Technically astounding, the fourth chapter of the Tales of Souls and Swords is indeed vast, but sounds incomplete...
Graphics are stunning. The images that we see in this game are some of the better we ever saw on playstation 2. Well, it's not next-gen, but it's the perfect individual of the actual generation. Characters and ambient are modeled very well, putting playstation 2 hardware to its very limit. even textures are well done, though they looks a little low in resolution (look at Cervantes' hat of the second outfit). Maybe a little more outfits per character should have been done.
Sound is better than in the previous chapter, if you mean the quality of the sounds. I found music isn't as inspiring as in SC II. Naturally, the game is meant to be played in japanese language, so english voices are a bit ugly.
Gameplay is great this time again. All the things we saw in the saga have been put in (8-way movement, Guard Impact. The game has been rebalanced and the new modes are intresting. In the other hand, the classes of the custom characters are not enough balanced. Those have from half to two thirds the number of attacks of the normal characters. Some styles, like the staff, aren't enough serious and don't fit well with the others. Other styles, like the katana, have good moves and look balanced, but the stances aren't realistic at all (does a samurai hold a katana like he may do with a club???).
The game lasts VERY long. It has lots of unlockables, like drawings hi-res images, five movies, etc... only one complain, why they didn't put in the making of included in SoulArchive? It could have been even more interesting. The chronicles of the sword mode is at least 20 hours lasting, if you are very good at this game and you don't customize your characters. Given that you have 26 playable characters in the tales of souls, it will take nothing less than 10 hours to play only one time per character's tale. Well, there's 30 hours of game, usually more than the time people plays to a single, typical game. The good thing is that, after those 30 hours, you have completed only 5% of the game.
In conclusion, we may say that SC III is a great game. The thing that make me say that i prefer SC II is that this last chapter looks like it hasn't been finished, and some things are realised like in a demo version. To make an example, the interface in the select screen is "good", and not "very nice" like the one in SC II. the screen is not used in the most efficient way and the colors, while they look nice at the first glance, they become a little boring after the first hundred hours. Even collisions aren't perfect. Sometimes you Hit without reaching the opponent: the thing is not casual, and then you may ignore it, but i don't remember if Namco ever did a fault like that. It is a real mess. Anyway, this game is great and i think that it's the third best fighter i ever played (after SC II and VF 4 EVO).