5/5 ★ – Nestunt's review of Tekken 3.

Fighting games are in a genre that is an exception for my tastes. I tend to absorb more out of games when their mechanics and systems serve and elevate the interaction and immersion in a world and its narratives. That’s why you will find many action-adventure and role-playing games at the top of this list. Fighting games, like I said, are the exception. A good fighting game has such instant-fun mechanics and another layer of mastery and discovery, alongside its focus on detailing as much of its ingrained limitations, like characters and backgrounds, that learning out to play a fighter is a narrative on its own. There is a myriad of games in this genre. Ones focus more on the elegance of the mechanics, like Street Fighter, others spend more time in giving depth to the fighters, like Mortal Kombat. But none reaches the robustness in both camps like Tekken. Tekken 3 is, in my opinion, the best example of this “volumetric” feel I speak of. This entry DID NOT look or feel like it belonged in the Playstation 1 era. The animation was so nuanced, the characters had a weighty presence, and the sound of each hit was populated with a more meaty realism than it had any right to be. Mortal Kombat 3 was violent and the characters looked more “realistic”. But Tekken 3 felt like the true game for adults.