No More Heroes 3

Superheroes are No More Heroes

No More Heroes 3 might be my biggest guilty pleasure yet. It's objectively a mid game, and mayhaps the weakest entry in the series so far (even worse than Travis Strikes Again in my opinion), but it somehow still manages to entertain me from start to finish. It feels like even though Suda has aired his grievances in TSA, he's still stuck with the publisher's demand and tight schedules, cuz it's apparent that this game is very, very unfinished and might be far from his original vision. Just a bit of disclaimer, this game is more of a direct sequel to Travis Strikes Again than Desperate Struggle, so play that game first. Even if it's a top-down dungeon crawler and I rated it as the second-worst NMH entry, it's still worth playing for the story alone. If you don't mind being Suda's therapist for 10 hours, it's an incredibly personal game for Suda, and gives you a lot of insights about his journey as a game developer and his frustrations with the industry, especially with EA (Damon, one of the two antagonists of NMH3, is literally based on an EA exec who ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up Shadows of the Damned's development). First of all, the open world that is promised to be larger than Santa Destroy is a half-truth. Yes, there are five areas to explore now, but almost all of them (aside from Perfect World) are half the size of Santa Destroy. I don't know how Grasshopper managed to create an open world that is not only small, but also empty. At least in NMH1, the emptiness is on purpose, and there are ton of stuff to do to make up for it. My biggest disappointment with this game is the "Restricted Area". It's 60% of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ map. I thought they're gonna open up with time, but no. They never did. The biggest offender might've been Neo Brazil. I was catfished so hard by the prospect of seeing a futuristic town, but only got an empty, unfinished plaza with absolutely nothing to do. With the open world coming back, the entry fee system also makes a return, something I lowkey missed in the second game. In this game, instead of fighting useless mooks before a boss fight, you have to complete "Designated Matches", which are a series of gauntlet matches against alien enemies. It's basically the enemy rooms in previous NMH games spread out around the open world, so after you complete these matches and pay your entry fee, you'll immediately gain access to the bosses' front door. A novel concept, but idk if Grasshopper intentionally did this to not upset the NMH2 fans, but the entry fee might as well not exist. Completing these Designated Matches will grant you enough more than enough money to pay for the entry fee. The thing is, in NMH1, they did the same thing by giving you enough money to fight the next boss directly after killing the preceding boss, but they also tie your money to your upgrades. So you either pay the fee directly and fight the boss underpowered, or you strengthen yourself and grind the entry fee through side jobs. In this game, there's a separate currency just for upgrades, called WESN. Meanwhile, money is used for almost nothing. Sushi and Death Glove Chips are dirt cheap, and you get a ♥♥♥♥ ton of them from Defensive Battles and Requests as well. SS-ranking Designated Matches also gives you a disgustingly large amount of money. The only way you might burn through your wallet is by spending it on gacha machines, which throws out duplicates. So all in all, money is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless in this game. I thought that in higher difficulty, they might raise the entry fee. No. I tried a second playthrough in Carolina Reaper mode. Still the same. What a disappointment. This, in turn, makes side jobs useless, which is a damn shame, considering these side jobs are actually way more fun than the previous games. I think I spent 4 hours of my total playtime just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with the side jobs. Combat is overhauled from the previous numbered games, which is now much closer to Travis Strikes Again. Instead of the four-attack button format in the previous game (two slashes, two beats), it now uses a three-button format; light attack, heavy attack, and throw. High Beat is now dodge, and Low Beat is now Jump. Stunning the enemies just require you to hit them repeatedly, instead of breaking their defenses with beat attacks. Throws can be done if they're either stunned or if you're behind them. Tension still works similar to NMH2, but instead of being used as a power-up move when fully charged, it now alters your light and heavy combo sequence the higher it is, which affects your DPS. The loss of these basic attack depth is replaced with the Death Glove; again, a carry-over mechanic from Travis Strike Again. With it, you can do a teleporting drop kick, slow down time around you, create an area where enemies inside it will be shot, and Force Push/Pull. When mastered, these new skills offers a surprisingly different kind of depth compared to the NMH 1 and 2's combat system. Enemy variety is also really good in this game. Because the main enemies are aliens, they can really go wild with the designs and attack patterns. I think this might be the best enemy variety in the series. Now let's talk about the highlight of the series; the boss fights. My biggest gripe with this game is that, even though they promised us to fight alien assassins, we get a Letz Shake-ahh situation like 3 or 4 times, and fight a different boss entirely, most of them are humans. I think there's only 6 fights that are actually aliens; the rest of them are either humans or robot (a very, very annoying robot btw). The fights itself, though, might be the second best the series has to offer, right next to the first game. I thoroughly enjoy all the boss fights. They all have cool designs, story, and gimmicks. My favorite boss fight has got to be Gold Joe, Midori, Velvet Chair Girl, and Sonic Juice. I won't spoil them here, cuz it takes too long to write anyway, but I personally didn't find any boss fights that are annoying or boring in this game, unlike NMH2. The story has a good premise, but sadly felt really rushed at the end. I liked how this time, most of the bosses had a heart-to-heart session with FU before facing off with Travis, allowing you to empathize with them a bit (even tho most of them are still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like him). [spoiler] FU and Damon also was set up to be this menacing threat that Travis might have little hope of beating, but by the end of the game, he just... steamrolls both of them. I'll be honest, I didn't feel a single thing after beating them. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ empty. [/spoiler] All in all, I have low expectations coming to this game, and I was not really disappointed. I had a lot of fun with this game, but I'm also kinda sad that, just by looking at the game, you'd instinctively know that this game is unfinished as hell, and Suda tried his damndest to finish this game and move on to the next project. I hope after Romeo Is a Deadman, he'd get the opportunity to work on NMH4, and hopefully, this time he gets to fully realize his vision. As to whether you should buy this game or not, get it when it's on sale. It's often sold dirt cheap. Also, try playing this game in 1.00. Go to Betas and switch versions there, then install the Muteki HD Texture Pack mod. In 1.10, the current version, they removed Midori's boss fight music, which is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ banger. The downside is that in 1.00, there's a lot of Sonic Frontiers-like pop-ins, but it doesn't really matter with how claustrophobic the world is in this game.

