Street Fighter III is easily one of the most influential and best-playing fighting games in existence.
It's not hard to understand why Street Fighter III creates such drastically different viewpoints: if you've never played it before you'd be forgiven for mistaking half of the roster as Darkstalkers rejects. While the majority of the cast is unrecognizable to fans of Street Fighter II and IV, the blow of unfamiliarity is lessened due to the appearance of quite a few Street Fighter III characters in Super Street Fighter IV. Their appearance undoubtedly proves that quite a few of those characters fit in nicely with the older ones, and hopefully that should make digesting Street Fighter III a little easier for people who've never played it before.
Perhaps the most controversial feature introduced in Street Fighter III is the parry system. The mostly brand new character roster is one thing but the addition of parries essentially completely alters the fundamentals of traditional Street Fighter gameplay. Let it be known that the parry system by nature is truly spectacular. It really is. The parries in Street Fighter III add so much depth to the gameplay that it's almost ludicrous. Literally any move in the entire game can be completely parried at no cost of health reduction to the player. You can use your most powerful move in the game: a super arts that does 20 hits, but if your opponent is good enough they can nullify the entire thing with correct timing. Parrying to this level functions more in theory rather than in practice, but you'd be surprised at the amount of things people are capable of doing (Evo Moment #37 comes to mind). That being said, parrying is also one of Street Fighter III's greatest shortcomings. It's such an in-depth and unforgiving system that it elevates Street Fighter III to a plateau that is nearly impossible for the average person to achieve. Most people simply just don't have the time or dedication to get that good at a fighting game and it makes Street Fighter III fill a unique niche that appeals strongly to the hardcore crowd.
Those who claim that Street Fighter III isn't a real Street Fighter game either haven't played the game or they're not looking closely enough. Perhaps back in the day it was easy to dismiss Street Fighter III as a bizarre mutation of the Street Fighter name, but with the advent of Street Fighter IV the influence of Street Fighter III is clear. EX-moves made their first appearance here and with their inclusion in Street Fighter IV they'd eventually go on to influence other fighting games such as Mortal Kombat. EX-moves are simply powered-up versions of normal special attacks that have unique properties that more often than not create much superior versions to their standard counterparts. All of this power comes at the cost of a portion of your super meter, so they must be used in specific circumstances lest you let the best opportunities to use them go to waste. Much like the other Street Fighter games you can simply forego EX-moves in favour of unleashing a devastating super arts attack. Each character can choose from a variety of three different super arts, and this option of choice would eventually make its return in Super Street Fighter IV with the ability to choose between two ultra combos before the start of a match.
3rd Strike includes your standard fighting game modes including arcade, training (there's also a parry training mode), trials, and online matchmaking in both ranked and player match variants. Arcade is your standard single-player romp through the game's AI, although one unique and highly enjoyable feature is that you can choose between two opponents after each match. It's especially nice because if you don't like a match up or if you find yourself continually getting your butt kicked by the same character you can go back and try your luck against the other character to see if you can pull out a win. The end of the arcade mode pits you against Gill: a seizure-inducing multi-coloured final boss that makes Seth from Street Fighter IV look like a wimp. Gill's clearly had an influence on Seth and anyone who has played both games will notice that they share some moves between each other. The most striking difference between the two is that Gill has the ability to resurrect himself after he's been KO'd if his super meter is full. This is blatantly cheap and is actually pretty frustrating despite the fact that you can attempt to knock him out of his resurrection so that he doesn't recover his entire health bar. If you're new to Street Fighter III then get ready to be robbed round after round by this sadistically designed boss character.
The trials mode is a nice addition to Online Edition, but the timing of these inputs is not indicated so if you've never pulled off the large attack strings that you're expected to do then expect to spend a lot of time aggravatingly trying to figure out the correct timing for these. It would have been nice if there was an option to have the game perform the sequence for you so you can see how it's supposed to be done; other fighting games have done this in the past so there's really no excuse not to have it included in every fighting game with a trials mode.
Online play for 3rd Strike has been surrounded by a lot of hype due to the inclusion of GGPO. If you have no idea what GGPO means, all you need to know is that it's a community-developed network code designed primarily for use with 2D fighting games. Its purpose is to preserve the integrity of your inputs and it serves its function nicely enough. It's not this mystical force that seemingly prevents laggy online gameplay from occurring though, and if you're matched up with someone with a bad connection you'll see some really strange things happen online. There were several times where I would hear the announcer say KO before the match had even ended, implicating that something else entirely different was actually happening in the game than what was happening on my screen. I even had one game where I lost by a small fraction of health in the third round, only to go back and watch the replay to find that I had apparently won the game in the second round. The replay was most likely bugged out, but the online play for 3rd Strike has definitely been somewhat of a mixed bag. Ranked matches seem to be plagued with issues that drop you from your opponent while you're searching for a game, and then you get kicked back to the main menu instead of the game looking for a new opponent. The replay uploading to YouTube also appears to not function correctly as of this writing for the Xbox 360 version, although having the option for replays in general is a really nice feature that should be implemented into every fighting game.
People who take their fighting games seriously will be happy to know that Online Edition comes with an option to change your control set-up at almost any time; by simply hitting the back or select button you can bring up a screen to quickly and easily alter all of the game's controls to your exact preference. As far as looks go 3rd Strike is the most beautifully animated sprite-based 2D fighter that I've ever seen in motion, although that may be partially because I spent 90% of my time playing watching Chun-Li's legs in all of their 2D glory. The fluidity of the characters and their motions is striking and it makes Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix look like it was made using stop-frame animation. There's a few different display options available that let you make the game look a little cleaner than its original presentation, and theirs also an arcade cabinet view which is a nice bonus for people who want to get their nostalgia on.
Online Edition also comes with a built-in achievement system that presents a number of challenges to you on the edges of the screen, assuming that you stick with the original 4:3 aspect ratio (although if you're playing on an SDTV you won't be able to see them at all). These are based on doing a variety of things such as performing a certain amount of EX-moves or super arts. The challenges work a lot like the challenge system in Final Fight: Double Impact, with the exception that when a challenge is completed, rather than unlocking something in the vault directly you're instead awarded vault points which can then be used to make individual purchases, so you can prioritize the things in the vault that you actually want.
If you're coming into Street Fighter III for the first time then you better bring an appreciation or at least a tolerance of rap/hip-hop music with you, as a lot of the soundtrack is primarily beat-driven with rap style vocals dispersed throughout. There's new menu and character select themes, but the original music can be purchased through the vault, though should you be looking for traditional game music to replace the new songs you will be disappointed to know that all that awaits you is additional rap music. For what it's worth, the new menu music has some of the same cheese-factor as Indestructible from Street Fighter IV, and eventually you may even end up liking it in that it's-so-silly-it's-awesome sort of way.
When you break it down to the fundamentals, Street Fighter III ends up being a lot of things. It's a shame that the online portion of this "Online Edition" seems to be somewhat broken right now, and it would have been nice to see some sort of online skill-based ranking system to better ease new blood into its highly intricate gameplay. All misgivings aside, Street Fighter III is still an incredibly in-depth fighting game that is unmistakably Street Fighter. Offline versus matches play as smooth as silk, and its strange cast of characters all have something unique to show you if you actually give them the chance. Street Fighter III may never catch on in a big way, but after seeing the way fighting games have evolved over the last ten years, it's obvious that it's one of the single-most influential games in the genre; it's worth checking out for that reason alone, even if it's just as a history lesson.