YMMV / Wario Land 3

• Anti-Climax Boss: Rudy the Clown is far from the hardest boss in the game. He only has two attacks; his grabbing attack can make you restart the battle, but it's slow and easy to jump over, and his punch attack will only occasionally combo Wario into his grab and is also easy to dodge. He also has only four hits, and although the timing to stomp on and then throw his hands may be tricky, a player who's made it this far is unlikely to lose more than once or twice.
• Awesome Music: Numerous tracks; see here for details.
• Contested Sequel: Primarily due to the Metroidvania style of gameplay, the amount of backtracking, and a few scrappy mechanics like the golf minigame. Some think the execution, pacing, and progression are not as good as the more linear style of Wario Land II, while others consider it an Even Better Sequel to II and the best game in the series for its sheer intricate depth and the creative level design.
• Disappointing Last Level: Not guaranteed due to the open nature of the game, but chances are on a 100% run the Chain of Deals will end with E6 The East Crater's blue chest. While the main mechanic of throwing a barrel over obstacles and catching it is a decent challenge, it's directly preceded by S6 Above the Clouds' blue chest. Said chest involves Wario taking a tricky vertical climb and going to the moon itself. The moon has an entirely unique aesthetic which, along with the level not sharing its music with any other and the setup of ascending to the moon, just screams 'finale'. Having to follow it up with a volcano level that looks like and has the exact same music as another volcano level with an extremely similar name is quite a letdown.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why don't the enemies kill Wario? Because at the end they're revealed to be townspeople turned into monsters by the Big Bad who were only trying to prevent Wario from reviving him.
  • Mad Scienstein seems to be the only Helpful Mook who is intentionally helping Wario rather than accidentally. As revealed in Dr. Mario 64, he was The Dragon for Rudy all along. This handily explains why he's the Token Human enemy: Rudy never transformed him!
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Brrr Bears, much like the Yukimarus from the previous game, shoot hard-to-dodge projectiles that turn Wario into Frozen Wario, sending him sliding backwards uncontrollably until he collides with a wall or a solid object. Of course, they almost always hang out in areas where getting hit will cost you a fair chunk of progress, particularly in The Frigid Sea.
  • Hebarii, the slime enemies that crawl on the ceiling and spit bullets at you. They are very hard to kill while they're on the ceiling, and the only way to make them fall is by using a heavy Ground Pound, which is only unlocked late in the game, or by being Fat Wario. Even worse, after they hit the ground, you only have a few seconds to kill them before they disappear and reappear on the ceiling.
• Goddamned Boss: Shoot the Soccer Bunny, the boss of "A Town in Chaos". As the name of the boss indicates, the battle he challenges you to is a soccer match where you have to jump on Shoot to turn him into a ball and then score a goal with him three times. This is not as easy as it sounds—Shoot is quite tall, meaning Wario must be at peak jump height to stomp the boss, all while he's trying to do the same to Wario. Lining up a good shot with a crushed Shoot can also be a chore due to how quickly he bounces in place. To make matters worse, the tortoise goalie is difficult to bypass, and it'll revert Shoot back to normal when the latter is caught. The tortoise's hitbox is deceptively large, and while it's possible to stun it and drop its guard, it recovers quickly. Thankfully, Shoot must also score three goals to beat Wario, so rather than having to restart the battle several times, it mostly comes down to a war of attrition.
• Memetic Mutation: The endgame "Perfect!" screen, Quote Mined to say "erect",◊ has become well-known, especially as a Shitpostbot 5000 source image.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Final Boss, Rudy the Clown. It doesn't help that he's the one thing in the entire game that can actually kill you!
  • If this◊ Dummied Out Nightmare Face is any indication, it could have originally been even worse.
  • The Robo Mouse in The Stagnant Swamp and The Peaceful Village is also pretty creepy looking, is invincible, busts through walls and jumps up ledges to chase you, and throws you out of the area if it catches you.
  • Several of the final levels in the game are pretty creepy and unsettling.
    • The Warped Void (East 5) is aesthetically unlike any other level in the game. Its walls and floors are entirely made up of unnatural-looking spheres, and its backdrop is a repeating pattern of distorted swirls that somewhat resemble Giygas. Befitting of its name, it's also littered with pulsating yellow fields that will warp you around the level, making it very easy to get lost and disoriented.
