Perhaps a quintessential Mega Man game if there was one. A lot of fine tuning is done on just about every gameplay aspect here, both from the previous two games and the formula of the franchise as a whole. The plot starts out pretty unconvincing, but has a handful of interesting turns especially towards the end. Weil's escape aside, it very much feels like a satisfying conclusion for the series. I kinda wonder where they'll go from here with 4, so maybe I should get around to that one soon.
On a note unrelated to Zero 3 but related to the series, a lot of my time spent playing these three games has been ruminating on the plot of the first one. There's some groundwork lying around for some very stark contrast with the Mega Man X storyline, but as it goes along it becomes a bit clear changes had to be made due to the unfortunate existence of X6 onwards. It's pretty obvious the X featured in Zero 1 wasn't originally intended to be a copy, and I think it would have turned out twice as interesting if it had stayed that way. His true self doesn't seem to contribute a lot to the Zero series anyway. Mega Man X6 has slightly soured other video games in its rampage of Sucking Ass. Like it gave radiation poisoning or something.
On a note unrelated to Zero 3 but related to the series, a lot of my time spent playing these three games has been ruminating on the plot of the first one. There's some groundwork lying around for some very stark contrast with the Mega Man X storyline, but as it goes along it becomes a bit clear changes had to be made due to the unfortunate existence of X6 onwards. It's pretty obvious the X featured in Zero 1 wasn't originally intended to be a copy, and I think it would have turned out twice as interesting if it had stayed that way. His true self doesn't seem to contribute a lot to the Zero series anyway. Mega Man X6 has slightly soured other video games in its rampage of Sucking Ass. Like it gave radiation poisoning or something.