Full, unedited, longer review here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-nVjWLJvvLnJhnUhwUUS11jdzjv6Y6u2O-4v66Gk7uY/mobilebasic No More Heroes 3 is my second favorite game in the main numbered series of NMH right below the first No More Heroes. While NMH3 has its problems, I really don't think it deserves as much hate as it gets sometimes and I'd even personally argue that this game is better than No More Heroes 2 in many areas. For one, the combat feels excellent to play around with and the Death Glove abilities make combat a lot more engaging as you have to plan out which abilities to use at a given time on a particularly tougher opponent, such as using death slow and death rain at the same time to deal a ton of damage to said tougher enemy or possibly even killing them if you manage to get lucky with the slot system that makes yet another appearance from the previous games. The abilities that the slots can activate in this game after killing an enemy such as both armor modes, invincibility mode, mustang mode, and throw-crazy mode are all extremely fun and satisfying to get in the heat of battle, especially during clutch moments when your health is running low and your getting backed into a wall. With that being said however, there are flaws with the gameplay worth mentioning in that there were two specific occasions where Travis got literally stuck in a corner thanks to an enemy pushing him there and I couldn't leave in time and I died, completely ruining my then "No-Death Playthrough" that I was doing for fun. I didn't die because of my own fault but the game literally messed me up by itself which thankfully only happened two times and on the second time, I did manage to escape in time before I died again but that doesn't change the fact that it happened. There's also the infamous open world in this game that does feel empty and barren at times, like with Neo-Brazil or ThunderDome, that almost makes the game feel like it did the bare minimum and especially compared to NMH1's open world, yeah there are some pretty big downgrades in how things look around Santa Destroy but that’s not to say the open world is awful though. I actually really liked exploring the open world and finding all the different collectibles and optional battles that you can find across the map and I also really liked the cool little gacha toys that Travis can buy from the one motel room that show different characters from across the series and the different fights too. The jobs in this game compared to NMH1 are a bit of a downgrade though, while most of them play nicely, the mining minigame in particular isn't the best since Travis's jumps in this game aren't really made for platforming in mind and sometimes in these minigames, it expects you to make certain jumps that Travis sometimes can't pull off due to said jumping not accommodating itself to this sort of platforming which means that you might die and have to start the job all over again which can be a bit annoying. Now onto proper spoilers for the story in this game, if you don't want to get spoiled then please skip this entire section. This game might not be as thematically strong as NMH1 or Travis Strikes Again but I still think the story is pretty good for ending Travis's story across the games. In NMH1, he starts out as a rookie killer raring to get to number 1 but as the games went on you can see that this all clearly starts to affect Travis deeply and by NMH3, you can tell he's straight up done with this ♥♥♥♥ with lines like "I'm tired of all this ranking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, all I gotta do is take prince dumbass's head off and it's over" and other reactions he has throughout the game that shows how tired of all this he really is but that he keeps going out of revenge. What's interesting is that Sylvia constantly hammers in that this cycle of madness will never stop to Travis multiple times and that he'll never truly escape from the garden of insanity, their relationship feels very strange in this game, almost one-sided at points with how Sylvia acts towards Travis when he wants to "talk to her" about something that's never revealed in the story but we can assume that whatever it is bugs Travis enough to think about it constantly. I think GhenryPerez's video on this