Battle Arena Toshinden 3 [PS1(Duckstation), 1996/1997]: Ellis Arcade playthrough (Normal)

The third main title in the Toshinden series and the only one that is exclusive to PS1, BAT3 tries to mix up the formula a bit in hopes of still profiting off the series despite it quickly losing steam by this point in time (Dead or Alive & most notably Soul Edge/Blade were out in '96 by the time Japan saw BAT3 in December: in fact, Soul Edge's PS1 port would release SIX DAYS before this game would). In this game due to the nature of the plot being a massive "Good vs. Evil Final Battle to see if the Big Bad can revive a massively destructive fighting god to ruin the planet" thing, the main Toshinden cast (plus some newcomers) basically are in a war with a completely new group [whom were a rival criminal group to BAT1/2's Secret Society] named "The Organization" (lead by final boss Abel, who sees the "good guys" as blood sacrifices to his god in question). The fighting engine gets tweaked again & despite this being considered the 3rd Toshinden tournament, the fights are much more direct in regards to being considered contests literally to the death between the two sides. This is even reflected in the default options: if you boot the game up fresh, rounds are set to only 1 and the time limit is actually set to Infinite from the jump: THIS is the reason why (of course, you can change it to be like standard or whatever rules so.... yeah whatever lol.)

Lore aside, the gameplay itself gets tweaked again from BAT2, cleaning up a reasonable amount of the collision, hitbox and pathfinding jank that the previous title had. Damage is MASSIVELY reeled in across the board in this game, though this is likely due to the fact that it was balanced to focus around the default 1-round deathmatch concept of the game. The combo system is also radically changed: freestyle normal chaining is now COMPLETELY gone in favor for dial-in short strings no longer than 5 hits max depending on character: in fact, it's impossible to chain specials and supers from normals anymore, meaning you now have to hit them raw every time you wanna go for them. Ring-outs are also completely gone (again due to the change in combat direction) which means that to advance you WILL need to win by KO. All of this combined means that BAT3's pacing is ironically the SLOWEST of the main trilogy (and is only beat, yet even MORE ironically, by it's sequel BAT4).

That being said there ARE some interesting things BAT3 plays with: the game now has a full juggle system & the walled in arenas actually have mechanics to them: you can have moves knock foes clean against the wall and the ceiling which you can combo off of if you're good enough (funny enough, ceiling ones can backfire on YOU if you just so happen to be directly UNDER the falling opponent while doing so...) & while limited, the game does have air recovery & wall recoveries, even going as far as having wall reversal moves if your timing is especially good.

Meter wise: on top of Desperation Moves and Overdrive Attacks a new mechanic called Soul Bombs is introduced here: a finite resource through the match [3 for 1 round, 4 for 2 rounds, 5 for 3 rounds] and when activated basically lets loose a canned super attack, having two variants (ground or air).

Toshinden 3 has the largest cast in the series... though that doesn't mean much considering half of the cast are moveset clones of the main cast. Arcade pits your character against the entire opposite roster of the lore, so Ellis indeed has some work to do.

0:00:00 Boot-Up, Game Intro & Main Menu
0:04:49 Character Select
0:03:44 STAGE 1: Schultz
0:11:11 STAGE 2: Tau
0:15:41 STAGE 3: Cuiling
0:19:48 STAGE 4: Toujin
0:25:51 STAGE 5: Rachael
0:28:55 STAGE 6: Judgment (Jason Voorhees ripoff)
0:33:23 STAGE 7: Leon
0:37:06 STAGE 8: Miss Til
0:41:45 STAGE 9: Adam
0:46:32 STAGE 10: Balga
0:50:37 STAGE 11: Zola (Catwoman Sofia be like)
0:54:42 STAGE 12: Ten Count (Probably the only clone anyone remotely knows about [outside of MAYBE Zola] since he's such a BLATANT reference to Michael Jackson ["YOU'VE BEEN HIT BY, YOU'VE BEEN STRUCK BY A SMOOTH CRIMINAL"])
0:58:56 STAGE 13: Vermilion (HEAVILY nerfed in this game compared to his BS incarnation in BAT2)
1:03:24 STAGE 14: Atahua [RIVAL/CLONE BOSS (honestly feels really weird that a Peruvian tribal kid would be Ellis' clone...)]
1:08:07 STAGE 15: Sho Shinjo [SUB-BOSS (the "kid-gloves' finally come off from Sho in this game as he really digs into the "Akuma" archetype in this game, having absurd movement speed and even a flat out teleporting/invisible Hishouzan attack)]
1:14:15 STAGE 16: Abel [FINAL BOSS (You know something's up when the final boss of a weapons based fighting game fights you bare-handed. He has some rather blatant references to Street Fighter's Ryu/Ken/Akuma in his moveset and while he doesn't look like much his Soul Bombs, Overdrives and Desperations are ABSURD, either in speed, range [FULL SCREEN AOEs!] or raw power. NEVER let this guy get momentum.)]
1:20:33 Ellis' Ending & Staff Roll