Game Review: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

One of the most iconic and best Street Fighter game of all time, and the last entry in the Street Fighter III series is Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.

Street Fighter III, 3rd Strike is a 2D fighting game by Capcom, the game was released on the arcades on 1999 and was ported to the Sega Dreamcast, Sony Playstation 2, and Xbox between 2000 and 2010.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is the definitive and perfected version of Street Fighter III, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was released 2 years after it’s predecessor Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact and brought many changes to the game, the game introduced many gameplay, soundtrack, new characters, new stages, and quality of life changes to the game.

Here is a comparison of the arcade opening of the 2 games.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike brought back a classic character Chun-li on the roster and introduced other characters like Twelve, Remy, Q, and Makoto, making the game have a 20 playable character roster.

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Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike also brought new stages, endings, and new voice actors for certain characters, it also continues where the last game story left off. The game also changed its theme with some jazz, hip-hop, and techno music playing on the opening, character select screen, and on the stages bringing a fresh look and sound on the game.

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On the gameplay side they changed the inputs on how to do a air parry, throw, and leap attacks, while other characters received a gameplay balance changes, also 3rd Strike introduced guard parry or red parry where the player can perform a guard parry during a guard stun if the timing is right, and last but not the least the game introduced a judgment system that gives you rating on your performance after the game it ranges from F to S, it does not have much of an impact but it can really make you feel good when you get a high grade.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is one of the best Street Fighter game in the series because of the parry mechanic (a mechanic where you can negate the damage of an attack by performing a frame perfect input) and multiple super arts available for each characters. Because of this mechanics the gameplay is very complex and creative you can pull off insane combos and comebacks, and each characters playstyle can vary on what super art you chose, but since the game is very technical new players might have a long learning curve but most of the new mechanics are easy to do you just need to practice the right timing to pull it off.

While it can be daunting to new players once you learn the game reading the opponent or reacting to certain attacks can be rewarding because of this mechanics, and when watching high level games you can see this mechanics put in to use, I’ll give an example of how you can use those gameplay mechanics on a high level with one of the most iconic moments in gaming and one of the best comebacks in Street Fighter history.

All in all Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is one of the best fighting games out there until this day tournaments and matches are still being played till this day, it can teach you the fundamentals of how to play fighting games and its also a good example on how to refine a game without making it too-easy and un-fun to other players, since fighting games rewards players who makes the right decisions and good executions.

I give the game a 4.7/5 rating it’s definitely one of the games that you should try if you like the fighting game genre.

Reference Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_III:_3rd_Strike

https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Street_Fighter_III:_3rd_Strike