This game is a game of almosts.

The opening to this game and the impression you get of it before you play it are entirely separated from your thoughts on it when you finish it. You effectively go into this game expecting a large island murder mystery game where you encounter strange folks and solve puzzles. Each of those things is correct, but they are individual. There is a large island you traverse. There is a murder. There are mysteries. There are strange folk. And there are puzzles.

This game at times feels like one of those bull riding machines you see at the fair. The kind where the the entire goal is to stay on as long as you can. Whenever you get into the groove with this game, you get tossed right off.

You beat this game and 'almost' say it was fun. You witness the story and 'almost' get it. You wake up and this time you 'almost' get to the hotel lobby.

I've seen people explain this game not being fun as 'intended' as some sort of parody of classic adventure games. I've not read every single Suda interview, but as far as I could parse this wasn't the case. But I also understand why some people would say this. At times, it feels like this game is trying to suck on purpose. For some sort of ulterior reason like story or thematically. But then other times, it just feels like a bad game.

My favorite part of this game was running along the beach listening to 'Rhapsody In Blue'. Not the puzzles, not the jokes, not the story. Just running.

Edit: I like this game now. No idea why.

I recently got two friends to play through this game. One loved Suda games and visual novels, the other hated Suda's writing and visual novels. One thing we all have in common is that voicing our opinions on this game is hard.

Finding something to say about something you love is actually quite an undertaking. It's easy to love something without explaining why. It's even easier to hate. It all comes down to being able to formulate your thoughts in a cohesive manner, which believe it or not, is actually pretty fuckin' hard. I actually have a really bad habit of not collecting my thoughts before they get brought up. "Why'd you like this part of the game?" "I dunno, I just liked it." "Yeah, but it's poorly designed." "It didn't bother me cause I liked everything around it."

Hating is easy cause it's a strong and simple emotion and it can be used to zero in on any particular thing. Love is more of an 'all over' kinda feeling. It's not channeled into a singular point, it's 'all over'.

'The character portraits are inconsistent' - Yeah
'The pacing is awful' - Yeah
'The story is constantly fighting the way it's presented' - Yeah
'Plot details are hard to follow' - Yeah
'So, it's bad, right?' - No, I love it actually. A lot.

Next time you watch someone review a game they hate and hear them give detailed explanations on what parts they individually hate, watch them review a game they adore. They'll get into specifics, but at the end of the day they all say the same thing. "I just love it, and I can't fully articulate why."

Well, they won't literally say that, but an approximation... Sometimes.

"Like how you feel when a cool breeze flows by. It's a pleasant feeling."

The story of this game didn't quite hit me at first. I enjoyed it and acknowledged how powerful it was, but it was only when I rewatched the final cutscenes on Youtube that it hit me like a pound of bricks. Especially that letter reading at the end, god. Many cite this game for having bad voice acting, but in a way it feels intentional as the voice acting stops being bad once you get to the serious stuff.

Really my only issues with the game are how not scary it is and how bad the difficulty is balanced. I was scared many times during the course of Silent Hill 1, but at no point during Silent Hill 2 was I ever actually scared by anything. And the Hard difficulty isn't even nearly as well balanced as the first game was. At times I would have a wealth of healing items and ammo, and then have to fight a 7 minute boss that stole 90% of it. The semi-final boss took me 30 minutes to beat because I had to refight it due to not having enough ammo for the final boss. I only ended up beating it due to the Great Knife cheese strat I learned. I like my survival horror games to be tough and hard so that I really feel the fight for survival, but this was just tedious. Silent Hill 1 was a lot more fair as all of the issues I had were due to my poor planning and mistakes.

I actually started this series with Homecoming. As of writing this review, I've played Homecoming, this, Silent Hill 1, and am currently playing through 2.

This game is another game that I love far more than what it deserves. Don't get me wrong, this game is actually way better than most people give it credit for, with the few downsides like the boring monster designs and doodoo combat negatively effecting the game, but the good of it still shines through. The story is relatively simple, but what they do with it is actually incredibly smart and well thought-out and if the story had a bit better writing it would definitely be more well regarded than it currently is. I actually really like Murphy as a protag and I wish the game he was in was a slightly better one. The introduction of the open world and side missions are actually a really great and fun idea, but the rewards can vary from pretty good to whatever making some of them feel like a waste of time. Plus, the fact that you can't bring multiple melee weapons with you/can't bring them to the final area of the game, can make a lot of the side missions feel pointless.

Really my biggest complaints with the game are:
-It's not scary (Which I think you could at least improve a bit by making the game extremely dark like SH1)
-The gameplay is just super barebones.
-The subway system being locked behind a side mission is obnoxious, and the fact that you have to walk through the sewer for a bit before you get teleported to the area you want to go to makes using it feel redundant. I just ran around town for most of it.
-The lack of alternate costumes for Murphy outside of a side mission and story ones is incredibly lame. Most of the other games have bonus outfits, are you really telling me you couldn't just add a couple into the game?
-No cutscene skip. Not a big deal as it only affects replays and most cutscenes are fairly short anyways, but it's still annoying.

You should still definitely play this game. It has way more worth as a game than Homecoming does, which isn't saying much, but still. I think if this game ever got remade, Murphy would finally get the justice of being in a good game that he deserves.

