One of the hardest games I have played in a LONG time. This game never stopped kicking my fuckin' ass. I even had to switch to the new save system for the final boss rush, because the final boss is immediately after it. That was rough. Everything else though? Amazing. The fundamentals from Megaman Zero 1 have been refined to their peak. No upgrades necessary? High speeds? A phenomenal story? A ridiculously hard Zero duel? What can I say, man. They topped themselves with this one. The biggest problem with the game is that final boss rush, which is ridiculous with the boss at the end - but it is a minor issue when those bosses are so memorable, and everything else comes together. Cannot reccomend highly enough. Loved the ending.

Greatest Mega Man game in the entire franchise, just so much fun start to finish. Took everything that was good about Zero 2 improved and expanded on it. The level design is just as great, and the combat (specifically the combo system combining EX skills and normal attacks) has been fully fleshed out, giving you a ton of freedom for how you approach enemies and (especially) bosses.

And I don't care what anyone says, the story was cool as fuck. I actually cared about what was happening throughout the series, and it culminated in the best finale in the Mega Man franchise.

Hands down the best MM Zero game and maybe Inti Creates' best game period. Great gameplay feel, level design, bosses, and soundtrack. Also, this might be the first Mega Man game to actually have a good story with stakes that felt like they mattered and a satisfying conclusion. It finally makes the Cyber Elf system actually work like a normal video game too which is great. The only reason I can't give this a 5/5 is that the zoomed in screen resolution still leads to some frustration.

I'd highly recommend this to any Mega Man fan even if you haven't played the previous 2 games.

Mega Man at its very core has always been about options. Selecting stages in any order you want, using whichever special weapon you prefer, etc. Mega Man Zero 3 encapsulates and achieves that tenfold. You're offered so much variety from your weapons skills, enhancement chips, cyber-elves, combo system, and how you approach stages and bosses that the replay value is practically endless. There are some serious balancing issues sadly, and the game is noticeably easier than the other Zero games. But top the unlimited variety with mostly fun levels, an amazing story, and great spritework and music for the GBA and you have what amounts to what I'd easily call the best Mega Man game. ...And what plenty others agree with nowadays.

I can barely approach Mega Man Zero 3 as a "game".

I received Mega Man Zero 3 as a Christmas gift from my grandmother, it was the last Christmas gift I would receive from her. Her and her coworkers had pooled their money together to afford gifts for me and her other grandkids, she likely had put most of her own money into cancer treatment. My parents have a digital video camcorder tape of me tearing open the wrapping paper and chanting the game's name. I played the game in the living room at my uncle's house, where we typically had our Christmas dinner, and my parents watched over my shoulder. When they saw that Zero held a gun which fired bullets, they decided that after we left my uncle's house, we would go to the local game store and trade it in for something else (that "something else" would be Pokemon Ruby).

Since then I have played Mega Man Zero 3 many times, with many different devices. I have at various points owned at least four different Game Boy Advance cartridges of the game, two different DS cartridges of the collection, I have digitally purchased the game on Wii U, I have digitally purchased the collection on Switch. None of the versions of the game that I have now are the cartridge that she gave me.

When my grandmother died, my father inherited her car, and when I became old enough to drive it became my first car. After four years, I took the car to a mechanic to get the brakes checked out; the car was old enough that the rusted insides were falling out of the bottom and crushing the brake line. Cars of the same make and model surely exist, but they will not be hers. When I moved out of my parents' house, I moved into her old apartment building, but not into the same room. I have two music boxes, one is an Eda Mann Songbirds of America porcelain sculpture which plays "Somewhere My Love" from the film Dr. Zhivago, the other is a San Francisco Music Box Company sculpture of an iris flower that plays "Wind Beneath My Wings". My great grandmother, who also lived in the same building until she passed away, had these same music boxes; rather, she had identical music boxes, I have these objects which look and function the same way, but they are not the exact literal objects that I once held in my hands as a child.

But maybe it doesn't matter.

"Don't you feel any attachment? Are you really prepared to spend the rest of your life in that cheap fake?"

"As long as your heart is your own, you are Zero. The one and only..."

I've seen people on forums express the sentiment that caring about the story in Mega Man is pointless, that any focus on the games' story only makes them worse, but the setting and characters still seem to hold a particular importance. The Mega Man franchise is stuck in such a terrible stagnant limbo that the classic series has reached an eleventh installment (after a decade long hiatus) without any meaningful event transpiring. Any brand alternative to Mega Man, whether conceptualized by former Mega Man creatives or by fans and imitators, has failed to reach the same cultural significance despite delivering the trademark jumping and shooting.

Multiple objects can carry the same heart across time and space, hundreds of thousands of computer chips can all carry the same intellectual property. Some parts of the Mega Man series I can genuinely appreciate as interesting and well designed video games, and others I could critique for their flaws. Some parts of the Mega Man series have their more technical qualities so obscured by sentimentality that trying to talk about them feels like applying a rubric to a comfort blanket, or ranking your childhood stuffed animals in a numbered list.

A lot more stages than the previous two. Removes tedious weapon upgrades with use and armor unlocks to instead start with more skills and head, body, and leg chips to be found and equipped. Better use of elves with permanent options. More practical to unlock boss skills by keeping an A or S rank the first time through. Maybe too easy this time around as I never bothered to upgrade my health and maintained an A easily all game. Spear/Chain Rod replaced again with fun useful new tonfa style weapon that can knock enemies and objects back when charged or increase your jump height, gives you a lot more useful combat options and combo opportunities than the old two.