No More Heroes III Review

No More Heroes 3 is a game that I am questioning what made me go through all the way to the end besides the fact that I paid money for it and I try to make sure every game I buy, I try to "beat". If I wasn't so persistent with the games I at the very least didn't get some enjoyment out of, I would've dropped this game around episode 2. I might as well go in detail on my thoughts now.

The good thing about this game is the combat, it's been years since I played NMH1 and 2, but I think this game has the best combat in the whole series, easily. Combat just feels a lot better with the ability to chain combos being really smooth, with more offensive options like a dropkick, sending projectiles, slow down time within close proxmity, and being able to send enemies flying across the battlefield, as well as being able to transform into a sentai style armor and do some serious damage to enemies, being able to a quick dodge and do an over the top fast slashing attacks and having various slot machine abilites like "Mustang Mode" and as a result despite how unfair some of the "desingated matches" can be at times, the amount of offensive options in combat as well as being able to respawn with various buffs or respawn with full health got me through this game, when combat is fun it can be pretty enjoyable and fast paced. I also think the bosses which is a staple of this are creative, wacky and enjoyable, the final boss with FU is pretty good especially before you fight the giant arm version of him, and the "final" boss with Damon while being a bit on the easy side did use the game's base mechanics when turned it a fighting game unlike say Metal Gear Solid 4.

Now this is where my praise pretty much ends. I'll start with the gameplay reasons why I am so lukewarm on this game. NMH3 brings back the open world of the first game and from what I remember of NMH1, that game involved Travis being low on the totem pole and he slowly had to work his way up the UAA, in this game, it feels like a pointless waste of time since this game doesn't have the excuse that NMH1 had. The open world in general just feels really pointless, you have very little ways of interacting with it, you can't even climb and use parkour like in other open world games like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry or Breath of the Wild, and while I am not big on those games either, you can at least interact with the worlds themselves more. Travis' only interactions with the open world is using his motorcycle which doesn't control that well and he can't even climb up waste high walls with tons of invisible barriers in the open worlds. All you can really do is designated matches and I am just wondering, why not cut out the open world, and have it be a generic guanlet of enemies before you reach the boss? It serves the same purpose and it's much less time consuming plus later designated match ups give you enough money for the boss anyway, making the open world even more redundant. NMH2 really did a lot better by having it be a level select menu, and NMH3 should've done the same. Other issues include pointless rpg elements that barely add anything to the game since you will always have enough money to increase your stats so it's better off not even being there since the only way to get money is through the match ups. Some of the enemies are also not very fun like the bullet hell exploding ball projectile enemies and the game also having the issue of being a 3rd person melee combat with a moveable camera where enemies will attack you from behind and you won't see it coming.

Now the story, I don't remember the stories to NMH1 and 2 that well since I haven't played them in years, and this game is more of a sequel to Travis Strikes Again, which is already a bad sign when a game series pulls a Kingdom Hearts where all the background information is explained in a spinoff. Ignoring all that, maybe it's that my tastes changed over the years but I found much of the writing to be obnoxious and try hard. I really got sick of how much this game tries to parody anime with every mission having an OP and an ED like an anime does while also having the Netflix episode counter. I also got really sick of Suda51 constantly reminding the player of his massive hard on for Takashi Miike. I just wanted to say, "yeah Suda I get it, you like Miike". I don't know much about Miike and or an expert in foriegn films so when Travis and his buddies spent minutes at the start of every mission talking about the guy, I kept wondering what it had to do with the overarching plot, and the game in general relies so much on meta humor and 4th wall breaks that didn't really connect with me. I'll give the story some credit, it did give some decent amount of scenes to FU and did end up growing somewhat attached to him by the end and to want to beat him up which is one complement I can give the story.

Overall, NMH3 is a game where the combat carried it 90% of the time for me, it played well to make me beat it.