While I didn't hate my time with it, No More Heroes 3 was profoundly disappointing to me. The original game blew my mind back in 2008 and quickly became one of my favorites. Its unusual grindhouse-esque vibes and cheeky sense of humor made for an experience unlike anything I had seen. Everything about it felt comedic yet deeply unsettling with plenty to say both about its atypical protagonist and video games as a whole. It played well too, with flashy combat that looked amazing and felt great once you got the hang of it. NMH2 wasn't far behind it in overall quality either and I absolutely loved it for its improved combat, excellent soundtrack and (slightly) heightened stakes. These games (along with Killer7) were my introduction to Suda51 and Grasshopper, and for a minute there, I was starting to think they were infallible. Shadows of the Damned proved this wrong pretty quickly, but it was still a decent enough game and removed from the expectations that come with a sequel like this. NMH3 feels like it was compromised in every aspect of its design (in part due to reasons beyond the team's control, like covid) and struggles to have anything interesting to say, leaving me with only a void in my heart and thoughts that I still have a hard time putting into words.

Travis Strikes Again certainly had interesting things to say about Suda51's career as well as the industry in general, but playing it was an absolute nightmare of tedium that legitimately strained my eyes. A lot of its choices did not jive with me at all, but I was hopeful it was just an experiment of sorts and NMH3 would veer closer to the first two games. Turns out, I was half right - NMH3 plays very much like the first two and is a more enjoyable experience than TSA by default for it, but everything else about it picks up exactly where TSA left off, much to my chagrin.

TSA served up a significant transformation of Travis' character. Rather than the sociopathic yet oddly likeable killer we had come to know, he had become more of a recluse, intentionally hiding away from society to play video games in the woods. While a sensible enough change considering all he's been through and the end of his arc in NMH2, he felt like he had become a completely different person so suddenly, less of an individual and more of a mouthpiece for Suda51's views and experience with video games and the industry he works in. This isn't inherently a bad thing and considering how many people seem to consider TSA the best entry nowadays, it seems to have resonated with its target audience, but I found this change to be mostly insufferable. Part of what made the first two games so memorable to me was how bizarre yet driven in personal ways everyone was. Watching Travis bicker and interact with similarly deranged people, some of which simply enjoyed the thrill of the kill and others who were more nuanced, made for entertainment that was like watching reality TV - you know everyone involved kinda sucks, but that's what makes it so fun! But here, Travis is so far removed from all of that and it just makes him boring by comparison. The game is so fixated on video games that you generally know what's coming and what he's going to say based on the environment alone. It reminds me of Eat Lead if anyone remembers that game - a game that just reeks with "how do you do, fellow kids?" energy. It's a weird choice to me because prior to this I wouldn't have questioned Suda's love for the medium at any point, so I don't really understand why the game was so insistent on trying to relate to me through video game references instead of through the perspective and experiences specific to the character I had grown to love.

I bring this all up because NMH3 takes this and amps it up further. TSA Travis at least had his moments of introspection and intrigue, but NMH3 Travis is all figured out. He loves video games and Takashi Miike films and he'll let you know about it constantly. He grew up with a video game he has a personal connection to called Deathman (just like you, a person who probably likes video games!). He's essentially a rich superhero with access to advanced tech like Iron Man and everybody loves him and lives with him now. It is a "proper" conclusion to his arc in that he has come a long way since his early days and learned a lot, but it's also a far less interesting conclusion that feels surprisingly normal coming from a team that tends to do anything but. Celebrated, 100% competent heroes like this are a dime a dozen in video games, so it was a shame to see Travis become someone far less interesting than he once was even if he is a better person for it.

