Battle Arena Toshinden 3

"A unique game with some flaws"

Graphics-7/10
Somehow the stages are a bit worst off compared to Battle Areana Toshinden 2. The lack of an ending also made this game seemed incomplete.

Storyline and Character Design-10/10
The storyline isn't too good but it isn't too lousy either.
But character Design is another area which I want to elaborate. They have many different and unique characters in this game. There are pirates, Robots and unarmed combat fighters and Gun men. There is even a Michael Jackson Ripped off. They were one of the first game to have a guy carrying a gun fight again guys carrying weapons like swords and spears in Toshinden 2. In Toshinden 3 they were one of the first games to have a guy use martial arts.Yes
the idea of Heihachi Mishima using his martial arts in Soul Calibur II wasn't original. Battle Arena Toshinde 3 was one of the first game to feature a guy with no weapons competing against guys with weapons.

Gameplay-8/10
This game has many characters to unlock.There are also a couple of unique ones even though they try to copy Tekken 2' clone sub boss concept. They also try to copy Tekken 2's combo move system by giving their guys more combos and moves. However to give them credit they were one of the first guys to use the wall concept in which you can knock your opponent into walls and do more damage. Tekken copied this idea in Tekken 4 and Soul Calibur II did the same thing as well. One frustrating aspect of this game is that there are too many characters to unlock and sometimes you just don't feel like playing as some of the characters. Now if they have given everyone an FMV ending like Tekken did I would not mind playing it again and again. Anyway what I did was set my controller's auto function on and picked some guy with great combos and set the difficulty to easy. I return 20 minutes later to see the guy complete his game without me controlling it. This was one bad aspect of the game's replay value. However the unique and special characters more than made up for it. The game actually presents tons of new moves. There are moves that can only be used twice in a battle, moves that you can use when you are dying. This was another unique aspect of this game.

Sound Effects/Soundtrack-6/10
Sadly after its excellent sountrack in Toshinden 2 this game actually features mediocre music. I feel that they should have simply use the sound tracks in Toshinden 2. However there are some nice ones too.

Conclusion- The Toshinden series have always been about innovative ideas. Thus I would recommend players to play this game to look at its unique features. Although I would suggest a gameshark to avoid the hassle of using the characters you dislike.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/08/03, Updated 06/08/03