This review contains spoilers
No More Heroes 3 is a game I've waited a very long time for. And I think this game delivered! It made me very happy while playing it, just like the previous games, its a mix of relaxing but simple exploration, silly minigames, satisfying combat, and incredibly compelling characters and dialogue. this one feels a lot more surreal than the previous ones, it fleshes that atmosphere of Travis Strikes Again out. Maybe that feeling of surreality is fueled by how long I waited and how many expectations I had for this game, and maybe its fueled by the absurd amount of references and brands name-drops played completely straight. But it is certainly a trip, from start to finish.
The gameplay loop has changed a bit, in some ways that I like, and some ways I don't like. For one, now the map is split into 7 different locations. I like this change, it gave us some needed aesthetic variety, I've ran around Santa Destroy enough already. Though, it's kinda obvious that some of these places are lower effort than others. These maps are very minimal in interactivity, and have massive chunks you can't access. The scale of them might've been necessary for driving around in your bike to be satisfying, though. And I liked that part a lot! There's also the change to require you to do 3 designated fights every episode, which works fine enough. It gave a lot of time for you to get used to the combat, but they definitely aren't more fun than the boss stages were in previous NMH games. The jobs are as fun as they ever were, and with designated fights giving you so much cash, I imagine they might've felt less like a slog to mandatorily go through to players who didn't like them in NMH1. I like the part where you suplex crocodiles. All the overworld objectives like collecting cards, finding scorpions, and planting trees were cool too, it gave some needed depth to the overworld. I don't know if I like the general gameplay loop of this game more or less than NMH1's, it's kinda like they traded some cool stuff for some new cool stuff.
The combat of No More Heroes has absolutely never been better than this. NMH1 and 2 aren't shallow games, but they do rely a lot on the satisfaction of the combat rather than depth. I don't think NMH3 turned No More Heroes into some super complex character action game, but it did give a ton of depth to positioning, your tools, and how useful your overall kit is. Stunning into suplexes to get back battery is so incredibly fun, the Death Glove skills have a ton of varied application, and I don't think they lost any satisfaction even though I'm no longer swinging my wii-mote around all the time due to how incredibly good heavy slashes feel. And I love the mech. The mech kicks ass.
The most important part of No More Heroes' gameplay loop is definitely the boss fights, and fun-wise, I don't think these are any worse than NMH1 or 2's. Everyone knows the most fun fights in action games are the ones where the bosses are similar to you instead of giants, and NMH3 has a ton of fun fights like those. Though, they did cut a major compartment of the bosses, which is the stages you play through before them. I miss those stages, some of these fights really needed some extra aesthetics attached to them to prop them up in the cool factor. And this isn't really about gameplay, but I don't think I liked most of these bosses as characters as much as I did in the first No More Heroes. Most of those fight intros were carried by Travis being really cool, instead of the bosses also being really cool, exceptions being some ones near the end.
The plot to this game very fun, and all the colourful characters definitely kept it as anything other than boring. I found myself wondering how this game fit into the plot of NMH through a lot of my playthrough, and I think I get what they were going for. NMH1 is all about this young assassin who's desensitized to death and sex, NMH2 is him returning to his town and realizing the scope and reality of his actions, and TSA is him fucking off into the woods and coming to terms with everything. NMH3 represents an older assassin, who still definitely likes sex and violence, but understands things a bit better than he did before. At this point, Travis is living his best life, but FU comes around, a parallel to a younger Travis, eager to prove himself and in love with violence. FU works very well as a crux to Travis, an angry alien prince cool with murdering and killing, except when it happens to his friends, who are apart of shallow friendships at best, or only work with him out of fear at worst. But I did find myself wondering one thing through all of this, after TSA, did we even need a game to pinpoint Travis' character growth like this? We already know his path to maturing. In a lot of ways, I think that No More Heroes 3 might've been a story that was already told. Which might feel weird to say after establishing I waited years for this game, but I think its the main explanation to why some of the kill the past-heads felt underwhelmed by the plot. But, I can't think of a way to extend Travis' character any more meaningfully than this. You could say this was literally the best outcome! And I'd agree.
No More Heroes 3 is the game I didn't need, but I wanted. and what I got was an incredibly fun game, with a fast paced gameplay loop of super cool combat, oddly fun menial tasks, absurd dialogue, and mind blowing art design. With a ton of collectables that kept me playing for a while, style that feels equally sleek, and completely overbearing. That overbearing style lies deeply at the core of No More Heroes 3's aesthetics, with bombastic referencing, constant logo cut-ins, with an opening, outro, and even commercial breaks. There are probably parts of this that read more critical than I even feel in my heart for this game, I just really loved the whole experience. In the first hour of the game, I didn't even know what to focus my brain on, from the weird NES segment, to Sylvia talking about gaming in a tab in the corner of the screen, to the sudden introspective dialogue with Mr Blackhole. No More Heroes 3 has so much depth to its aesthetic flair, and barely lightens up on it the whole way through. This game kinda feels like sensory overload, but in a way that never feels tacky or annoying, which is pretty impressive. There are times where it relies a bit too much on that sensory overload and runs out of substance, but there's almost always something compelling somewhere to back that up, whether it be gameplay or incredible visual design. I think this game is super special, and even with its flaws, I really couldn't imagine a better conclusion to this series. I hope Suda gets more opportunities to make games like this that are completely from the heart, even in their weird quirks. And goodbye, Travis touchdown. You were the perfect protagonist for me.
