Amazon.com Review

Given its immense popularity, not to mention first-rate pedigree, it'snot surprising that Street Fighter EX3 is among the first PlayStation2titles. After the relative success of the first game for the originalPlayStation (PSX) and the disaster of the second, it'll be interesting to seehow long-term fans of the series take to yet another 3-D brawler with theStreet Fighter moniker. Even with classic characters--like Sagat, Blanka,Ken, and (of course) Ryu--back to duke it out, this might be one horse that'sbeen beaten to death.

In Street Fighter EX3, players will be able to take advantage of a newsystem that allows character switching at any time throughout the battle. Notonly will you be able to swap at will, but your dynamic duo also will havedouble-teaming tag combos to enhance an opponent's agony. This means that gamerswill face three other opponents, and have four incredibly detailed fightersbattling it out on screen at any one time in the ultimate handicap match. Takethem out, and one might ask to join as your sidekick. Form a stable of four, andall of you can take your turn kicking Bison's tail, as well as that of any ofthe other famous Street Fighter characters in the game.

The control is predictable, but that's what fans want... nay, crave. Supercombos, dizzies, and a number of other staple Street Fighter combos arehere and look incredible. Lighting effects are much more mature: the animatedsparks fly, and the pyrotechnics flame up all over the place. Character modelshave come a long way since the days of the first blocky Street Fighter EXgame. Although they still lack necks, these brawlers are seamless and welldefined. Their victorious poses rival any graphics that previously have beenseen on a console.

Not everything is peaches 'n' cream with EX3, however. The endings of theEX series always have been a bit lacking: all you get in EX3 is afrozen frame with text; then, while the credits roll, a little consolationprize: over 10 enemies onscreen at once, all wanting to put the boots to you.This isn't the "true" ending we'd hoped for, but it's a nice gesture (and itshows off the system's power).

Capcom is doing everything it can to make Street Fighter EX3 the fightinggame of choice for the PlayStation2; but, with Namco's Tekken TagTournament set to hit the market at the same time, it'll be a tough sell.Still, this is a Street Fighter game, and that alone justifies at least aplay. --Todd Mowatt

Pros:

• Switch characters at any time during fighting
• Seamless and well-defined character models

• Predictable controls
• Lackluster ending

Reviews (50)

OK BUT...
GREAT CHARACTERS,GREAT GRAPHICS,GREAT SPECIAL MOVES,GREAT GAMEPLAY AND GREAT SET OF OPTIONS BUT NOT ENOUGH DEPTH IN THE GAME LIKE-NO STAGE SELECT,FEW AND BORING STAGES NO STORYLINEMOVIE ENDINGS,ONLY 6 STAGES TO FIGHT AND NOT TO BE TO PICKY,NO MILD VIOLENCE(LIKE A LITTLE BLOOD!)KEEPS IT FROM GETTING 5 STARS. BUT CAPCOM VS SNK 2 IS THE LAST GOOD STREET FIGHTER GAME(BESIDES 3RD STRIKE ON THE COLLECTION)TO COME OUT AND THIS IS 100% BETTER THAN THAT GARBAGE FIGHTING EVOLUTION AND IF CAPCOM WANTS TO GET BACK ON TOP IT WOULDN'T HURT TO RELEASE A 3-D RIVAL LIKE CAPCOM VS NAMCO WITH CHARACTERS FROM SOUL CALIBUR AND TEKKEN BUT JUST A SUGGESTION.

i am hungarian
How can I unlock Evil Ryu?
How can I earn Bronze medal in party, stage 2?

Hogy tudnám feloldani Evil Ryu-t egyszerûbben, medál nélkül?
Mit kell csinálni a bronzért a 2. pályán partiban?

Fun Fighter
The graphics are not spectacular but this is a GREAT, fun, fighting game with lots of variety. The graphics are ok though and when you learn some of the better combos it really becomes addictive.The game was widely over looked and should not have been.

