No More Heroes 3 - Review

When the first No More Heroes game released, many had no idea what to make of it, it was full of style and while the gameplay was suggestive at times, it earned itself the cult classic label. Then a few years later, we got a follow up and now more than a decade later, we have the third – proper, entry in the series, but in that time has Travis and his eclectic group of friends managed to stay relevant, or has the time of the assassin come to an end?

9 years have passed since Travis Touchdown last attempted to climb the ranks to become the world’s most deadly assassin and, in that time, he has done very little, but soon after his return to Santa Destroy, a massive alien ship appears and starts to lay waste to a lot of the city. The alien ship was brought here by Jess Baptiste VI, or as he is known by Damon, Fu and while he seems friendly to Damon, he also wants to take over the world. Going back in time for a moment, the game opens with Damon finding Fu in the forest, after his ship crashes on Earth and over a period of time, the two become best friends. Eventually, the pair manage to build a rocket for Fu to use, in order to return home and escape the G-Men that are coming for him and 20 years later, we see that Damon has become a CEO of Utopinia, a company that specialises in Urban Renewal and he has gotten to where he is, thanks to some power that got whilst building the ship.

If all that sounds pretty weird, then the rest of the story is going to be even crazier, with aliens from all over the galaxy working for Fu, there is never any shortage of folks to fight. What makes this crazy though, is that they all tend to get their own little intro sequence and explanation about why they are the best around and why they can kill Travis. If that wasn’t enough, the UAA, the folks responsible for the assassin rankings, also seem to have a lot of information on them, explaining to Travis why they are bad and worth killing, because planetary invasion isn’t a valid reason or something.

Now all that story could have been told in a serious way, but as this is No More Heroes, that was never going to be an option, however instead of it just being wacky and out there, the entire game is presented as if you are watching some random YouTube fan series. Each chapter begins with a cutscene, then we get opening credits and maybe some more random story and then we get to play and once you beat the boss of that chapter, there is more cutscene and then end credits, like you have just beaten the game. The first time it happened, I was honestly confused as to what was going on, in fact it took a few more goes before I understood what they were going for and that is not a good thing. Something else that the game fails to do, is introduce characters to you properly, meaning unless you have played the other games recently, or have a really good memory, attempting to work out why Travis has a protégé, or who the man in the mask is, is going to be really hard.

Speaking of hard, the game itself isn’t terribly challenging, sure there are times when the boss fights can get a little crazy and kick your butt, if you ain’t careful, but more often you are just going to wander the world. The first game was unique in that Travis had to do manual jobs around town, in order to earn enough money to pay the entrance fee for his next fight and the same thing has returned here. While that aspect is charming, it does come with an annoying little issue, in that it breaks the games flow, something that the game does with its ‘up next YouTube’ presentation, but this throws it into a pool of molasses, it is that frustrating. The basic cycle is, watch a cutscene, explore part of the world to defeat enemies, attached to specific-coloured crystals and once that is done, go mow some grass, chase bandits off the road, all in an attempt to earn an ever-increasing amount of money, so you can do the next boss fight. I really wanted to enjoy that loop more, but nothing about it clicked to me, even when you start meeting more zany aliens, being thrown back into the manual labour role just slows things down.

Slowdown is also something that happens when playing the game, because the presentation and performance are as mixed as you can get, let’s start with performance. Across the board, it is average at best and while it is clearly targeting 30fps, there are very few times it is able to achieve it, more often it is hovering lower and as someone who doesn’t really care about dropped frames here and there, me noticing this, meant it was bad. Now if the game was stunning in its presentation, one could make a case for the performance issues, but it isn’t -more on that in a bit, the game struggles in loading as well, with some load screens lasting for a few seconds, but some lasting upwards of 20 and when the space it loads up is a random room with only a few enemies, the result can’t be justified by the wait.

On the presentation side, the game is also hampered by weird loading issues, as the draw distance for the game is bad and then worse. The bad is that the horizon, especially in some areas, constantly has items popping up to fill it, and while countless games have bad draw distances, this one suffers from it the most, given how lifeless most of the areas are. One specific area is just an open desert locale, with a town at the end of it and even that has constant pop up in the background, but worse than that, is the radius of detail around Travis. This is the second and worse draw distance, many games will have proper quality textures load closer to the character or the direction they are looking, in order for things to look the best. Sometimes this radius is large, other times it is not, but in No More Heroes 3, it is microscopic, coming in a just over a few meters away, meaning you can see a clear break between the better textures than that of the other ones.

Notice that I said better textures, not good textures and that is because the game has a few visual appearances, the one you will see the most and be disgusted by is the world, everything looks basic, including cars and folks, to the point where I thought the textures were not loading. The next area you will see a lot of are fight rooms, the motel and such and these areas have far more detail contained within and are able to run with little hassle, proving the developers have some sense of what works. The final visual area is everything else, character design, menus and overlays, this is where the style of the series comes in and the game shines here, which also means, in comparison the rest looks bad. From Travis to Fu and the countless aliens you fight, all the characters look great and if the game gave the rest of the visuals the same touch, it would elevate things across the board.

Finally, let us talk audio, because the game is equal parts charming and weird, of course as we like the latter, we shall start there with it. The weird comes in via the music, which is amazing at times, but then also short, because some of the encounters you have, only last a few minutes, you will end up hearing the same tracks many times. The different areas of the city, as well as the mini-games and such, also have their own music, which is nice to hear the first time, though I do wish the music was mixed better when you got onto the bike. As for the voice performance, they are solid throughout, even characters who have very little to say, sound great, sadly some of the lines the characters have to say, wouldn’t sound good, no matter who says it.

No More Heroes 3 is an odd game, it does continue the story of the earlier games, but offers nothing to welcome new players, it has some stunning combat, but requires you to slog through countless hours of side quests to get to the better fights. The world is large, but mostly empty, leaving you to just drive around until you get to some activity and when you do find something, they generally lack depth to make them worth repeating on their own. The biggest letdown isn’t the lack of visual wow to the city, but instead is the performance of the game as a whole, the Switch has plenty of open worlds and graphics intense titles, yet for some reason, this one struggles across the board. Fans of the series should play it, just to see how the story of Travis Touchdown ends, but if you are new to the series here, I would suggest holding back for now.

The Score

7.0

Review code provided by Nintendo

The Pros

+Combat is fast and fun and once you start combining powers is a treat

+A decent conclusion to a story 15+ years in the making

The Cons

-Game struggles with performance so often, it is surprising it runs well

-Visually, it is more of a mess than anything and that is counting the vast amount of style the game has