No More Heroes III

First: even if you have no interest in playing NMH3 please listen to the song Itadakimasu.

I've been trying to write this review for a while, and it's been elusive to say the least. I like this game, but as I filter though my many negative points, I look at those four stars like, no way, it's 3, then think again and go no maybe it's 5 stars, actually. I am a Grasshopper fan (and will try my best not to be insufferable) but No More Heroes was never my favorite. ...Then Travis Strikes Again rolled around, and I got into the story. I media blackouted any NMH3 news for months leading up to release, but kept my hype tempered. I'm happy I did, because I think the best route with this game is to appreciate what's in it, not what could have been or some crazy expectations.

The combat is pretty fun! TSA suffered on this point, as the actual gameplay was repetitive, at best smoothing into a mindless Warriors-esque experience. People were rightfully worried NMH3 would be the same, but they pulled it off splendidly. It's close to the first two games, minus some clunkiness. I was pulling off dodges and wrestling movies often and it felt good! The additions from TSA--special moves with a cooldown--are novel without becoming overwhelming. In TSA you got many, many special moves you could equip at will; thankfully they pared it down to simply 4 with a range of effects. There's obviously a rhythm to the gameplay but it's satisfying, and if it gets broken and you scramble into a corner to jerk off the controller and think about your mistakes, there's a usually reason.

(Side note. This is a special case but I will complain about it: I do not recommend almost anyone play on Berry Sweet. I'm disappointed I picked this not knowing exactly what it meant because you can't change difficulty settings once you pick (why?), and it is not an easy mode but a story mode. You take zero damage, and while I could still tell whether I was doing better or worse in a fight, it was unsatisfying. It's lazy to make a mode like this instead of changes to keep the game fair but on the easier side; they just slapped a permanent shield on Travis instead. Include this mode, but have an actual easy. If you're like how can you complain about this just restart, 1. I wasn't getting hit that much in the start, I thought maybe you get a couple free hits and then the shield fades, 2. by the time I was sure I was several hours in and didn't want to restart, 3. I picked it in the first place because I hate the Switch controllers, especially undocked, and didn't want to struggle because of them. They are bad.)

The worst aspect of combat is enemy sponginess. Even after powering up the beam katana fully some of the enemy types were painful to encounter, and there's not much relief because there aren't that many types. They did their best to make a variety, with aliens that scatter mines, ones that are just a sword guy, and ones that can restart your special move cooldown timer, etc., and then put them together in different amounts and variations to create different circumstances. It's a thoughtful use of enemies given budgetary constraints, so I commend them for it, but it just lead to me kiting the enemies that moved more into a corner, killing them, then going back and facing the less mobile, often more annoyingly HP heavy units separately. It eliminates potential strategies by making those heavy units so tanky.

And that ties into another thing I didn't care for, which is why you're doing all these encounters in the first place. Unlike NMH1 and 2, it's not only money you need to move on to the next ranked match, but you also need to "qualify" by doing random alien fights scattered around the world. This is well-intentioned, to keep the player from making a ton of money at once and then boss rushing the entire game, and forces you to explore, but they're just kind of... boring, worsened by the lengthy load times. Yet again I will stress I understand the budget issues, but I really wanted to see a return to the levels leading up to the ranking battle from NMH1, and we do not get that (actually there is literally one, which makes that fight stand out in my mind), so you fight a set of aliens in a bland room instead. So the combat feels good; the issue is that I don't feel compelled to fight. (Here is where a true diehard GHM fan might say that's the point, but I don't think so.) The levels in NMH1 provided unique settings and sometimes even puzzles (Speed Buster's is particularly memorable) that are missing from this game.

The puzzles are saved for the bosses, which are obviously the highlight (and hey, always have been). I legit don't want to spoil them because as you'd expect, there's puzzles, there's genre-bending, there's kill steals now-you-fight-someone-else galore. Since they're probably one of the most appealing aspects of NMH to a wider audience, I want to say that they justify the work to get there, despite all my griping. Obviously that's where a majority of the story beats are delivered as well, another high point I don't want to spoil but will get to shortly.

