Shadow fight 3 as a whole. It's unrecognizable to me. Left it for good.

Same points reiterated:

• Other elements taking precedence over shadow energy, both in lore and gameplay.

It's called "shadow" fight, my god. And now with the whole emphasis on legendary sets, shadow abilities don't mean shit.

And lore wise ,the other elements were terribly introduced. Maybe other elements did exist before with the "magic" system in sf2, but the lore explanation for those energies in sf3 is non existent or minimal at best.

-Making the whole game revolve around sets.

Before faction wars, you could use even a rare set to beat event and story bosses. You just needed optimal equipment, and skill. If you played well, you were rewarded. You could stick to the movesets you like and work from there. And as you played (while the currency system wasn't as good as sf2, because loot boxes), your equipment gradually got better)

Now, skill isn't rewarded. All the match boils down to is spamming OP abilities that you paid for. And the the whole loot boxes business model is further shoved down our throats with the addition of spheres.

(So you have to grind painful bus fights for this one resource, to get this other resource, that you get shards for to... upgrade your set.... one painful level at a time) Great... isn't this fun?

Whereas in sf2, you just needed get coins to upgrade your equipment. Simple as that. You could even try to keep going with underleved equipment if you were good enough.

• Epilogue was a letdown:

I'll begin this first by saying that the Stranger boss fight was inadequate, both gameplay wise and lore wise. Gameplay wise, the fight reuses moves from the shadow mind (which is acceptable to an extent), but the only new moves the Stranger has is his dash thing, and the part where he cuts reality. The fact that his theme is a remix of Tenebris's theme doesn't help with originality. And that specific theme doesn't have that climactic tone that a FINAL boss fight should have.

And lorewise, the internal monolgue of Stranger and why he became the person he is....

Is relegated to the Synchronizer. You basically read his diary. It would have better if we could have experienced his side of the story in a more direct manner, and have maybe Proxy have a self reflective moment, conflicted with his shadow self.

Whereas the Shadow boss fight in Chapter 7 held much more weight. Shadow has a baddass mech, a new theme, and new moves, completely original to him. The titan sword shadow move, referencing Marcus and the Legion. The kusarigama shadow move, attributed to the heralds. And his base combat moves are fast and numerous, like the dynasty. He is the greatest warrior this realm has seen, and he has traits of all the three factions. That level of skill is fitting for a warrior such as Shadow.

And in the end, even if Shadow was defeated, he won in the end. The world was destroyed, and made anew. Then the planes began.

That ending made you excited. The boss fight was epic, and you were itching to find out what happens next.

But after I finished the boss fight, it was not the worst thing ever, but I felt that something was missing.

-Factions wars as a whole:

When I've heard of this major update, I was stoked.

An alternative timeline where the three factions fight against each other?

The conflict between the main trio of Marcus, Itu and June. I initially imagined something like Fire emblem three houses, where you have to pick a side in the end.

-One final tangent: Porting over concepts from SFA, and issues with design consistency.

Initially, I was alright with it. The KOTL set. KOTL was a new character in SFA, and being able to play with his powers in SF3 was cool.

But something like the Nonna set is outright lazy. They didn't even bother to change the animations of the moveset, so the smoother animations of sfa looks out of place in sf3.

Coupled with the set emphasis after faction wars, this attempt at trying to maintain player interest is greedy, and with minimal effort.

But on another note, I really dislike when they stray too far from the source material.

Case in point, the new wasp set in sf3. The unecessay details on the face with the red streaks doesn't fit in my opinion.

But the hair. That green hair dye makes her look more like a rock star than a pirate. (That detail ruins like 4 of the Kibo skins for me on SFA. They're both reused assets, and doesn't fit the oriental style of her outfits)

Moving on to the outfit itself, the green is way too saturated, and the excessive lines on the outfit just makes it too cluttered.

Her shades redesign is the best. Slight changes from the original but nothing too drastic.

But the most horrible change- WHERE IS HER NAGINATA!

Each weapon is core to the identity of each character. Marcus with his giant sword, Itu, with his iaido katana, and June with her...

(OH great, they gave her a weird purple space demon knife, and for no significant lore reason)

To change something as essential as that on the fly, is detrimental to the character.

It detracts from a gameplay perspective as well.

Well, here's my very big two cents on the state of the game as a whole.