Hello everyone. Today I want to talk about the iOS game Shadow Fight 3.
Unlike my review of Shadow Fight 2 which I reviewed the premium $20 Switch version which removed many of the freemium aspects of the iOS version, there is no premium version for Shadow Fight 3. So this playthrough was entirely the free iOS version with all of the annoyances that brings.
Let’s begin by talking about the core gameplay.
Like its predecessors, Shadow Fight 3 is a 2D fighting game. Historically, such genres have had a hard time working great on touchscreens due to the imprecision and lack of feedback with virtual sticks (this recently has become less of an issue as many if not most recent mobile games now supporting regular controllers). But the Shadow Fight games have controlled quite well on touchscreens.
The controls consist of a virtual stick at the bottom left of the touchscreen and 4 virtual buttons at the bottom right. You have a button for strikes, kicks, magic and ranged attacks. Combat consists of moving the stick in a direction and pressing a button. Unlike other fighting games that require multiple precise inputs (especially motion inputs) to output fast strings of attacks, the Shadow Fight games' combat consist of slower high commitment attacks that can't be cancelled. For example, right + kick has your character do a kick to the stomach. You can counter this by either blocking (releasing all controls) or attacking with a faster attack to hit them before the kick lands. Blocks can be countered by throwing an opponent by getting in close and pressing right/left + strike.
The result is a very intuitive and fun combat system. It's easy to pick up and get a sense of what individual moves do and how to use them. And the fun comes from reading your opponent's moves and responding accordingly in the heat of the moment and trying to combine all the different moves you have into combos. Additional variety comes from the equipment and gear characters have as different weapons have different moves. To quote a section from my old review of Shadow Fight 2 that still applies to SF3:
"SF2 was made initially for phones so its control scheme was designed to work for that (which is weird because SF1 was a simple Facebook game so it's weird how good the controls transfer over). You have 2 basic attack buttons, kick and weapon/hand, and a virtual stick. A direction + an attack button does a specific attack. For example, No direction + Kick does a simple roundhouse kick to the head. Up + kick does a jumping kick at the opponent's chest level. Down + kick is a sweep. Front + Kick is a push kick to the opponent's stomach. Back + Kick is a weaker but longer and faster kick to the stomach. Etc All these attacks can be somewhat comboed into each other. But the main thing is that each attack is quite deliberate and long and can't be cancelled. The main way to damage opponents is to attack them during an attack animation. Maybe they try to do a rather long attack with a sword and you try to avoid it so you can counter attack. You block automatically by not doing anything when you get attacked but you can throw blocking opponents by getting in close and pressing left or right + an attack.
So a typical match consists of all these balancing acts where players have to watch their opponents moves, counter or respond correctly and hopefully gets some really good hits in. Someone taking damage also tends to fall over quickly and moves to attack a grounded opponent are quite feeble. There are some other aspects to fights. Hitting an opponent's head does bonus damage and may even "shock" the opponent where they drop their weapons and have to fight with their fists instead which can be quite devastating as weapons are the most powerful attacking tools.
Speaking of which, there are different weapons combatants can use, each with their own pros, drawbacks, combos and intricacies. For example, double handed sword makes your weapon attacks very strong but very slow leaving you more open to counter attacks from faster attacks but also leave you without an intermediate attack as all you'd have are slow and strong attacks with your weapon, and fast and weak attacks with your kicks. Other weapons like knives give you great speed and combo potential but a very small range which can leave you vulnerable to throws. You can bring ranged weapons like shurikens or throwing knives in addition to your primary weapons. They work by doing a somewhat fast wind up animation and throwing a single item horizontally at the opponent which can't be blocked but can be rolled under which leaves the thrower vulnerable just before and after throwing. Most of the weapons do seem relatively balanced and I never found a pair that were just too amazing or too weak."
Shadow Fight 3 does make a few changes to how fights proceed compared to Shadow Fight 2.
The main change I noticed is the pace of fights. It's hard to explain but to use an analogy, fights in SF2 felt like they played out at 0.9x speed while SF3's fights feel like they play out at 1.2x speed. Back in SF2, when you hit or knock over an opponent, they appear to get i-frames as they fall and get up so it is much harder to punish an opponent repeatedly or get multiple hits in. This is best demonstrated when you hit an opponent in the air with a quick strike and try to follow up. They seem to fall straight down and phase through your attacks. Even trying to do a "down + kick" turns your regular sweep kick into a feeble stomp that's lucky to get an extra hit in. This results in fights having much more of a "back and forth" and feeling like " a traditional duel" with more pauses in the action as it's much harder to be on the aggressive and landing a multi-hit combo feels like quite the accomplishment. SF2 even has a "style" meter that fills as you land multiple hits in a row in quick succession as a way to gauge your aggressiveness and it's quite hard to fill that up.
