But these two titles had quite a different legacy. FF3 was replaced by Real Bout, which learned a lot of lessons from 3 but was its own thing, and then got iterated twice until it became RB2, one of SNK's all time greatest games.
Zankurô Musôken is the prettiest of all SS games, but it was also absurdly messy, and nothing of it remains in later titles. Amakusa Kôrin ditched almost everything and went into the opposite direction (an absolutely terrible one, adding automatic combos to SS). SS continued to experiment and, more often than not, fail, until Yuki cleaned up the mess the series had become with a game that, first and foremost, used SSS as a base, and then incorporated some further systems, but systems that mixed well with the SSS formula of slow, high damage, patient play.
It's good to experiment, but SNK spent very little time learning from these experiments. Zankurô or AoF3 have no legacy.
And it sucks, because when SNK allowed themselves to refine their ideas, that's when they made their classics. LB2 over LB1, SSS over SS, RB2, 98 over 97-96...
