This is basically just Rayman 2 with better combat and pacing, not sure why no-one really talks about it.

The game does feel a bit short but it's not a big deal, I think it's around the same length as Rayman 2, just feels shorter because of the faster pacing, maybe?

Instead of continuing the dark tone of Rayman 2, 3's story is extremely self aware and full of 4th wall humour, which comes across as very early 2000s for better and the for worse.

I do enjoy this game's dialogue a lot but it does end up making me miss the more meloncholy dark fantasy vibe Rayman 2 had. If I'm still alive when Rayman 4 comes out I hope it has the fun dialogue and characterisations of Rayman 3 but still lets the story be serious and high-stakes outside of that to preserve the tone and atmosphere of Rayman 2.

Also I love this game's design for Rayman. The big 2D eyes work so well on Rayman and it makes him really expressive. I was pretty upset that Sparks of Hope completely abandoned this design. I'm hoping they do go back to something similar to this in the next Rayman project.

Minor complaint about the presentation but when Rayman throws his fists, the hands on his model don't dissapear, so he's basically just duplicating his hands and throwing them? Looks kinda visually confusing. Apparently the PC version fixes this but it's messed up on every other version. Strange.

Also don't play the HD version of this game, it's really buggy and breaks certain aspects of the game. It also completely removes the intro to the game that featured "Madder" by Groove Armada which is unforgivable

I don't know how to talk about Rayman 3.

Typically when I approach games, I attempt to keep an open mind. It's a difficult task, though I've always felt like I've done a fair job at keeping my biases up front. I don't have any personal grudges toward Rayman 3 — it certainly didn't kill my family. But I can't say I've enjoyed my time with it. And I genuinely dislike that.

There was once a toxic discussion I had with someone that contained a multitude of talking points, (of which I'll spare the details of as to not dredge up the past), but the key point for this review was with Rayman 3. The person in question praised Rayman 3 by putting down Rayman 2. In a way, it felt like they were overcompensating their defense of a game they liked by pre-emptively putting down the game that usually gets praised. Perhaps this happened in the past for them. Perhaps they were just in a foul mood. But this has unfortunately set up some expectations. This conversation has been running in the back of my mind as I played, and may have inadvertently caused some bias within me.

Granted, I have always heard Rayman 3 is a bit of a divisive game. Gaming reviewers over the years have always seemed to let it slip by them when talking about 3D platformers, and those that did delve into Rayman 3's idiosyncrasies never seemed to care too deeply about them. I went into Rayman 3 with these expectations as well, believing this to be a case where Rayman 3 will be different from Rayman 2, but I'll still walk away with enough positives to say that I've enjoyed the game.

It didn't end up like that.

What's struck me the most about Rayman 3 is the humor. From the moment you enter proper gameplay, the game hits you over the head with 4th wall breaks. Murphy is constantly talking about how much the game tutorial sucks, how you suck for not getting the red lums that you only just began to get a feel for the controls, and starts getting into an argument with the tutorial text. Gag after gag is played on top of one another to a sickening degree. After a while, Murphy suddenly drops a "See you in Rayman 4!" and then decides to leave abruptly. None of this made much sense and was a bad first impression, but hey, Murphy only seems to be in the tutorial, so I suppose it'll get better as I progress, keeping the strangeness to the character.

It did not do that. As it turned out, every single character was like this. Every enemy spouted out non-sequitor lines that weren't really funny as non-sequitors, jokes would be made that would only vaguely fit a scenario but made absolutely no sense given the set up of them being non-existent. A detrimental example is of a strong, scary enemy that you cannot damage. These enemies say lines like "I will eat your flesh", but then inserts lines like "You will bounce a bad check" over and over ad nausea. Some of them speak to one another, yelling that "my dad could beat up your dad" at an unfitting moment. These repetitive lines actually affect any mood or feeling you get from the gameplay set ups of these creatures. They're built up as intimidating, and being surrounded by them is a big deal, but they replace any semblance of emotion with a cheap, uninspired gag. There's no restraint, there's no subtly, there's no structure. It's a bad fever dream of a plot that barely connects to one another, making the events that happen genuinely disorientating to follow. I kept thinking about Eternam while playing this game. This may be some specific style of surreal humor that might be a cultural difference. Maybe it works better in the native language, I don't know. But for me personally, it quickly became obnoxious and irritating.

I would be more forgiving of this tone shift from whimsical and surreal to obnoxious and surreal if the gameplay was serviceable. Rayman 3 attempts to improve aspects of the original game, but falls flat in execution. Rayman controls much more stiffly than his Rayman 2 counterpart, and it's immediately noticeable. I believe this was meant to play into combat, given Rayman 3 is a more combat focused game. Combat is something that could have been improved on from Rayman 2 in an interesting manner, yet the game keeps the very basic system that Rayman 2 had, but adds on small layers of complexity through the suit power ups along with curving your fists. These suit power ups act as very basic lock and keys to levels, making these power ups feel more situational than versitile. This system wouldn't be as bad if not for the fact that the boss and enemy fights in this game are plentiful, poorly thought out, stretch on for far too long, and overstay their welcome after 30 seconds. Each boss you face feels like their purpose is to extend the game's length to reach about 8 hours of gameplay, and it's genuinely soul crushing. Each phase of a boss left me genuinely upset that I had to continue rotating through the same patterns 3 times just to end the phase. There's inklings of great ideas here, a boss fight revolving around chasing a guy through his mansion as he sets up traps for you is a clever idea, but the game is relentless. Rayman 3 has trouble letting go of ideas.

