I'll sum it up quickly as I can.THE GOOD THINGS ABOUT THIS GAME:>
It's a visually attractive 2D fighter, like all the Shodown games are;
It follows the Shodown tradition of very well-designed characters, many of whom are based upon actual Japanese historical figures;
Not only are nearly all the character voices present, the original arcade version's music has apparently been redone completely, using live instruments! There are even a couple tracks that weren't on the arcade soundtrack at all. It's very impressive, and it might be worth it to buy the game just for that, since a soundtrack for the PS version was never released, as far as I know...
You get all the bamboo slicing, cherry tree chopping, lantern breaking, torso halving and artery spraying you could want in a Samurai Shodown game.
THE BAD THINGS:
It's loading all the time, and there is no shortcut option to bypass these lengthy waits;
Many frames of animation are missing...it's most noticeable in the characters' pre- and post-fight animations, some of which have been abridged to the point of incomprehensibiliy;
The voices, although present, suffer from low sample rates and are very muffled;
Personally, I wish there were more characters. I think I was spoiled by Street Fighter Zero III.
IN A NUTSHELL:
The music rules. And hey, it's Samurai Shodown. But the loading times are dispicable. And Samurai Shodown III is no substitute for the original, which was never released on US Playstations.
