Mega Man 3 was the third Mega Man game I had on Wii Virtual Console as a kid, so it's another one I'm relatively familiar with, but like Mega Man 1, it's a game I had forgotten a reasonable bit about beyond which boss's weapon is good against whom. It took me around an hour and a half to beat the Japanese version of the game.
This game's story throws a bit of a twist into it. Dr. Wily claims to have learned his lesson and mended his ways, and he's going to work with Dr. Light again to build Gamma, a BIG robot who will ensure that there's world peace for all. All that needs to happen first is that Mega Man needs to defeat eight robot masters led by the mysterious Break Man and get the energy they have so that Gamma can be completed. Of course Break Man turns out to be Proto Man, and Dr. Wily runs off with Gamma once Mega Man has completed his quest, but it adds a bit of flavor and sets the action up just fine, as the other games also do.
The stage design is again fine tuned just a bit more to once again be excellent, and part of that is due to Mega Man's new ability: dashing. Holding down and pressing A allows you to zoom along the floor for a brief time, and it gives you a much higher ability to dodge enemy attacks and stage traps than you did before. While the first eight robot master stages are quite good, where the game takes a bit of a dive is in the four stages that follow. At that point, Doc Robot (a poor translation of "Dokurobotto", with "Dokuro" meaning "Skull", referring to his skull-shaped head) hijacks four of the stages and makes them harder than before. A lot of them being harder involves just adding a bunch more spikes and traps that makes them far more difficult to get through. It makes a game that is otherwise really tightly designed feel far more unfair, and it's a real shame. You do once again have unlockable platforming aids in the form of Mega Man's new doggy sidekick Rush, but that doesn't save the game's platforming from the uneven quality of the first eight from the latter four (though Wily's stages that follow are better, albeit a bit short).
Where this game really starts to shine for me is in the robot master and boss fights. The addition of the dash means that you have a lot more mobility to get under and around bosses when they jump, and the boss fights overall get a lot more technical. They're not all perfect, with some like Top Man being far too easy and Spark Man feeling a bit too mobile still, but fights like Magnet Man and Snake Man are great, challenging fun. This game even manages to have quite good Wily fortress fights, with the Yellow Devil MKII being a particular highlight. The only really sour part here is once again with Doc Robot, who appears twice in each of his four stages toting a particular weapon from a Mega Man 2 boss. It's more than just an homage though, as Doc Robot is harder versions of those, largely owing to his larger size compared to most of those bosses, but here Mega Man 2's somewhat rough boss design rears its ugly head. Doc Robot's tough stages and overly tough boss designs push the formerly manageable Mega Man 2 robot masters into pretty rough slogs quite often requiring using E-tanks to heal through. It isn't a deal breaker, but it's again a pretty unfortunate mark on a game that's otherwise much more polished than that.
The presentation, however, is once again excellent. The graphics are a bit better detailed once again, and the boss designs are as well done and iconic as ever. The music too is excellent, as like Mega Man 2 you have a ton of really banging main stage themes. I wouldn't say there are quite as many really good tunes in this game as there are in Mega Man 2, but there are still a lot I really love, like Magnet Man's and Snake Man's.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Again, not my favorite in the series, but one I do ultimately like better than Mega Man 2. Warts and all, I think Mega Man 3 does manage to stand above its predecessor, particularly in how much better its boss fights are and how good its platforming sections manage to be. Both are definitely worth playing, but I think Mega Man 3 manages to be just thaaaaat much better in my book, and it's definitely an NES action game that still stands the test of time.