In contrast, SF3 has it where when you hit an enemy in the air, instead of phasing through you to fall straight down, there seems to be actual physics where they tumble somewhat realistically based on your character's model. There are also no i-frames or any alterations to your controls to stop you from attacking. Meaning you can absolutely attack stunned or falling enemies resulting in a far more aggressive experience. Getting a 5 hit combo in SF2 felt like a real achievement. Getting a 5 combo in SF3 can be the norm as you hit an enemy with 1-2 attacks to knock them over then do a double sweep to hit them twice while falling followed by a final kick or strike (depending on your weapon). The game does try to compensate by having defenders automatically roll away quickly when they get hit while following as a way to have them recover quickly but with no i-frames, this isn't guaranteed to always help.
A more useful addition is that when knocked down, you can kick your opponent's knee from a grounded state which can do some damage and more importantly, interrupt their attack giving you the advantage. However, this kick is rather limited in SF3 as it can only be done when your character is knocked face down. Resulting in it being more situational (but still helpful whenever you can use it). This is something the next game, Shadow Fight 4: Arena significantly improves upon. In that game, you can grounded kick no matter where you get knocked down to and even remain lying down for longer if you want. This makes the combat more interesting as you can intentionally remain grounded to allow a follow up attack to pass over you and counter with a grounded kick. Or if you are the attacker, you can intentionally bait out a grounded kick from a grounded opponent and respond with a counter of your own leading to some nice mind games.
On top of that, I remember back in SF2, throws were a bit inconsistent to trigger. I would find myself right next to an enemy, spamming right + strike only to have my character do a few elbow strikes and then snap to do a throw or the AI could throw me instead. I could never predict with 100% certainty if my next input would result in a throw. Whereas in SF3, I felt I could predict if my next successful input would result in a throw around 90% of the time and I could do it more often and easily.
SF3 also expands the RPG elements from SF2. Gear can now change your movesets. Back in SF2, every character had the same base kicks and movement options with only their strikes changing depending on their weapon. SF3 has it where different gear gives you different base moves. For example, most leg armour has your down + kick just be a kick to the shin. If you want the SF2 style sweep for your down + kick, you need to specifically wear leg armour that lists that as the move. Equipping a rope dart as your main weapon changes your regular jump into a long rolling jump and your right + kick into into a cartwheel kick which can do nice headshot damage.
This also expands to magic. Back in SF2, Magic was a singular equippable piece of gear you could use after dealing/taking a certain amount of damage to fire a one off powerful attack that cannot be blocked (but can be dodged) that would then need to recharge. SF3 makes it that 4 of your gear pieces (weapon, legs, helmet and chestpiece) now each come with a magic power. And when your magic meter fills up, instead of only using one of your magic powers and it being expended, you now enter a "Shadow State" for a short time where you can use all of your magic attacks back to back around 3-6 times depending on their animations and cooldowns. It's not uncommon for when someone enters a Shadow State for them to basically become unstoppable and deal crazy amounts of damage by alternating magic attacks. Even if you manage dodge or interrupt 1 or 2 of these attacks, it can be quite difficult to successfully stall out the entire duration without getting hit once by a magic attack. And depending on the difficulty and situation, it can easily swing the match in favour of the magic user. Also, a sidenote, since your weapon contains a magic power, getting disarmed means you also lose that magic power for the round
Personally, I feel it would be more balanced if you could either only use 1 of your 4 Magic Attack if your meter was filled rather than enter a state where you can use up to 6, or if there was a Shadow State, the Magic Attacks drained more of your meter proportional to their strength. So you could do something like the "Spikey back power" to get an opponent off you and then try and go for a medium power magic attack, or risk it all in a single powerful magic attack like the "impale multiple ranged swords" move or try to chain 3-4 small weaker attacks.
Ranged Combat has also been tweaked. You can no longer infinitely throw shurikins or knives. You can now only throw around 3 at a time and then have to wait for them to recharge. This makes it harder to turtle up or to cheese fights. On top of that, you now have different kinds of ranged options. You can also use bows and guns for longer range at the cost of longer animations. Or use caltrops and traps to restrict your opponent's movement. Definitely glad you can't infinitely spam ranged attacks as these are annoying enough to deal with.
