Mega Man Zero 3

"A great game with a couple of flaws, all in all, your typical mega man game."

Being a big fan of the Mega Man Zero series, I quickly bought this game and put it into my system. The experiences I had from the first two games in this series were that of pure mega man bliss. This game, however, offers a mixed bag of good things and bad.

Graphics (7/10)

Even though the graphics in this game are very good and very clear on the gameboy advance screen, they offer little improvement over those of Mega Man Zero 2. Over the past three years of this series, the graphics have not improved much. The style of characters and the water-colored back grounds are nice, but after two games, I think it is time to improve the graphics in some way. The lack of improvement may be a good thing for fans of the series, as they maintain the same style to a “T,” but I think that a games graphics should be improved in some way three years after the original came out.

Story (9/10)

The story in Mega Man Zero 3 is fairly enjoyable. At the beginning of the game, it may feel like the story is being thrown at you to fast as they seem to fly through a lot of things at one time. In this game, Zero is in pursuit of the Dark Elf (as he was in Zero 2), but this time, Ciel has finally finished her energy source and now wants to harness the power of the Dark Elf to create enough power to support the world and thus, make the war with Neo Arcadia worthless. This is all good and grand, but we have the appearance of a new (or old, depending on how Capcom decides to write him in future games) villain, Dr. Weil. Dr. Weil is a mad man whose motives are not clear at the beginning of the game, but as the game's story unravels more about his motives are revealed. Various other characters make reappearances as well, and seeing some of them return will surprise you, but I'll let you play the game and be surprised when you see them. This game builds up for great things in future games in this series and will make many players anxious to see what happens next in the series, I know I'm one of them.

Music (6/10)

The music of this game isn't all that great. I can't give it lower than a 6 though, because it fits the atmosphere of the game. I didn't find many of the tracks in this game very memorable. The boss theme is very dull and will not be retained in your memory for more than a minute after fighting the boss. Same goes for most of the in game levels. For fans of Mega Man music, rest assured that this game does have the more Rock oriented music that many of the more recent Mega Man games have, so if you're a fan of that type of music, you may be in for a treat with this music. If you're anything like me, and you disliked more of the recent music in the different series, you'll really dislike this music a lot.

Gameplay (8/10)

This is the big one. Everyone knows what to expect from the Mega Man Zero series now. If you asked a person to describe the series in one word, they would more than likely say “HARD” That, however, is not necessarily true in this game. Mega Man Zero 3 seems to be dumbed down a bit in difficulty. I'm not sure if Capcom maybe got to many complaints but many of the bosses are extremely easy when compared to bosses from previous Zero games. Many of the bosses can be killed in 7 or so charged sword hits, which isn't very hard to do since many of the bosses patterns are repetitive and predictable. The difficulty is helped by the fact that many of the levels are longer than previous Zero games have had as well as the fact that there are now 11 robot bosses to fight over the course of the game. Sure three of them are from previous games, but its nice to have them in it again with new levels to correspond to them. That brings the total amount of levels in this game up to around 15, which makes the game seem much longer then older mega man games.

Another thing that helps is searching for cyber elfs. They are back in this game, and many of them have to be fed to mature, like they were in previous Zero games. Here's the catch, you can only equip two cyber elfs at a given time. This greatly reduces the chances of making an ungodly character your first time through the game. Capcom did, however, not leave players who want to have all their cyber elfs on at one time high and dry. They created what is known as “cyberspace” which are accessible in all levels through blue doors. This puts a greenish tent over the screen and enables all cyber elfs you have to be used. You will have to exit cyberspace before fighting the bosses, and entering cyberspace will affect your rank for each level as well. That's alright, cause in the past two games, having cyber elfs turned on would destroy your score in the game, which was, in my opinion a huge flaw, but as far as I can tell, cyber elfs in this game don't deplete your score near as much as they did in Zero 1 or 2.

Collecting all cyber elfs, battle chips, enemy cards, and body upgrades makes for a rather expansive amount of replay value. They also have several mini games you can unlock by beating the different modes of the game, which adds a decent amount to the gameplay.

Overall: 7.5 or (8/10)

If your looking to play this game for gameplay and storyline, you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of it. If your big into graphics and music, you'll be disappointed by this addition to the mega man series. All in all, mega man advocates will love this game for all it has to offer, and if your anything like myself, you'll sit here and speculate where Capcom plans on taking the series in the next few Zero games with all the twist and turns that were seen in this game. Only time will tell…

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/29/04