I was going to write a long review for this but honestly it just felt tiring to do and it felt like it was going nowhere. Shockman 3 will really only impress in the fact it has a translation of the game’s cutscenes as they were never translated just like the previous games. Sadly even for $6, it’s hard to really say it’s worth going through this one unless you were already a huge Shockman fan. While I do appreciate games on this system being more available, this game feels so unfinished that the game suffers a lot for it.
This is not only the easiest game in the series but it reeks of crunch time with a couple of bosses dying before their dialogue can even finish, to gimmicks that have zero substance to them. The level design is also thoughtless and feels mostly like straight lines. Even that plot that was exciting to see actually ended up being pretty run of the mill and also felt rushed. While it’s cool it’s dependent on who you play as, it doesn't make up for them being rather unimpressive. You can’t even fully enjoy them 24/7 as sometimes the cutscenes fail to load their audio. I’m not sure if that’s an issue with the OG release or just this new rerelease but it’s rather annoying to sometimes have to rewind to fix it.
This release does at least have some cheats though I doubt you’ll really be messing with any of them this time but I do appreciate them being there especially since one would be impossible to achieve due to the PCECD start screen being skipped in this release. This also has a gallery and scan of the manual and thankfully unlike the past two games rereleased, there are no crashes on the Switch version. You can also mess with video options like giving the color palette an awful look if you’re insane.
It’s hard to recommend this even for the small price. Like I said before, I appreciate when a group lets these forgotten games be seen in a new light but Shockman 3 just feels more like a what could have been entry in the series. It has some good ideas and at least there’s still co-op but I can’t see anyone really enjoying themselves with this game. The game is poorly balanced with your OP projectile and you’ll probably only die once or twice in your playthrough. Even on the hard difficulty you’ll barely struggle. While this probably could still be your favorite entry depending how you viewed the past two, this was a pretty depressing end for the series on PC Engine. I expect the publishers to eventually rerelease the final game that was on the Super Famicom so look out for that in the future.
This is not only the easiest game in the series but it reeks of crunch time with a couple of bosses dying before their dialogue can even finish, to gimmicks that have zero substance to them. The level design is also thoughtless and feels mostly like straight lines. Even that plot that was exciting to see actually ended up being pretty run of the mill and also felt rushed. While it’s cool it’s dependent on who you play as, it doesn't make up for them being rather unimpressive. You can’t even fully enjoy them 24/7 as sometimes the cutscenes fail to load their audio. I’m not sure if that’s an issue with the OG release or just this new rerelease but it’s rather annoying to sometimes have to rewind to fix it.
This release does at least have some cheats though I doubt you’ll really be messing with any of them this time but I do appreciate them being there especially since one would be impossible to achieve due to the PCECD start screen being skipped in this release. This also has a gallery and scan of the manual and thankfully unlike the past two games rereleased, there are no crashes on the Switch version. You can also mess with video options like giving the color palette an awful look if you’re insane.
It’s hard to recommend this even for the small price. Like I said before, I appreciate when a group lets these forgotten games be seen in a new light but Shockman 3 just feels more like a what could have been entry in the series. It has some good ideas and at least there’s still co-op but I can’t see anyone really enjoying themselves with this game. The game is poorly balanced with your OP projectile and you’ll probably only die once or twice in your playthrough. Even on the hard difficulty you’ll barely struggle. While this probably could still be your favorite entry depending how you viewed the past two, this was a pretty depressing end for the series on PC Engine. I expect the publishers to eventually rerelease the final game that was on the Super Famicom so look out for that in the future.