Samurai Shodown III: Blades of Blood

"This is where the begining of the end begins."

Graphics-9/10
Samurai Shodown I and II had anime style graphics. In Samurai Shodown III they decided to give it a new look that looks more artistic and mature. The characters do look like characters from ancient painting. On the whole they do looked better.

Storyline-8/10
Things aren't really that good but they aren't really that bad. Some of the guys really have great reasons for wanting to do battle and finish off that end boss in this game. But sadly some guys really seem like they were there to make up the numbers. They really should have think of better reasons for people to take part in the battles.

Soundtrack/Music-6/10
Lets put it this way the tracks aren't bad. But are they good well there is no catchy tune at all. Granted that the samurai shodown never did have great soundtracks in the past but they didn' sound this mediocre. Also if you were to compare it with the KOF series its really terrible if you compare it to KOF 96 and KOF 95.

Gameplay- 6/10
Firstly they try to give you the idea that there is more replay value in that every character has 2 styles Bust or Slash. The sad thing is that most of the characters are either great in slash or bust and rarely both. Thus if you choose to use this guy you will probably choose only 1 style. My question is why bother with such a stuff since people are going to choose just 1 style anyway.

Another problem with this game is that if you are the type of guy who seek to learn all the characters you will realise something. While Samurai Shodown II is kinda unbalanced this game makes is even more so. Its the most unbalanced game in the series. If you want to win you must choose a particular character and a particular style. while there are only a few characters who are great in either style, there are also characters who are lousy no matter what style you choose for them.

Conclusion- This game is really the begining of the end for the Samurai Shodown series. It wasn't as fun as Samurai Shodown II and is definately a boring game compared to Samurai Shodown I. Instead of capitalising on what was right in Samurai Shodown I and II they went out to remove what was good and created some new stuff. Well some of it was good but the bulk of it makes this game inferior compared to Samurai Shodown I and II.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/11/03, Updated 06/11/03