Topic: Mega Man X3 is a bad game?

[Karasai♪]

I've heard from a couple people say that X3 was the worst (Until everyone played X6 and 7) in the series.

I dont personally hate it but here's a couple things I didnt like with the game:

The "ultra" two hit Buster shots are kinda useless, they come out really slow and the first shot is just terrible

Weapons are really plain and useless, like Acid Shot and Frost Shield

Game is hard. Not incredibly Ninja Gaiden hard, but you will die easily if you rush in screaming EAT X BUSTER BITCHES (which is exactly how I play the X series....)

Doppler Stages. Mainly the one with the "elevator"

[Hiryu]

X3 has always been a good game to me. The only gripe I have about it is the boss AI is a bit too simplistic for an X series game. They only have one or two attack patterns, and that's for all of the bosses.

I can't comment on the special weapons, really. I'm the guy who saves them until a boss fight.

Doppler stages are nothing like the Gate Labs.

[Blackhook]

It's not bad...just really bland. Stages all look and feel the same. Nes era bosses laugh at the boss AI. Weapons are useless. The chip capsules are useless once you know that the gold armor capsule exists.

[Splash]

Weapons are really plain and useless, like Acid Shot and Frost Shield

Bad examples. When you use Acid Burst on enemies, they usually drop Weapon Energy. So does Frost Shield, only it guarantees that you will get Life Enegry.
These weapons are useful.
Parasitic Bomb is somewhat awkward to use.

[Gaia]

Weapons are really plain and useless, like Acid Shot and Frost Shield

Not entirely good examples. Tornado Fang is great for getting through the boulders in Tunnel Rhino's stage, and cutting down the miniboss' lifespan in half in the first Doppler stage (the Rex walker) as it dishes out multipule hits due to the pitiful invincibility frames (if you can time it right, you CAN gun down Blizzard Buffalo with the X buster while getting everything in his stage on the first go)

I can say it's mediocre, but not the worst. Reusing the "White-Haired Old Guy tryig to Conquer World" plot does remind me of the classic games though, +1 for nostalgia.

They could've done better with the Nightmare Police though.

[Karasai♪]

since I just beat it Sigma's Kaiser form has a REALLY small hitbox (the head), which is the only reason why the fight is hard.

[Raijin]

Oh X3. How much I have to say about you.
Well, let me say that X3, while having a ton of bad design choices, manages to still be a solid, fun game. It isn't quite as good as X2 and not even close to X1.

Now then, level design. There are alot of empty areas in X3. Gravity Beetle for example, has a massive amount of flat, boring design with absolutely no enemies to stand in X's way in some areas. The overuse of elevators in X3 is another bad thing. What is the point of these? They are only breaking the pacing of the game. Thankfully, you can skip them, but if you don't have the dash upgrade, you'll have a much tougher time doing so.

Enemy AI. Most of the enemies pose no threat at all. The enemies that munch on dirt in Tiger's stage, the enemies that take a second or two to realize X is an enemy before realizing they should fire at him, and those absurdly pointless green barrier enemies. They could have done alot more to the enemy design, like speeding up some of the enemy behavior and removing the pointless enemies, or at least making them a threat.

Boss AI. This is absolutely a joke. First of all, the hitboxes for the bosses are mostly just huge squares. Some cases, taking damage from a boss will leave you wondering what exactly it was that hit you. Second, I would like to point out something. How many enemies do you think ram forward in order to damage X? Let's have a look here.

Hornet: When he tries to sting X.
Buffalo: When he isn't shooting ice at you, he's ramming. I'm sure everyone knows this guy can be exploited to constantly ram into the wall by jumping everytime he turns towards X.
Beetle: He starts glowing and rams forward.
Catfish: In his despiration phase, when he absorbs lightning, after a few seconds he will ram towards X.
Crawfish: In his despiration phase, he will turn around and very quickly ram towards X.
Rhyno: Is constantly ramming. Also, the miniboss in this stage constantly rams.
Tiger: In his despiration phase, he starts glowing and rushes towards X before leaping into the air.
Bit: Jumps into the air before ramming with his saber.
Byte: Shoots a gravity based projectile onto the wall before ramming.
Vile: In his ride armor he will ram towards X before punching. If you wait to fight him later in the game in the Doppler stages, he will constantly ram here as well.
Doppler: Goes into the air and uses this red goopy barrier thing before ramming towards X.

