Apparently.....capcom still hasn't learned a thing about "balanced gameplay"
Story: 4/10
Keeping with the tradition of inconsistency, SFA3's storyline is the most controversial of all SF storylines because its so friggin ridiculous its not even funny. Im not gonna bother touching this one folks. In a nut shell, everyone fights bison for god knows what.
Gameplay: 2/10
Capcom is known for imbalanced fighting games. This game reinforces that fact tenfold. Despite the fact that Alpha 2 had a decent balance (if not offset by cheap AI), alpha 3 demolishes that.
Zero Counters (Alpha Counters) are now officially useless and serve no purpose at all. Capcom changed the motion and buttons to execute a Zero Counter, and, in addition, made it ridiculously weak to discourage you from using it.
Counter Hits occur when you interrupt your opponents normal or special attack with one of your own.If executed correctly, your opponent takes slightly more damage than usual and the action pauses for a brief second. This feature is quite annoying as it disrupts the overall ''flow'' and momentum of the game.
Throws are now performed by pressing any two punch or kick buttons when you are close to your opponent. However, your character will now go into a missed throw animation when they are outside of throwing range. Just think of it as an extra taunt, as most characters look incredibly goofy in their missed throw animation (especially Blanka and M.Bison). It just comes off looking really cheesy and serves no real purpose at all. At least in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike you could get different combinations depending on which direction you entered, but in Zero 3, you get the same result regardless. There was really was no point in altering the throwing commands, but Capcom is trying to pound the idea into your head that this is a new game, and to get their point across, they've thrown out what works and made illogical changes out of spite. Absolutely craptacular.
What is different is the ISM's. The main gig that makes this game absolutely no fun is fighting in random styles where half the time one ISM is all you need while the rest are just eck...
X-ism is the SF2 crap (for everyone who hates the alpha ways)
A-ism is the Alpha ways (in what arrogant pro players call the "scurb" style)
V-ism is the one ism that makes this game unbalanced. As it completely dominates any chance another player of a different ism has at actually WINNING a match. It takes the custom combos from the previous game and allows you to move, giving you more edge on wiping the floor with people. This becomes a tedious factor as many players get stuck using akuma or any multi-hitting/flying characters and goes straight for V-ism. This makes the game become a one sided deal of fun for one and frustrational for the other. infinite chains of combos await anyone who goes against V-isms as that ultimately becomes the only one people will use. Naturally, with the Shotos like Akuma and Ken being so combo-happy in the first place, V-ISM gives them a tremendous advantage. Sadly, this has the unfortunate effect of turning most SFA matches into Shotokan gong shows with Akuma wiping the floor with everyone's ass.
Additionally, certain moves are exclusive to certain isms, and certain isms may change the function and appearance of a certain move. Sagat's 7-hit ''tiger blow'' changes to the 1 or 2-hit ''tiger uppercut'' for the X-ism. While interesting, it feels more of a gimmick than it does a major uplift to the SFA lineage, especially considering that the game relies on the same sound and graphics as games one and two. Certain Isms can be abused, as stated above, V-ism Akuma seems to be a major fan-favorite. Then again, Akuma is such a one-dimensional character that I'm really not that shocked and angered by his repeat usage anymore.
The computer is a pretty capable opponent, and only against some characters will it result to irritating tactics (Akuma, Bison, Ken, etc). Capcom has left the ''cheese'' of certain characters very much intact, and there's less you can do to get out of it with the Alpha counters taken from some of the isms. In the same thought, the computer M. Bison has typical LBS, or Last-boss-syndrome, where someone thought that making him cheaper and more powerful would be a better alternative to a better opponent. Computer Bison has a special move capable of destroying 75 percent of your life, no matter who you are. It might not be so bad if computer Bison didn't pull it off at what seemed to be impossible times, even impossible for a human opponent given the command.
Moreover, certain characters have moves that are way more complicated than they need be, like Guile's ''charge down-back, down-forward, down-back, up-forward'' super move. Let's be honest, a double quarter-circle motion would be much more ideal and less frustrating. Other characters have move executions that really are not befitting of the end result, and the charge times on these moves are often too long to be useful. Although it was a complaint glossed over in Alpha 1 and 2, the game hasn't done anything to improve them after all this time.
Perhaps I'm comparing it to competitors again, but a major downfall of SFA3 is the fact that most characters have a very tiny amount of moves. Take for example Ken, with a hadoken, shoryuken, hurricane kick, the shoryuu reppa special, and the shinryuuken special. Essentially, it's the same moves from SFA1, so nothing has been added. Really, when a game progresses to a sequel, I expect some changes to the character move repertoire. Most characters, even the new ones, have a whopping total of 3 moves, the most a character has that I've seen is 5. This is incredibly disappointing.
