tournament are pretty cheesy, too, making if you wonder if their stories weren't just written up minutes before the deadline to get this game released on time.

GAMEPLAY: A bit of a step down here, too, but not a total loss. All of the open arenas in BAT2 have been replaced with larger, closed arenas with walls on all sides, making escape (and cheap Ring Out victories) impossible for your opponent. This often leads desperate players to resort to the cheap tactic of pinning the computer opponent against the wall and repeatedly using several varieties of special attacks (including an ''Energy Bomb'' attack, whose effect varies from character to character). The good news is that a few new modes of play were added, such as Practice and Survival. The fact that you could actually SAVE your progress (and that means less time spent on having to re-unlock all of the clone characters in the game) is also a plus.

REPLAY VALUE: You'd be lucky enough to get any more out of this game after playing through all of the game modes and unlocking all of the secret characters. But considering the clunky gameplay mechanics and indecisive graphic engine, you'd be hard-pressed to find something better to do with your time.

OVERALL: Battle Arena Toshinden 3 lands right in the middle of the pack. On a scale of 1-10, I give it a 5. By itself, BAT3 isn't really a bad game, but you'd probably be left wondering why it isn't as much better than its prequel as it could have been.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/06/02, Updated 10/06/02