YMMV / Mega Man Battle Network 3: White and Blue

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Where Anetta's Well-Intentioned Extremist eco-enthusiasm ends and where Wily's (and PlantMan's) brainwashing begins is... unclear. Also, is PlantMan loyal first to Anetta or to Wily? While the third game makes it obvious he serves as Wily's voice in her ear, in Battle Chip Challenge he remains with her after Anetta has abandoned the WWW and has nothing to say about Wily.
• Americans Hate Tingle: BubbleMan.exe is much less popular in the West than in Japan, as his Ugly Cute design and Verbal Tic only really appeal to Japan's tastes. To most Westerners, he's a Goddamned Boss whose scenario relies on obnoxious Padding, Fetch Quests, and the introduction of the Press program.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The first rematch you get at the end of the game is against Flashman and his operator, who enter Full Synchro and boast how this increases their strength. Problem is that because this is a rematch with Flashman, you face a rather easy boss with just 500 HP, when you've beaten tankier bosses on the way.
• Breather Boss:
  • PlantMan is a total pushover. His attacks and movements are fairly predictable, and you'll have picked up a number of Fire chips just going through his dungeon itself.
  • JapanMan is the second boss of the post-ending Secret Area bonus dungeon. He's pathetic — his attacks are slow and predictable, with him always coming to the front of his area to use his spear, and it only has three range so if you Area Grab him, he'll be completely unable to hit you. The only complication comes late in the fight when he starts to take over your area back, but you can just bust out a powerful Program Advance and kill him before he gets much room. And unlike DarkMan before him, he's not Immune to Flinching.
• Demonic Spiders: The Elebee family due to phasing in and out of existence which makes landing hits on them difficult. Of note is their locations. The first species is found in the WWW tanks, the second species is in the Secret Area, which is post-game. Where is the strongest version located? The school's server, one of the first areas you can jack in. A virus family that is such a nuisance that the strongest enemy placement loops to an early game area.
• Difficulty Spike: The Undernet rankings in the penultimate chapter represents a massive jump in difficulty, where the enemies on the first half befits the brutal reputation the Undernet gets. The preliminaries pits you up against multiple HeelNavis with Omega-tier viruses when many third tier viruses wouldn't even appear until the postgame, and one of the early ranking fights features BeastMan V3 when the mandatory boss rematches in the final chapter only upgrade to the second version. Pass all that however, and the difficulty smooths out to manageable levels.
• Even Better Sequel: The second game was already considered an improvement over the first, and the third surpasses it in writing and gameplay, having a well-told story and smoothing out bumps in the mechanics without introducing new ones. This is why 3 is often regarded as possibly one of the best entries in the series, if not the best. Fittingly, it is also one of the few Mega Man games to exceed one million copies sold.^note Battle Network 3 does not appear on Capcom's official million-seller list, likely because the original and Black were not simultaneous releases in Japan and were thus counted separately, but was confirmed to be a million-seller in the PR for the Rockman.EXE movie.
• Fanon: It's widely believed that Mamoru is Serenade's operator. Mamoru has connections to the Giga Freeze program that Serenade guards, is the administrator of the Undernet, and a sigil resembling Serenade's Navi symbol can be found on the wheels of his wheelchair.
• Franchise Original Sin: The English versions saw animations cut due to cartridge space concerns, including the jack-in animation, Navi Customizer intro animation, and background of the Game Over screen. Complaints were minor since all of these were purely aesthetic, unlike the gameplay-related cuts that occurred in the international versions of Battle Network 5 and Battle Network 6.
• Funny Moments: If there's one scene besides the ending that sticks in people's minds the most with this game, it's Lan getting the drop on Noboru and beaning him in the face with his PET device.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Prism throws a crystal forward that will reflect any damage dealt to it to the eight squares surrounding it. It only lasts a short time, but when thrown into the middle of the enemy area, it basically makes every chip a Spreader shot, and chips that hit the entire enemy area will deal double damage for the direct hit and the reflect from Prism.
  • By inputting a button combo^note  While holding A, press B, B, Left, Down, Up when using VarSword, it becomes four elemental full-column shockwaves that do 160 damage each, and at least one will likely hit a weakness for double damage. The 640/800 damage it deals outstrips even Giga Chips. It drops off somewhat later on, but this combo can one-shot bosses for a good deal of the early to mid-game, and still does atrociously high damage even during the endgame. It's also really good for S-Ranking Navis to get their V3 chips early.