So there you have it. Obviously they could have put more effort into most of these bosses. Though, I guess to be fair, Hornet and Tiger can be overlooked. Hornets rushing to sting something makes sense and Tiger isn't really ramming into X like everyone else.

Weapons: This is a mixed bag. There are some good, useful weapons, and there are other weapons that can even manage to be completely useless.

Parasitic Bomb: Not too bad actually. You can use it on an enemy and just dash through them. Charged, it could be a bit sped up.
Frost Shield: Again, not too bad. It's extremely slow, but it guarentees Life energy dropping from enemies. Can't really say much about the charged ice.
Gravity Well: The most useless weapon in the entire series. You fire it and it absorbs small enemies. The same enemies that die with a single charged shot. It also takes an age before it actually absorbs them and usually you're already past the screen before anything happens. Charged is still a joke. There really isn't a point in using this at all.
Acid Burst: Pretty useful. It's a fairly strong weapon and can be aimed up or down so you can take out flying enemies or enemies waiting below. It also guarentees weapon energy dropping from an enemy. Charged, it's not that useful. It bounces around randomly and is kind of slow.
Triad Thunder: Pretty good. It can be used as a shield and in some crouded areas, it can be used to clear out enemies. You can also rotate it around, allowing it to be used a bit longer, and it can be rotated 3 times. Charged isn't really useful. No real point to charging this one either.
Spinning Blade: Good. It's strong and fires two projectiles, stacking damage with each other. Can be used to clear enemies very quickly. Charged isn't too good. If there are enemies around X, you can rotate it and take them out, but it's never really necessary. Additionally, this weapon can be used to replace Gravity Well as Hornet's weakness, allowing to kill him quicker.
Ray Splasher: Not very good. It's not very strong and not really practical to use in stages because it fires in random directions. It's good for a good deal of bosses though. Charged, it's worse.
Tornado Fang: Not bad. Not very practical in a stage and is pretty weak, but you can use it to slow some enemy animations, allowing you to quickly bypass them. Charged isn't really any different.

Music: Megagrunge X3. The instruments are awful. While the music isn't too bad overall, it always has boring, grunge guitars backing most of the songs. This OST would have sounded better on the Genesis for example, but even still, alot of the tracks could use more polish, especially the Password theme, Neon Tiger and Tunnel Rhyno's stage.

Well, that's about all I had to say. Sorry for the wall of text. I do hope people would be interested enough to read that.

[Karasai♪]

Also how come when I played Doppler's stage the stage was normal, but in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ems0sv_jB-g&feature=relmfu

It's all destroyed and stuff? What caused this?

[Satoryu]

That happens if you don't kill Vile in one of the 8 Maverick stages.

[Hypershell]

I don't think the game is all that much harder than other X-series games, and I actually do like the special weapons.  Ray Splasher and Frost Shield rank among my favorites.  Also loved the whole optionally-destructible-midbosses-affecting-later-stages shpiel that they came up with.

However, the whole arsenal and growing stronger shpiel being a big part of Mega Man for me, the fact that the buster "upgrade" sucks too damn hard makes the game quite a bit less enjoyable than its predecessors.  I actually enjoy unarmored runs more than 100%, and when *I* say that, something is wrong.

Most of the things that should have set it apart just didn't age very well.  The Ride Armor selection was a great idea, but their usable segments were short, and Chimera alone so overwhelmingly powerful that upgrading it held little point (beyond Frog's waterproofing, anyway).  Likewise, we got our first taste of playing as Zero, but only on a very limited scale, ultimately rendered obsolete by later games in the series.  And Hyper Cannon?  Awesome.  The fact that it works with the 2nd worst charged shot in the entire series?  Not so much.

Overall I'd say the game is comparable to X5 in terms of quality.  It's not without its unique charms, for sure, but on the whole it's a bit weaker and less consistent than what one would expect out of a quality X-series title.  I would definitely call it the worst SNES X game (granted, that's not saying much), and a generally inferior game to X4, Xtreme2, and maybe even X8.  Still has its moments, though.

[Blackhook]

Yeah, the midbosses affecting later stages thing was rather clever....and then X6 made it stupid...

[Flame]

The armor's sprite looked like a mess.

