Shadow Warrior 3: Definitive Edition(Playstation 5) Review

I originally bought this game on PS4 without even knowing there would be a PS5 version directly afterwards. It's been a few years and I wanted a quick game to finish before the year ends. As a whole, the game is still really good and it's my favorite Shadow Warrior game. There are things about it that don't hold up now mainly just playing on higher diffculties. Other than that, it's the very fun and enjoyable game I remember despite not being long since I first played.

There's a surprising amount of story in these Shadow Warrior reboot games. The story here does a decent job at keeping the action going. I was surprised they brought Hoji back when he was absent in the last game. He is my favorite character due to him being so insecure and stuck up and his banter with Lo Wang has an antagonistic friendship going on. One aspect I did like was him fearing losing god status in order to kill the Dragon. It was interesting seeing going as far to lie to Lo Wang in order to keep it since he doesn't want to get depowered and lose what makes him special.

Was weird seeing the post apocalypse suddenly happen after things being fine in the last game. Also how Lo Wang lost multiple times to the Dragon before the game starts but I'm forgiving here since I'm here for the gameplay.

The gameplay is of course the star of the show. SW3 borrows from both Doom 2016 and Titanfall 2 and both of them being inspired by the grand daddy of them all Quake at least when it comes to movement. There's also comparisons to be drawn to Doom Eternal like dashing and weapon switching. To be fair to SW3, the 2013 reboot game also had dashing before Doom Eternal did.

There is one major issue I want to bring up before I start decribing the gameplay is that playing on difficulties higher than normal at least for me is a massive pain. For one bosses take a lot long due to lowered player HP and health packs so far apart the arena meaning if you get hit, lose a lot of HP and die, you got to do it all again. The final boss in particular has tenticle swipes that can be hard to judge due to the first person perspective and erratic and hard to dodge moves. One aspect I did like about it was that it had a Prince of Persia The Two Thrones style finish where you need to platform up and land the finishing blow to kill it. There's only two bosses so it's no big deal.

What is a bigger deal are the Mogura Twins enemy. On normal? These guys are doable. On anything higher? They are infuriating due to the fact that they hit the player while on the ground in many parts of the various arenas and the only way to reliably damage them is wait for them to get out of the ground then fire a weapon like say the Basilisk. They take so much damage while doing so much to you that it makes hard mode infuriating. I did wish your grapple hook could pull them out of the ground like Kratos' blades can in older God of War with underground attack enemies.

It's a shame without them, hard mode can be intense and really feels like I'm scraping by.

With that out of the way, the game on normal is still very gratifying to play.

The guns are much more punchier and detailed gore effects on enemies.

One major thing I love is how reloading is handled. In any other shooter like this, reloading is a hinderance that you have to put up with...until you learn reload cancelling. By pressing sword swipe before the reload animation finishes, it will be done automatically. So close range combat especially with say the Riot Gun can be you unloading all 4 shots than sword slash and firing again afterwards.

There's also added uses for the weapons too. The Outlaw can be used for quick precision shots and I love activating traps with it since it's reliable for switches as well as platforming challenges. Sidekicks can be used for quickly gaining health back due to health drops when Shogai are hit. Crimson Bull is used for massive stun and area of effect damage. Shuirken Splitter is great for inflicting stunning on individual enemies. Basilisk is awesome for long range enemies and it's long time to fire reminds me of the Spartan Laser from Halo which is a weapon I love.

I love fighting the Hattori since it's awesome to shoot their shields down with the Basilisk, then stunning them with Shuriken Splitter and then finishing them off with the Riot Gun.

You also have different level finishing moves too. One on fodders, two on higher level enemies, three on the strongest. Sometimes the waves can overwhelm me that I use level 1 and 2 finishers just to get a quick turn of the tables on the enemies. You also get unique weapons depending on the finisher. My favorite is the Gassy Obaryion due to going to down with it's lasers.

The platforming is mostly fine but have bizarrely unpolished parts or can get too fast to get the bearings due to the first person perspective but it's fine. It's downtime in between combat encounters and does it's job.

Overall, SW3 is still great minus higher difficulties.