Really solid game, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios really nailed it with the characters and story. Everything connected so smoothly. The final boss was probably one of the most insane antagonists in the franchise, and not even gonna lie I sweat up a storm while playing the final few chapters.

I think my biggest problem with the game is how many side cases and side stuff is thrown at you during the main story, it really takes me out of the immersion. Also, the amount of info dumps? The game expects you to remember all of these characters and so many details... I really wished they had a character info screen just like the mainline Yakuza games instead of trying to find them in the case files.

I also had a lot of issues with tailing people, it’s honestly the worst feature of the game and is extremely boring... sometimes it takes around ten minutes to follow down one person.

(TLDR at the very bottom)

I love No More Heroes, I’m so in love with the series and all the uniqueness put into it. But to be honest here, this game was kind of underwhelming (but of course still fun).

MAJOR Spoiler warning

Okay I’m going to put it out of the way quickly and say that I absolutely ADORED Travis in this game.
Alright now into the actual review:

I genuinely enjoyed the combat and the silly overwhelming amount of references in this game, but gosh the story was just as lacking as No More Heroes 2 in my opinion. I couldn’t get invested into any of the new characters except maybe Sonic Juice and Fu.
I understand the games’ stories aren’t really supposed to get taken seriously... but man there was so much more that could’ve been added to make the game better.

The overworld was very empty but looked super gorgeous.
Also, while I loved the enemy variety for the battles outside of the boss fights, I really wish we could’ve fought through mobs to get to bosses like the first game.

I think the best part of the game was the Henry and Travis fight/cutscenes. I’m still surprised myself but I cried when Travis “killed” Henry. Not a waterfall of tears but quite a few. I thought they’d dive more into Henry being a cult leader... but instead we got like two cutscenes of the guy and that’s it. I was so interested in the flashback Henry mentioned... I really wish we got to see more of him.

I’m pretty sure this is the final game, but the post credits little chibi animation thing kind of makes me hope that there’ll be a sequel or side game someday.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game, but it just didn’t feel like a proper final send off to Travis and his friends. It felt like a side game more than something mainline. It didn't really add much too much to anyone's character, if anything it just made it clear that Travis' arc was complete in Travis Strikes Again. Nonetheless, I’m still very glad we got a sequel to Travis Strikes Again, and appreciate the work Suda and his team put out to make one.

TLDR pros and cons

Pros:
-Very fun combat and great enemy types
-looks very good in my opinion, I loved the shades and the character models. I thought the overworld was very pretty.
-I appreciated Kimmy’s Howell’s return, and her rap battle with Travis was a blast.
-Seeing NT Kamui and Midori Midorikawa was pretty cool.
-Music is great as always
-Travis is as cool as always
-old characters show up
-the alien designs are very nice
-voice acting is great
-final boss was fun

Cons:
-The story felt underwhelming
-Damon felt like just some guy
-Henry was severely underused, and his cult should have been expanded upon even more
-Shinobu and Badgirl barely showed up
-Sylvia was rather annoying this game... I miss her longer exchanges with Travis
-Overworld is sadly empty, barely any NPCs around

Overall, I like Travis Strikes Again. it does lots of nice things but does an equal amount of uninteresting things. I’m not going to dive in and analyze the game’s lore into detail, but just lay out some pros and cons.

Cons:

-The game’s combat is ridiculously tedious and repetitive, and doesn’t have the same satisfaction as the combat from the first game. In the first game, it’s all over the top and bloody and you’re slicing people apart left and right with cool beam katanas... but in TSA you’re just... destroying game bugs. I’m not complaining about the fact that you do fight bugs, I’m just complaining that it just isn’t as fun as it was in the first game. The attacks are too simple and the only somewhat interesting thing were the skill chips. But even with the nice variety of skill chips I still found myself getting bored very quickly. It’s such a slog going through each level (with the exception of the DLC Killer Marathon) and I was honestly only motivated because of the music and the story.

-the top down combat was kind of annoying, I didn’t like playing as a flea on screen. I mean we have all these cool shirts to wear but you can’t even see it during most of the game.

-Badman and Travis suddenly have a truce and no interactions after the first cutscene of the game?? Badman was after Travis’ head out of revenge, and once the first cutscene was over they never speak to eachother until the credits. I wish they could’ve had some banter occasionally?? Some interaction would’ve been nice...

-Coffee and Doughnuts was a horrible level it was SO boring and had really bad platform sections. It’s a shame though because the boss of that level has a cool design.

-CIA was just as bad as Coffee and Doughnuts. it was very long and very unappealing... the only thing that was good about CIA was the final boss.


Pros:

-Man the way the game opened up was so killer... seeing Dan Smith and Badman interact was so exciting that I closed out of the game so that I could rewatch the opening cutscene again.

-the game looks nice in my opinion. I liked how stylistic the character portraits look in the death ball games, the cool change in animation or model style in cutscenes, and how the visual novel sections looked. It kind of shocked me that they didn’t really reuse any portraits for the visual novel sections, they made so many for so many characters.

-it’s charming seeing how each of the playable characters interact with Death and Drive (the character) and the bosses.

-Killer Marathon’s OST was insanely good and I LOVED Silver Face. His boss theme is probably one of my favorite songs from the entire franchise. That whole level was a blast, although a stressful one (it was pretty difficult). It’s sad how the best boss from the game with the most interesting backstory was locked behind DLC.

-Badman’s DLC story was very very engrossing. I had my eyes glued to the screen the entire time— it was such a good read. It made me a little upset seeing how we never get to see him talk in a visual novel section in the main story.

-The crazy amounts of Suda51 characters that appear in this game was mind blowing. Kurumizawa giving Travis a death ball was probably one of my favorite scenes in the game

-The Fax machine stuff from K (and the single one from Jeane)

-I love Henry Cooldown, so thank you Suda for the twenty lines of dialogue we get of him in the Bubblegum Fatale DLC.