Mega Man X3

I'm a big fan of the Megaman franchise, however I'll say that none of them are perfect games as I never like the boss rush in any of them to be compelling, this being no exception.

With that said, this is among my least favourite of the franchise mainly because of its difficulty spike compared to earlier entries in the franchise, this is noticeable with the bosses who are way more powerful this time around and sometimes require luck to take them out even when equipped with their weakness ammo. You can forget about completing these stages in one go as it's impossible to face any of the mavericks without doubling your starting health and acquiring some of the body upgrades due to how ruthless they are, having sub tanks is also necessary for the first few bosses you fight as none of them can be taken down with your staring health again due to how powerful their attacks are. This does make them the most interesting bosses out of the 16 but trilogy, and as usual the soundtrack is amazing as are the graphics, but boy does this game love to kick your ass relentlessly.

It's a good game with a great challenge, just one that I need to be in the right mood to appreciate which is why it's not one of my favourites in the franchise.

I'll be honest, X2 was bland but it wasn't really bad. X3 on the other hand is borderline a bad game and also bland. Okay X3 isn't a huge downgrade from X2, but it is easily the worst of the original X trilogy on SNES and this game came out at the end of the SNES's lifespan and was already starting to feel dated. The levels in this are beyond awful and forgettable, and even manage to be more cheap than the previous 2 X games. I think this game had the most cheap deaths to spikes and cheap platforming segments. The boss fights in this were also pretty bland, some were actually better than the X2 bosses, but I'd say most of the bosses in this game were awful. The difficulty is also weird because some parts are too easy and some are just way too hard. The final boss in this is just incredibly tough and can only be damaged with a charged beam that directly hits his head, or a hidden weapon that isn't easy to find. I also didn't like the whole mecha suit thing, or whatever they were going for, it feels weird having it be an important game mechanic in this. I mean sure it has the same basic upgrades and hidden items, 8 level/boss format of the previous games, but this formula was beginning to grow stale and the design was getting worse. Its like if you took the best elements of X and X2 and then threw them out the window and took away all interesting design of those games. Hell even the weapon upgrades in this game were more tedious than fun to use. Unfortunately the X series continued to go on and degrade even further after this, but at least the SNES didn't have to suffer with anymore X games before it died out.