There are now way more perks and modifiers you can add to your gear and weapons and upgrade using specific currencies. In addition to the usual stuff SF2 had like "extra damage to headshots, regain x% of health on hits" etc, 2 new notable ones are a "charged" state where the weapon glows orange for a short time. I'm not entirely sure what triggers this but in this state, your next attack cannot be blocked and it is a guaranteed critical hit. I've found it is often impossible to successfully stall out this state so the best approach is to keep attacking and try and keep the opponent stunned or in a position where they respond with a weak kick or elbow attack which spends the charged state and hope they don't follow up with too devastating attacks. The second is an "armoured/invulnerable" state on certain attacks. This is signified by a white flash and aura around a character as they attack. In this state, the character's attack cannot be interrupted. They will still take any damage they receive but won't stagger or be stunned. This makes it harder to properly defend yourself. Trying to interrupt them with a quick kick or jab won't work and you'll take extra damage. Trying to roll or jump away can be too slow. You can block but that can leave you open and you still take a small % of the damage.
But yeah, all this results in SF3's matches feeling like you're always on the offensive. You're always attacking and there's very few, if any, moments of downtime like in SF2. SF2 had moments where both fighters would sometimes get up and slowly inch towards each other like a climactic scene from a movie. It would be tense waiting for the other to respond and trying to come up with a plan. It also felt easier to play defensive if you wanted. Waiting for your opponent to strike first and either try interrupting or baiting out attacks. But in SF3, I feel that approach isn't viable. Between the improved throws, charged states, armoured attacks, more frequent and powerful magic attacks, I found that waiting for the opponent to attack you first was often too risky. It was better to always be attacking in some way and using the block more sparingly.
Is it fun? Yeah. It is. That said, I do prefer the slower pace of SF2 or the approach of SF4 over 3 due to the improved grounded combat but in any case, the core gameplay and combat of SF3 is really good and fun. I enjoyed that.
But now lets talk about something I'm less positive on: the campaign.
One of Shadow Fight 2's biggest selling points was the pretty lengthy singleplayer campaign that consisted of multiple chapters. Each chapter required you to defeat the main bosses to progress. To get strong enough to do so, you often had tournaments, survival, side and challenge fights to do that gave you money and XP to upgrade your character. Granted, this wasn't the best approach, especially on iOS. The free iOS version had an energy system that limited you to a handful of fights at a time which you could pay premium currency to skip. The payouts from fights was often pitiful and you had to grind the survival mode to make up the difference which got repetitive. You could only upgrade your fighter so much before the next boss so you were always walking into a disadvantage. But despite all that, at least you could play SF2 offline and it was somewhat clear you could progress your own way. Like, It felt possible that you could eventually progress once you grinded enough and the tools to do so were in front of you. That if there was no energy system (like in the Switch version), you could progress albeit slowly but still consistently.
That isn't the case in SF3's campaign. Each chapter/sub-chapter still requires you complete the main boss fights to progress. However, upgrading your fighter is far more dependent on RNG and fewer resources. Unlike SF2, there are far fewer side fights/quests per chapter. Often consisting of 1-2 events at a time. It's possible to end up in a state where either even the side quests are too high levelled for you or you exhaust them all and there isn't anything else you can do to bridge the gap between the next main story fight. There are simply far fewer renewable fights you can grind.
Like, there are duels which pit you against an AI version of another player's character around the same power level as you. Doing a certain amount of these gets you a lootbox with resources. But you can only get 1 of these per day. Doing addition duels doesn't reward you.
The main way I made progress was by relying on the Free Seasonal Events and Battle Passes (this game has multiple Battle Passes running concurrently). Some of these often provided valuable resources. My progress, however, depended on the generosity of these events. Some events were quite stingy with rewards so I couldn't progress much and stopped playing for a while. Others were extremely generous and gave me enough to keep going for several chapters.
It doesn't help that match types that were default parts of SF2 have now been removed and are now a part of specific Seasonal Events. Survival, one of the best ways to grind back in SF2, is now only doable if there is an event for it going on.
On top of that, upgrading and resources are far more convoluted and annoying. In SF2, there were only 2 currencies, gold coins and red gems. Gold Coins were the standard currency that were used to unlock, purchase and upgrade most gear and equipment. Red Gems were the premium currency used to skip wait times, purchase and upgrade stuff quicker and easier and even buy exclusive Red Gem only gear. It wasn't the most consumer friendly but at least it was straightforward.