  • The "Deux Hero" Program Advance and its upgraded form Double Hero. Deux hits the entire enemy area for 8 hits of 70 damage, Double deals 10 hits of 70 damage. And because it's one of the "different chips with the same code"-type Program Advances, you can slot multiple copies into your deck and it can be augmented with Atk+ chips.
  • BubbleMan chips fire a number of water shots at the enemy (6-9 depending on the version of the chip), dealing 20 damage per hit. Since it's a Water-elemental Navi chip, BubbleMan is compatible with both Aqua +30 and Navi +20. A BubbleMan V4 with just one Aqua +30 will deal 9 x 50 damage; add in another booster and you've got a three-chip combo that hits harder than Double Hero. In fact, BubbleMan and Double Hero use the same chip code, so they have great synergy with each other.
  • The FlashMan chips are by far the best stunning weapon in the entire franchise. They require no aiming on the player's part and pierce Invis. Boost its damage with Ice Stage and Plasma and you've got a setup that is broken beyond repair.
  • The PlantMan chips work much like FlashMan, in that they hit everywhere and leave the opponent unable to move. While they do not pierce Invis, they make up for it by destroying every obstacle on the field and dealing continuous damage while the vines are on the screen.
  • The Bodyguard Program Advance bombards the enemy area with 18 Shurikens, dealing 100 damage for each. The only bosses in the game with more than 1800 HP are JapanMan, Serenade, Bass GS, Alpha (the Final Boss), and the SP Navis. Everything else will be shredded.
  • Some chips, such as Meteor and DarkMan, deal a fixed number of attacks spread across the entire area of the enemy field. The number of attacks remains constant even if the enemy's field has been reduced, allowing chips to under the right conditions do upwards of 3000 damage concentrated onto a single panel - enough to one-shot literally any enemy in the game.
  • FolderBack is a Giga Chip so it's Purposely Overpowered, but it manages to be broken even by those standards. It refreshes and reshuffles your entire chip folder, including itself, on top of instantly opening the Custom Screen. It also comes in the * code, so it fits any folder.
• Gameplay Derailment: The combination of the 11th Chip glitch and FolderBack makes multiplayer an exercise in frustration without house rules (or Legacy Collection's removal of the former), as there's little to prevent players from repeatedly abusing FolderBack to spam chips that stunlock the opponent.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • BubbleMan hides behind a huge rock and a hole in the field that constantly releases bubbles that block your attacks.
  • His friend DrillMan is just as obnoxious, as he appears randomly from the holes that pop on the field and is immune to frontal damage.
  • DesertMan vanishes for a brief moment whenever you hit him so it makes it difficult to land multi-hit attacks. At least he has a Logical Weakness (any Aqua attack makes him sticky) that can keep him still for a few seconds so you can unload a barrage of attacks.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The famous 11th Chip glitch. Mega normally loads 5 battle chips in battle and can sacrifice chips in order to load up to a maximum of 10 each round, but with the Navi Customizer, he can use Custom+ programs and the Custom style to load more chips at the very start. However, if you load Mega with too many Custom+ abilities, the game will glitch and give you access to an 11th, 12th, and even 13th chip. These slots each load chips from very specific locations in your folder, allowing you to control what chips you have access to at the start of battle.
  • Chips with an ???? attack value are actually set to a whopping 10000 in the game's data, coded such that the game won't actually read that as their damage. Taking a hit on purpose to Lag Cancel Mega Man's attack animation will trick the game into preserving that value for another chip, allowing one to basically one-hit delete anything in the game.
  • The Japanese version allows the Program Advances Big Heart, Prix Power, and Bodyguard to be recycled with NaviRecycle. Bodyguard in particular doesn't even involve a Navi in this game; the fact that it works on Bodyguard is a holdover from Battle Network 2, where ShadowMan appears before the shuriken start flying.
  • One of the gimmicks that may show up during multiplayer battles is a pair of flag obstacles, which spawn on both sides of the field. If a player manages to deplete the HP of the flag in the opposite area, they instantly win the round. However, due to an oversight, throwing a Black Bomb or a Prism on the flag will immediately destroy it for an easy victory.
• Heartwarming Moments: Checking Dex's game console at his house brings appreciation for older games, which becomes borderline fourth-wall breaking with the Legacy Collection rerelease.
  A collection of somewhat old video games. But even old games can stay just as fun as they were!
