I LOVE the first two Mega Man X games. The first game perfectly evolved the Mega Man formula with fast paced action and rewarding exploration. The second game had hidden boss fights that made me change how I play a Mega Man game, and challenged me with levels that required precision platforming. The more I think about the first two games, the more I appreciate them. The opposite happened with X3 for me. When I finished it I first thought "that was alright" but when I reflect on my time with the game, I start noticing more flaws.

I had a rough time getting over the difficulty curve at the start of the game. Enemies hit like a truck, and bosses hit like a meteor strike. So I went from level to level getting all the heart containers and armor upgrades I could get without boss weapons, and then would run out of lives at the boss fight. It wasn't a good way to start out the game. I don't mind harder Mega Man levels, but this isn't the answer. My small health bar didn't let me make enough mistakes to learn how to fight these bosses before I had to start the stage over because I ran out of lives.

Once I got over that rough start, I was having fun! Mega Man X3 wasn't doing anything new, but the gameplay was fun. Since these levels are harder, I found myself slowing down and taking things carefully. It felt like I was playing a Mega Man game instead of a Mega Man X game at times. I can see the slower action turning people off, but because I love the classic Mega Man games, I felt right at home. Although I would have had a better time with the difficulty if the boss weapons were useful in combat. They either had a slow rate of fire or wouldn't kill enemies faster than my buster. Triad Thunder was the only one I found useful since it was a shield and exploded into a huge attack.

After finally beating the 8 Mavericks, it was time to get the upgrades I missed before starting the Sigma stages. I had to do way more backtracking than I did for the previous two games. The way you unlock many of these upgrades are obtuse, I don't know how someone could figure these out without a guide. Mega Man games love not explaining anything to you, including one of the selling points of this game, finally being able to play as Zero! I didn't know I could switch to Zero until the game was almost over because it was hidden in the pause menu. I was disappointed I didn't know this at the start of the game, until I played as him. His hurtbox is huge, he doesn't get to use any of the armor upgrades or boss weapons, and X steps back in for any boss fight. At this point I am scratching my head wondering why the developers made all of these poor choices, and it only got worse from here.

The Sigma stages in X3 had everything I dislike in Mega Man games. Recycling bosses, spamming the same enemies over and over, cheap deaths, waiting, and a annoying final boss fight. All of the recycled content made these last levels a chore to get through. It made me realize the game literally only had 5 enemies to use in every level, this isn't a Gameboy game, they didn't need to save on memory, what happened? The boss rush in this game was particularly annoying because you had to watch a 15 second explosion every time you defeated a boss. The final boss fight ended with an escape sequence I was not prepared for, and so I died...and had to re-do the boss fight, which meant farming enemies to refill my sub tanks :) I don't understand why X3 didn't take notes from X1 on how to re-use bosses in a better way and how to make refilling sub tanks easy.

So yeah, the beginning and ending of X3 wasn't fun for me. I still don't hate this game, but since most of the experience wasn't as good as the previous two games, and because everything new about the game was obtuse, I can't give this a positive rating.

EDIT: I forgot to talk about the music! It was also disappointing for a Mega Man game! Having level themes that loop in 10 seconds is pretty bad