No More Heroes 3 - Switch Review
"Welcome back to the Garden of Insanity"
Travis Touchdown returns in No More Heroes 3 and if becoming the number one ranked assassin in the world wasn't enough, now it's time for Travis to become number one in the Galactic Superhero Rankings. When an intergalactic threat crashes down to Earth, it falls to our otaku anti-hero to save the world by putting an end to the evil Prince FU's lifelong dream of conquering the planet. Travis, welcome back to the Garden of Insanity!
The Good
No More Heroes 3 is as zany as ever with all of the blood splatters and F bombs you can handle! But this time, those blood splatters come in a wide range of colours thanks to the aliens and the F bombs are coming from a motive to save the world.
The combat is as engaging as ever in the third instalment, especially with the newly added Death Glove Skills. These allow Travis to activate four different special skills, including projecting an enemy away from you (and sometimes, into another enemy), dropkicking an enemy from a distance, temporarily slowing down time and sending a cloud of projectiles within a small radius. Adding these skills allows for much more variety in the combat, distancing away from the standard slash-parry-suplex routine from the first two entries.
The music is wonderfully creative, especially during moments you wouldn't expect. My favourite example of this would have to be the hip hop theme when eating sushi; with the verse rapping about rolling sushi up like a bowling ball and the chorus dramatically singing "itadakimasu", I had no choice but to put the controller down for five minutes and take it all in.
The superhero motif is a primary theme of No More Heroes' third instalment and this transcends more than just your enemies' designs. There are multiple nods to Marvel and DC, such as Travis' Full Armour Mode turning him into a cheap Iron Man knockoff. It also wouldn't be a game about an Otaku if Grasshopper Interactive didn't use this opportunity to make the Full Armour Mode applicable to space battles in Gundam style mech battles and might I just say, these were awesome!
TL;DR
- As zany as ever
- Creative music
- The superhero motif fits well
The Bad
While this is definitely the best No More Heroes has ever looked, it doesn't quite look like a game released in 2021. This also may not be the first time Travis has been seen kicking *ss in HD but let's face it, it captures the spirit of the series better than the PS3 ports.
Remember when the original No More Heroes made players ride that terrible handling bike around a bare-boned overworld? Well, apparently Suda51 still can't get it right, even after 14 years. The mini-map is tiny whilst lacking in detail, so you only have a brief idea of what's happening on it, the bike controls awfully and the frame rate takes some horrendous dips. I honestly think it might even be worse than the original game. I was a fan of No More Heroes 2's menu style as it streamlined the experience and trimmed out the fat and the third game should have either got the exploration right or gone with 2's approach - instead, they did neither of those things. The map is also bigger this time around with more areas to explore. This would've been a good thing if exploring was fun to to begin with.
Saving the game by having Travis go to the toilet is something that's synonymous with the No More Heroes series and it would be strange to save without it. However, the concept of having to go to a specific point to save feels incredibly outdated. This was kind of fixed in this game by the idea of public restrooms in the open world and having to play a short minigame to unclog them but it still doesn't take away from the fact that it's a relatively high budget game which lacks autosave in 2021.
Despite the original two entries in the No More Heroes franchise being based around motion controls, you may not want to play with them now. While it's an option in No More Heroes 3 for purists of the original entries, the games are much better suited for standard controls. Give me No More Heroes 3 with a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller any day!
TL;DR
- Visually lacklustre
- Open world exploration is a chore
- Save points feel outdated
- Pro Controller > JoyCon motion controls
Final Score: 8/10
Just like the other entries in the series, No More Heroes 3 is not without its share of issues. With a bigger budget and more hands on deck, the series could certainly fix the game's lacklustre exploration - just imagine a No More Heroes game with the open world exploration akin to the Yakuza series! However, what Grasshopper Manufacture does manage to pull off here is another quirky adventure with all of the highs, lows and raised eyebrows that the series is known for.
Thank you for checking out our No More Heroes 3 Switch review, thank you to Nintendo AU/NZ for providing the review code and thank you to our $5 and up Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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