I'm not quite sure why, but although I've enjoyed the first two Mega Man games, it's taken me years to finally sit down and finish another one (apparently I played through Mega Man 2 almost eight years ago!). The next one up was the much-beloved Mega Man 3 which is apparently known for introducing the slide move, the robo-dog Rush, and Proto Man.
I must just not be a "mega" fan of the series, because although I liked the game all right in general, I wasn't that taken with it. The classic Mega Man formula is in full force, but I found that the trial and error involved in getting through the boss fights and figuring out the order to fight them just wasn't much fun this time around. The game is the longest yet, and fatigue was definitely setting in about halfway through. The boss fights seemed same-y to me; the weapons didn't seem that interesting or unique; and a lot of the levels themselves didn't seem very thematic. I have to confess that I ended up using save states at that point just so I could get through the game without the tedium of having to replay certain sections over and over again, mostly in order to get back to bosses that didn't have a checkpoint right before them.
I can see why many people count this as their favorite Mega Man game, but I guess part of the appeal is the higher difficulty and length of the game, which I just didn't have the patience for. I'm glad I've finally made a step into getting back into the Mega Man series, but I'm not sure if I'm going to continue with #4 next or skip to X, or check out the Game Boy games. We'll just have to see...
Rush through these Mega Man 3 links:
- The Mega Man Homepage has a lot of good info on the game including a password generator for the game (useful if, like me, you wrote a password down wrong :p)
- Complete playthrough by Coyote12101
- Review at NintendoLife
- Page at megaman.wikia.com
- PDF of the instruction manual, at replacementdocs.com
- Maps at GameFAQs
- The game placed 16th in IGN's top NES games list from a few years ago