This review contains spoilers
No More Heroes III is a game I initially thought incredibly highly of, mostly to deflect from my disappointment that a franchise that has played an instrumental part in my personal development didn't leave with a bang, but a whimper.
Had Suda51 not been so open in recent interviews about how Grasshopper's access to the IP is fleeting and that this will likely be the last time we see the cast for the better part of a decade, the egregious yet charmingly self aware sequel-bait ending might have been a little more palatable.
There's also the unfortunate case of No More Heroes III's fairly mediocre soundtrack. Rize drummer Nobuaki Kaneko is at the helm for most of the combat tracks in the game, though this mostly amounts to a loud wall of drums and little else of note. The game's best track, Start The Game, comes from Grasshopper and No More Heroes numbered-entry veteran Jun Fukuda and is heard literally once during one of the first by-the-books, mechanic-checklist tutorials. It's incredible.
That being said there's admittedly quite a lot to like here, most notably a massively overhauled combat system that makes good use of a few of it's 2019 predecessors more interesting mechanics: the Tension Gauge and Death Glove. Whilst not as expansive as Travis Strikes Again's offerings, these four abilities do a lot to make this the most fun a No More Heroes game has been to play since the franchises inception. That doesn't mean it's the best though, as I've always felt that the first game has thematically flawless gameplay; of course the otaku, trained on anime and pro-wrestling tapes, would live out his fantasised boss battles with all the weight of samurai duels of old.
That's about the extent of III's homages to Travis Strikes Again however, because Dr. Juvenile is reduced to a piece of plot armour who's shilling publisher Marvelous' DAEMON X MACHINA as the credits roll for the first of multiple times and newfound hardcore fan-favourite Badman is beaten to a bloody pulp shortly before the Rank #9 fight.
Poor writing isn't relegated to just Dr. Juvenile either, as not a single member of III's fairly sizeable female cast is given even a shred of depth. Though in all fairness most of the men, outside of Travis and FU, aren't treated much better either.
This might be due in part to how III is structured, just like the Netflix inspired pre-chapter credits would lead you to believe, No More Heroes III is explicitly episodic.
Normally this would be fine as all of the games prior were technically chapter-based, even if they weren't obvious about it, but this presentation makes each and every inevitable trademark Goichi Suda Narrative Fakeout that much more of a kick in the teeth when they miss their mark and rob the player of the one opportunity per ranking they had to be graced with even a nugget of story content.
Naïve as it may be to have expected it, No More Heroes III feels a lot less like an earnest follow-up to Travis Strikes Again and more akin to a No More Heroes 2.5.
Had Suda51 not been so open in recent interviews about how Grasshopper's access to the IP is fleeting and that this will likely be the last time we see the cast for the better part of a decade, the egregious yet charmingly self aware sequel-bait ending might have been a little more palatable.
There's also the unfortunate case of No More Heroes III's fairly mediocre soundtrack. Rize drummer Nobuaki Kaneko is at the helm for most of the combat tracks in the game, though this mostly amounts to a loud wall of drums and little else of note. The game's best track, Start The Game, comes from Grasshopper and No More Heroes numbered-entry veteran Jun Fukuda and is heard literally once during one of the first by-the-books, mechanic-checklist tutorials. It's incredible.
That being said there's admittedly quite a lot to like here, most notably a massively overhauled combat system that makes good use of a few of it's 2019 predecessors more interesting mechanics: the Tension Gauge and Death Glove. Whilst not as expansive as Travis Strikes Again's offerings, these four abilities do a lot to make this the most fun a No More Heroes game has been to play since the franchises inception. That doesn't mean it's the best though, as I've always felt that the first game has thematically flawless gameplay; of course the otaku, trained on anime and pro-wrestling tapes, would live out his fantasised boss battles with all the weight of samurai duels of old.
That's about the extent of III's homages to Travis Strikes Again however, because Dr. Juvenile is reduced to a piece of plot armour who's shilling publisher Marvelous' DAEMON X MACHINA as the credits roll for the first of multiple times and newfound hardcore fan-favourite Badman is beaten to a bloody pulp shortly before the Rank #9 fight.
Poor writing isn't relegated to just Dr. Juvenile either, as not a single member of III's fairly sizeable female cast is given even a shred of depth. Though in all fairness most of the men, outside of Travis and FU, aren't treated much better either.
This might be due in part to how III is structured, just like the Netflix inspired pre-chapter credits would lead you to believe, No More Heroes III is explicitly episodic.
Normally this would be fine as all of the games prior were technically chapter-based, even if they weren't obvious about it, but this presentation makes each and every inevitable trademark Goichi Suda Narrative Fakeout that much more of a kick in the teeth when they miss their mark and rob the player of the one opportunity per ranking they had to be graced with even a nugget of story content.
Naïve as it may be to have expected it, No More Heroes III feels a lot less like an earnest follow-up to Travis Strikes Again and more akin to a No More Heroes 2.5.