The gameplay loop has changed a bit, in some ways that I like, and some ways I don't like. For one, now the map is split into 7 different locations. I like this change, it gave us some needed aesthetic variety, I've ran around Santa Destroy enough already. Though, it's kinda obvious that some of these places are lower effort than others. These maps are very minimal in interactivity, and have massive chunks you can't access. The scale of them might've been necessary for driving around in your bike to be satisfying, though. And I liked that part a lot! There's also the change to require you to do 3 designated fights every episode, which works fine enough. It gave a lot of time for you to get used to the combat, but they definitely aren't more fun than the boss stages were in previous NMH games. The jobs are as fun as they ever were, and with designated fights giving you so much cash, I imagine they might've felt less like a slog to mandatorily go through to players who didn't like them in NMH1. I like the part where you suplex crocodiles. All the overworld objectives like collecting cards, finding scorpions, and planting trees were cool too, it gave some needed depth to the overworld. I don't know if I like the general gameplay loop of this game more or less than NMH1's, it's kinda like they traded some cool stuff for some new cool stuff.
The combat of No More Heroes has absolutely never been better than this. NMH1 and 2 aren't shallow games, but they do rely a lot on the satisfaction of the combat rather than depth. I don't think NMH3 turned No More Heroes into some super complex character action game, but it did give a ton of depth to positioning, your tools, and how useful your overall kit is. Stunning into suplexes to get back battery is so incredibly fun, the Death Glove skills have a ton of varied application, and I don't think they lost any satisfaction even though I'm no longer swinging my wii-mote around all the time due to how incredibly good heavy slashes feel. And I love the mech. The mech kicks ass.
The most important part of No More Heroes' gameplay loop is definitely the boss fights, and fun-wise, I don't think these are any worse than NMH1 or 2's. Everyone knows the most fun fights in action games are the ones where the bosses are similar to you instead of giants, and NMH3 has a ton of fun fights like those. Though, they did cut a major compartment of the bosses, which is the stages you play through before them. I miss those stages, some of these fights really needed some extra aesthetics attached to them to prop them up in the cool factor. And this isn't really about gameplay, but I don't think I liked most of these bosses as characters as much as I did in the first No More Heroes. Most of those fight intros were carried by Travis being really cool, instead of the bosses also being really cool, exceptions being some ones near the end.
The plot to this game very fun, and all the colourful characters definitely kept it as anything other than boring. I found myself wondering how this game fit into the plot of NMH through a lot of my playthrough, and I think I get what they were going for. NMH1 is all about this young assassin who's desensitized to death and sex, NMH2 is him returning to his town and realizing the scope and reality of his actions, and TSA is him fucking off into the woods and coming to terms with everything. NMH3 represents an older assassin, who still definitely likes sex and violence, but understands things a bit better than he did before. At this point, Travis is living his best life, but FU comes around, a parallel to a younger Travis, eager to prove himself and in love with violence. FU works very well as a crux to Travis, an angry alien prince cool with murdering and killing, except when it happens to his friends, who are apart of shallow friendships at best, or only work with him out of fear at worst. But I did find myself wondering one thing through all of this, after TSA, did we even need a game to pinpoint Travis' character growth like this? We already know his path to maturing. In a lot of ways, I think that No More Heroes 3 might've been a story that was already told. Which might feel weird to say after establishing I waited years for this game, but I think its the main explanation to why some of the kill the past-heads felt underwhelmed by the plot. But, I can't think of a way to extend Travis' character any more meaningfully than this. You could say this was literally the best outcome! And I'd agree.
No More Heroes 3 is the game I didn't need, but I wanted. and what I got was an incredibly fun game, with a fast paced gameplay loop of super cool combat, oddly fun menial tasks, absurd dialogue, and mind blowing art design. With a ton of collectables that kept me playing for a while, style that feels equally sleek, and completely overbearing. That overbearing style lies deeply at the core of No More Heroes 3's aesthetics, with bombastic referencing, constant logo cut-ins, with an opening, outro, and even commercial breaks. There are probably parts of this that read more critical than I even feel in my heart for this game, I just really loved the whole experience. In the first hour of the game, I didn't even know what to focus my brain on, from the weird NES segment, to Sylvia talking about gaming in a tab in the corner of the screen, to the sudden introspective dialogue with Mr Blackhole. No More Heroes 3 has so much depth to its aesthetic flair, and barely lightens up on it the whole way through. This game kinda feels like sensory overload, but in a way that never feels tacky or annoying, which is pretty impressive. There are times where it relies a bit too much on that sensory overload and runs out of substance, but there's almost always something compelling somewhere to back that up, whether it be gameplay or incredible visual design. I think this game is super special, and even with its flaws, I really couldn't imagine a better conclusion to this series. I hope Suda gets more opportunities to make games like this that are completely from the heart, even in their weird quirks. And goodbye, Travis touchdown. You were the perfect protagonist for me.