Mega Man X3 (Super Nintendo)

Second verse, same as the first! Yes, for the second week in a row, I’m reviewing a Capcom-published release featuring design work farmed out to contractor Minakuchi Engineering. And for the second week in a row, I’m not happy about it. This time, it’s 1995’s Mega Man X3. I actually wonder if I’m being cruel at this point. It was certainly never my intention to direct so much bile at these folks in so short a span of time. That said, it’s hardly my fault that they insisted on blighting some of my favorite Capcom franchises with the game design equivalent of cold oatmeal. I’ve gotta call ’em as I seem ’em.

As with Minakuchi’s Game Boy remake of Bionic Commando last week, my frustration stems from the fact that the exact same formula that made Mega Man X and X2 two of the best action-platformers of all-time is undoubtedly present here. Maverick hunter X and his partner Zero return to foil the latest scheme by archvillain Sigma to turn robots against humanity, this time with the aid of misguided patsy Dr. Doppler. You’re still expected to fight your way through eight stages in the order of your choice and claim their bosses’ signature weapons as your own before moving on to the final showdown with Doppler and Sigma. X3 even looks and sounds the part, with slick audiovisual stylings on par with those of previous installments. It’s all here…and it’s all so very dull.

I spent the better part of a day playing through X3 and I couldn’t for the life of me look at the majority of its levels now and tell you what their themes are supposed to be or which Maverick is associated with which one. I can tell you that they seemed long. Whether they’re really longer than X and X2’s, however, I’m not sure. They could well just feel that way due to their all-encompassing blandness. There are some ladders, I guess. There are corridors and some big, empty rooms. There’s an exceptionally small and forgettable cast of oddly durable cannon fodder enemies populating all of them. That’s about it. I searched in vain for cool settings like Storm Eagle’s airship from X or Crystal Snail’s glittering caverns from X2. No dice. I similarly found myself missing the memorable action set pieces, such as the out-of-control mine carts that sent you careening through Armored Armadillo’s lair in X. Finishing these levels isn’t especially rewarding, either, as neither the bosses nor the weapons you gain from them left much of an impression on me.

If Mega Man X3 was merely boring, that would be tragic enough. Unfortunately, its two most promising new features, the expanded upgrade system and the ability to play as Zero, are presented in a strange, almost passive-aggressive manner. Throughout the first eight stages, you can find and enter capsules that will equip X with an enhancement chip, allowing for potent extra abilities like health regeneration or a double air dash. You can install one chip of your choice, and once you do, you’re locked into using it for the rest of the game. Tough, but fair, right? Except that only if you go out of your way to avoid acquiring any of the four enhancement chips in the opening stages will you then be allowed to use all of them simultaneously during the endgame. Of course, you probably won’t realize beforehand that the capsules containing the chips are thus effectively beginner’s traps intended to screw you out of attaining X’s true ultimate form later on. How nice.

The mechanics governing Zero are no less obnoxious. While you can theoretically switch over to controlling him in lieu of X whenever you please, there are some severe, downright brutal caveats to that. He can’t be used against bosses or mini-bosses, for one thing, presumably to emphasize that our boy X is the real star of the show. Worse, if Zero dies at any point, the dude is just gone. As in, for the remainder of your current playthrough. It’s an utterly baffling, borderline mean way to implement a fan favorite character and I can’t excuse it on any grounds.

All told, my time with X3 was the least fun I’ve had with a Mega Man title to date. Is it a bad piece of work in general? Probably not. I’ve endured much worse, so in that sense, it’s largely adequate. I won’t hesitate to call it a bad spin on Mega Man, though. On the rare occasions it’s not a total snoozefest by series standards, it’s needling you with its terrible takes on good ideas. These are famously some of the most replayable games ever made, yet I can’t picture myself returning to X3. The only lesson I can draw from all this is once again that the gulf in talent between Capcom’s in-house staff and that of its erstwhile collaborator Minakuchi was wide indeed. I’ll give you one guess which of the two is still around today.