VERY FUN!
SF EX3 is the one fighting game you must have. The graphics are
cool. Fighting the other character or teams is challenging. If you beat the game don't stop. Each time you beat it, you get a new character. There are nine hidden characters to earn or
unlock. And just so you know, there are two other characters:
M. Bison 2 and Evil Ryu. I won't tell you any tips, you should
play it if you haven't. Trust me, you'll love it!

Why 16 Mega-Bites?? It's Not That Advanced......
Street Fighter EX3 is probably one of the best fighting games,but why 16 megabites? that's like,almost the whole frickin' memory card!! (I Think?)
Anyway back to the GOOD parts,S.F.EX3 has really good graphics and good controls,not to mention very good music.My favorite is Ken's.
The game does not really have a story but who cares,It's still REALLY fun to fight all those losers at the end!(hahahaha!)
The thing is,I was exspecting more of a challenge.
I beat the game in less than one minute!(seriously!)
Bison(Boss)Is Eaisier then Skullo!!(Skullo Sucks!)
Vega,Ken,and Ryu are probably the only kick A$$ guys!!
I don't think they sell this game in the stores anymore,it was #2 of the first 3 games that were for P.S.2!!
the 1st game ever was The Bouncer,then #3 was Tekken Tag.
You should probably order it from here,'cause i don't think amazon.com lets you "RENT" stuff.
sincerly,
kenny ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

Summoner highlights all of the reasons that manypublishers steer clear of the role-playing game (RPG) genre. Most RPGs are heavyon text, light on adventure, and thus--for most gamers--boring.

The setup to Summoner's sweeping story line is so slow at the beginningthat anything good that comes later in the game is masked completely. As thestory begins, you play as Joseph, a young gent who has vowed never again to usehis summoning powers. This is because a demon he had summoned previously toprotect his village actually burned it down and killed everyone he loved. Thosewho stick through this heavy exposition will be rewarded with a twisting,nonlinear plot.

The environments are carefully designed, built, and textured to convey a grandsense of scale and color. The castle's courtyard, for example, is a great placeto visit--its booths and caravans are festooned with colorful cloths andcoverings. The place is abuzz with people, many of whom want to chat and shareinformation with you. The castle itself is immense, and dwarfs everything andeveryone around it. The game's graphical splendor is cut somewhat short,however, by draw-in problems that give it a terribly disjointed look.

Summoner's combat system is pretty cool. The idea is to chain yourattacks by pressing the controller's D-pad while your sword blow is beingdelivered. A little chain icon appears above your character's head and signalswhen to time your move. By chaining attacks, you can sustain your own offensiveaction, and make the attacks longer, more interesting, and a lot more fun.--Todd Mowatt

Pros:

• Capable texturing gives the game a good, clean look
• Miniquests help make for deep gameplay

• Severe draw-in problems give the game a terribly disjointed look

Reviews (96)

Great RPG story
I loved this game.Initially the graphics disappointed me but the game is heavy on mood and story and that is what makes a good RPG.RPGs are meant to have a certain length to them and this one delivers in spades.By the end you really feel as if you have taken an epic journey.It makes me wonder how much better games will be down the road when the technology catches up with the storylines and produces games that are as visually attractive as they are imaginative.This one is very imaginative but the graphics are primitive by todays gaming standards.That has generally been a problem with all RPGs.They take so much longer to produce than an FPS or adventure game that the graphics are never as good.

If you don't mind the graphics and like a true RPG this is your game!

The bad reviews are accurate, but so is mine
I thought this game was great, for the same reasons that other reviewers hated it.

I'm a father now, mid thirties, and frankly, I'm too old to judge a game by dazzling graphics.I don't care if this PS2 game has graphics that are at a PS1 level of quality.Although I must admit, the main character does look a bit like a corpse.:)So other reviewers can complain about dated graphics, but it doesn't bother me.

And other reviewers have made mention of the long, lesiurely plot, overly big areas to explore, and over-abundance of NPCs.Again, the reviewers are accurate -- those things do exist, and if they hate them, that's fine.But for me, a guy who likes games like BG1, BG2, and Arcanum, it was sooo nice.I get home late from work, I'm tired, and I don't want to play a game that requires lots of button mashing.I enable the options for auto-chaining my attacks, sit back, relax, and stroll through the game world, chatting with random characters, taking out a few bad guys, and working on my character's stats and inventory so that the next battle will be even better.

