Description of game

Known as Gōketsuji Ichizoku in native Japan, Power Instinct 3: Groove on Fight is the fourth installment in a series of light-hearted fighting games produced by a Japanese software company, Atlus. The series features seven cannon and two spin-off games in total, with the plot revolving around the eponymous Gōketsuji clan, that every five years hosts a fighting tournament, to choose its next leader.

There are eleven playable characters present in the game, each coming with a set o unique combos and special attacks. These are performed by combining both button and joystick input. Combat is tag-team based with 2vs2 battles (kind of Capcom vs. Marvel). A team wins, once both opponent are down. Should the match end in a tie, when the match timer runs down to zero, the team with more remaining health points left wins.

To complete the game, the player has to fight with a choosen pair of characters through a series of rounds, where they will fight all the others, until there is essentially nobody else left. Then the grandfinale comes, with the previous clan leader as the final boss (who is also the only unplayable character throughout the whole game).

The controls in Power Instinct 3 are rather generic: an 8-way joystick and six buttons. Now, four of the buttons are arranged in two rows of two: two for punching (one for a lighter punch and the other for a harder and slower one) and two for kicking (same as before, one for lighter kick and one for harder, with the harder being also slower). The remaining two buttons, however, are new to the game—as the previous installments had only four buttons as described above. The first of these two new buttons is for the so called superblow—which is a kind of harder and slower version of the regular hard attack, be it a punch or kick. The second button is then for dodging, which allows you to quickly get behind your opponent and hit them from behind

Now, I would dare to say, Power Instinct 3 is a great entry-level fighting game. Really: it has an addictive gameplay and it’s fun to play, up to the level where it just gets you all hooked up in a matter of minutes. The characters are cleverly designed and everyone eventually finds their favorites. But most of all: unlike in Mortal Kombat and others, the overall difficulty of the game isn’t hitting the roof here.  The game is actually quite easy to manage for a new player and leaves only a little room left for frustration and anger coming from constant losing your matches.