    • Forest of Fear (East 7) is no slouch, either. The level is dark, maze-like, and full of vampires and zombies. The level's music lends a lot to the atmosphere, consisting mostly of silence punctuated by loud, dissonant major sevenths.
  • The Forest of Fear song. It's basically 2 PSG channels playing scary tones together with an uncomfortable pause between them.
• Older Than They Think: Most people believe Dr. Arewo Shitain's first and only Wario Land appearance to be in Wario Land 4, not realizing Mad Scienstein from this game is supposed to be the same character. It doesn't help that he doesn't quite look like himself in this game. (For the record, he also appeared in Dr. Mario 64.)
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The minigolf game, which one must do over a dozen times over all of the treasures. It's annoying, too different from the rest of the game, boring, and the game can randomly give you really bad golf terrain, like long stretches of bunker, or even worse, water. Especially later in the game, when the price rises.
  • The game cannot be paused during a boss battle; attempting to do so will emit a double buzzer instead. This makes for some tedious boss fights if they run long, especially the soccer game against Shoot. The issue was thankfully rectified in 4.
  • The owl returns from II. While it moves much faster, and flying sections are much rarer than they were in II, the few flying sections that you do have to navigate are often longer and much narrower than the ones in the previous game, essentially defeating the purpose of the owl's faster speed and adding unnecessary difficulty.
  • Once the game is beaten with 100% Completion, the game goes into permanent time attack mode where timing is determined by obtaining all four keys in the level and then finding the nearest exit. Not a bad idea... until one pauses the game and discovers that the save and quit option has been disabled for good, likely to prevent players from cheating the time trials.
• Sophomore Slump: Compared to Wario Land II and Wario Land 4, the game is less popular and influential. That said, the game is generally seen as great in its own right, and there are people who consider it the best in the series.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Vampire Wario's theme sounds very similar to the famous Addams Family theme song.
• That One Attack: After Wolfenboss has been hit twice, it starts throwing its spiked balls upward rather than downward, causing them to bounce across the floor a few times before stopping. They always bounce toward Wario, and each impact with the floor will shake him up if he's not airborne. Combined with the energy balls still flying around, this makes landing the final hit much harder than the first two, which are already somewhat hard to pull off.
• That One Boss:
  • Wolfenboss is widely regarded as the hardest boss in the game. Its reputation is due to its chaotic projectiles and the indirect method of defeating it. To damage Wolfenboss, Wario must bash its red Mooks and carefully ricochet them off the walls. When on its last legs, the boss performs a sudden change in strategy, which causes a certain projectile to bounce nearly the length of the screen. If Wario doesn't move out of the way in time (thankfully, the attack is quickly telegraphed: the boss lightly tosses the projectile upward rather than slam it down directly like before), he'll be forced to start over.
  • Shoot the Soccer Bunny, the fourth boss, isn't much better. Like his basketball-themed counterpart Dunk in the previous game, Wario has to beat Shoot at his own sport — soccer, in this case — by scoring three times with his Dash Attack before Shoot can do the same. This is much easier said than done. Simply transforming Shoot into a ball is bad enough, but scoring is a nightmare. The tortoise goalie will save nearly every shot you take against him due to his deceptively large hitbox. The only options for scoring are either to stomp the goalie to stun him and then quickly knock the transformed Shoot into the goal before he awakens, or to land an incredibly precise shot at the very tip of Shoot's bounce from directly next to the goal. Oh, and if Shoot turns you into a ball and then catches you (which he almost always will if you become a ball), he'll knock you into the net with enough force to frighten the goalie into letting him score. The only saving grace is that you don't instantly lose the battle if Shoot does score, so you can continue fighting as long as you don't allow him to score that third goal.
• That One Level: "S6 Above the Clouds," which is also usually the last level one unlocks, is a vertical level where the main platforms are appearing and disappearing clouds, often alternating, forcing players to time hops between a platform just fading to a platform just appearing. Depending on how high one goes, falling can cause one to lose lots of progress.
• Underused Game Mechanic: One of Wario's new transformations in this game is Snowman Wario, which allows him to break certain blocks by rolling down hills and becoming a Human Snowball. It only appears in one level in the entire game, E2 The Frigid Sea, and even then is only required for two optional treasures.

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