Lot of friends either hate it or find it mediocre but I personally had a lot of enjoyment with it. Yeah, the story is whatever, it's like something you'd see in a generic action flick but the gameplay is kinda fun to mess around with.

Multiplayer is a bit busted since there are various exploits that can be used that ruin the whole "game infiltration" shtick. Competitive gamemodes are OK too, I guess.

WD2 is definitely better, but this is a guilty pleasure of mine. Probably a top 10 PS3 title for me.

Perhaps one of the more conflicting Suda51 titles in terms of reception with the audience, No More Heroes 3 tries to bring new life for Travis Touchdown following years of trying new combat systems and narratives within Grasshopper Manufacture's titles. There are TONS of gameplay, narrative, and stylistic elements drawn from their older titles (a similar overworld to One Night Kiss, similar space fights to Liberation Maiden, a similar art style to Killer Is Dead, various characters returning from previous Suda51-written stories, etc.), and it's pretty obvious that this and Travis Strikes Again serve to be a celebration of everything Suda and Grasshopper have created for over 20 years of game development.

I'm going to be honest and upfront: Travis Strikes Again has the best story. Yeah, pretty unique take, right? But regardless, I think it's fine that this game went the direction it did. After all, Travis' development in TSA already did most of the legwork with the narrative and I don't think it had much to go by after that. That being said, there's still quite a bit to digest with this game's story: love, hatred, death, life, heroism, villainy.

Suda51 wasn't very subtle with most of these recurring themes, especially knowing how much of a New Order fan he is. But even then, it's interesting to see all of them being demonstrated through the interactions of Travis and the rest of the cast. You have the big bad villain of the story, FU, who serves as a reflection of what Travis used to be in the earlier entries. FU is in a relationship conflict with his best friend Damon, who you can hardly tell if the pair really love each other until the very end. Travis meets various characters who have their own reasons for fighting. Some fight for glory, some fight because they believe it's their destiny, some fight because it's the heroic thing to do (one person in particular is actually a coward under the guise of a hero), and some fight because they're just damn mad. The final hour of the game demonstrates that last fact pretty well. It's a perfect culmination of everything that occurred in the previous games, thematically speaking. Some might argue that the story was a little rushed or unfinished, but I think it works well anyway. There were some subversions of expectations that had me a bit frustrated at first, but in any case, it's a satisfying conclusion to a t̶r̶i̶l̶o̶g̶y̶ tetralogy that begs to leave it the way it is.

Gameplay wise? It's the best that Grasshopper Manufacture has to offer. For No More Heroes veterans like myself, there is still a lot more to digest in terms of tech and strategies that allow for more fun with the beam katana. For example, learning how to reduce attack animations with jump attacks, learning combinations of light/heavy attacks with said jump attacks to maximize damage output while minimizing battery usage, learning that you can technically stock 2 Full Armors with an exploit, and finding new ways to look flashy all the while doing so. There are returning mechanics from 1 and 2 that are both easier and harder to complete. Dark Steps can be exploited by spamming the dodge button while holding the katana charging input, and extra damage from Kill Slashes are more subtle and are shown with the intensity of the light of the Blood Berry. There's just a lot to take in for those who want to find everything this game has to offer for gameplay. It's also a bit like Travis Strikes Again, so NMH3 mixes in traditional action gameplay with arcade style combat for a pretty unique and stylish experience. Fun? Yes. Monotonous? Yes. Conflicting? Yes. I don't care. I fucking love it.

Suda51 has a lot of love for this series and the way it ended should be left that way. I don't think we need a fifth installment because I wouldn't really be much point to it, unless you want something of a boring, quirky tale like No More Heroes 2. That's just me, though.

Playing this game for over 400 hours and I still can't get enough of it. Thank you, Grasshopper Manufacture, for creating a satisfying beginning, middle, and end to my favorite series.

Farewell, My Hero

I've been following the Science Adventure series (SciADV for short) for the last 4 years now, ever since I checked out the Steins;Gate anime, read some of Chaos;Child, and read the Chaos;Head NoAH spanish translation in full, which made me a diehard fan of the series for a time, and I even helped work on the Committee of Zero Translation and QoL improvement patches for a good while too. That said, while I will still always be grateful to NoAH for putting my own shut-in lifestyle into perspective and helping me get out of that hole I dug myself into, as I've gotten older and graduated college I've come to realize that I've drifted away from this series, and don't like a lot about it in retrospect. I've found the series more often than not is more plot-driven and really chokeholds the potential of its characters to be more compelling due to heavy plot devices and fast pacing in a good amount of entries, with the only real exceptions being Robotics;Notes and Chaos;Child. I've also really grown to not care for the heavy fanservice and objectification of women in the series, there's a lot of misogyny that goes on in the series that feels like it's done for otaku bait, among other fanservice things. For these reasons and a few more, I'm not the biggest fan of SciADV anymore, and I planned to make Anonymous;Code be the final game I check out in the franchise, and I think I might still stick to that. That said...

I have to stay I was pretty impressed with A;C itself. I don't plan to spoil the plot in detail, but I will say some general things. Firstly, I think this game truly is meant for those long-term SciADV fans first and foremost. The game explains enough that newcomers can enjoy and understand a decent bit of the plot, but I think most of the returning SciADV concepts really make a lot more sense and hit much harder in terms of impact if you're already familiar with the series. I'd really recommend most people read Chaos;Head NoAH, Steins;Gate, and Steins;Gate 0 at the minimum before playing this, to get the full impact.