Given the new isms, it would have been nice if the A-isms would have been the characters and movesets we're used to from SFA2, but entirely new move sets for the V and X-isms. The fact that each character has only superficial details from ism to ism makes the game feel sloppy, and gives the player the impression that the SFA series is mired in stagnancy, which is not altogether a wrong assumption. If I wanted to go play SFA2, I'd pop it in my Saturn. Forgive me for being so blunt, but SFA3 doesn't bring nearly enough to the table for being the sequel to a ''more characters than the one before it'' game like SFA2. The problems that were obvious in SFA2 are screaming in SFA3, and overall there isn't nearly enough more that I can say to have Alpha 3 warrant a purchase if you own SFA2 like I do.
The game, when you don't have a full super bar, feels exactly like Alpha 2 only with more characters. SFA3 truly is one of those ''fighter-megamixes'' that seem all the rage these days. I think the goal of the game was to take every Super Street Fighter 2 fighter and put them into Street Fighter Alpha 2. Aside from that, the game is identical.
For being this far in the future of Street Fighter, SFA3 feels like it's shackled to a five-year old game, and isn't trying to break away as much as it should be. Sadly, several games beat Street Fighter Alpha 3 at its own game, surprising to me as SF2 was the pioneer of the fighting game genre.
Perhaps I'm asking to much, but the characters don't seem nearly as interesting or complex as they should be, in story, design, moves or otherwise. I only gravitated to about 3 characters in SFA3, and the rest felt either like nothing was different, or were just added for the sake of upping the character count. The new characters are really flat as characters, like a rival to Sakura, as well as all of the Super Street Fighter 2 characters, who I could honestly care less about. The moves are predictable, nothing else is being brought to the table, and the characters are boring and hackneyed to begin with. Ugh.
I had a lot of issues with it, but if you love games which only add a few gimmicks and characters, you'll feel right at home. This game is what SF2 championship edition is to SF2, it is not what Soul Calibur was to Soul Edge. I expected so much more from the gameplay, and all in all I liked SFA2 much better. This is not a good sign.
I've always felt that the decline of Street Fighter started after Super Street Fighter II Turbo had finished its run and Capcom, displaying their gross inability to count to three, released the first Street Fighter Alpha. SSF2T introduced the Super moves (and marked the start of the rot), but what SFA did was to totally pervert and distort them until they became ridiculously overpowered, invincible 20-hit combo moves that could be charged up in ten seconds or less. Further cheese was introduced with Street Fighter Alpha 2's Custom Combos and Alpha Counters, as well as their introduction of thoroughly asinine characters like Sakura. One would be forgiven for thinking that the final Alpha game, Street Fighter Alpha 3, would be nothing but more of the same.
If there have been any constants with the Street Fighter series, it's been Fireballs, Foot Sweeps, and Cheating AI. The former 2 refer to the bizarro-world in which Street Fighter takes place, where people can throw fireballs all day to their hearts content, and where Thrusting Foot Sweeps(TM) are in integral part of every form of martial arts there is. In fact, in this unreal world, most bouts involve two combatants sitting crouched ten feet away from each other, for fear that they will knocked on their ass by a Thrusting Foot Sweep(TM). Gameplay usually involves staying out of range of your opponents longest ranged attack, which nine times out of ten is, you guessed it, their Thrusting Foot Sweep(TM). Now, there's nothing inherently WRONG with this setup, as most game players just want to be entertained; realism be damned. However, after countless Street Fighter games and its rival's knock-offs, the whole gameplay feels like stale, old dinosaur that should have been put out to pasture years ago, and no amount of flashy, over-the-top super moves can disguise that fact. The last problem, that of the disgusting, unfair, blatantly playing-by-a-different-set-of-rules Artificial Intelligence, is really just the final insult.
The cheating AI. More specifically, the cheating AI that's been in every Street Fighter game since its inception and that Capcom has steadfastly refused to improve.
People who played Street Fighter 2 and its many iterations will remember how blatantly the CPU cheated. It could do M. Bison's Pyscho Crusher or Guile's Sonic Boom without having to charge back for two seconds. It would also read your controller inputs, so if you did a standing punch, the AI could counter with a Thrusting Foot Sweep (TM) before the first frame of animation was even drawn. Whilst in Street Fighter Alpha 3, the AI must now charge back for two seconds to do certain moves, it's sad to see how little the AI has progressed in other areas. I understand that AI programming is difficult (to put it mildly) but after seven years and a billion versions of Street Fighter 2, there's no excuse for the AI to be still this bad!