This kind of treatment technically extends to the rest of the cast as well. Much ado was made about Bad Girl and Shinobu returning in TSA, but here they're sidelined until the end immediately. Badman gets even less time in the spotlight (for a good reason, admittedly) and Sylvia is mostly reserved for a lingering plot thread/recurring joke that never gets resolved in a satisfying way. Henry is a completely different person now and goes from a perfect foil to Travis to a brief, purely antagonistic force that ushers in the most nonsensical portion of the game. Naomi is a tree now, for some reason? At least Jeane the cat gets a new, extremely deep voice that's pretty hilarious; they're probably the most entertaining character in the game now! But beyond that, the characters we've come to know over multiple games are at their least nuanced and likeable here, and considering that this may be the last NMH game ever, that's a huge bummer.

The new characters vary in quality to dramatic degrees. Some characters, like new antagonist Fu, get plenty of time to showboat and do ridiculous things that make them fit right in (though he also gets what might be one of the worst boss fights in recent memory, what a tragedy!), whereas other characters get a scene or two at most or remain mostly unexplained to those not familiar with Suda51's older work. The majority of the alien bosses you fight are some of the dullest foes Grasshopper has presented - most of them are unceremoniously killed in a cutscene or have little of interest to say when you do actually get to fight them. It's telling that the best boss fight by far is the one that's a direct callback to NMH2! There are attempts to make the player see the aliens from Fu's perspective as he bonds with them one last time before their battles with Travis, but these rarely make a lasting impact because of how disposable they end up feeling. It's a noble attempt though and is the only aspect of the game that feels like a proper commentary on a greater theme (the power of friendship vs trusting only yourself and how Travis and Fu represent this) instead of Suda51 just reminding you of what he likes again and again.

Among the game's many polarizing elements is its presentation. The previous games, even TSA, had style in spades, but NMH3 is much shakier. In some places, such as the anime-style intro and ending used for each chapter, the game looks gorgeous, but when actually playing the game, specifically while in the open world, it may very well be one of the ugliest games I've ever seen. Bringing back the open world was a controversial idea considering how it wasn't super well received in NMH1, but theoretically it would have been possible to expand upon it and make it more compelling and fully featured. That... absolutely did not happen here. The open world in NMH3 is probably the most unenjoyable open world I've ever participated in and I found it had absolutely nothing to offer me. Likely due to a combination of budget, time, and covid, the world looks completely unfinished, consisting mostly of empty space, some cats and scorpions to find, aliens that give you t-shirts, and some of the most bright, eyesearingly white buildings I've ever seen. It got to the point that I had to keep my trips in the first part of the open world short because my eyes couldn't handle looking at it! There are some things you can do for cash like various minigames, but once you've got some ranking fights and required qualifier battles under your belt, you'll never need the money they can provide. The minigames honestly aren't bad this time around, it'd just be nice if they were more worthwhile in terms of rewards. Luckily, none of the other areas are as blindingly white as the first one, so I was able to explore them more, but they all fail to impress, with the last two being particularly dumbfounding.

One of them is called "Call of Battle", which as the name implies is a cheeky reference to Call of Duty, I guess. Except that... there's no joke and it has no reason to be here or fit in with the rest of the world? It just looks like a brown war-torn wasteland with ruined buildings, people walking around as if nothing's weird about it, and nothing else of note. It even has a weird grainy CRT filter on the screen whenever you're there, which is such a weird place to go with the idea. Call of Duty games were on older consoles like the PS2, sure, but does anyone actually think of Call of Duty when they think of CRTs? It feels wildly out of touch and random in a way that's almost embarrassing to witness and I constantly found myself wishing that I didn't have to be there.

The other one that really stood out was Neo Brazil. With a name like that, I was expecting some kind of cool futuristic city, but instead I got a flat white plain with a few buildings and some grass on it. It legitimately feels like someone had just started a new project in whatever their program of choice is but had to save it and ship it out before they could finish. This is the last area you see before the final one, too, so it's a hell of a way to fail to impress players with your late-game! It's staggering just how empty and lifeless it is, so much so that I'm wondering if there's some kind of joke I'm missing. Is this a weird jab at Brazil, a reference to yet another anime, or is it exactly what I think it is and covid just hit this game extremely hard? Who knows!

