A Critical Look at Mega Man 2 vs. Mega Man 3
Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 are often considered the best of the series, with 2 as perhaps the more popular choice. So, before we move on, I’d like to compare these games overall.
My gut reaction has always been to say that Mega Man 3 is the easier of the two, but that’s not entirely true. I had the opportunity to watch an inexperienced player attempt both games recently, and a more accurate statement would be that Mega Man 3 is more stable. MM2 has difficulty spikes that stand out in one’s memory, such as Heat Man’s blocks, Quick Man’s lasers, and BooBeam.
However, most of the main stages of MM2 can be beaten with less hassle. Crash Man and Metal Man are just speedbumps, while Bubble and Air front-load most of their difficulty. Flash is full of Sniper Armors, but offers players a safe route around them. That leaves Quick and Heat as the stages a player is likely to get stuck at, while Wood Man is a very difficult boss without the right weapons.
Then we have Mega Man 3. Nothing in the first eight stages, or anywhere in the game for that matter, rivals the worst of MM2. However, almost every stage has something toward the end that can cause a few deaths. Snake has both the clouds with dodgy hit detection and enemies trying to knock you off of small platforms. Shadow has the Parasyu section while Hard wears the player down before throwing them into the toughest fight with Proto Man, and both have a difficult boss.
Gemini and Spark both end with the hardest platforming segments in the game. That leaves Magnet, Top, and Needle as the easiest stages to start with, but Needle Man is among the hardest bosses, and even an easy vanishing block section can get players stuck for a while. Top is probably the best starting stage, but that depends on how quickly a player can learn to deal with the spinning platforms at the end.
Needle Man also guards the Rush Jet, which trivializes the game’s platforming sections, but a player would have to beat at least Gemini and probably start with Snake to get it if they can’t handle Needle Man with the Mega Buster. Point is, a new player could try and fail most of these stages before finding one they can beat, whereas Mega Man 2 has at least four that are more forgiving to players without the right item or boss weakness.
That said, Mega Man 2 keeps throwing dangerous things at the player throughout the Wily stages, as well as making Crash Man’s lifts dangerous and allowing the weapons to be used for puzzle solving, while MM3‘s Doc Robot stages are easier than their counterparts overall (though having two boss fights in each helps balance that), and the stage difficulty falls apart entirely in Wily’s castle, leaving it up to the 2nd and 3rd bosses to pick up the slack.
Difficulty aside, Mega Man 3‘s major changes from 2 include the slide and the upgrade from Items to Rush. I like the slide overall as it gives Mega Man an alternate way to dodge things and avoid bosses, as well as providing an easy method for one-way exits on split paths, but it also adds the possibility of a player doing it by accident and sliding into a pit. How much of a problem that is just depends on how often that happens to a particular player. For me, it’s almost never an issue.
I think Rush Coil is mostly a miss. It only had a couple moments that justified its use as anything more than a tool to overcome obstacles that only exists as reasons to use the tool. Starting with it also removed a lot of the fun in getting optional items. Mega Man 2 hid them on alternate paths and in places that required an Item to get to, so they were more like rewards for having beaten certain bosses early, but having Coil from the beginning means that getting out-of-reach items is just a matter of whether the player wants to bother opening the menu and using it.
Rush Jet is incredibly broken, allowing Mega Man to fly over any platforming segment in the game once he has it, but it’s held by a fairly strong boss, it opened up the ability to add flying segments, and it added a completely different way to deal with certain bosses. In that sense, I would call it broken in the same way as the Metal Blade. That is, a fun kind of broken that makes players excited to have it. Rush Marine only got a handful of screens to be useful in, but it was fun for those segments and certainly didn’t hurt anything by being there.
The weapons somewhat reflect the overall feeling the games leave behind. Both games had some bad weapons, or at least weapons that weren’t given a chance to shine. However, the good weapons in Mega Man 2 were really good, with Metal Blades and Quick Boomerangs tearing up most enemies, Leaf Shield to protect Mega Man from things his Buster has a hard time dealing with, and Atomic Fire to blast away the largest enemies.
