No More Heroes III
I quite enjoyed the first two 'No More Heroes' on the Wii, and despite not playing either since near their respective releases, I still picked both up on Switch. I was looking forward to the third game especially after all the praise, but the technical shortcomings had me wait for a release on more powerful hardware. I used some Gamestop gift cards to get NMHIII at launch, but hadn't gotten around to it until now. After beating it, I have one question for all the reviews that praised this game: did you play a different game than I did?
Let's start with those technical details. The game runs well, a locked 60fps from what I can tell, and looks super sharp. That's not hard given the simple geometry, small world, and origins on Switch, but it's still nice to see. That said, whenever a scene or even camera position changes, the textures still take a second to form. It's distracting and confusing on hardware like the Series X. Character design is diverse for enemies, but in the open world there are literally two character models; a male and a female. That's it. For all the style this game oozes, it's incredibly bland at the same time.
Speaking of the open world, that's a generous description. There are five sections of the world connecting through loading screen via a tunnel you don't traverse, but aside from those few NPCs and couple of cars that wonder around, it's completely empty. Santa Destroy and Perfect World are at least pleasant to be in, but the others, especially the battle torn areas, are a chore. There are dead ends and invisible walls everywhere. Sometimes Travis can't even walk up a curb without jumping. The only thing to do in any of these areas is the occasional odd job for money (which are simple and boring) and the battle nodes that come in two flavors: waves of enemies and designated battles necessary to progress. When activating a node, you're transported to one of the few separate arena spots to fight. Nothing takes place in the world itself. Everything goes to a separate spot, even the odd jobs. On the overworld map, there are giant swatches of red that can't be access, but those never open up either. It's just inaccessible land to taunt you. I know the first game did this to a degree, but it was the Wii. It was understandable given the hardware and time of release. This isn't an excuse even for the Switch that has many bustling open world games. They should've either committed fully to the open world, or stuck to level progression like the second game. But this in between compromise just makes the game feel disjointed and incomplete.
Moving on to the story, admittedly never the most important thing in a NMH game, a little alien crash lands on earth and is saved by a boy who hides him from the authorities and nurses him back to health. The little alien leaves having formed a bond with the boy, and comes back as an adult to take over earth with the now grown man. It's an interesting setup, told through animated still (one of the many competing styles on display in this game), but goes nowhere beyond simple world domination. In stark contrast to something like 'Fire Emblem: Engage,' the voice work carries the whole story. Good thing too, because the ending twist is no surprise and the ending as a whole is pretty whatever. The voice actors do a very good job, but most characters only pop up in the very beginning and very end, which sucks for anyone hoping for more interaction.
Ok, so the world, story and characters are mostly a bust. How's the gameplay? It's good. Well, fine. It can be good. Travis can increase his stats in the lab below his apartment in the motel (something they don't tell you and took me half the game before I ventured down there), and there's a simple combo system in that it tracks your continuous hits, but not many actual combo moves. The gameplay definitely loses something without the motion of the Wiimote (or Switch Joycons, but those aren't as fun as the Wiimote and nunchuk). Your death glove, which still resembles the red and blue Joycon, has special cooldown abilities. After every major fight you get material to craft new chips to permanently augment your play. Most are a give and take with a gain and loss, but some are useful. This game suffers the same issues 'Bayonetta' does in that there can be so much on screen at once, like the slots graphic that literally takes up two-thirds of your viewable area, that it can be hard to see enemy attacks coming in order to dodge. It's not as big a problem as 'Bayonetta,' because there's never more than 5 enemies in an arena at a time and there's stuff like boxes to move behind, but with the camera closer to Travis it can be just as detrimental. Also, the same enemy attacks can deal different amounts of damage it seems. Sometimes the same attack will just knock me back, taking a small amount of health, and other times the same exact attack from the same enemy can one-shot me. Also, it takes waaaaay too long to get back to your feet if knocked down. And there's no invincibility frames, so you can get beat to death with no chance of getting up. Each enemy has their own types of attacks, but each only has a couple. Nothing really evolves during the course of the game, and that goes for the bosses too. The devs try, sometimes to great effect, sometimes to eyerolls, to mix things up with bosses, but standard boss battles are pretty simple. The only thing tricky might be the short amount of time any given boss is open to attacks.
So the world, story, characters and gameplay is mostly a bust. The odd jobs are boring and the few collectibles don't reward anything outside of currency for fights, food (of which I only used the one to refill health in battle) and for upgrades. There's a lot of t-shirts to collect through certain in-game achievements by way of friendly aliens, but you can only see what those are by going to a said specific alien for him to tell you only when it's possible to achieve them. There's no additional jackets (outside of no jacket) and unlike prior games, there's no change to your beam katana. I'm sure this game was working on a smaller budget, but it doesn't feel like that budget was used in a smart way.
I had to struggle to finish this game (a pattern I've seen with recent Japanese developed releases I've played outside of 'Ishin!'), not because it wasn't necessarily good, again, it's fine, mostly, but because I found myself really bored. You do the designated battles, maybe an odd job to get enough currency, then a boss, repeat the whole game in the same few spots. I'm massively disappointed in 'No More Heroes III' to the point where I regret buying it. I don't know how a game that screams such style and artistic variety can be so boring at the same time. I don't know how a game that garnered 8s, 9s and almost perfect scores across the Switch and current-gen consoles can be so utterly...okay-ish. For anyone interested in this game, I'd only recommend it for die-hard NMH and Suda fans. And even then, I'd suggest renting or waiting for an even bigger sale (it's currently selling at retail for about half its launch price). The physical bonuses that come with the physical game are cool, but the game, in my opinion, is not.
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