No More Heroes 3

Genre: Spectacle Fighter

Players: 1

.

Review:

No More Heroes 3 is a Spectacle Fighter with some Open World elements released on Nintendo Switch in 2021 and ported to PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2022. This game once again returns to the odd saga of series protagonist and lightsaber-armed perpetual manchild Travis Touchdown, who finds that his title of #1 assassin (as well as all of planet Earth) is now under threat from an invading alien menace. As such, Travis heads out to take down the ten ring leaders of the aliens.

The No More Heroes series has always been noteworthy for their eccentricity and overall excess, and No More Heroes 3 is no exception. This game is bizarre in ways that go even farther than the first two games, with an oddball plot that only sometimes tries to make sense, with oddball characters whose motivations and attention spans seem unhinged to the point of absurdity, and with a tone that shifts so quickly and with such frequency that anyone trying to take this game too seriously will no doubt suffer from emotional whiplash. Do yourself a favor and don’t try to make sense of any of this, just let the silly and at times immature bizarreness of this game wash over you and try to enjoy the ride.

The presentation here is absolutely bonkers, with a crazy sense of style, visual flair, and wacky character designs, all bound together by elements from nerd culture, old-school videogames, and anime. The soundtrack is similarly all over the place, with fast-paced action themes, stylish jazz, and music befitting a more serious anime, all rolled into one odd package.

However, while this game is stylistically excellent, on a technical level this is pretty underwhelming, even for a Nintendo Switch game. Nasty pop-in and texture pop-in, horrible aliasing, and barren environments are all extremely common here. The odd thing is that these issues are most noticeable in the most unnecessary part of the game, the Open-World section.

Yes, the Open-World elements that were in the first No More Heroes game and thankfully removed from the second game have made their return here… with all the same problems they had the first time around. In other words, you have a massive open world with nothing to actually do in it except travel from one destination to another, something that could have been more easily achieved with an in-game menu, something that was done this way in the second game, so it’s perplexing that they would go to the trouble of reintroducing this element of the game without actually fixing any of the problems it had in the first place.

What’s more, the overall pacing of the game is possibly the worst in the series. All that craziness I mentioned early on, the stuff that gives this game so much personality and flavor? Well, as great as it is, there’s just too darn much of it, and you can go for long stretches of time without getting to the actual meat of the game, the action.

That action is still as good here as it ever was. To be clear, this is a messy, silly take on the Spectacle Fighter genre, one that doesn’t have the beautiful elegance of the Bayonetta franchise or the wonderful combat options of the Devil May Cry series. No one is likely to think this is a contender for the best game in the genre, but it’s still a delightfully joyous take on the genre all the same… at least once you actually get to the combat. And once again you still have a wealth of variety in fun little minigames surrounding that core action too.

Still, I can’t help but feel like for every step forward No More Heroes 3 makes for its series, it takes another step backwards. The ridiculous excess of personality here is bigger and better… but it infringes too much on the action. That action is still top-notch, but players now must once again trudge through the tedious Open World stuff to get to it. And despite the potential to build on the series using the power of the Nintendo Switch, on a technical level this is extremely underwhelming and at times outright ugly. It’s still an excellent Spectacle Fighter, and fans of the series will still likely enjoy this, but it’s not the triumphant return to form I’m sure many were hoping for.

tl;dr – No More Heroes 3 is a Spectacle Fighter with Open World elements that has the series’ manbaby protagonist Travis Touchdown taking on a horde of bizarre aliens. The presentation here is even more delightfully ridiculous than prior games in the series, and the action is just as good, but the pacing is worse, the game’s performance is awful, and bringing back the Open World of the first No More Heroes without fixing its problems is a baffling choice that takes the series backwards. Make no mistake, this is still a great Spectacle Fighter, but it’s one that alternates between being a blast and shooting itself in the foot.

Grade: B+

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