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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great looking, but dulls easily, June 29, 2001
I liked the first two Bloody Roars because of the ability to change into beasts in the middle of the battle, and the second one had a pretty good storyline for a 3D fighter. Truth be told, this game is one of the chief reasons I bought a Playstation 2 (that and the soon-to-be-released Final Fantasy X).The graphics are incredible. They are so detailed that you can see the facial features on the characters, such as recessed and blinking eyes and moving mouths. They aren't like the flat polygons used in the other Bloody Roars...in fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find sharp edges anywhere on the bodies. The arenas are also composed of polygons, and they look as good as the characters. Too bad that you can only blow out a wall on the final round...I miss being able to knock the opponent out of bounds! All these graphics, and the game doesn't slow down at all. Amazing! Unfortunately, now we get into an area that Bloody Roar 3 lacks...new ideas. There is an arcade mode, a multiplayer mode, practice mode, and a survival mode. In other words, it's like all the other 3D fighters. And all of the characters from the second Bloody Roar are back, with only one new initial character (who looks like a cross between Alucard from Castlevania and Sephiroth from FF7), and two other characters that are unlockable, for a total of fourteen characters. Sure, I like the original characters, but most of them have been around since the first Bloody Roar, and their moves have remained largely unchanged...time for something new! As for the in-battle differences, the only new things are an extra beast-drive move and a hyper-beast mode, which makes you do tremendous damage, but when ten seconds elapses, you turn back to human and you can't become a beast for the rest of the fight. Weeeee. The gameplay, as I said before, was very fast and smooth on the Playstation 2...maybe TOO fast. Since the first BR, I've noticed an increased focus on combos. I'm not a *hardcore* 3D fighter, so my when I'm going up against an opponent that won't even let me move because he's pulling off a 10 hit combo, which tosses me in the air so that he gets off another 10 hits "juggling" me in the air, and then gets off ANOTHER 5 hits while I'm down on the ground, needless to say, I get frustrated very quickly. Sure, there is a way to block these things, but as I said, the thing moves FAST, so most of the time, I don't have a chance to pull it off. And don't bother doing combos of your own; most of the time, the CPU blocks it all in the later stages. I'm having problems on the final levels on a dificulty setting of ONE. Well, as I said, I'm not *hardcore.* After about two hours, it got rather boring. Unfortunately, the good storyline of the second BR is gone in BR3. All you get is a slideshow at the start and the end, all of which makes no sense, unlike BR2, where there is a slideshow in between each battle, and some storylines cross each other and make SENSE. If I have to suffer five hundred gillion hit combos, then I at least want it to be WORTH something. Being a 3D fighter, BR3 has a multiplayer mode. Well, my friend just happens to be non-*hardcore* just like me, except his temper is even shorter than mine when it comes to being juggled in the air with a multi-hit combo. (His favorite fighter is Super Smash Brothers...go figure) Needless to say, he got intensly frustrated, and trust me, it is no fun playing with someone that is ready to throw the controller through the TV. Overall, Bloody Roar 3 is a game that looks absolutely incredible, but a lack of a good storyline and an insufficient number of new features makes BR3 a weekend-rental title, unless you are a fan of the series.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of fun!, March 21, 2002
Bloody Roar 3 is a good fighting game. There is a nice variety of moves, the graphics are awesome, and the beast mode is really cool. It is a great, fast paced fighting game. If you can unlock it, check out the sumo mode. The first person to knock their opponent into a wall or into the floor wins. This takes a lot of strategy to win and is worth the effort. It is a great game to play with a group of friends. The only thing that is lacking is the storyline. It is rather vague, and the endings are little slideshows with text. This does hurt the game, but I never really need a story in a fighting game to enjoy it.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More of the same, July 26, 2003
The first rank of fighting games, and the select group of developers that make them, is defined very clearly in this day and age. Ask more or less anyone, and they will tell you: there is Namco, there is AM2, there is Team Ninja, and then there is Everybody Else. Or to put it more appropriately, there is nobody else. Tekken, Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive have captured the lion's share of the attention in the genre since the peak of the Playstation era, when DOA came out of nowhere to become a recognized contender.Which Bloody Roar never quite was. Raizing's lycanthropic fighter had two outings on the PlayStation, both localized by Sony and met respectably at the box office, but the franchise never seemed to earn the respect that Dead or Alive pried loose from the market and that Tekken and Virtua Fighter seemingly possessed by default. DOA's next-generation debut received a flurry of hype and anticipation, while the eventual arrival of Bloody Roar 3 on System 246 and PS2 barely raised eyebrows. Unfair? To a degree. Bloody Roar 3 is not the toe-to-toe equal of Soul Calibur or Tekken Tag Tournament, and it's not as ambitious as DOA2 in some ways, but it's undeniably fun as a solo or multiplayer game, and every so often it throws out a moment of serious graphical flair. It's certainly worthy of its American release, which has come thanks to Activision, and it's worth the attention of those looking for something off-beat in a fighting game.Bloody Roar's gimmick is the inclusion of monstrous alter egos for each of its characters -- the werewolf's the cover boy, but there's also the were-leopard, the were-lion, the were-tiger, the were-rhino beetle, and something called the Unborn, the definition of which has never yet been satisfactorily explained. The cast runs the gamut of visual and technical fighting styles, both in and out of their bestial forms, which they can swap between almost at will. "Almost" is the kicker, though. The game's chief strategic element involves managing the energy meter that allows the transformation, and knowing when to use the extra attacks that it enables.See, characters can fight in human form, but not nearly as effectively as when they're packing giant fangs and sharp claws (or antennae, or giant prehensile spiky things, or floppy ears and a cotton tail). Beast form enables stronger combos, and you can sacrifice your entire store of beast energy on the gamble that as a massive Beast Drive -- hit or miss, you return to human form, but it's worth it if you can land in excess of 20 hits.Offensively, then, Bloody Roar 3 has a lot of flash and a reasonable amount of depth. The combo scheme should be familiar to someone with a grasp of Dead or Alive or the more basic elements of Tekken -- characters have a decent-sized selection of attacks based on directional movements and the two attack buttons, with preset combos generally ranging from two to six hits (although a few stretch up to eight or so low-power strikes). Like DOA, though, linking attacks is generally determined by the canned strings or by staggering your opponent (which works more or less as in DOA2). There's a little less emphasis on developing original combos, although you can still devise some very clever linked attacks by studying how the stagger system works and what effect the walled arenas have on combat.It's the defensive system rather than the offensive system that feels a little less deep than some. Bloody Roar 3 includes a simple, easy-to-use sidestepping system, with up and down mapped to the lower shoulder buttons, but it's not the equal of the reversal scheme in DOA or the complex parry/reversal/sidestep system that Tekken's evolved over the years (you haven't seen real fighting sausagedom until you've seen someone chicken an attack in Tekken Tag). Defense in fighters has evolved a lot in recent years, and Bloody Roar 3 definitely feels a bit behind the curve.
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