Until last week I would have cited Mega Man III as my personal favorite.  It was the first one I played as a kid, so it has a special place in my heart.  However, I just so happen to download the title last week and I have to say that I wasn't nearly as impressed with it as I was when I was a kid.

Besides the weak Dr. Wily stages (which Zach already mentioned) my biggest gripe with the game is the illogical boss weaknesses.  I was playing purely from memory and while I had stored away a few boss weaknesses (Hard Knuckle against Top Man and Snake Search against Gemini Man) everything else was purely trial and error.  I had to come back and fight Hard Man something like five times before I finally beat him because I couldn't figure out the right weapon (also, I didn't want to use any E Tanks for the entire game).

If you don't already know the ideal boss order you're going to have to replay the stages quite a few times unless you get really lucky.  Then again, maybe that's for the best--it's a short game.  I beat it in probably 2 hours.  Still a great game, and I fully support the Recommended for Everyone rating.

Sounds like Kirby 3 isn't for me.  I didn't even like Super Star (Deluxe) all that much.

The debate over MM2 vs. MM3 is a toss-up for me.  I always enjoyed MM2 more as a kid, but that may be because I never owned it.  MM3 is definitely the longer game, and I think its soundtrack is clearly superior.  However, MM2 is more iconic and feels more original, and it has my favorite level of any Mega Man game (that of Bubble Man).

I replayed MM3 again and it still is an amazing game. It is funny how the impression criticizes one of the coolest (and unique) things a game has doen, by bringing in older bosses along with redesigning previous levels for a different experience.

That's because his greatest weakness is his own weapon, the Hard Knuckle.

If I remember rightly, Mega Man's creator (don't know his name, some unpronounceable jumble of letters I'm sure) expressed that Mega Man 3 was his least favourite because it was a bit rushed due to time constraints. Is it possibly ironic that Mega Man 3 is considered one of the best in the series while the following Mega Man, Mega Man 4, is considered one of the worst?

The boss weakness loop did get messed up in this game though, as there's no order in which you can play through them and always have the best weapon to use. Other than that though, the game doesn't feel rushed; it still has some of the best level designs, music, and weapons in the series. It's also the only one to have known cheat codes, which I wonder if they're still present in this VC release...

Dream Land 3 feels much  more like Kirby 64 than Super Star. KSS is kind of an anomaly in the design and controls for the series, one reason why people tend to praise it so much. Kirby 64 has more interesting power combinations than this game, though.

Really?  I had no idea.  I always use Magnet Missile.

That's his secondary weakness.  The bosses usually have tiers of vulnerability to the other weapons.  Some will do almost no damage (it's possible to do less than the Mega Buster in some games), others will do twice as much or four times as much damage as the Buster, and some will kill the boss in 1-5 hits.  There are multiple examples of bosses who are super-vulnerable to their own weapons, which is good to know for the boss rush before Wily.

I know that, but his own weapon is still his greatest weakness as that's the most effective way of taking him down. Now obviously you won't have his weapon the first time you face him, but it is still his greatest weakness.