Well, that was an experience.
Oh, my stars and garters.
I don't foresee myself playing X3 ever again.
Most of the stages were either boring or irritating or both, with many of them seeming to have the same riff playing through their theme for some reason. Boring Maverick designs for the most part. Bit being as nearly impossible as he was early in the game and then Byte being simple to take down near the end of it still irritates me. And as you already know, the final battle is just cheap garbage meant to drain all your subtanks.
Things I like about it:
Crush Crawfish - he's so cute! Him and Gravity Beetle are really the coolest designs here, everything else is kinda meh. But I'm obligated to like Volt Catfish 'cause I grew up catching, frying, and eating catfish, and also catfish are just so cute! Truly one of my favorite animals. Volt could be a lot cuter, though...
Playing as Zero - it's really lame that you only get to play as him ONCE on each level. But it's better than nothing. Honestly, calling him to do part of Tunnel Rhino's stage was the only reason I beat Bit, because calling him in saves X's life bar from being depleted. Switched back to X before the Bit fight and used up all my Sub Tanks to tough it out and take him out. I didn't use Zero as much as I would've liked; I was afraid of accidentally getting him killed.
Some gorgeous backgrounds, as always. Definitely a bonus point when the stages themselves aren't all well-designed (in my opinion)
The story changes depending on your actions! If you finish some characters with their weaknesses you will straight-up kill them and they won't make a return at the end of the game (I didn't do that, though; I wanted to see Godkarmachine O-Inary, and I just straight-up never went to Vile's secret warp places). Also, you can get a different ending depending on how things go for Zero! This can be seen as both a positive and a negative, 'cause if you go in already knowing this (which is easy to do, since this came out in '95), it can make things pretty stressful...
Getting to choose between multiple Ride Armors was awesome! Once you find each one, of course... The Frog is my favorite, even though its mobility is garbage. I just think it's so cute!
All the treasure to hunt for, of course!
Now that I've finally beaten this game, I wanna replay Mega Man Xtreme 2 again! But, I can't, 'cause I still need to get a new USB controller since my nibling ran off with my old one. So I'll watch videos of someone else playing it to get my fix in the meantime.
Oh yeah, here's my updated ranking. Enjoy.
1.) X5 2.) X8 3.) Xtreme 2 4.) X4 5.) X 6.) Xtreme 7.) X2 8.) X6 9.) X3 10.) X7 (still haven't finished it but it's a broken mess and it can stay here for now)
YES, I PUT X3 BELOW X6, the game I'm always bemoaning as the WORST OF THE WORST. At least I can honestly say I want to play X6 every now and then, even though it's an annoying broken garbage mess of a game! I can't see myself ever saying I wanna replay X3. Maybe that'll change in the future. But for now, it's staying under The Nightmare That Should Never Have Been.
I can honestly say, playing X3 has made me love and appreciate X4 even more than I already did. Because they went from this infuriating trainwreck, to that ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE. Marvelous. Truly marvelous.
Yes, X4 is difficult too. TRUST ME. It's no cakewalk the first time around. But it's a FUN kind of difficult. It's fun to learn (and for me that's kind of the point of a Mega Man game, learning the patterns and building your skill). Most of X3 is NOT fun to learn. I mean, YMMV, of course. I'm just comparing my own experiences, comparing the amount of "DANGIT! Well, hold on, let me try something and see..." to the amount of "DANGIT! THAT WAS SOME CHEAP BULLSHIT!".
