ACA NEOGEO ART OF FIGHTING 3 - (Kasumi Todoh, Level 1 Difficulty, English Version)
0Art of Fighting 3: The Path of The Warrior (Ryuuko No Ken Gaiden in Japan) was developed by SNK and released in 1996.
The Invincible Dragon and the Raging Tiger have returned for a third and final time! This time, the story places a focus more on Robert Garcia than the Sakazaki family. The year is 1980. A half a year had passed since the first King of Fighters tournament. One day, Robert went for a drive in his car and accidentally hit a man that stole a woman's bag.
Retrieving the bag, the woman it belonged to approached Robert and noticed the pendant that he was wearing that was similar to the one she had - it turned out that the woman was Freia Lawrence, a childhood friend of his. Robert had told Freia that the pendant was given to him by a wealthy man (Wyler) when he was younger, and Freia announces that her father is dead.
Freia tells Robert that she needs to go Glasshill Valley, and that her father, being an archeologist, made a discovery in South America. Working with a biologist named Victoria and a man who is the father of Wyler, the experiments regarding the discovery turned out to be very dangerous. Victoria wanted to continue the studies, but Freia's father wanted to put a halt to it - and leaves with the data on the project. With the research in Freia's hands now, she vows to return it to Wyler.
Robert is intrigued and decides to help Freia on her journey, offering to be her bodyguard since he senses there still might be something troubling lurking in Glasshill Valley. They head off to Wyler's mansion in Mexico. Turns out that the research data is about an elixer that make a person exponentially grow in strength, and Wyler wants Freia to complete the research. Not if our heroes have anything to say about it, that's for damn sure!
Art of Fighting 3 heads in a slightly different direction this time around in terms of gameplay and overall presentation. A bit of a far cry from its previous title and it's ridiculous difficulty, AOF 3 introduces a smoother, somewhat floatier kind of gameplay based off of motion capture technology instead of using the traditional sprite work seen in most 2D fighting games. I believe this was truly the only fighting game in SNK's library that incorporated this, since games returned to the usual sprite-based graphics after this release.
The spirit gauge system since the beginning still remains, where you charge your spirit bar by holding down any attack button for a few seconds, and you can still taunt your opponent to drain their spirit. The higher your spirit gauge, the more powerful your special attacks will be, and the lower the gauge, the less effective they will be. A new mechanic is also introduced where all characters can perform a Super Death Blow, where if your opponent's life is down to around 10%, you can use a special technique where if it connects, can end the entire match regardless of how many matches you've won/lost, resulting in an Ultimate K.O.! So if you're careful, you immediately end the entire match from the first round. Reminds of me of how the Guilty Gear series later on in the years had the same mechanic, if I remember right.
Aside from Ryo and Robert, joining the roster are new characters ready to compete against our heroes. First we have Kasumi Todoh, daughter of Ryuhaku Todoh, who wants fight Ryo in order to avenge her father after his defeat back in AOF 1. Next we have Karman Cole, a personal assistant and employee of the Garcia family. He comes to Glasshill Valley to look for Robert after he carted off with Freia. Next there is Lenny Creston, a freelance journalist who learns about Wyler's search for Freia, and wants to get information regarding the research of the elixir in order to boost her career.
Next is Rody Birts, a bounty hunter and Lenny Creston's partner - whom she hired to help in finding Freia. Damn, Freia, aren't you a popular young lass! Next is Jun Fu-ha, a disciple of Eiji Kisaragi. He has been betrayed by Eiji for reasons unknown, and wants to get revenge. However, Jin wants to fight Ryo as a test of personal strength knowing that he is sworn enemy of Eiji. Lastly, there's Wang Koh-San, a portly Chinese artist that comes to Glasshill Valley and finds out about Wyler's elixir, and surmises that it might highly interested his friend Lee Pai Long. He has a pet pelican named Hoeh-Hoeh.
The two bosses are Sinclair, Wyler's bodyguard, who secretly wants to put a stop to Wyler's experiments, and of course, Wyler himself.
AOF 3 is an alright game - but I wouldn't put it at the top of my favorite games list. At least it's not as stupidly difficult as AOF 2, and while the motion capture graphics are unique, it doesn't have a real staying power compared to other SNK's fighting games. The best thing to come out of it was the introduction of Kasumi Todoh, who's one of my favorite female SNK characters, second after Yuri Sakazaki.
That's it for now! See you next game, gamers!