Much of the good about Rayman 3 comes with some caveats. The environmental design can look fantastic in some areas, but they lack a sort of cohesion due to the story and writing bouncing around like two cartoon characters fighting. Power ups I enjoy like the shoe racing go under utilized as a fun opportunity to race against yourself and are instead religated to threading a needle by hitting your other shoe, acting as yet another boss fight to stay put on your screen for far too long. The music in certain places is spectacular, but contains some sour patches that grate the ears. Friends of mine would get annoyed if I stayed in an area for too long.

I finished Rayman 3 within two sittings, and by the end of the first sitting, which was a little over halfway through the game, I was already about done. I continued because I genuinely hoped the game would become better, and while those moments did come and I found myself not being as irritated, those rough patches would crop back up soon after. For every small piece of game design I enjoyed, the three other aspects mentioned here would pop back in to greet me. I really wanted to like Rayman 3, but I just couldn't. Whether my biases clouded my enjoyment or not, I don't believe I like Rayman 3. I found the game to be a mediocre platformer at best, and an obnoxious reminder of 2000's era zany random humor at worst.

I want to come around on this game, and who knows! Maybe I will! But I reserve my doubt.

God, I really am a masochist. At least I'm not as bad as those fucking rats things in this game that beg to be hit again. Though, maybe I am if I'm that willing to replay this game eventually down the line.

A charming game made with passion. I really enjoyed it :) Soundtrack absolutely rocks, dialogues are funny, though i wish there were subtitles. I love the silly sound design and especially that orchestra hit that plays when your ability is over. A memorable world of cool-looking characters and gameplay variety. Various upgrades didn't felt forced and my favourite one is when you become a helicopter. I also enjoyed vertical levels a lot. Platforming feels smooth, and i like that they gave you a free camera option to look out for secrets or to look at pretty environment of this magical world, because often i just stopped and looked at how beautiful this game is.

I've never been so disappointed revisiting a game that was special to my childhood and one of the first games I remember playing in my life

Unfortunately this is a very bland 3D platformer in level design, with repetitive and boring combat - certain enemies are not fun to fight against or simply too tiring, and some are not intuitive at all to make things worse

The best thing about this is the well-made steampunk and trippy atmosphere with great soundtrack, but other than that, I don't see many qualities in this game that aren't aesthetic to be honest

Really bad discovery upon revisit, holy shit I wanna cry REEEEEEE

This is a game that I really wish was better.

Rayman 2 is one of the best platformers out there, so Rayman 3 feels like it should be better, right? In a lot of ways it actually kind of is. The visuals are incredible, the music is beautiful, and the environments have a lot of more variance and interesting things going on than the previous game's somewhat samey locales. The new enemies (particularly the Hoodlums) are very creative in design and fun to sock in the face. Rayman's new design is really fresh and he animates exceptionally well, with a lot of fluid movement and funny expressions. The gameplay feels really smooth (even smoother than before), and Rayman's finally got his projectile punch in 3D and it feels great! Curving punches left and right is also incredibly smart as it adds a layer of depth you don't find in most platformers with combat. A lot of great ideas are at play here, and shape potential for a killer sequel.

Unfortunately the game squanders a lot of these things by being really, really, really, really annoying. The enchanting tone the game feels like it wants to carry is talked over loudly by what seems to be the writers team trying to pull a weird French take on Shrek, where we make fun of everything we were just treating genuinely in the previous game. Everyone quips and thinks they're the funniest person ever (besides Ray himself, which the game gracefully excludes from most of that). Almost no characters from 2 return (goodbye forever Ly the Fairy....), leaving only Globox, the Teensies and Murfy (the characters you can laugh at). A lot of the dialogue is mean-spirited in a way that just feels uncomfortable, the game is insistent on breaking the fourth wall, and you hear far too many jokes about burps, farts and getting drunk on plum juice. The lore is, while present, an afterthought and the game is desperate to let you know how little it cares that you got invested. The overall vibe is a very boy's club frat house energy. And it feels kinda.. gross?

Those things have bothered me since I was a kid, but I (child who grew up in the edgy 2000s) was pretty used to it, and learned to ignore it to appreciate the amazing art, catchy music, creative worlds and stellar gameplay. Or at least, what I thought was stellar gameplay back then. Playing it now, it's got a lot of great moments, but the level design is so much less involved than 2 was. 3 cares way more about waves of enemies to fight and alternate gameplay gimmicks (hello 2003 game design, I missed you none!). You have to stop progressing repeatedly to clear out a whole room of it's enemies, which was usually only optional in Rayman 2. The game wants you to try these new powerups ("combat fatigues" as Rayman puts it), which are neat in concept but are used so often (and with such annoying jingles) that it bogs down the flow of the game by a lot. And yeah, like your average 2003 game, there is sudden genre roulette. You will drive vehicles and shoot from turrets at least once or twice.

There is so much less actual platforming than Rayman 2 that when you get to the Teensie hide-away level later in you'll be thrown off by how the game suddenly became a puzzle-platformer again. It's a welcome switch-up to suddenly play a whole world of jumping, sliding and climbing through areas that need your fists to break doors and activate switches, but it'll really throw you through a loop and make you notice how much they changed style between games. Bizarre how this game just kinda shed a lot of what made the previous one so compelling..

That said, I still think it's a pretty decent game. Definitely worth playing for the sake of good controls, art and music. You just may want to temper your expectations. And play it with the voices muted. Believe me, you don't want them.