game really helps explain the cyclical life that Sylvia is trying to convey to Travis, he's stuck himself in this mobius strip of life, never escaping but constantly killing more assassins over and over again. It's exactly what Death Metal in NMH1 tried to warn Travis about but he didn't listen and now is in this never ending hell of fighting and dying and coming back to life again. The assassins in this game also are more memorable in their backstories compared to NMH2's 'concept art' bosses where they looked cool but didn't really have a lot of character most times, in this game each assassin has their own relationship dynamic with FU and each is toxic in their own ways. Like I said previously GhenryPerez's video on NMH3 touches on this in greater depth but the game in general places the theme of relationships as it's central plot point contrasting FU's relationships with his 'friends' and Travis with the friends he's made along the way like Kamui, Shinobu, Bad Girl, etc. Speaking of Travis' friends, I really don't like how Shinobu and Bad Girl got done dirty in this game, both characters aren't that integral to the story and you don't even get to play as either of them like you did with NMH2 and TSA. It feels like such a missed opportunity to not improve on what was already established in NMH2 with the different sections where you played as characters other than Travis, those parts had massive flaws in that game and they could've really improved that sort of gameplay in this game by having you play as Bad Girl and Shinobu in certain sections. I also found it weird how some characters acted towards each other in the story. The biggest example of this is Notorious and Travis seeing each other again and acting like they've never met each other despite in the Bubblegum Fatale chapter of Travis Strikes Again showing us that Notorious was actually tracking "evil threats' and his belt that was tracking that led him to Travis. This doesn't get brought up at all in this game which is extremely weird to me as this could've been connected to the greater theme of superheroes in this game and reiterated the theme of there being "No More Heroes" when Travis starts cutting down these so-called 'heroes' when he himself in their eyes would be something of a villain they had to defeat. Destroyman's appearance in this game is also the weakest part of this game and feels more like it was something they had to put in the game rather than something organic, his boss fight was pretty fun though and his boss music is cool too. Moving on from the spoiler section of this, I also really enjoyed the OST of this game and the boss themes really hit that sweet spot like always with these games, especially Midori Midorikawa's boss theme, Kimmy Love's boss theme, Native Dancer's theme, Mr. Blackhole's theme, and FU's theme. The graphics in this game are definitely strange and may not be as nice as the previous games but I think that this was done on purpose in a way, I mean what goes great with superheroes? Action figures and what do we see at the beginning of the story? A commercial advertising Travis and the other alien assassins as toys to buy which also explains why all the alien enemies look the way they do, don't they all look 'toy-etic' with how colorful they are? Overall, in my opinion, I believe that No More Heroes 3 is a great game despite it's flaws and shortcomings and is overall better in a lot of ways compared to No More Heroes 2. No More Heroes 3 is now in my top three favorite hack and slash from Suda51 and co right next to the original No More Heroes and Romeo is a DeadMan. I give this game an 8.6 out of 10.

Best one might be even better than nmh1 10/10 no crashes no bugs

Mas siempre es menos

it seems very ♥♥♥♥♥♥ at first but the game gets better. Travis is cool, gameplay is responsive.

Однозначно одна из лучших серий игр для опытных геймеров. Куча отсылок, очень угарный сюжет, и не очень сложный слешер, No More Heroes 3 отлично завершает трилогию и ни в чем не уступает 2ой и первой части, хотя некоторые скучные моменты, также наследует из предшественников, периодически возвращаюсь к этой серии и каждый раз нахожу что-то новое. Сама игра довольно прямолинейна, но в ней огромное количество секретов, рекомендую изучать вопросы на карте и иногда играть с кошкой.