To further Alfonso’s point, a lot of the non-shotokan characters in the other street fighters are completely and utterly USELESS.  Compare the likes of Oro, Urien, Makoto, Hugo, Alex, Necro, and of Course YUN!!!  Yun destroys everything about the classic way to play and that’s what we call evolution.

There’s are a few simple reasons that Street Fighter 4 is the best:1.  Massively different characters are very very strong,  Jun, Chun-Li and Makoto are very very strong and require completely different strategies.  Necro, Hugo, Urien and Ken are also  pretty strong and require even more varied strategy.  This game took street Fighter out of the fireball uppercut world and moved to something that resembles true life, complete chaos.2.  The parrying system completely changed Street Fighter.  I don’t know why they removed in Street Fighter 4.  The parrying system means that at any moment, a different decision (requiring possibly a great deal of skill) can alter the match.   I was always against air blocking in some of the other street fighters but this is so much better.  This requires true skill.So basically it’s all about complexity to me.  In a recent match I was trying to jump attack someone and I couldn’t get past a few move.  I then realized that I could parry when the opponent tried to hit me out of the air.  Then he realized that so he altered his game-play.  I don’t know any other game that exists like that.  This is not even getting into the mix-ups of low attacks, mid attacks and throws.  It’s like chess where most street fighters rely 100% on attack patterns that are the most effective.To Capcom, this is the best Street Fighter ever!  I have played every single Street Fighter ever made and I’m at least a 9 out of 10 on most of them (meaning I can beat 9 out of 10 opponents).  This reviewer wants to do fireballs and uppercuts forever and wants that to still be a winning strategy.

Finally I must say the only reason I happenned on this page is to look at the character select screen because after every time a friend of mine and I play we randomly choose our character of choice for the next session.  He got Hugo and I got Ken (he hates fighting against Hugo so this should be interesting).

@BlackXino – The challenges also includes trials, trials are great, challenges is to show how much you are progressing, this is not a game that you should win by just looking at the manuals or anything, this game is more like a chess game, I learned the hard way too, I always changed stratetgies, when you see how is you challenge status is doing you’ll see how you’re really doing in the game, seriously my dude, I recommend you to get it, I used to suck at Sf but this game made me become a real good player for the competitive fighting system, parrying is still an issue for me, but I can defend myself with it!!!!

But for sure fams, give it a try, at least the Dreamcast version, I learned from both DC and arcade!!!!!!

I’m sorry to say this, but you don’t even know how to review a game, it’s like you don’t know jack about the game seriously, so why reviewing it???

your point 1- What you find so wrong with Sf characters looking like King of Fighters characters???? you want all of them to look like super heroes or fighters on steroids or something when they’re not???? I don’t care about how they look as long as they’re good in gameplay, and Sf3 provides real good characters!!!! Plus when it arrived on the Dreamcast, the PS2 wasn’t even on the market, and it came to the PS2 in the form of Sf anniversary collection!!!!

point 2- graphically, it aged well, so wtf are you talking about if you never played it back then, calling everything about the game looking ugly graphically when in reality is a 12 year old game!!!!

I recommend this game to any true SF fanatic, of course it ain’t the n00bis SF2s and Sf4s, what’s so bad about a game that requires a learning curve and skills like KOFs, and you should know well there 6 of those so called “unknown” and “ugly” characters you called in SF4!!!!!

You find the graphics ugly, ugly sound, ugly music, ugly characters, ugly everything, seriously, like everything about it is bad to you, you want everything to look pretty like rainbows and butterflies, no gamer plays graphics for your information my friend!!!!

Last but not least, this game is the 3rd game of Sf3 aka the New generation for a reason, so of course it needed new characters, new settings, new times… And you call some of the characters ugly beings when Blanka is another ugly one, I didn’t know Blanka was so pretty to you!!!!!!!

You gave your feelings, your opinion, not a review, so please leave the review to those who knows about fighting games, and I recommend you to give this game lots of tries this game deserves more to be played than SF2 and SF4 combined, I’m sorry  I know I wrote a lot, Lol, but you made me do it!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, this game wasn’t supposed to have any of the shotos nor other classics in the first place except Sean, there was a reason it was called New generation don’t you think???? they included ryu and ken cause they were mostly the main leads in the series, but the Sf3 series Alex is the lead character…… The SF3 saga has being the greatest along with Alpha 3, just because it didn’t have Honda, Blanka, Zangief or Dhalsim it gotta have a low score, fuck outta here, I take 3rd Strike over evrry fucking SF2 and SF4 anyday!!!!!!

thanks for your comment, As I mentioned, I appreciate that a lot of people will love this game, but I can only review it based on my own personal opinion.

To address a few of your points;

1) I don’t mind new characters, change can be a great thing. The problem is everyone they added looks like a generic SNK character. The ex/alpha games added new characters who looked and felt like SF characters. I don’t think they accomplished that with SF3.

2) Stretching the screen to get rid off pop-ups is hardly a solution. A simple option to turn them off would have been appreciated. I don’t want to stretch out an already ugly 4:3 game across my 50″ TV.

3) Speaking as a gamer, this is not a review I enjoyed writing. I actually wrote this review 2 weeks ago but I held off publishing it until I was certain that my opinion wasn’t going to change. This is clearly a well made game which a lot of people think fondly off, and I hate to be the jerk to stand up and say “actually it sucks” but that’s honestly how I feel.

Thank you for taking the time out to read the review and express your concerns, all feedback is greatly appreciated.

I never played SF3 Third Strike when it came out but I downloaded it on Dreamcast and I was really impressed by the game. I didn’t know how to parry nor advance in the game. But I enjoyed the game man, the animation sprite is the best I’ve ever seen in any 2D game. Look at that African girl with white (can’t remember her damn name now), when she does her victory pose, do you see how much animation frames she has? incredible, that makes her move so fluid!

I love the music man, Ryu’s theme is so badass especially when you wait for 2min, the music starts to kick ass and if you play in a real battle with another human , you know YOU MUST NOT lose! Because it really does get your blood pumping.

I tried the trial for this game. I like the upgraded menu design and new menu music which is better than the original. Graphics hasn’t improved much but I do like the scanline+arcade style. Also the ‘challenges’ doesn’t do a good job in teaching people how to do things right which is a failure. But so far I think I’ve learned how to parry correctly thanks to the Challenges and the parrying is so badass:)

Also I hate to insult people here but if you are going to complain about Capcom cutting out characters from SF2, then you must be a n00b. First of all, when you release a new fighting game, you should NOT recycle old garbage characters. What developers normally do is release a so called new fighting game, recycle all old characters, add 2/3 new characters and stage and call it a new game. Seriously that is an ‘expansion pack’ and NOT a new game!

Street Fighter Alpha manages to keep the core characters of SF and introduce massive new ones, just like what Street Fighter EX did. Street Fighter 3 did the same. If you want to play with those characters, you should go back to playing SF2!

Also the 90% fanbase you talk about ARE the tournament players!
Also you complain about the green screen annoyance pop up. You do know you can get rid of them by increasing the scale of the fighting screen.

I don’t think you are a real hardcore street fighter fan. Any hardcore street fighter fans only play SF for tournament game or proper battle. You only play SF for fun. I won’t buy SF3 because the game is only for the real serious fighters and takes a learning curve.

After I’ve perfected the first Parry Challenges, thinking how Diago did the parry against Justin wong makes me wonder that the guy must be insane!

This game is only for the hardcore! not for someone looking to play single player arcade.

Worst review i’ve seen in a long time.