hmmmmmmmmm. no more heroes 3 is a good enough game that i found to be pretty dissapointing in several areas that ended up making the overall product feel a little less than. namely the story and the way they handled the levels.

but okay, let's not try to start off being a negative nancy too hard because there's stuff I liked a bunch in this game! for a start, the combat feels great! the removal of the stance system kinda bummed me a bit at first but after playing around with the new death glove abilities and some additional refinements they made to the overall combat i'm pretty happy with it! i never hated the combat in the old games but it's appreciable to have the katana killing in 3 just feel a lot faster and cooler. travis' animations and swings feel satisfying, the new glove abilities are fun and the change to the dark step mechanic gives it a bit more risk/reward. oh and the focus on keeping them at 60FPS is incredibly welcomed.

also MAN, that "KILL!" screen with the blood splatter in the background and the guiter soloing in the background rules. fuck ye

i also liked the boss fights in this! which like ye, shocker, no more heroes has good boss fights but they managed to keep a good amount of variety, gimmicks and surprise "no, I'M the real boss!" encounters in to keep me excited for each ranked rumble. there's probably at least two bosses from this game that i would take into my imaginary, non-published "Lewis' Favourite All Time NMH Boss Fights" canon. very happy me and suda were in the same "hey, that boss design looks boring can you kill them off and replace them with someone else" hivemind.

speaking of designs, the last thing i really wanted to praise was just the art and look of this game. i really liked the different clashing presentation styles of this game from old Mac PC looking menus, to PS4 livestream windows, to cutscenes like the intro to Velvet Chair Girl's fight and having your screen pop up with a strong arm of A buttons and every literal way to say Accept on the planet Earth. it was good. colourful, pop and obnoxious!

so whilst i feel like grasshopper got the combat, bosses and looks right they unfortunately dropped ball in some other areas for me. mainly the story, which ended up being my biggest sticking point after finishing the game. i don't know if this is just my fault for expecting too much from a modern day no more heroes game but the game doesn't really have anything surprising to it or anything to really say. like i mean, yes there are weird things happening around the edges of the main plot and fakeouts on boss fights etc. but when it comes to the actual story and where it goes it's kinda...it kinda just plays out how you expect. alien invasion happens, travis must kill top ten ranking dudes, he does, you get your big final boss fight with who you think plus additonal palpatine's behind it all and...yeah! Which I guess isn't nessisarily bad but the introduction of people like midori midorikara, kamui giving his big kill the past, kill the life speech, henry cooldown having a personality change and being a part of a secret organisation (and also sylvia??), the constant boss fakeouts i mentioned, even the fact that Travis Strikes Again even managed to say something or go somewhere more than it's initial premise with the deathballs granting you a wish thing just made me feel a bit meh on where the game went in the end. kinda came away without really feeling much about what happened or what it said. i guess at the end of the day i didn't really care that much about Damon and FU so having the game sideline everything to focus on them in the end was a bit of a bummer.

also i feel like the cast of this game is pretty underused. like, the no more heores series has such a strong line-up of characters and designs and a lot of old favourites and new hotness appear in it! bad girl is back! shinobu is back! dr. juvenile is here! midori midorikara appears from another universe and kamui is also her bf and has some fuckin kurumizawa shit going on in those hands! like it's a stacked cast but in the end none of them really end up doing anything or impacting the story until right at the end. shinobu gets her arms ripped off immediatly, bad girl gets Depression, dr juvenile just...wasn't asked to do stuff i guess and kamui just chills with bishop and travis for one scene and that's about it. even sylvia feels pretty underused in this game. do you see what i mean about stuff not really happening and characters not really mattering? it just seems like a bit of a waste, which is sad.

also yeah, the way they handled levels in this game is bad because they removed them completely and instead replaced them with arena fights where you get teleported around and they have no real style or location and because of that they feel way less unique and more like an extention of the overworld in a bad way and BOY let me tell you about the overworld it su-okay wait i just noticed the length of this review nevermind.

in the end, i enjoyed my time with no more heroes 3 and it definitely holds some value in the overall series. it just didn't leave me with much in the end. who knows, this might be one of those things where in a couple of years i'll look back on it and wonder why i was high strung on certain things and why i didn't enjoy it for what it was. but for now, alas.

actually one more thing henry cooldown is so fucking cool in this game i love him