One thing you'll notice right away is that there is only one time when the AI will perform it's super moves. That time is the exact moment when you perform a move, and the AI can pull this off with such consistency that nine times out of ten you are the one who ends up eating a super. I am not talking about slow, easy-to-counter special moves, either; I've seen a CPU Ken pull a Shoryuu Reppa off my standing jab punch. Of course, it comes as no real surprise that the shotos are the once who seem to cheat the most. A human player might manage to pull this sort of thing off a few times out of sheer luck, but the AI has no problems doing it repeatedly and consistently. Block Ken's Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku and counter with a Thrusting Foot Sweep (TM), only to have the AI pull out Shinryuken the second you push the kick button. Skillfully manage to combo into a super, only to watch in frustrated astonishment as the CPU executes it's super one millisecond after yours, negating your super. Jump in the air at the same time as your CPU opponent, guess who's attack ALWAYS going to hit first no matter how early you time it? This blatant cheating is particularly infuriating when confronting the boss M. Bison, who possesses a super capable of depleting three quarters of your life, and where continuing means you must start over from the first fight! It's an utterly disgusting and pathetic method of artificially increasing the difficulty, and if Capcom's AI programmers aren't begging for change at a bus stop by now, there is no justice in this world.
But don't kid yourself into thinking the AI is actually GOOD. Rather, aside from the cheating mentioned above, it's about as moronic as they get. CPU Honda and Birdie are content to simply sit around and eat fireballs all day, and Ken STILL likes to throw up Shoryukens that have absolutely no chance of hitting. I can't count the number of times the computer has simply sat there and let me perform Akuma's Raging Demon on them again and again, or sat in the corner and be Dragon Punched until the cows come home. Should you decide to camp out in the corner and not attack, the opponent will walk back forth, throwing out a few useless moves, unsure of what to do, because all it CAN do is wait for you to make a move and then counter at the last second.
This all reduces the single player experience to a series of infuriating losses and unsatisfying victories. One cannot hope to compete with the millisecond-timing of the CPU, so instead one must learn the patterns and the stupidities of the AI opponent and employ strategies that would never work on a human opponent. You can work on your skills and slowly, your number of wins against the CPU will rise, but there's no telling when when SFA3 will suddenly decide you've had a bit too much fun out of this quarter and kill you by pulling a Raging Demon on you the split second you hit the punch button. Playing against the computer will make you feel like Charlie Brown after Lucy moves the ball away; you just can't win, and yet you come back again and again because, after all, this is a Street Fighter game. I cannot really recommend a game whose single player experience will likely cause you to become enraged, develop super human strength a la The Incredible Hulk, and hurl the arcade machine over the counter, hopefully at the arcade operator who was insane enough to buy the thing in the first place. If Capcom were striving to create an instrument of psychological torture via the artificial intelligence, then they succeeded.
"The AI cheats, so what!" I hear you say. "Isn't it like that in all fighting games?", as if that excuses sloppy programming and obvious quarter-stealing ploys. In my opinion, cheating AI is utterly UNACCEPTABLE under any circumstances, and it's really quite sad that game companies (I'm looking at you, Capcom and SNK) continue to push obsolete arcade hardware that doesn't have the computational capability to do anything but cheat.
"But what about the 2 player?" you then protest. Surely that must be up to the usual level of excellence we've come to expect from Capcom?"
To sum up: Nothing special. At best.
Akuma went from being a super-secret character in Turbo, a hidden character in the first Alpha, and a full blown selectable in Alphas 2 and 3. And with every incarnation, he seems to grow stronger with no regard for balance. With SFA3 implementation of the "juggle" system whereby opponents can be kept in the air with a continous string of attacks, Akuma becomes even more jocularly overpowered. If you're not familiar with the character (I'm talking to all of three of you), then imagine a Ryu or Ken, only with multi-hitting dragon punches, the ability to teleport and to throw fireballs in the air, an almost un-counterable diving kick, a mid-air grab, and one of the most devastating supers in the game. That is, of course, before you switch to V-ISM which makes the character balance totally go to hell. SFA3 entices you with its plethora of different characters, each with a different of fighting style, then brutally rips that illusion to shreds once you realise that only a handful of those characters are worth playing.
Street Fighter Alpha does not so much "fail" as it flails its across the finish line, panting and wheezing in its old age hidden beneath its flashy surface. After seven years, the gameplay of Street Fighter just feels stale and tired. Look at SNK and its Samurai Shodown series for an example of adding a touch of innovation to the 2D fighter genre. But I'm sure as long as Capcom continues to churn out new versions of Street Fighter, people will continue to play them, even when Ryu and Ken become so old that they cannot throw a punch without their backs going out on them. But enough of this review, I have a karate tournament to go to. Surely no one there will be able to stand against my Thrusting Foot Sweeps (TM), will they?