Garou Densetsu 3: Road to the Final Victory

"A choppy road to the final victory"

Garou densetsu 3 is better known as "Fatal Fury 3: Road to the final victory" outside of japan. This game was released on the Neogeo (CD, AES, MVS) around 1995 but did not enjoy tremendous success. One of the complaints was that some old favorites such as Kim Kaphwan were killed off. However, this game did spawn some very cool characters such as blue Mary and Yamazaki. Its story mode was also pretty cool and being told in great "Engrish". If you ask me its my favorite fatal fury, on par with RBFF special and Mark of the wolves. Its being said that Real bout Fatal fury 1 was actually the fixed version of this game. This game contained some of the previously booted characters. I was satisfied with FF3, however.

This game is the sequel to Fatal Fury 2, in which terry beat Krauzer. A few years after this there is a story being spread about some scrolls which should give the owner immortality. Another rumor is that Geese howard is also after this scrolls and so the 3rd standoff emerges. There are 10 characters to choose from which is considerably less than in the dream match that was Fatal Fury special, a sort of upgraded FF2. These characters are the lone wolves Terry, Joe and Andy which want the scrolls for their reasons, they are accompanied by the ever strikingly beautiful Mai Shiranui and rival sexy chick Blue Mary. Other fighters are Franco Bash, who has to get the scrolls for an organization which hold his son captive until he delivers them the scrolls , the mysterious sorcerer Sokaku, the police officer jacky chan lookalike Hon-fu, Richard Myer's (FF1) capoeira student Bob Wilson and last but not least the badass Geese Howard who is clearly in a bad mood for that boot out of the window. The bosses are the raving lunatic Yamazaki and the 2 Jins, who wield some sort of evil power connected to the scrolls. The good news is that on the Saturn those 3 guys are playable via some cheat so you get 12 characters which is kind of fair.

So, how is this saturn port? Well to be honest the game does let down a bit, and thats the result of lazy porting because the game itself is quite good.

First of all the Graphics are Arcade perfect or pretty damn close, big sprites and lively backgrounds make this game cool to watch. There is one problem however, as soon as the screen moves it seems to be doing it quite choppy.. all the time. So what you get here is a good ol mixed bag, great graphics on pictures but the choppy movement brings it down. I doubt there was any ramcart when this game was released yet but seeing efforts from capcom such as Nightwarriors run so smooth makes me think SNK has been lazy here.. it all feels like they shamelessly ported over the NeoCD version or something. 6/10 (when not in motion 8/10).

Then the Sound which is surprisingly good, I found some tracks of this game quite good and the saturn versions soundtrack is CD quality which means its improved over the AES and MVS versions. The hitsounds and voices seem to be pretty close to the arcade too so on this subject there isn't really much to complain 7/10

However, the Playability seems to be not so ok thanks to the aforementioned choppyness of this game. In the arcade this game played quite well, difficult but well.. more responsive than its prequels at least. Here it plays the same but it all goes at a lower framerate which is kind of annoying. But if you are used to it there is not much to complain as the moves flow out quite easy. Not bad but could be better. 6/10

The lastability is not as low as you would expect, as mentioned before the characters are all completely different so it takes time to master them all, also the story mode is cool and its fun to finish it with every character. Unlocking the bosses is a nice console bonus too. Ofcourse these games are meant to be played in vs mode, and a vs mode in fighting games lasts like Unlimited. However, this game is overshadowed by its sequels, the Real bout FF's and the KOF ports on the saturn. 7/10

Overall this game is not bad to have in the collection, I have good memories of the coin op and therefore I found it a nice buy. But if you are searching for a Fatal fury and don't share the nostalgia then RBFF1 might be a better choice, this game runs smooth, has all FF3 characters and music and some old favorite warriors are brought back. However its storymode is way more crappy and it only has like 4 backgrounds... I personally didn't like this sequel much but on the Saturn it runs much better than FF3. Thats why Ultimately, I would suggest RBFF Special, this game is a truly worthy Fatal Fury (but its purely a dreammatch).

Endscore FF3: 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/04