Wario Land 3 was released for the Gameboy Color in the summer of 2000. In terms of gameplay, this has to be my least favorite one of the series. It is a Metroid style of game in which Wario has lost all his abilities and must collect treasures in order to gain them back. You do a lot of back-tracking in this game in order to get the necessary treasures needed to progress through the game and give Wario his powers back. It is still a fun game to play because of all these concepts, but it is pretty hard to keep up with where you need to go next. I also hated the golf mini-games. Everything else feels like your typical Wario Land game.

Graphics 9/10: I think Wario Land 3 looks better than the previous one. The graphics are only 8-bit Gameboy Color graphics, but they are pretty exceptional for this game. It has more color and life to it than Wario Land 2. Wario looks more animated, and this is really noticed a lot whenever he does his supercharge and ground-pound maneuvers. The other sprites of the game have more detail and are better drawn in this game too. I still thought the backgrounds weren't much of an improvement over the second game, so I can't say that Wario Land 3 is much better than the other previous installments. It isn't perfect but is still a nice looking game.

Music 9/10: Wario Land 3 has a very good soundtrack. I love the music in this game! Almost all the songs are very catchy and upbeat. It still kind of has that pirate theme to it like the previous ones, but I just find this one to be an improvement. There are a few tracks I don't like very much, and some songs are just ones Nintendo used in Wario Land 2. Like with the graphics, the third game isn't perfect but pretty damn close! It isn't to the level that Wario Land 4 was in terms of music, but it is about as close as you can get. If only Nintendo wouldn't have just recycled some of the songs from the previous game, it would have been a perfect soundtrack! It has very few problems and is still pretty memorable.  

Gameplay 6/10: Wario Land 3 is sort of similar to Wario Land 2 in some ways, but in other ways it is a completely different game. The first thing I noticed about this game that was different was the way they brought back the overworld map like in the first Wario Land game (Super Mario Land 3). Wario cannot die in this game either, but he hasn't got any of his basic abilities.

He has to collect treasures in the game in order to gain back the abilities he lost whenever he fell into the music box. Each level consists of four treasure chests that are different colors: gray, red, green, and blue. However, in order to get the treasure, Wario must find the corresponding key that unlocks the treasure chest. You have to explore the level to find the key first before you can unlock the chest, reveal the treasure, and progress to the next level. That is how this game is played. You go to the level, find the key needed to unlock the treasure chest (the gray one is usually unlocked first, red is second, green is third, and blue is last, normally). After unlocking several treasures, another level is revealed or you can gain access to a previous level where there is another treasure that can now be opened.

In a lot of these levels, Wario cannot get to certain treasures because he needs to jump higher, ground-pound, etc. After getting a certain number of treasures, Wario gets these abilities back, and he can now do these things even better than he could before. It's a great idea to keep a pencil and paper handy to write down the level that gets opened next and to number that level. That's how I keep up with the order in which to play each level. It's a lot to keep up with, and I still have that same sheet of paper! Why do you need a pencil and paper to play a video game? That's what turns me off about Wario Land 3 and makes for some confusing/tedious gameplay. I don't care how good you are, nobody can keep all this straight, and this makes it hard to progress through the game!  

Anyway, after grabbing about 77 treasures the final boss (Rudy the Clown) can now be fought, and the regular game can be beaten. There are a remaining 23 treasures that are optional and are meant to provide the player with an extra challenge, but I find the final boss to be more of a challenge than these extra treasures. There are a total of 100 in this game, and if you find all 100, you just get a better ending and get to play a time-attack game. In time-attack, you just go back to the previous levels and find the 4 keys. Your time is recorded after finding them, and you get to try and beat that time. I don't care for the time-attack game much, and finding all 100 treasures plus beating Rudy the Clown is challenge enough!

Some levels in Wario Land 3 contain a golf mini-game. This mini-game must be played in order to open the corresponding rock that blocks Wario's path leading to the key or treasure chest. You have to find the door that has an enemy on it in order to play the game. The golf game isn't easy to figure out how to play. Wario has to use his charge-attack to knock the enemy into the hole. There is a meter at the bottom of the screen that measures the amount of power behind the charge. That is what can be a pain to get right! This is a trial and error thing that took me forever to get, and Wario kept falling over!! Anyway, if the enemy falls into lava or water, you have to start again. After so many tries you have to pay 10, 30, and towards the end of the game 50 coins to play this mini-game.

This mini-game is yet another example of how Wario Land 3 isn't as good as the other two games. All this golf game amounts to is pure luck! I feel like there is no skill to this whatsoever! You can't see where the enemy is going to land when Wario hits him. This is just a blind type of challenge where the player hits the enemy and hopes he'll land in the hole! Most of the time he'll land where you don't want him to, and you'll run out of chances and have to pay more coins. What happens if you run out of coins? I guess you'll have to go back and collect more! How can you make progress when you're having to constantly worry about making it through this cluster!

The golf mini-games are not hard in a way that's challenging, and I can see no purpose in having them in this game! They just slow things down to a point that it isn't fun anymore! This is the worst thing about Wario Land 3 and why it isn't as good as the previous ones I have reviewed in terms of gameplay. This was just bad game design on Nintendo's part! There was no need for this, and it ruins what would have been a pretty good game. WL3 is still pretty fun to play, but these golf games are crap! Players should just use save states on these parts! You shouldn't have to cheat like this! Why?