• Magnificent Bastard: Noboru Sunayama is the showy and bombastic host of the N1 Grand Prix, and secretly an operative of the WWW who aims to prove the power of the organization by defeating Chaud and ProtoMan. Entering the N1 himself with the help of a disguise and a robotic drone, Sunayama makes a point to wow the audience the entire way, including seeming deathtraps on a survival segment of the N1 show that are actually perfectly safe, and even restraining his own NetNavi's murderous impulses to avoid making the match with Chaud too anticlimactic. After dramatically revealing his identity, he takes Chaud's father hostage and attempts to ransom him for ProtoMan. A consummate showman who takes his defeat with dignity, Sunayama is one of Wily's most charismatic underlings.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Pretty much any time you need a specific chip to proceed. Thankfully this only happens a few times, but when it does your progress will grind to a halt while you try to find the chip you need. At one point in the game, you have to find an "Iceball M" chip. How do you find one? Look it up. Only one enemy drops the chip, they're a rare encounter in a single-screen area you've no other reason to revisit, and you need to have the Fish program installed in the Navi Customizer to make them appear. ^note However, one of the in-game BBS boards does talk about the chip and how you can get it on Hades Isle with a Navi Cust Program from Beach Square (the "Fish" Encounter Bait). And thankfully, the game is quite generous on giving you Iceball M when you do encounter the virus dropping it.
  • The Ability Required to Proceed programs for the Navi Customizer, Press and Energy Change, which are only used to manage specific obstacles that only arbitrarily occur out of battle and hobble you by taking up space in the Navi Customizer—you can either resign yourself to less available space or force yourself through the tedium of opening the NaviCust again and again.
    • In addition to Press paths often being long and pointlessly winding, Mega's travel speed scales down with his size, causing progress through the path to slow. (Battle Network 4 would fix this with the C-Slider, a freely usable item that let you zip around on compressed paths, which were now implemented as shortcuts).
    • Worse, the Energy Change is pure gimmick, essentially a rehash of the Water Gun from the first game meant to wipe out certain dungeon obstacles but which now costs you a battle chip from your inventory. (Battle Network 4 would also fix this with another rehash of the Water Gun, also freely usable, and having you eliminate obstacles via a mini-game).
  • While Battle Network 2 let you hold on to two Styles that you could switch between, 3 restricts you to one. This wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't have chips that can only be won from enemies when in Custom or Team Style — a player may have to keep a Style with an elemental affinity they don't want so they can find new chips, and later will have to weigh which style to keep to find either virus or Navi chips.
• Scrappy Weapon: While Dark Chips don't have any huge costs like the next two games, they are still way too cumbersome to use. Every Dark Chip requires a Hole tile present to activate, which almost always means setting one up yourself with chips or using a big program obtained by Bug Style to let you use them whenever. While this is bad enough on its own, all the Dark Chips are also Giga Chips. This means they have to compete for Folder space against the Game-Breaker chips such as Folder Back and V5 Navi chips, and those don't require setup.
• Signature Scene: Lan throwing his PET (in which its case was noted earlier to be tough enough to withstand having an elephant stepping on it) at Sunayama's head to prevent Chaud from handing over Protoman and his PET in exchange for his father, to the extent that it rendered him unconscious. This is one of the most memorable scenes due to how different it is from the usual way issues are resolved and a very prominent case of Just Eat Gilligan.
• That One Attack:
  • FlashMan's light bulb attack. It doesn't damage MegaMan, but it does paralyze him and bypass invisibility. Since it counts as MegaMan getting hit, it will prevent you from getting an S-Rank. It's blocked by Barriers and Auras, but it's not a defense that many will think about.
  • GutsMan Beta may not have a lot of HP, but if you let him get to low health without finishing him off, he'll demonstrate how he Took a Level in Badass by unleashing his own Program Advance, Z-Punch. It turns him invincible for several seconds, during which he flings nonstop rocket punches without triggering Mercy Invincibility, which can stunlock you if you're unlucky. It goes on for so long that you might as well say goodbye to your S-Rank if you see it.
• That One Boss:
  • KingMan hides in the far back row while his nearly invincible, regenerating chess pieces attack you and block your spaces, which means no AreaGrab or powerful direct and melee attacks. If that wasn't annoying enough, if you stay in the back row (the easiest way to avoid his chess pieces), KingMan has a "plan B" attack, where he summons some new chess pieces and permanently steals an entire row of your area. Even if you break the chess pieces with certain chips, they are only incapacitated temporarily, and KingMan can create a different and more vicious set to replace them.