As mentioned, there is a return to the system of paying to fight those matches, but I do want to lightly compliment the minigames this time around. There's a host of new ones, except for lawn mowing which deserves a return, and I found them kind of mindlessly fun. You get a fair amount of money if you succeed, and I never was hurting for cash, usually doing a few jobs whenever I had time so I could pad out my wallet. The open world you explore to find them, in NMH fashion, is sparse. There's a few things to collect, like kittens and scorpions (same thing really), and aliens who will give you new shirts for completing requirements, but most of it is empty save utterly generic NPCs milling about. There are also a couple (like, literally 3 that are optional) quests that are in the format of Travis Strikes Back, the visual novel element of TSA. However, their paltry inclusion is more disappointing than having them gone altogether. The TSB segments were the butter to TSA's bread, where here they're short and not very interesting. There is one that is automatically played through the story line that provides anything satisfactory, and it's a shame because they feel tacked on. Knowing how much content was cut, I'm not sure why they didn't use these to greater effect.

Carrying on from that idea, here's where I will critique the overall... maybe... conception? of this game, from like, a Fan perspective, aka this is the most skippable paragraph. Of course, in TSA they made fun of the VN elements, saying gamers wouldn't be interested in them because NMH is an action game, but then TSB went on to heavily carry the narrative, so it felt full circle. NMH3 includes these segments, but not done as well, so it's almost a justification for this thought process. A couple of this game's themes are basically inclusions from TSA but not done quite as sharply, leading to this slight sense of feeling burned, as Suda51 has said that TSA is important and canonical to the NMH storyline. I get that no one played it, but I see compliments of this game handling Travis's maturing and like, that was already started in TSA, to a fulfilling end. So when I play this after TSA, I feel that it's almost missing a forward motion for the overall story, whereas if I hadn't played TSA, some parts might seem a little out of nowhere but an interesting turn. That's all I want to address on that topic just so I don't get deeper into like, themes and shit. I had to get some waxing out.

Despite that, the story line is good! Travis being pushed to save the world, over his previous destruction only games is certainly new. It's hard to discuss without spoilers, but the returning characters you'd expect are back, like Shinobu and Jeane (the cat) and even Bad Girl (I didn't say I wouldn't spoil TSA), plus other inclusions from TSA who were outsiders to NMH like Kamui from The Silver Case (please play The Silver Case) and Notorious from Suda's most recent turn at FirePro Wrestling. Unfortunately one of my favorites was sidelined for the entire game which is unforgivable but I already had my fanwank segment. Your ranking battle opponents are vibrant and tons of fun, which is another bummer to hear what material was cut, as I would've loved to know more about them. The galaxy's number one, FU, is absolutely the highlight of the game for me. FU is like the opposite of Jeane (human) from NMH1. He's an in your face, obvious big boss, bold space weirdo and the voice actor knocked it out of the park portraying his swagger. All the VAs are great, the cast is lively and brings a lot of characterization to the table.

And all that wasn't including the design and graphical treatments. I flat out love the alien designs. There are tons of love poured into the stylistic aspects of this game, from the opening faux retro game turning into faux Youtube, the anime intro and endings to each "chapter" of ranking battle, the faux Netflix continue screen, KILL! when you kill, maybe the most hype "Press A" you can imagine, it just goes on. One thing I often criticize in cutscenes is poor direction since it's common even in AAA games, and there is none of that here. The effort going into keeping scenes from turning into bland talking heads is phenomenal. I especially love how they included small gestures and movements just to liven up something as simple as Travis sitting on the floor of a boss arena. If nothing else, I would recommend this game to show off an impressive level of detail, especially for a smaller studio. It's simply a marvel in this aspect.

So that's mixed, right? Still, I think it deserves the nudge into a higher rating as even now, years after NMH's inception, it manages to be a unique, surprising, exciting, messy game. You will be baffled by some element or another, whether it's Jeane (the cat) being Travis's "radio companion" like character, the interstitial segments of Miike movie reviews, or the hilarious and stupid but also great ending. When it comes down to it, TSA is the deep thinking part of the current story line, and NMH3 is the glitzy punches of action and insanity and blood that you want to see. And there just isn't much like it out there, even in the indie sphere. It's one of those games where its many flaws are buffered by being outstanding elsewhere.

And hey, it's probably the last No More Heroes game anyway. If it didn't go out on a kinda fucked up high note, what would be the point?

(If you got this far, reward yourself with a listen to Musical Chair. I don't know how to talk about music so I didn't but there are some real standout tracks.)