SF3 makes that system look downright heavenly.
For starters you cannot straight up buy or upgrade a consistent set of gear and equipment with Gold Coins or even Red Gems. You unlock new pieces of gear by collecting them as cards from activities and lootboxes. Finding duplicates of a card powers up that card and gives you some "Shadow Energy". Shadow Energy allows you to upgrade cards directly. The in-game shop shows a small rotating selection of cards every day. Some you can buy with Gold Coins and Some only with Red Gems. You can also pay some Red Gems to refresh the shop early. But there's no guarantee you even get the stuff you want or if the prices of the new stuff remain the same. So it's entirely possible to waste your Gold Coins and Red Gems here especially if you're unlucky with Gear Cards. I found it was often better to purchase the Card for Extra Shadow Currency from the shop. However, you cannot purchase extra Shadow Energy Cards directly. Not even with Premium Currency. You must either refresh the Shop with Red Gems to get another chance to purchase the card with Gold Coins, or buy Card Packs using Real Money as opening Card Packs always gives you a small pittance of Shadow Energy.
There are also additional currencies. Red, Blue and Yellow Crystals are needed to upgrade the perks/enchantments/magic on certain gear pieces. However, these are extremely rare and often only obtained from specific Battle Passes rather than through regular gameplay or purchasable. So you can only upgrade a small bit of these perks. One consolation is that as you are upgrading the perks themselves separately and not the gear themselves, it is possible to transfer these perks/enchantments to other compatible pieces of gear for free. But you won't know which gear comes with which perks/enchantments or what it's compatible with until you already have it unlocked and in your inventory. So it is totally possible to waste valuable resources purchasing a new helmet or leg armour that looks good but has perks/enchantments/magic worse than what you had before or doesn't fit your playstyle. I had a situation where I spent 75% of my Gold Coins to purchase a Leg Piece that had better stats than my old one, only to find I was playing worse with it since it didn't have the double sweep move and the Spin Magic Attack. I went back to my older weaker armour as a result.
Upgrading Gear with Shadow Energy is frustrating. Different tiers of gear take different amounts of Shadow Energy to Upgrade. But there is something of a "soft cap" where, until you beat the next major story boss, your upgrades will slow down while the cost keeps going up. Leaving you in an unfortunate situation where you either keep paying the extortionate upgrade fees for minor stat increases and hope it takes you close enough to beat the next boss and wasting so much resources, or try and beat them with your underleveled gear to save your resources for the next chapter where this cycle repeats.
There are also keys. Every day, you have daily challenges and completing these earns you different coloured keys. Blue Keys are the least valuable and open Blue Chests which don't give the best rewards. Red Keys are more valuable and unlock more valuable Red Chests. Yellow Keys and their corresponding Yellow Chests are the most valuable. However, certain challenges will not complete or unlock or even go away if you haven't paid for the premium Battle Passes. They will just sit there, taunting you forever with their basic "kick 4 times" labels.
There are also "seasonal currencies" just as ribbons often used for entry into certain seasonal events and rewards for completing said events or for things in the Battle Passes. One positive is that when these seasons end, they are often converted into Gold Coins automatically.
I don't need to tell you this. But this system is a frustrating mess. Having so much of the progression dependent on RNG cards and the resources from those cards, with no way to even bypass it with premium currency is absurd and disgusting. While I haven't spent any money on the game, it feels like even if you did, it wouldn't be worth it. At least with Shadow Fight 2, the Red Gems instantly and noticeably benefited you. You could get that new exclusive gear or skip the grind and upgrade what you already had.
With Shadow Fight 3, there were times, especially towards the end of the campaign where I felt I literally had nothing to do. I had done all the side fights, duels and season events I could that day as a free to play player. I simply did not have the stats for the main boss fights. I either had to wait 24 hours for another refresh, or pay premium currency to refresh or pay Real Money to get card packs or Battle Pass stuff. While SF3 doesn't have an energy system like SF2, this feels much worse.
You can't even cheese wins partway through. In SF2, it was possible to win via time out if you had more health remaining than your opponent. In SF3, in major boss fights, you will lose regardless of how much health you have compared to your opponent if time runs out. I made a great build focused on using quick attacks to stun opponents to keep them from attacking me as I was so underlevelled that even blocking hits took a good portion of my health. I discovered an exploit with the AI that as soon as they fill up their magic meter, they will enter the Shadow Form immediately and try using their magic abilities. So if I could trap them in enough of a loop, I could get them to waste their attacks and interrupt them in the process. It was risky and I'd often lose quickly once the boss got an opening to use one of their random abilities or got a charged attack or managed to get off a single magic attack. It often took multiple attempts for late game fights but I could usually make it through by doing enough damage across a round to barely scrape by. But eventually I would start running into Bosses that I simply could not do enough damage to completely deplete their health by the end of the round leading to a loss for me even if I played perfectly and didn't let the boss get a single hit in.