  • BubbleMan never leaves the back row; and the center tile on his side is a hole that generates an infinite number of bubbles, which block shots and home in on you. Popping them will just make them spawn again, and may distract the player from BubbleMan's other attacks. And that's not even taking into account BubbleMan Beta, who can only be encountered if you have less than 1/4 of your max HP remaining.
  • When raising your rank to earn the right to face "S", you're forced to rematch with BeastMan way before the endgame Boss Rush. Unlike the plot-based boss rematches that pit you against their Alpha versions, you're up against BeastMan Beta, and he moves much faster than his first encounter.
  • FlameMan has two candles on his back row, each of which have about 20 HP or so, and revive after a short amount of time. They have different effects depending on their color, and if even ONE of them is Green, he's invincible. If one's Red, he recovers HP steadily, and if one's yellow, then fire appears in your area and limits your movement range. Even worse, he can have two varieties of flames lit, which means he can be recovering HP AND invincible at the same time. And his attacks are designed to take advantage of this.
  • DrillMan has lower HP than most bosses, but that's compensated by the fact that his drill blocks all frontal attacks and he's always on the move. Very few chips can bypass his drill, and if the player's folder lacks chips that can damage different rows, defeating him is pretty much impossible.
• That One Level:
  • The Internet Fire scenario combines the bad points of compulsory Navicust programs, backtracking and padding to extend the scenario for all it's worth. Not helping matters is points where you have to juggle Energy Change and Press at the same time to reach some of the fires you have to extinguish!
  • The World Three guard drones in the final dungeon have security claws that will take you to a certain checkpoint if you get caught. While the claws do have patterns, it can be difficult memorizing them and there are times when a security claw overlaps the shadow of another security claw making it easy to get yourself caught. Some are also ridiculously fast giving you only a few seconds (or less) to run past them while others are incredibly slow forcing you to wait until they pass you.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Time Trials, which become available after beating several Superbosses and are needed to 100% the game. You have to beat the V2 version of every boss within a certain time limit, but you're restricted to an Extra Folder, a weak uncustomizable folder that you can get off certain NPCs in the game. Many of them are clunky and not as fluid as you'd expect of an endgame folder, making getting those times a daunting task bordering on Luck-Based Mission.
  • "Legendary Tomes" feels like a rather straightforward fetch quest, but in addition to the client's given reward, the quest gives a few vague hints on how to decipher the tomes you've been collecting to obtain the treasure (which is a ridiculous amount of money). Which is fine and all, but the results from deciphering the tomes were not translated at all, turning finding said treasure into a bit of a Guide Dang It! for those wanting to get the most out of it. If you turn in the quest without looking for the treasure, it's lost. Fortunately, the Legacy Collection translates them properly.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Pretty much nobody in the fanbase likes to refer to the samurai NetNavi, YamatoMan, by his English name, "JapanMan.EXE". It certainly helps that his Classic Timeline counterpart in Mega Man 6 kept that name, so it certainly made identifying him as "YamatoMan" the easier option.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Early in the game, MegaMan begins to glitch and has to be stored in a sub-PET for safety while Lan's dad fixes the main PET. The sub-PET has limited functionality, including an inability to jack into the internet. Sounds like a convenient chance to put a Hero on Hiatus while some crisis happens and MegaMan can't help out, right? Nope — the PET is fixed by the next morning and MegaMan is back to normal without anything significant happening.
• Tough Act to Follow: Mega Man Battle Network 3 received critical acclaim and is often considered the best in the series. Spinoffs such as Battle Chip Challenge and Network Transmission get hit by this to an extent, but Mega Man Battle Network 4 gets it the worst due to it not only being considered an inferior game to 3, but its status as a main game earns it even more flak.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The WWW Navi Security Cubes located all over the Undernet that locks rewards behind them, which can only be unlocked when their respective Beta/V3 random encounters were defeated. This feature was never used again in the subsequent games.
• Woolseyism: The use of Greek letters in place of version numbers for Navi rematches is exclusive to the English localization. Additionally, the Final Boss' name was changed from "Proto" to "Alpha" to avoid confusing with ProtoMan^note Called "Blues" in Japanese, so there was no similarity in the names. Taken together, these allowed the localizers to make a brilliant pun with the True Final Boss: Alpha Omega.