I love the X3 armor's design, Its my favorite armor design along with the X4 armor. But in game, it just looks bad.

also, yeah, it's grunge guitar obsession would have been far more at home on the Genesis.

[Soultrigger]

Growing up as a kid, X3 was probably the one I played the most until I get a PlayStation. This was largely due to the fact I didn't have X2 and couldn't appreciate X1 (bigger number = better, amirite?).

With that said, it's now a game I don't revisit often. The game is sluggish in comparison to X1 and X2, the novelty of Zero is gone, and 100% completing the game just takes way too long because of forced revisits: Tornado Fang + Triad Thunder + Boot Upgrade -> Buster Upgrade -> Heart Tank/Head Upgrade in Tunnel Rhino's stage is just stupid.

X1 is awesome for so many reasons, I'm not even going to bother. Excluding plot/themes/symbolism, I think X2 succeeds as a followup because it does pretty much everything right as a sequel:
-cool new upgrades that expand the gameplay
-good music (though obviously not up to par with X1)
-great stage designs that emphasize speed (ride chaser, escaping an eruption, chasing a submarine, etc.), though admittedly short
-interesting bosses with unique patterns and memorable styles

Now X3 on the other hand:
-Zero gets limited stage segments and dying is too punishing
-too many new upgrades, but none of them seem cool or particularly useful/limited
-eh music
-mediocre stage designs, good but not spectacular or memorable without repetition
-lame bosses that have insane damage output

I mean, X3 wasn't completely bad, it had its merits. But overall, it's just mediocre, and placed right next to the kings that are X1, X2, and X4, it just isn't up there. It tried to do what X2 did to X1 by expanding with new elements and more content, but this caused the game to be way too saturated with forced "power ups" and, as a result, lost its core gameplay experience because the devs couldn't effectively design the game around those power ups.

[zuschzero]

X3 is definitely not as good as X&X2, but calling it bad is rude.

The level design focuses more on enemy placement than on platforms & gimmicks. It's not a bad idea of having clever enemy placement, but I need my gimmicks instead.

The weapons aren't as bad, but certainly not the best. Spinning Blade is very good, both uncharged and charged. Ray Splasher is a good rapid-fire weapon, but the charged version sucks. Frost Shield is very powerful at close range, but there's not much point of charging it. Gravity Well is actually useful in like 2 or 3 occasions, but please don't charge it. Parasitic Bomb has some interesting features, it paralyzes the enemies and sometimes if another enemy shows up on the screen, the stunned one will homing to it and voila!

The music is... VERY GOOD!
There's not a single track I dislike, I don't care about repetitiveness because all of them sounds awesome. I'm shocked that people usually don't like the OST of this game.

The boss AI isn't that bad if you don't use weaknesses.

Personally, I think X3 is better than X4.

[Protoman Blues]

WAYYY.......TOO.....MANY.....GATES.

That is all.

[Da Dood]

I understand the X3 complaints, but I like it a lot. Something about the game being "in sync" with X1 and X2 as far as presentation and events. I just can't separate X3 from the other two.

As for my pros and cons:


· Weapons IMO are unique and fun to use. I like Frost Shield underwater. Ray Splasher and Spinning Blade are my trusty Buster substitutes
· Lots of cause-consequence stuff with optional bosses and enemy placement
· Upward dash and double air dash upgrades are extremely cool
· Z-Saber


· Takes forever to get some upgrades, it's like you're doing an item trade quest
· Level design is super lazy and empty (I don't mind this one much, but can't ignore it)
· Boss AI is hilarious for the most part
· The PS1/X Collection soundtrack, which sounds like a broken merry-go-round
· X-Buster upgrade sucks and is the main reason I usually run the game with only Foot upgrades and nothing else
· I wish Bit & Byte were completely optional like the X-Hunters

Sounds like I have more complaints than nice things to say about the game, but the few pros outweight the several cons. The Bit & Byte thing for example is just nitpicking.

[Karasai♪]

Things I liked that were in X1 and X3 was that Zero always helped make X stronger (Buster in x1 and saber in x3) although the buster in X1 didnt do much.... X1 in general was all about getting stronger, imo I think it was the only game where you NEEDED all the Hearts/Tanks and secret weapons (Z-Buster, Hadoken) to beat the game.

The Boss AI in X3 is pretty laughable, whenever you have their weakness, they're easy [parasitic bomb] to beat, like Rhino, Seahorse, and especially Hornet

Personally, I think X3 is better than X4.