Of course, a few times the game's size did annoy me.I probably talked to each merchant in the Lenele market twice, just because I couldn't recall who was who.I looked online for a full complement of printable maps but never found anything.It would have helped me a lot to just have printed maps with each NPC flagged.But for some reason, that really didn't bug me that much.

What did bug me was the locked camera view in the cities.Out in the open, you can set the camera to high (overhead) view, or low (over the shoulder) view.But in the Lenele market, for example, the camera locks to high view.And since I couldn't pull the camera back far enough to see a lot of surrounding buildings, I had a horrible time getting oriented.If I had been able to use the low view, I could have at least used the horizon to know my general direction and place.This alone caused me to knock 1 star off the review.

Anyway, to conclude: Summoner has lots of characters, tons of dialogue, joinable NPCs with a little bit of party banter, plenty of stats and inventory management, lots of areas, many non-linear quests, and dated graphics with a (sometimes) annoying camera angle.And battles are very configurable -- you can button-mash with chained attacks and turn-based play, or you can do like me and set the battles to continuous mode with auto-chaining.Since I care less about graphics and more about story, this is a great game for me.

Really Strong Strenghts...Very Strong Weaknesses
Volition's Summoner is a game in which it is easy to get lost...lost in the unnecessarily huge locations, lost in the insane amount of side quests, lost in the insanely slow pace, or lost in in the insanely high amount of text and story detail that means little or nothing; or in my case, all of them.Those, teamed up with somewhat shallow characters, a horrible frame rate, and a small scene count make Summoner one that any and all impatient RPGamer's should probably steer clear of.

However, during the last 10-15 hours (of a 40 hour quest, mind you), the game, while somehow getting slower, got much more interesting and increased in intensity very sharply.Also, later on, the game made sense finally, and from what I hear, Summoner II plays off of this game's plot beautifully, and also, from what I hear, Summoner II is so good that it's actually worth playing through this one just so that you can understand it better!

The graphics are totally a mixed bag, and actually a contradiction.You see, if you play this game with the camera zoomed in all the way, not only will the spell effects, mainly the projectile and summon effects be much more impressive, but also the textures, when viewed from up close, actually surpass any textures I've seen on even the XBox, all except for the Cube's Resident Evil titles.However, in order to win any battles, or find your way through countless obstructions, you'll have to back the camera up all the way, turning the textures to practically single colors, and turning the 30FPS to about 12FPS or so.

The sound effects are not only mostly recycled from PSX RPG foley discs, but also, during the whole second half of the game, the sound effects are almost cut out, and you hear one every few seconds, and that's while in intense combat!It's as if the programmers weren't sure if the polygons, textures, music and sound effects were too much for the new PS2 system, so they reduced the sound effect quantities to make sure it'd make it.For whatever reason, they did it that way.The voice acting is also a mixed bag, ranging from horribly dead, to perfect, to horribly overdone.

The music on the other hand, while commonly really just "ambient" music, is sometimes quite grand...I can think of three examples: the Lanelle Sewers, which is a sort of epic creepy theme, one of the forest themes, which sounds much like the Lord of the Rings themes, and the World Theme, which is simply incredible.Overall, every time you hear music, it's either good or better, but commonly the "music" is just a sort of beat or random notes.

The gameplay is cool enough with an original battle system, based off the chain attack idea, only where you can keep the chains neverending until you win if you're good enough, but that's nearly impossible, and the interface is nice and clean, with several types of equippable armor peices, a great special skill/magic system, and a great level up system (except that each character will probably only level up about once every 30 min of action, and with all the non-action parts of the game, that could stretch out to less than once an hour).

All in all, Summoner is something that's rewarding if stuck out to the end, and has certain merit, but also has severe weaknesses.Let's break it down for the end.
Plot Movement/Revelations: 6/10, Storyline: 10/10, Characters: 5/10, Battle System: 7/10, Interface: 6/10, Music: 7/10, Sound Effects: 2/10, Dialogue: 7/10, Graphics: 4~8/10 (Distant~Close), Voice Acting: 5/10, Replay: 4/10.