Earlier I talked about how WL3 was similar to WL2. One of the things that makes it similar is that Wario cannot die except for on the boss fights. He usually just gets pushed out of the boss door and has to start again with the exception being the final boss. When he fights Rudy the Clown, you'll get a Game Over if you die and go back to the title screen. You'll still keep all items and progress but have to go through the battle all over. A lot of the enemies transform Wario into different forms. Many of these transformations are the same as Wario Land 2, but there are some different ones.

The game includes some of the transformations from before like: Bouncy Wario, Bubble Wario, Fat Wario, Flat Wario, Hot Wario, and Zombie Wario. But there are also some new ones as well such as: Bat Wario, Invisible Wario, and Snowball Wario. Like before, these are only some of the transformations Wario undergoes after touching enemies or other hazards. Some are helpful and some can hinder your progress in the game.

I like the way you have to collect treasures and explore levels in order to gain back your abilities in this Wario Land game. I hate how it is impossible to keep track where you need to go in order to make progress, and the golf mini-games are just plain awful! The boss fights are still similar to the other Wario games. Wario Land 3 is big on exploration, but it is hard to make progress and keep up with where you're going. This game isn't good for first time players and is easily the hardest in the series. I want to say it has good level design and gameplay, but I can't. In some ways, it is fun, but I can't get past all the confusion and badly designed golf games to enjoy it that much. I don't hate it, but this Wario Land game leaves a lot to be desired in terms of game design.  

Story 10/10: One day Wario is flying in his airplane, and it crashes in the woods. He goes to a cave and finds a music box. After looking into the box, Wario is sucked into it. He is woke by a voice telling him he is inside the music box he was peering into. The voice says that he needs to collect 5 music boxes in order to restore this person's power. If he finds the music boxes, he will be sent back to his own world but all the treasure he finds along the way is his to keep. So Wario sets out on his quest to battle these strange monsters, get back his powers he lost when he fell into the music box, and find the 5 music boxes needed to be sent back to his world.

After collecting so many treasures and finding the 5 boxes, the voice turns into a giant clown. It turns out to be the evil Rudy the Clown who is trying to take over the real world. He can now rule the music box world and the outer one too. He needs Wario no longer and is going to crush him. Wario dodges his attacks and throws his giant fists back at him. After defeating Rudy the Clown, an old man appears and tells Wario the story about how Rudy transformed the villagers into monsters. After all this is over the old man sends Wario back to the real world with all the treasures he collected along the way.

I think most people can agree that Nintendo did another fine job with the plot for this game just like with the other two. Captain Syrup isn't in this one, and it goes in a totally different direction that is fresh and exciting. WL3 takes place in a different setting, and there are a lot of twists and turns to this storyline that make it very catchy and memorable for me. I never grew up with this game, and it was released years after I lost interest in video games, but for people that did grow up with Wario Land 3, the story probably does stick with them. I would guess Rudy the Clown probably scared the hell out of kids that played it when they were younger!!

Content 10/10: Just like with Wario Land 2, Wario Land 3 is still a long game. There are hours of back-tracking and exploring through many of the same areas in order to find the 77 treasures needed to beat the game (and 100 treasures needed for 100% completion). Wario Land 3 consists of 4 different areas each now with its own overworld map. These are basically: North, West, South, and East with only about 6 or 7 levels in each area. There really isn't much to this Wario game, but as already stated, you have to keep going back to these levels to find the treasures needed to unlock new levels and uncover necessary secrets in previous levels that could not be accessed before. Not all 100 treasures need to be obtained, and nothing new is really uncovered by doing this, but I don't think these treasures were as hard to collect as the final boss fight was.

That part still gives me problems, and the treasures aren't hard to find. It's just getting past the golf games and knowing the order in which to play these stages that take so much time. Technically, you are just playing the same levels, but you're getting to explore them more after finding certain keys and treasures that unlock new power-ups for Wario. Wario Land 3 gives players an opportunity to do a lot. It is a game that offers a large amount of content even though it can be pretty frustrating and tedious at times.

Difficulty 9/10: For me, Wario Land 3 was the most confusing game out of the series. There were a lot of bugs and glitches in the game that I had to read up on in order to understand how to bypass them. One of those was the climbing bug in The Pool of Rain where you had to reset the game in order to continue when you got to that part. There was also the problem of getting off a vine or ladder by pressing the B button. Not to mention how hard it was to figure out how to play the golf mini-game. I never could find any walkthroughs that explained this properly, and had to pay attention to the meter at the bottom of the screen and play around with that in order to figure it out. 

After I learned how to get through a lot of these problems I was having, I still found this game to be harder than the second one. I could never memorize the order in which to play the levels without my old list I made when I first played it. Seriously, why do players need a sheet of paper to play a video game? I still can't get used to the golf games either! The gameplay was kind of similar to the previous game in a way, and I found the platforming part of the game to be about like the last Wario game. Rudy the Clown still gives me some trouble, and so do some of the other bosses.

However, the real issue is keeping track of where to go, and the golf games make for some frustrating gameplay. This is easily the hardest game in the series and the least fun to play. It isn't impossible, but the first time I played it, I felt like it was! And it still hasn't gotten much easier! I find myself having to spend more time with this game than I feel like I should and also going to a lot of trouble just to play it!

Overall 8.8/10: Wario Land 3 is still a pretty good game despite the problems I have with the design of the game. The graphics are pretty good and so is the soundtrack. Even though, it was released when I was working my first job and had other problems at the time and had forgotten about video games, the younger generation was probably enjoying the storyline of the game. It still did offer a lot of gameplay just like with the previous Wario Land game. I give it an overall average rating but not as good as other Gameboy and Gameboy Color games in the Wario/Mario Land series.