I didnt like X4 that much, it's not a bad game, I just think the game is very...boring

[Flame]

Personally, I think X3 is better than X4.

I respectfully disagree with your opinion.

[Soultrigger]

X3 is definitely not as good as X&X2, but calling it bad is rude.

Excuse my poor choice of words. What I meant to say is I think X3 is good, but not great. There are plenty of good Mega Man games, so in that sense X3 doesn't stand out much.

Personally, I think X3 is better than X4.

Fresh graphical coat of paint, complete Zero mode, interesting/memorable design choices (bosses, stages, upgrades), anime cutscenes, new story direction, awesomely bad voice acting. It might be relatively one of the easiest X games, but I think anyone who's grown up with the X series starting from the beginning has fairly strong emotional ties with X4. And even without that, X4 reeks of creativity, ambition, direction, and actual budget. X3 is more of just an expansion of existing ideas.

Not saying X4 is flawless of course...the final stages are extremely bland. But what it does right, it does a pretty dang good job of.

The level design focuses more on enemy placement than on platforms & gimmicks. It's not a bad idea of having clever enemy placement, but I need my gimmicks instead.

X2 is gimmicks done right, because it's subtle. X8, on the other hand, is gimmicks gone wrong because they're way too apparent and take away from the actual core sidescrolling. Gimmicks are okay if they're not overpowering. That's my opinion, at least.

[Hypershell]

Yeah, the midbosses affecting later stages thing was rather clever....and then X6 made it stupid...

X6 merely exposes those of a weak will, albeit with a slight risk of traumatizing them.  Evidently it did a number on you, because no boss in the entire game affects any other stage.

The Boss AI in X3 is pretty laughable, whenever you have their weakness, they're easy [parasitic bomb] to beat, like Rhino, Seahorse, and especially Hornet

Can't really argue with that, although I will add, Tunnel Rhino is pretty damn easy even without his weakness.

[Sakura Leic]

X3 is decent but it is undeniably the most forgettable for veterans, but for beginners and people who don't know the game well some of the things are a guide dang it and if you're reckless in the beginning stages you'll die in 3 hits.  I think it shares similar problems with X6 in the way that they pack in way too many gimmicks though instead of being annoying most of it is not useful and you can go through the game just fine without them.  

I mean look at all the collectibles, armor, heart tanks, subtanks, ride armors, 1 of the chips or the golden armor, and the Z saber, honestly the only thing that's useful in this group is the body armor, air dash, heart tanks, sub tanks, the Z saber if you want to cheese Sigma and maybe the buster upgrade if you want a little extra power, emphasis on a little.  

Boss AI, as everyone pointed out, is hilarious, if I wasn't so awful at Megaman games I could probably beat them like no one's business.  I mean even the mid bosses and Sigma aren't any different but Sigma is the hardest fight in any of the X series since his first form fires so much stuff at you and his second is so huge and still fires so much stuff at you.

What boggles me is how people figure out everything without a guide, especially getting the Z-Saber.

It's a coincidence that this topic is here now since one of my subscriptions on Youtube just finished X3 and the commentary grouped pretty much sited the same reasons of why they didn't like X3.

WAYYY.......TOO.....MANY.....GATES.

That is all.

I also agree with that.

[Blackhook]

X6 merely exposes those of a weak will, albeit with a slight risk of traumatizing them.  Evidently it did a number on you, because no boss in the entire game affects any other stage.

Sorry, I counted the hidden bosses as sub bosses. The fact that you can skip half the game by beating High Max...

[Flame]

you can also skip half the game by Firing Enigma/launching the shuttle in X5.

Granted that doesnt involve bosses, but a potentially worse thing, which is just pressing a button. key word is you have to BEAT High max first, and without Turtloid's weapon I think it was, you cant. so X6 requires beating 2 bosses to reach the final stages, (3 if you count the intro boss) whereas X5 just 1 intro boss and the press of a few buttons as soon as you reach the stage select.

But I digress. this is an X3 thread.

[Blackhook]

Oh right...X5 was kind of stupid too

[Karasai♪]

What boggles me is how people figure out everything without a guide, especially getting the Z-Saber

i got the z saber on accident, I thought it would be cool for both Zero and X to do the Doppler stages, but then I got to the mini boss....