“True peace can only be found in the cold darkness.”
Darkstalkers 3 or Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire as it is known in Japan was one of those fighting games I didn’t get around to playing until I picked up this one in a video games store for pretty cheap. I did know of the games before this though. I had a few EGM (or maybe GamePro?) magazines that had move list for the second Darkstalkers game. I also had some of the anime series on VHS tapes. One thing I liked about this game was, even though it’s a 2D fighting game, it wasn’t all a bunch of martial artists. It was legendary monsters with a werewolf, vampire, Frankenstein’s monster, sasquatch (or abominable snowman?), a merman, and several others. Darkstalkers while haven fallen off a lot of peoples radar still produced popular characters such as Demitri the vampire, and of course, Morrigan Aensland the succubus. Morrigan has been the series flagship character almost appearing in crossover games. Morrigan has been a mainstay of the Marvel vs Capcom series. She was also in the very excellent Capcom vs SNK 2 game. Morrigan was the character I thought would be my main when I picked up this game, but after playing it for a few weeks I realized I enjoyed playing as Lilith much, much more. Her Gloomy Puppet Show super is by far my favorite super in a game and one of my all-time top five favorite supers from fighting games! Darkstalkers 3 is a fun game that is easy to pick up in play if you want a fighting game with a unique look. I’d love for Capcom to come back and show this series some love. Maybe with them bringing back Mega Man they’ll look to this series again? Gameplay: 8/10 Sound/Music: 10/10 Story: 6/10 Graphics: 7/10 Replayability: Medium Overall: 31/40 [B]