Well, this is awkward. I just beat Kid Dracula a couple of days ago and basically talked about how it is just a mediocre Mega Man knockoff. I had done a second playthrough of Mega Man 2 not long before that, so I had that fresh in my head as I drew comparisons. Now here I am, having just finished Mega Man 3 for the first time, and some parts of it made me wish I was playing Kid Dracula again instead. Perhaps this is just early on-set fatigue with this series. After all, I still have 3 more NES games to go through and it's already getting stale. But it's not so much the repetitiveness of the gameplay, but more so how a lot of things here feel like a step down from MM2. Still, there are some obvious QOL improvements here such as:
- Images in the weapon selection menu so you're not scratching your head on what the initials stand for
- Free control of Rush Jet
- Weapon energy gets refilled after each stage
- Slide mechanic
But these are just minor things and don't make up for its other shortcomings. I feel like this is when they started running out of ideas. Weapons are worse than in MM2. They just aren't as interesting. Stages for the most part aren't as good, either. They're still fun, but the second half of the game is a somewhat miserable experience. A gauntlet of boss after boss that leaves you praying that the next one will be the last. Seriously, why the hell are there so many bosses? Most of them are re-used, no less. We even get a variant of the Yellow Devil from the first game. It doesn't help that this game turned up the difficulty dial way up again. Sure, maybe I got spoiled with MM2, but hey, I beat MM1 without save states. I don't mind a challenge, but did the devs really have to make you go through this many hoops in the second half?
This game is still decent for what it is, but it's oversaturation of boss fights in the second half makes it drag more than it should. And I am aware that the "Robot Masters Revisited" stage is a recurring thing, but then they should have cut the part where we had to revisit all the MM2 Robot Masters. If MM4 makes me revisit the MM3 robot masters, I will have a stroke.
- Images in the weapon selection menu so you're not scratching your head on what the initials stand for
- Free control of Rush Jet
- Weapon energy gets refilled after each stage
- Slide mechanic
But these are just minor things and don't make up for its other shortcomings. I feel like this is when they started running out of ideas. Weapons are worse than in MM2. They just aren't as interesting. Stages for the most part aren't as good, either. They're still fun, but the second half of the game is a somewhat miserable experience. A gauntlet of boss after boss that leaves you praying that the next one will be the last. Seriously, why the hell are there so many bosses? Most of them are re-used, no less. We even get a variant of the Yellow Devil from the first game. It doesn't help that this game turned up the difficulty dial way up again. Sure, maybe I got spoiled with MM2, but hey, I beat MM1 without save states. I don't mind a challenge, but did the devs really have to make you go through this many hoops in the second half?
This game is still decent for what it is, but it's oversaturation of boss fights in the second half makes it drag more than it should. And I am aware that the "Robot Masters Revisited" stage is a recurring thing, but then they should have cut the part where we had to revisit all the MM2 Robot Masters. If MM4 makes me revisit the MM3 robot masters, I will have a stroke.