Mega Man III
Platform Played On: NES
ABOUT
Mega Man III is a continuation of the Mega Man series, Featuring 8 new robot masters to fight and even a brand new mysterious character being introduced to the series.
STORY
So for the story of Mega Man III is very, disjointed or something like that. You see, because of rushed development of this game there would have been an intro cutscene to the game that actually gives you the details of what's going on, fortunately you can find the patched romhacks online to get what's happening. But basically in this story, Dr. Wily and Dr. Light is working together one again as supposedly Dr. Wily gained his sanity back and is willing to work with Dr. Light once again, Developing 8 new robots to harvest on these other planets. They also made a "Peace Keeping" robot by the name of Gamma as it was Dr. Light's dream to have a robot that can protect the world. However, Mysteriously the robots went out of control and became destructive (gee i wonder who caused it...). So it's up to Mega Man to bring down these robots and bring peace to the galaxy once again. Along the way of going through level to level, you might meet a mysterious character who will come and spar or help you (Basically does both most of the time). As you learn at the end, This character was Proto Man all along as he wonders the world, Or something like that. And at the end, Dr. Wily succumbs to his death, or so we think... I gotta say for a third entry, There's a bit more substance in this story than the previous two and I have a feeling it might get deeper with time.
GAMEPLAY
So the gameplay is almost the same, Except this time Mega Man has access to his dog companion named "Rush" who gains even more abilities as you progress through the game. At first, he acts as a spring in which you can use to reach hard to reach areas. Then you later get a submarine ability that you can use to traverse through water parts of certain stages, Which sadly is just a few and ends up being underwhelming. Now the best one in my opinion is "Rush Jet" in which you can fly around with rush and shoot things in the sky, It's really good and makes a great utility to pass hard sections. Mega Man also gets a new Slide ability, which makes him more fun to control and brings new ideas to level designs overall. Speaking of, The Level designs in this game is fine, My biggest gripe is actually with the Doc Robot stages which has no purpose but to be filler as they are THE hardest levels to do. However, I should say that this game also suffers from having mostly the same enemies you come across and the BS enemy placement becomes a bit of thing, not nearly as much as Mega Man 1. But yeah, This is also the easiest Dr. Wily castle I have done personally (So far) in comparison to the first two games. This will of course change with time. The game also suffers from being buggy as well with stages like Snake Man in which the cloud section can just make you fall to your death and there's other reasons as well. Overall, the game has improvements and have some faults in the end. Oh! And this game also has an exploitable Save function which you can start your journey with 9 e tanks to boot (This made it a bit easier but still tougher than Mega Man II)
MUSIC
Let me say this, The music just gets better and better and the Title and Character select screens are FUCKIN BANGERS. Many of the stage map music is really good too. But the Boss themes and Wily stage? Not nearly as good as Mega Man II but it's still bangers overall.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Mega Man III is a bit of a let down to me as there was great ideas that could have made this an even better Mega Man game than II. But if you don't know, They actually made this game in like 2-3 months and it was released in a unfinished, Buggy mess of a game. But at the time, It became a very successful game and some people have the audacity to consider this game even better than II, Which I would agree if the game was finished. They had great ideas and have no time to actually implement and polish this game by the time it was made to release. For now if anything, I gotta put this game under II. It's still a fun game and kinda good, Just couldn't succeed past it's predecessor...