Reviewed by C.K. Gan

As far as I am concerned, a lot of people have not play this installment of SS before. So, I'll try to explain the game as well in this review.

As you may have already known, this game is on SNK's latest machine---Hyper Neo Geo 64. Well, this is SNK's first attempt to make 3D game. It is a good looking game actually, but it just seems a bit too 'polygon'(blocky) compare to Namco's Soul Edge.

The gameplay may change a bit for a lot of us, due to the button changed(A=light B=heavy C=guard crush D=move around). There is also a stamina gauge(kind of like AOF's spirits gauge), if you move around more or do more special moves(or CD combos), the bar will go down, then you'll become tired(dizzy). But unlike AOF's spirits gauge, you can wait for your bar to recover slowly(don't worry, you don't have to do the ABC thing to charge). This is quite new of a feature in the SS series, I wouldn't say it is innovative or not innovation. It is just a bearable add on in the game. The only problem is moving around(D button) takes a lot of energy.

There are 11 characters(2 new characters) in the game, the least amount of characters in a SS game. The cast is Haohmaru, Genjuro, Ukyo, Nakoruru, Rimururu, Galford, Hanzo, Sogetsu, Kazuki, Shiki, Hanma.(Does anyone notice that all of the characters are Japanese, except for Galford. Although Galford once said, "I think I'm turning Japanese!"). The characters in their 3D form seems somewhat different from the 2D form. It seems like Genjuro has been working out(he appears to be so huge and musculine), Haohmaru has his baggy pants, Sogetsu has a long narrow sword, Nakoruru and Rimururu are too small and skinny, and it is a surprise to see that both Nakoruru and Ukyo have their hairs tied at the end, a ponytail.

The ending is text based again(lazy SNK staffs). I've only seen one ending so far. Because the bosses are hard. Normally, the fight among characters are easy, only the bosses seem to be hard. There are a sub boss(Deku or Dekuina) and a main boss(Yuga) to fight. Fate will decide which sub boss you fight, Deku(male boss who has the skills like Haohmaru's) or Dekuina(female boss who has the skills like Shiki's)

I didn't play this game as much, probably because it doesn't seem to be that fun to play and secondly because it costs more to play.($1 for this and $0.50 for SS4). Overall, it is still a very nice game to play, I like this game more than a lot of other Capcom games, that's because this is part of the Samurai Shodown series!