Lo Wang is back and better than ever. Get ready to enter the dragon in the newest entry of the Shadow Warrior franchise, Shadow Warrior 3. Developed by Flying Wild Hog and published by Devolver Digital, you’ll be able to rip and tear the demon scum plaguing the earth on PC, Xbox, and Playstation.

Set after the events of Shadow Warriors 2, Lo Wang has lost his mojo after failing to defeat the ancient dragon that they foolishly released from its prison. As one last ploy to save the Earth, his old employer-turned-nemesis, and now turned sidekick, has a plan to finally put down this ancient threat and restore peace to Earth. All the ragtag crew of anti-heroes needs is a little bit of magic, a demon egg, and a f***tonne of firepower. Set in a Neo-Feudal Japanese world, the game is split up among 8 stunning levels that smoothly transition into one another, with 7 fully upgradeable weapons to blast every living soul to pieces, and 9 brutal gore weapons to quickly and brutally level the battlefield.

Shadow Warriors 3 is a complete overhaul of the franchise. Featuring new guns, enemies, abilities, and mechanics. When traversing the lands, Lo Wang will stumble across 2 different types of upgrade orbs; white and purple. White upgrade orbs are used to add perks to your weapons and unlock devastating abilities for them. Purple orbs are used to upgrade and add perks to Lo Wang himself. The new enemies all have their different roles in battles, and these roles are defined extremely well, letting the player know which the immediate threats in a battle are.

Shadow Warriors 3 also introduces a new finishing move system that brings some intense brutality to the game. Upon a successful finisher, Lo Wang will rip a Gore Weapon from the petty demon which he can then use to aid his struggle. Some gore weapons are single-use, while others are a weapon Lo Wang can go absolutely insane with, crushing, dismembering, and shredding anything in his path. The extremely well-thought-out battle arenas also include Gore Tools, an environmental weapon that causes absolute mayhem when activated, but watch out that you don’t get caught up in the destruction yourself.

The game has a fancy new toy, and the developers want you to know this. The addition of the grappling hook adds to the fluid movement of battles. Being able to grapple and swing from a hook while laying a hail of bullets on the enemies below was extremely satisfying, however, in some arenas, I ended up swinging into a beam that wasn’t dodgeable, disrupting the flow and momentum of battle. The grappling hook felt like it was one of the most used tools in the game, whether it be in free-running segments or battle the availability of the grapple system added a whole new dynamic. There is however a downside to this, in some instances it felt like collision boxes were janky, and even though my character had visually made contact with a wall run or grapplehook, the game had other plans, and Lo Wang wouldn’t mantle a ledge or he would, in turn, get a boosted fling and overshoot his mark, causing him to fall to certain death.

Lo Wang has never been more humourous. From start to finish, whether it be his witty one-liners in battle or jokes through the cutscenes, I was in fits of laughter. Shadow Warrior 3 has some of the best jokes in a game to date, and the constant banter between the group when the sword-slashing finishes provided a dynamic that didn’t make me feel like I was mindlessly wandering around. The game in itself, however, as stated by the developers, is meant to have 8-10 hours of content, but I managed to finish it in 5.5 and that was while taking my time.

Set in a Neo-Feudal Japanese world, you can expect to see a lot of feudal-esque buildings and scenery which is fitting in a Ninja-styled game, although it’s more run and gun than a stealth-style ninja game. The game was stunningly put together with great level and battle arena designs, areas that didn’t feel the same time and time again. The game ran flawlessly as well, running an AMD 5800x, RTX3070TI, and 32GB ram, I tried to push my PC to the max. Setting the game at max settings on 1080p I achieved an average 250FPS and at 1440p an average 170FPS, and during the heat of battle with all the high-tiered enemies trying to eat me, I didn’t notice any massive frame issues or drops.

In these intense battles, the battle music was slightly drowned out by the hacking and slacking of enemies being brutally mutilated, but the music was an upbeat Fuedal Japanese-D&B fusion that fit the game perfectly. A different track plays while exploring the pathway to the next upcoming battle but in a similar style. The developers have replaced most of the original voice actors, with Alex Dobbrenko being the only one reprising his role as Hoji. The new voice actors, I thought, were a better fit for the game. They made the jokes not feel so cringy and added an emotional dynamic to the story. I can’t flaw the audio at all. The cutscenes, however, had a janky stutter when they started to play which was downright jarring.

Shadow Warrior 3 was extremely fun, from the Doom-like run and gun battle arenas to the story that was extremely easy to follow. The only thing that I can’t see being easily fixed post-build is the lack of content. If the game had the 8-10 hours as stated, it would have easily scored higher, however, after finishing the story in 5.5 hours I was sat there asking if that was it? Is there more? The story was great and compelling and the gameplay was downright fun, but the lack of content really dulled the samurai’s blade.

Written by: Bigfoot