Mega Man 3‘s Buster replacements were the Needle Cannon and Shadow Blade, the former of which was essentially an autofire button and the latter more of an alternative than an upgrade. The rest were powerful in the right situations, but it was more difficult to figure out what those situations were. That goes extra for Top Spin, since a player has to risk taking a hit every time he tries it out on something new. Then again, it was a lot of fun to use and the game gave players a big reward for doing it, with two Wily bosses destroyed by it outright, including the very last. MM3 also had fewer opportunities to do neat things with them during the stages in the latter half, opting to put a stronger focus on Rush instead. They were still helpful, they just didn’t have as many moments where a player could completely stomp something with a weapon that gave them trouble before.
It’s a tough call, but I’m going to say that Mega Man 3 is my favorite of the two. Its greatest moments are less flashy than Mega Man 2‘s, but the weaker sections are also spread thinner and there’s a constant stream of new stage objects, with each main stage being fun in its own way. The Wily stages were handled much better in MM2, but I think the Doc Robot stages help even it out, and MM3 can be forgiven for rushing the end after putting players through that.
However, it also makes sense to hold up MM2 as the gold standard. MM3 added a lot of good things, but it also made a major addition to the controls and took the focus away from weapons somewhat. The overall design of the series started to change here, while MM2 was a more direct upgrade to the first game. It makes sense for someone making a new game in the series, or a similar type of game, to first look at what Mega Man 2 got right and work from there. Both are quality games, and both deserve their spots as fan favorites.
Tags: A Critical Look at, editorial, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Mega Man Classic
Filed under: Community Developments, Editorials
Mega Man 3 is better because Protoman is the best man.
My first megaman was the 6th title. Even in the X series, i use the buster only. But now i know that there are too much people that love the boss weapons and thinks it a major part of the games. I’m weird i guess xD
Both are awesome and neither top the other imo. Mega Man 3 definately is more balanced and fleshed out but Mega Man 2 has some of the best tunes and bosses.
Personally, I think there’s a big gap between MM2 and MM3. As said before, MM2 had more memorable moments, while MM3 had the rush flying section in gemini doc robot stage….I guess. MM2′s weapon set is also far superior to that from MM3. I just get way more fun out of MM2 than MM3
One major weakness I would not about MM3 is the lack of boss checkpoints in the doc robot stages. a new player could easily get discouraged if they’re not particularly strong at 2D platform shooters.
Imagine if the levels were difficult for you, and you finally managed to work your way to the first doc robot with maybe a quarter health left or less. most likely, this player will be destroyed by the doc robot. If I remember correctly, that means the player is starting back at the start of the level.
Also, mega man 3 had the ultra fun debug stuff left in. hold up for slow animation, left for moon jump, fall into a hole while holding left to become a zombie (on controller number 2 anyway)
well, when I first played mega man, top spin was the most fun thing ever!
Mega man 3 did have better “story”
Megaman 2 all the way. Megaman 3 and the sequels after it are great but my heart cant be shifted. This is coming from the guy that likes sliding and charging. XD
Mega Man 3 adds great things like Proto Man, Rush and the slide.
But it feels unfinished and they didn’t do a good job of conveying what they wanted to with the story in-game.
I also never really cared for MM3′s weapons but both games have great Robot Masters with lots of personality and great music.
There are things I like about both, and 3 might even be my favorite depending on what mood I’m in, but I think 2 is ultimately more solid.
Screw y’all, Mega Man 5 is better than both!
In all seriousness though, this is probably the most fairly-handled comparison of the two side-by-side I’ve seen. Nicely done, sir.
Mega Man 3 is better for me- if only for the controls alone. Mega Man is more agile in 3 than he is in 2 or 1 – and not just because of the slide! Mega Man just feels “tighter” in 3.
In 1 and 2 he was comparatively sluggish- tapping the control pad barely moved him, and his movement on ladders was frustratingly slow. I always had a hard time on platforms because I was afraid I would undershoot them or accidentally run off! In 3 they fixed this, and improved the controls (and climbing speed) that really made him feel more like the Blue Bomber we know him today.
Now, had they applied these controls to 2 (sans slide of course) my opinion may be different, but like most people’s opinions, mine is jaded by the fact that this was my first Mega Man game. For that matter, it was the first game I actually BEAT! I remember staring at the ending credits sequence with my brother- not really believing what we were seeing! Even at the end- with the “Thank you for playing” screen which continued to loop, I was reluctant to shut off my NES! XD
Excellent additional analysis before MM4.
