The story switches focus from the Sakazakis family composed of Ryo and his accompany sister Yuri to their best Robert Garcia who has been a supporting character in previous games.

Robert disappears to search for an old childhood friend, Freia Lawrence, and he tracks her to Glasshill Valley, Mexico.

In Robert's case he is aware of Freia's issues and wishes to save her and Wyler on her own, becoming a foe for Ryo and other characters for taking the responsibility on his own.

[1] Desperation moves performed on weak enemies on the first round result on an Ultimate Knock Out which automatically ends the battle.

As a result, writer Akihiko Ureshino recalls fans believing Ryo and Yuri being original KOF character.

[3] The concept behind Art of Fighting 3 was to use motion capture, so instead of the company's own Artbox tool that had been used to develop MVS and Neo Geo games, SNK used Microsoft Windows.

In an interview with Famitsu, designer Nobuyuki Kuroki, who was involved in the development of the series, said that while the captured data lost its original form as it was refined, he was still able to achieve smooth pixel art.

[7] Art of Fighting 3 was ported to Neo Geo CD with the action with visual issues as a result of the sprites could not fit in the system's RAM.

[8] The Neo Geo trilogy was compiled in Art of Fighting Anthology (龍虎の拳 ～天・地・人～, Ryuuko no Ken Tenchijin) for the PlayStation 2, while the original game was also included as part of SNK Arcade Classics Vol.

They lambasted the game for its poor balance, with their biggest complaint being the new Ultra-Cool Attacks, since they are easy to execute, cannot be blocked, and deal a massive amount of damage.

[1] Nintendo Life scored it a 7 out of 10, praising the simplistic and faithful fighting game system but the changes that evoke 3D design.

There were mixed responses to the story mode for the lack of cutscenes but large amount of dialogues that explore each character.

[10] IGN and Eurogamer instead felt that Art of Fighting 3 was a massive improvement over the series with the latter praising the visuals used for characters sprites and victory scenes.

They found the new touches of the gameplay to be add replay value especially as the Deperation Moves become more strategic if the players want to win with their first round.

In regards to the unfinished comment, the issue the reviewer found was that only Ryo and Robert have proper endings while the rest playable characters seem to lack dialogues.