I quit playing once I somehow passed all that and made to the Shadow Beast Boss fights where he is permanently in Shadow Form, has unlimited Magic and can only be damaged through you using Magic Attacks. You gain Magic Energy by taking damage. A single hit would give me a decent amount of Magic Energy but tear through my Health Bar. Even when I could get off Magic Attacks, they did a pitiful amount of damage.
While I haven't played the same amount of SF4 as I have SF2 or 3, what limited time I did have, even it felt better and it was a PVP game. The "main campaign" there is just playing matches against other players one after the other. There are a few unlockable side modes against the AI with some story and custom rules, but the meat and potatoes is the basic PVP. And even though progression is still dependent on getting cards, it's significantly better because -1- it's just cards and Gold Coins. No Shadow Energy or anything like that -2- you only upgrade/unlock individual characters instead of gear or perks so progression is straightforward and -3- there's always something to do. While you may run into better players or players who have premium cards/characters, they aren't impossible to beat. You can even win via time out if you are good enough and -4- there are no hard or soft timers. You can play as much as you want.
The unfortunate thing is that Shadow Fight 3 does have the pieces to have a fun campaign. And in the early game and some of the Seasonal Events, it does do that as the fights are generally fair, upgrades are quick and easy to come by and swapping equipment isn't a hassle. If anything, it is really fun seeing all the new gear pieces and what they can do. Many of the Boss Fights and wacky challenge fights are really fun and unique in a singleplayer context. A boss that literally summons vines and turns the stage into an obstacle course where you jump over stage hazards or one that tries to balance on their sword to try jumping onto you are really cool spectacles and fun to fight.....provided you aren't crazy underlevelled.
I'll briefly mention the story. And to SF3's credit, it does make more of an effort to make a more fleshed out story compared to SF2. There is a "story so far" tab as well as bonus chapters where you play as the individual characters' backstories. All of which do reward you nicely. And later on, there's even fully animated cutscenes where you have to make a choice and stuff changes. The story even introduces factions and lore. There's time travel, magic, sci-fi, mind control, conspiracies, political intrigue, alternate dimensions etc. I imagine fans of the story and lore will probably enjoy it. I took a glance at the Wiki for SF3's story and it was quite massive.
The only problem is that it's told almost entirely through static text boxes in between major fights. I kinda stopped paying attention after a while and just fast forwarded through the text boxes as they often felt like filler. So when the fancy animated cutscene played and the major choice of the story happened, I was certainly caught off guard. I sadly won't give an extended breakdown and analysis of the story but I will say that if it was a full on and well produced anime or something, I'd probably watch it as the I do like the weird hodgepodge of ideas, themes and aesthetics the game has.
Finally, I want to talk about the presentation and graphics of the game. Unlike its predecessors, Shadow Fight 3 ditches the "silhouette" look in favour of traditional 3D graphics. So now you can see all the character models and stages in all their 3D glory. And they do look and are animated quite nice. The boomer in me wants to say SF2's silhouette look was still more striking and novel but I suppose the 3D look now allows characters, gear and customization to actually appear. Like, in SF2, there were some nice looking gear pieces, including a funny unicorn mask and lollipop weapon you could only buy via Red Gems but you couldn't even tell you were wearing that in-game. But for a more practical purpose, actually seeing what exact gear or equipment you are up against does tell you beforehand what perks and magic the opponent has. It does mean it's kinda odd for the game to call itself "Shadow Fight" since there aren't Shadows Fighting anymore. But if I recall correctly, The Shadow now refers to like, the magic energy and there is also a Shadow Force and your character is a decedent of SF2's protagonist (named "Shadow").
So yeah, would I recommend Shadow Fight 3? It is a large game taking up almost 3 GB. I'd say "yes"*. The core gameplay is fun so it's worth at least playing it for a while until you reach the mid-game when the game starts becoming more draconian. Stop playing then. If you want more of the gameplay, either play SF2 with its less intrusive design or SF4 with its really fun PVP.
Maybe I'll do a review of SF4 one day. Next up for me is probably Lego Batman 2 VITA. See you all then
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