The one part of NMH3 that doesn't feel like a pure downgrade is the combat. It's essentially a continuation of NMH2 that exchanges some of its depth for accessibility and speed. You unfortunately only get one beam katana this time around, stance changing is gone, and you can't punch people to break their guard, but combos now flow more easily from the start thanks to weak/strong attacks having clear, specific combos. Perfect dodging works much more consistently now and the death glove from TSA returns to give you four special attacks on a cooldown. Each one is really useful, ranging from a drop kick to a continuous area of effect that can be placed down to damage foes further as you wail on them. The slash reels return and activate a bevy of random effects that feel too rigged in the player's favor this time around. I was surprised how often I was getting tremendous power boosts and super modes in the middle of boss fights - it made several of them a total joke! The best part of all is that the enemy variety is by far at its best this time around. The game shows its hand too fast and reveals every type surprisingly quickly, but each one fights in pretty different ways; some types prefer to snipe from afar whereas others will rush at you relentlessly or use unique gimmicks like shields that require different approaches. I really missed the bloodcurdling screams that came with fighting normal people in the first two games, but considering how many games neglect and underestimate the importance of enemy variety, seeing it here was very much appreciated. This is also the one part of the game that actually looks and feels good to play, since the excessive particle effects and loud beam katana sounds are back once again to make combat as flashy and impactful as it should be.

Even with all its improvements, combat eventually wears thin thanks to the open world structure. Instead of unique levels tied to each boss, you just have to find copy-pasted battle arenas to fight enemies in until you're allowed to challenge the boss. While the levels in the previous games could run far too long for their own good, completely removing them wasn't the solution. Now, it just feels like you never get a break from the open world grind. What you do at the start is what you're doing at the end, and Travis' arsenal isn't big enough to keep these fights interesting forever. There's incentive to fight enemies multiple times to afford stat upgrades and get materials for chips that can be equipped, but at least on the game's default difficulty, you really don't need to engage with these systems much at all. Stat boosts are obviously good, but some of the moves you can learn are either superfluous or flat out interfere with your usual combo structure. I found a few chips that didn't have drawbacks and had no trouble holding onto those the entire game. Making your postgame content of sorts a grind to get better gear so you can re-fight things you've already fought isn't exactly a compelling way to extend playtime for me and probably many other people, if I had to guess.

In case it wasn't obvious by now, I found No More Heroes 3 to be thoroughly underwhelming. Though its combat is good and the soundtrack, while not up to the standards of the first two games, is pretty decent, everything else was a significant step down. The story is the weakest I've ever seen from a Grasshopper game and it completely fails to do anything interesting or emotional with its characters. Instead of making this a properly satisfying conclusion to a series more than a decade old, it insists upon providing rote, neverending winks towards its audience along with an almost cringeworthy amount of Takashi Miike fanboying and expects you to accept it without question and believe it's leading up to something. Even the finale is mired in wacky, random video game references that hog the air in the room and a cliffhanger tease that sounds way better than the story we actually got! While I can certainly respect personal passion projects from creative, interesting individuals, this one somehow feels too personal and indulgent, to the point where it forgets that there are people out there who aren't necessarily interested in hearing about its creator's every little interest. This game is a Q&A session between Suda and his diehard fans first and foremost, not the story of the weirdo assassin clawing his way to the top that I fell in love with. I can't help but wonder and become wistful over what could have been if the game had more time in the oven, zero interference from covid, and more visible signs of other creative voices involved in its production. What was once one of the games I was most excited for in the history of my entire time with the medium ended up leaving me feeling frustrated and retrospectively uninterested in exploring the rest of a catalog I was once really interested in doing so. For 15 hours, I waited for the one ridiculous moment, the one laugh out loud joke, the one exhilarating boss fight that would have brought me back to the wonder I felt in 2008 all over again, but that moment never came.

Reviewed on Mar 19, 2022


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