YMMV / Mega Man Zero 3

• Anticlimax Boss: Omega's first 2 forms, thanks to the GBA limitations, are slower and more predictable than what is implied from the story. His first form is a repeat of the first fight against him (the first boss in the game) with faster attacks and one new one that are still easy to dodge. Once the intimidation factor of his massive second form goes away, you realize how telegraphed and slow his attacks are. Luckily, his third form more than makes up for it.
• Breather Boss: Volteel Biblio is annoying, but by now you have ice attacks and a rudimentary understanding of how to play this game. He takes so long to actually attack that any threat of him filling the screen with difficult-to-avoid projectiles is nonexistent. And when he leaves his hidey-holes, he's just combo fodder.
• Even Better Sequel: On the gameplay front, Zero 3 removes the need to grind weapon levels, forms (in favor of the simpler and more effective body chip system), revamps the cyber elf system to make it so you aren't heavily punished in terms of rank for using them, and implements the cyberspace areas to give newer players an easier way to get through levels and make the difficulty more manageable. On the story front, it introduces the Zero series' villain Dr. Weil, expands and elaborates upon the lore of the setting, and raises the stakes even higher than the previous game. Due to these factors, it's often considered to be the pinnacle of the series and a standout entry in the franchise as a whole.
• Fanon: More than a few fanarts have depicted Omega using Zero's Mega Man X design instead of a recolor of Zero's Zero design, to more accurately convey that Omega is in Zero's original body.
• Fridge Brilliance: The improved Cyber-Elf system, where the Elves are now categorized into the regular Fusion types and the non-expendable Satellite types. Why wasn't this implemented in past games? Keep in mind that Ciel spent most of Zero 2 doing research on Cyber-Elves to solve the energy crisis. The Satellite Elves may be a byproduct of that research.
  • Omega's sole line of dialogue is "Ware wa Meshia nari," which translates to "I am/will become the Messiah." In The Bible, Jesus, the Messiah, calls himself "the Alpha and the Omega."
    • Omega's true form is Zero's original body. The Greek letter omega makes the "oh" sound, and the number zero can also be pronounced "oh."
    • Of course a character named Omega, after the letter that symbolizes endings, would be the final boss.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The modification cards that increase the power of your weapons shift the power balance in the player's favor. Activate just one for the Buster Shot and combine it with the Burst Shot EX Skill and anything outside of the bosses with immunity to fire will die in seconds. The Zero Collection give you these cards for finishing games while the Zero/ZX Legacy Collection gives them as rewards for getting trophies/achievements, removing the original need to buy the cards.
  • This game was very well made with Zero's base moveset in mind. His dash, jump, Z-Saber, and Buster were all thought out perfectly to fit with every scenario in the game. Then you get the Double Jump from Cubit Foxtar. It's good you get it in the second half of the game, because it utterly breaks the rest of the game in half. None of the bosses were designed with the mentality that Zero can double jump to avoid attacks, rendering a majority of the Eight Gentle Judges gimped.^note  You can easily evade Childre's missile spam, Deathtanz is only a threat when he's level with you, Devilbat can't drag the fight out since you can jump right to him and attack his vulnerable head from any angle, Cubit Foxtar's best attack requires much looser timing to dodge with a double jump, the only attack Tretista can use to hit you reliably in the air is when he lets loose his dogs, and Volteel's lightning orbs are easily avoided. Really, only Blazin' Flizard and Glacier le Cactank remain roughly the same. The levels face less problems because of Zero's signature double jump, but only because the only ones remaining don't have that many sections where being able to jump twice would be all that useful. The final stage, however, is fair game.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Volteel Biblio; a large portion of his fight is akin to a whack-a-mole, except that the holes are spread far apart. His head will appear in one hole while his tail will appear in another, shooting a slow homing ball of electricity.
  • Hellbat/Devilbat Schilt isn't a hard fight, since you can fairly reliably dodge most of his attacks by just hugging a wall, but he will make you wait for him to leave himself vulnerable. Without the double jump, he's nearly impossible to hit while he's flying in the air, because his vulnerable head is just out of reach of the Z-Saber unless you luck out and he teleports close to a wall. For casual playthroughs this is just supremely annoying, but during high-rank runs his antics can make a massive difference regarding your end-of-stage score. The Weapons-Repair Factory has a notoriously tight time limit to get full marks for the sake of score, which requires the player to already rush through most of it, play it perfectly, and memorize enemy locations. With Schilt, it just comes down to dumb luck whether he decides to let you S rank the stage or not.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Several years later, Batman also has to fight a villain who is the original version of him, and wouldn't you know it? He's also called Omega.
  • As mentioned under Suspiciously Similar Song, the battle theme for the final boss is basically one-to-one a remix of the original Blaster Master boss theme until that theme's very short looping point. Not only would Inti Creates go on to make the highly acclaimed Blaster Master Zero series, the final boss of that series' third game itself incorporates Omega's theme at various points into what is otherwise a medley of the original Blaster Master boss themes, including the opening riff of the original, making it a triple-threat Musical Nod.
• It Was His Sled: We all know that Omega's true form is Zero's original body.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Weil crossed it long before the series by causing the Elf Wars that wiped out most life on the planet in the first place, and right off the tail end of the apocalyptic Maverick Wars to boot which rendered much of X and Zero's efforts for naught and potentially drove X over the Despair Event Horizon. But in case that doesn't hammer home how much of a bastard he is, the mid-game mission is him dropping a ballistic missile into a civilian district of Neo Arcadia, just to use the collateral damages to lure the Dark Elf out of hiding for capturing it.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Cannonball" sounds very similar to Blaster Master's first boss theme.
• That One Achievement: Getting 2 of the minigames requires you to beat the game with perfect 100 points in your average score. This means completing every mission perfectly - complete every sub-objective, beat levels quickly, kill a minimum amount of enemies and take no more than a small amount of damage. Oh, and not using your elves (at least not the Fusion ones) or entering Cyberspace.
• Tough Act to Follow: After its release, Zero 3 became lauded not only as the best Zero game, but one of the best games in the entire franchise. This has led to many people feeling that while its sequels (Zero 4, ZX and ZX Advent) are still solid games, they still live in Zero 3's shadow.

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