As the game's title suggests, this is the third-and believed to be final-entry in Psikyo's "Strikes 1945" series of military-themed bullet hell shooters. There's not much of a story here, just choose a selection of different craft based on actual military fighter planes and blow stuff up while trying to survive.
Compared to the other Psikyo games both in the series and on Steam already, one big thing that sets this one apart is the difficulty-in part because there are only 4 skill levels to choose from instead of 7 (the modes under "Easy" are gone), this one is very challenging. In fact, on Easy the difficulty is comparable to the early parts of many Cave bullet hell games, in other words not easy. Each ship again has its own unique weapons and attacks, which provides good variety and replay value. The game's graphics are once again arcade-perfect, although due to this being a 1999 game it shows it's age now and would have benefitted from some remastering for HD.. This soundtrack is the same as the arcade original which is good for what it is, as are the sound effects and controls. Like the other games this one also adds a "Score Attack" mode with online leaderboards as well as support for "TATE Mode" screen orientations.
Overall this is like all the other Psikyo games on here, a near-arcade-perfect port that belongs in all Psikyo Fans/Collectors' library, but it also will provide bullet hell fans with a good challenge. Another one worth buying, moreso since this appears to be the last Psikyo game the developer has coming to Steam for now.

(Edit: I stand corrected on the last sentence-they're bringing Samurai Aces 3-Sengoku Cannon to Steam in just under 2 weeks. Thank you devs and keep them coming!)

Consider this a borderline positive. Strikers 3 is a pretty, creative and exciting game to play 'for kicks'. It has beautiful graphics combining sharp pixel art with some subtle pre-renders, interesting enemy designs and compelling settings, and if you're just looking to credit through the game and enjoy the ride, it's perfect for that.

As a deeper gameplay experience, my thoughts on it are less positive. Even on Easy, the difficulty curve is too harsh, smacking like Gunbird 2 and Battle K-Road from the same devs of greed for credit-feeding or just plain being in a rush and not playtesting or tuning the game well. In this game outside of bosses, most enemies just fire directly at the player. On your initial stage this will seem fine, but the number of bullets on screen ramps up dramatically immediately after your first boss. This might still be approachable for casual to medium skill players were you in a very mobile ship, but you handle like a boat, especially when moving backwards or side to side. The game becomes too imbalanced too quickly and good runs just feel like luck rather than skill most of the time. To clarify on my experience level I have 1CC-No-Miss completed Nemesis, 1CC completed Mushihimesama, Crimzon Clover Evolution, Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu and perhaps most tellingly, Strikers 1 and Strikers 2. I can't see myself 1CCing this ever because of the dodgy gameplay balance and frequent unfair deaths.

Score-attacking is equally frustrating, higher scores being locked to a chaining system that relies on you picking up medals at the exact point that they shine in the sun in quick succession. When you're dodging or trying to dodge 52 on screen bullets at the same time, it's impossible to also pull of a complicated timed flight over these items, so expect to be continuously humiliated by the high-score ranking system, which is purely based on the size of your medal chain.

On top of this some parts of the game just plain don't work right. Multiple times I've been hit by bullets that should have been wiped off the screen during my bomb animation to end up cruelly losing a life when I timed my bomb perfectly, and the less said about the bomb lag the better. On top of this, frequently the game will let you pass through one set of bullets then have a wonky collision box for the next one, killing you off when you're clearly out in the open from any bullets. I've played the original arcade machine and these issues as well as the game balance problem are present there too, so this isn't a port issue.

Although as you can tell, this isn't my favourite shooter by a long shot, Zerodiv and City Connection have done a pretty good job of converting it. Tate mode is supported, controller support is solid, with it having supported my 360 pad and my WiFi Retrobit Saturn pad, and having excellent keyboard support. There are multiple options for display, game settings tweaking, modern graphics cards are comfortably supported and there's none of the hideous 'pulling back out to windowed then going back in just to open a menu' rubbish you see on some Japanese shmup ports like Bullet Soul, which is a much better game but a far worse port job. I would have preferred the Tate mode to support the entire height of my screen instead of having black bars at the bottom or wallpaper depending on preference, but otherwise, it's a great port of the game, even if the game is the hands-down worst shooter Psikyo produced.

Strikers 1945 III doesn't bring anything new to the table, but it's a very solid PSIKYO shoot'em up and my favorite from the 1945 saga. The port is very similar to all CITY CONNECTION releases, a correct one without anything special or mediocre.

• Beautiful 2D graphics.
  
• Various aircraft to select with very distinctive characteristics.
  
• Great boss designs.
  
• Great enemies designs.
  
• Different rutes each play.
  
• Sound FXs.

• Difficulty curve. After the second map, the difficulty spike is extremely aggressive.
  
• Bullet patterns and speed.
  
• Player hitbox.