I don't give this game 5 stars because it's actually that good. It's hard to put into words how important of a game this one is to me. There's no reason why a dumb tie-in game for an anime I've never seen, from a developer that I'm fairly interested in, in a language I do not speak should affect me as much as it does, and yet it does. There's just something special about it. Almost everything about it, outside of the combat and the insane amount of exact-same-room dungeons you have to go through, is perfect for me. The vibe, the music, the story, the characters (especially Aoyama) - This is my perfect game. The ending and Perfect Night Kiss-only post credits cutscene still get me all emotional and I will never be able to tell you why.

No More Heroes is a series comprised of 2 good games, and 2 bad ones. 3 is one of the good ones.

Combat is great, if a little repetitive due to the lack of any real progression in the combat outside of like 3 upgrades, the music is once again fantastic, the story is great, if a little too fast paced with Suda refusing to linger on what could be a fantastic emotional moment, and the side content is fun, if a little lame due to the lack of any real variety outside of a few different job missions with different difficulties. The game somehow feels about as barebones as 1 was, all these years later. If this game was made on literally any system other than the Switch, we'd have a truly fantastic game.

See you, space assassin.

Also, Suda stop fucking making these games require knowledge of past Suda games. Like, at least if you do that do the average person a favor and explain this shit and don't just wink and nod at the camera. You actively push people away when you reference games you made 400 years ago. I'm still gonna play Silver Case, but y'know...

I wish this game was good, man. The story is a return to form, the music is fantastic, literally everything but the combat is amazing. But god, that combat. It's so lame and you have to play so much of it. The game would be 10x better if most enemies could be killed in 1-2 hits. It took them until Killer Marathon to actually understand how to make the gameplay interesting, and it's the DLC for godsake.

Also, Suda, I love you to death, but referencing the fact that Travis is in a video game I am playing every 2 seconds makes me want to rip your head off. Please never 4th wall break again. It only makes the player less invested in the stakes.

Suda is really great at making games just comprised of stuff he finds cool. There is a story with symbolism and whatever, but none of that really matters. How you perceive media is more important that what the original intention of it is. I can appreciate a piece of art for being what it is, emotionally affecting me or not, and still not understand why it is the way it is. I got what I wanted out of the game and that matters more than proving you get what it's about.

IDK man cool shit happens and it's cool and I teared up at the end

This shit is mondo funny.

Killer is Dead has gotta be one of Suda's most underrated games. As much as I love No More Heroes 3, this game feels like what that game should have. It's fast, fluid, and the blood/combo mechanic rewards you for being skilled at the game.

Things I like:

-Story: The story is really great. It's not as nearly as tough to get a read on the point of, like other Suda games can be, but that's actually good as it allows you to focus more on the characters without having to constantly think "What's the purpose of all of this?" My only problem is that due to the story being so simple, you clock what's happening about halfway through the game and spend the rest of it just leading up to that event. The group dynamic is fantastic and I really wish we got more time with the characters.
-Gameplay: By far the strongest part of the game. KiD is about as close as Suda ever got to replicating the feeling of effortlessly offing multiple goons at once in NMH1. The combo system really lends itself well to combat encounters, rewarding you with more blood the higher your combo gets, and that blood in turn being used for your arm or to kill a particularly troublesome group of enemies incredibly quickly. Speaking of the arm, the gun and charge cannon are fantastic weapons that really help in dealing with annoying ranged enemies or to quickly dispatch foes from afar. The drill I only ever really used if I had to, and the freeze gun is next to useless as it tends to lead to you dropping your combo more than anything. I also have to shout out the parry system, as being able to parry from any direction is such a nice feature and later being able to punish an enemy from a parry helps keep the gameplay feeling fluid.
-Side content: The side missions/challenges are great fun. There's really not much to say with them, some of the missions are great, some are pretty annoying.
-Soundtrack: This OST is filled with bangers. From Vibrations to Symphonic Razor to King of Ghost (and basically all of the boss themes). Some of the level themes are kinda whatever, but when the OST is good it's good. Also, the RIZE/Jesse and the Bones songs that were in the original release of the game were fantastic and the Nightmare Edition is worse off without them. If a mod to add them back in ever gets made, it's worth the effort. Changes the entire feel of the scenes they're in.

Things I didn't like:

-Length of the game: You can very easily beat this game, with all of the side missions, in a handful of hours. Practically everyone I've talked to that enjoys this game agrees that it's just too damned short. It leaves you wanting more, but not in a good way. It also doesn't help that the first handful of chapters in the game are extremely short. The 1st level is just a hallway, the 2nd is a group of enemies, the 3rd is a fairly short level, and the 4th is basically only a boss. At 12 levels, I'd say about half of them are good, and the other half are whatever.
-Leveling up: One issue I had with the game was with how many upgrades were vital to later levels. If you don't replay each level a couple times, you tend to end up without important upgrades. This leads to troublesome encounters that would be way better with certain upgrades.
-Dating: The dating stuff is pretty funny, but you have to do it a decent amount and they lock the weapons behind it. If it had more depth, I'd be okay with it, but as is it's pretty barebones.

What I would change:
-Increase the amount of EXP from side missions by a lot to encourage you to do them and not just repeat main story missions
-Replace the RIZE/Jesse and the Bones songs with at least new music that fits and not the lame instrumentals
-Have more filler missions to help flesh out the group a lot more
-Make the HQ a place you can walk around in and talk to the other characters