Summoner
This is an awesome game.My daughter and I love it.I'm not a very good role model, because we are always at the computer.We have summoner 2 but were unable to find summoner until now.It was worth the wait!

Not Very pleased, at all
This game ... is very bad. 2 get 2 the point.
A. The graphics were awful, looked like something from early N64, not PS2
B. The story plot was bad also.
C. world was huge, you could easily get lost and that took any of the little fun out of the game.
and D. It was confusing, there were a lot of little mini-quests, but the problem was, even finding how to solve them.

Anyhoo, i could go on and on about how bad this game was. But if you want 2 figure it out 4 yourself, rent it, don't waste your money on this cheap piece of garbadge ... Read more

Reviews (23)

Fun, for about a week.
This is the sequel to one of my favorite Dreamcast games. There are new boxers featured and even some suprise celelbrity charecters such as Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Shaquille O'Neal. The graphics are nice and a little cartoony and the music is pretty standard. Voices in the game include Michale Buffer's "Let's Get Ready To Rumble" line and more standard voices ofr each charecter. The Arcade Mode is a fun knockout fest complete with ridiculous charecters and extremely realistic bungie cable physics. There's also tournament mode with training sessions which are little button tapping mini games that get kind of annoying but it's stil fun to build up your charecter and ot fight in scheduled matches. Multiplayer is great, only 2 people but its still quite a bit of fun. The game is a nice attempt for a sequel but it gets old really quick.

Decent boxing.
Hey, where else can you get in the ring with boxing gloves and beat the ... out of Michael Jackson?Enough said, now I know you want this game.So go get it!

FUN GAME
ready to rumble round 2 is awesom you should BUY it. You can be celebrities and many other people.

yeah
this game rules. if you buy any game get this one. yeah man yeah.

ready to rumble
it rules! I rented this game once and i just love it. I suggest that you kids out there should rent the game or buythe game. ... Read more

Reviews (82)

Great racing Game !
After reading all the reviews I wanted to let people know that this Racing game is great.I think most people dont like this game cause its not realistic, but I dont want games to be realistic either.I hardly like any new games, but this one is a great racing game. The graphich is ok, but the gameplay is great !! the last Grand Prix is almost impossible on the hardest levell ! You take Sunny Beach ,Green Field on the hardest level.

I recommend this if u liked the other Ridge Racer Games, Personally I loved this one and dont get the awful reviews this one has gotten, very unfair.

A total waste of time
I got this on the cheap thinking that it would be a decent racing game. I was wrong. I didn't know what to expect, but cars that handle EXTREMELY unrealistically, graphics that are just average in my eyes (compared to NFS 2 Hot pursuit and GT 3) and a general unexpected hardness in gameplay made me sorry I got this game. The cars are fake, which isn't too much of an issue but you have to make the fake cars good. If you're looking for a fun racing game with realistic cars, go for Need For Speed 2: Hot Pursuit, and if you want a good driving sim, go for Gran Turismo 3. Rent this if you must, but don't spend a lot of money for it.

Cool Launch Title
The ideal jaggerific racing expierience. Actualy, it's quite entertaining, and should not be overlooked, especialy by fans of the series.

O......K
When i first got this it was hard. Then i played it more and more, I used the slowest car and i beet the game in about 3-4 hours. The game is to short, when you beet it all you have are the time attacks and the races were you try to beet a fake computer guys(time attack).

And how the hell do you get medls!

Terrible game
I picked this up on sale... now I know why it was so cheap.Stick with the other racing games if you want to actually DRIVE a car.If, on the other hand, you want a game that doesn't even resemble racing, then by all means.The play control is absolutely terrible.I know that there is a so called style to the RR games, but this time it is really unrefined.The tracks are almost all the same, with very little variation.The announcer is perhaps even more annoying than the playcontrol, and the game takes forever to load, with many different confirmation screens to get through before actually racing.I thought the ability to design your own car down to the paint job was cool, but not enough.Oh yeah, and the girl on the box is really cute, but don't be fooled by that! ... Read more