My first Classic Mega Man game is 6, but 3 is my absolute favorite. 2 is fun, but I just genuinely like 3 better for various reasons.
(One thing I found nifty in Needle’s stage – those Met minibosses you fight in the Needle Doc Robot stage? They were in Needle’s stage, but you could only see their helmets because they were blocked off! I thought that was neat.)
You enjoy what you enjoy and you don’t enjoy what you don’t enjoy.
Pretty sure Mega Man 3 was rushed to finish, so it is in a sense “incomplete”. Considering how much I enjoy it, that is just a testament to how awesome it is; had it been finished, it could have been hands down the best Classic Mega Man game of all.
Doc Robots were meant to make the boss fights more challenging, and keep Wily from looking foolish. I’ve heard claims you’re technically fighting a single Doc Robot eight times; I thought it was eight separate.
Either way, though, to give you a challenge you’ve got a bigger body for most (if not all) Robot Masters, plus you don’t get their weapons. While I would have loved to had another eight weapons in the game, both those changes make a lot of sense story wise.
I always thought Mega Man 3 had the most balanced weapons. I won’t claim they are perfect, but the Magnet Missiles were great until they ran out (it wasn’t a power guzzler, but it always seemed to run out with at least a screen or two of a section left).
The Hard Knuckle was strong but its speed made it better to pretend it was a melee weapon at times… which kind of fit. Since it was slow, it was possible to use the limited steering control more effectively; I liked to line up some shots fire, and climb out of the way quick/steer the Knuckle on target.
The Top Spin, as we eventually learned was awesome, but really hard to use. Plus perhaps the earliest, most likely moment to teach you to use it in a Stage came in Shadow Man’s Stage, where I know I wanted to save it for him.
The Shadow Blade only seems bad if you knew the Metal Blade. Seriously; the Shadow Blade was “awesome” until I saw the raw abusive power of the Metal Blade. Still, it allowed Mega Man to make angled shots and was very handy when climbing because it could shoot straight above as well.
The Spark Shock… okay, this I always felt was a bit of a dud, since it acted like a nerfed Ice Slasher; “freezing” enemies but not in a safe-to-touch manner. Then again, I guess the Ice Slasher only froze pillars of flame safely. Doesn’t help that the boss that was vulnerable to it wasn’t “that” vulnerable to it, either.
Search Snakes were cool. As I learned later, they could be used like the Bubble Lead to make sure footing was “real”, but since I don’t even remember if that was needed I mostly recall their use being an easy way to hit mounted weapons on walls or floors. Specialized, but handy.
The Gemini Laser was a pain to aim and even more of a pain if you missed and had to wait for it to hit something or rebound long enough to finally go off screen. Still angling was useful for trick shots (if you were good at it) and I thought it packed a solid punch. Honestly, without the Top Spin this would have been the “bad” weapon a skilled player would prove good.
The Needle Cannon was a Rapid Fire buster. When I finally got to play Bass in Mega Man & Bass for the GBA, I was like “its a Needle Cannon that fires in 8 directions! <3" so I know it made an influence on me.
So I guess I am saying a lot of the weapons were good, just not as good as they could have been. I respect you prefer Mega Man 2, I just think a lot of what you're holding against Mega Man 3 are things that are good, just not as good as they could have been. Sure I would have loved to Revisit the correct Stages for the Doc Robots, or even faced all 8 Robot Masters from Mega Man 2 in revamps of their old Stages, with Doc Robot showing up 16 times in place of the now standard boss rematches in the telelporter room.
Mega Man 3 is my favorite, but part of me would love a “Director’s Cut” like version, either featuring how it would have been done then with more time/resources, or how it would have been done now (in terms of game play/stage design).
My main point of contention with the article is… the Rush Coil. If it wasn’t for the cheats, that would have been the “easy mode” for the game. Big jump? Rush could make it into a small one, or when needing to jump over spikes, you could sometimes drop Rush onto them in case you missed or got knocked off a platform. A lot of mistaken jumps, the Rush Coil could erase.
Lastly, it was a fall back when the Jet ran out of power. The weak Rush Mode was the Marine, and I wonder if they had more underwater sections planned and/or didn’t realize it was about as easy to use the Rush Jet in the sections they did have. Ironically, some later games that lack it, might have worked better with it. XD
Mega man 3 is the best!!
the music in this game is EPIC!!