The game is very plot-driven and only really fleshes out its two lead characters, but the main appeal of the game really is the worldbuilding and payoff to long term SciADV plot points and themes in my opinion, and it does a fantastic job of that. So many things I'd theorized and figured out on my own beforehand were finally vindicated after so many years, so that was nice. The very brisk, thriller-esque pacing of the plot was very welcome too, after dumping so many hours of time investment into this series with its earlier entries that are more slow burn plots. I didn't really want another slow burn story with SciADV after this much time investment, and I'm really glad A;C delivered there. I was able to beat the game in 4 days thanks to that.

The OST is also amazing, definitely one of Takeshi Abo's best. Also, after seeing SciADV's horrible decline in quality following Chaos;Child, it's nice to see that Naotaka Hayashi, the original scenario writer for NoAH, S;G, and R;N come back to return the series to form was very nice. Also, thank goodness that they FINALLY got rid of the fanservice crap aspect this series is infamous for. There's next to no fanservice in this game which was super refreshing.

That said, as an Orthodox Christian, this game is pretty blasphemous to my beliefs, but I wasn't too surprised as I said, because a lot of those aspects of the story were already foreshadowed and built up to long in advance in previous games. So I won't hold that against the game itself, even if it's another reason I probably won't revisit this series or read later games.

Overall, the story was good for what it was going for. It's far from perfect, lots of missed opportunities with better character writing and portrayal, some kind of one-dimensional views of religion and other concepts, but I think the game succeeds in what it was trying to be: a full realization of SciADV's overarching themes and sci-fi concepts, and shows them taken to their natural extreme to answer enough of what the narrative's been leading up to all these years. I enjoyed it enough, and I think this is a great place to end my time with Science Adventure.

It's been a fun ride, and may the delusions you wish for come true.

Total playtime: 18 hours.

Waited 7 years after being announced, and eventually played it the moment it gets released and localised.

I've been following the SciADV series throughout my entirety of High School, starting with Steins;Gate and eventually falling in love with both Chaos;Head & Child -- visual novels that would make me fall into the rabbit hole of the medium. The many theories spiraling around the series were engaging and wanted me to know more, which Anonymous;Code would deliver while being an overarching narrative to the entirety of SciADV.

What's heartbreaking was that I didn't enjoy it as much compared to the prior titles, emotional-wise. There were many instances of moments that had many stakes at hand, but didn't resonate with me due to how the length and pacing of the narrative felt "fast". Another complaint from readers is the short length of A;C compared to the prior which were about 20+ hours -- the longest being Chaos;Child. The pacing was perfect but it felt more as if it didn't know how to approach its overarching narrative while building upon a new story, that being A;C. Despite the theories spiraling around SciADV being resolved and explained in A;C, it's more satisfying compared to how MGS4 would tackle a certain overarching narrative. Regarding the narrative, the characters didn't feel as memorable despite being the main motivation for the narrative to be driven forward -- with our main trio of characters being more memorable and the motivation of the 'antagonist' feeling lackluster.

A bit disappointed that I was not fond of it as much compared to some of my SciADV mutuals, regarding it as superior to Chaos;Child though it's probably because I expected more from this. It doesn't fail to impress since it without a doubt has a high production value with its presentation, animation, transitions from visual novel UI to manga panels (done by the amazing Haruhisa Nakata, who worked on Levius!), Takeshi Abo's score and sound design, and the amazing direction with A;C.

At least this was better than Robotics;Notes DaSH.

I don't even know how to describe this game, It's incredible, from the first minute to the last!

Firstly of course, this game had a huge improvement compared to Rockstar's previous games, graphics, motion capture, music, map, mechanics, combat system everything is extremely well polished and wonderful!

Of course, there are certain problems in the game, very simple bugs that Rockstar never fixed even though the game was from six years ago, such as the camping bug, where you are unable to camp. Another problem is the very large and long loading screens, taking around 5 minutes to load a save.


Now something spectacular is how Rockstar managed to make this game run well and extremely fluidly on an Xbox One and PS4, it's incredible!

Speaking of the story, I don't even have any comments, the storytelling in this game is better than many films I've seen, the construction of characters and the development of the plot is extremely well made! for example, the game's side missions are important to the game's story itself, and it's almost impossible for you not to be interested in doing all of the game's missions.

I won't go into details of the story so as not to be a spoiler, but this is certainly a very incredible story and perhaps one of the best stories in a video game.

I have so much to say about this game but I'm gonna stop myself.

Once again, Rockstar has proven that throwing money at problems doesn't magically solve the issues games have.

This game is rumored to have 350 million dollars budget, making it one the most expensive games to date. But the quest design is still reeks of early 2000's. The story missions are unconnected, at least until the Island sections, making it hard to follow what you are doing or why. They resemble Ubisoft levels of filler content (though this might be a bit harsh; at least this game has presentation quailty).

This game had enormous potential, but Rockstar played it safe and shot themselves in the foot.

There are an abundance of mechanics: gun cleaning, horse cleaning, camp investments, hunting, doing chores for the camp, dressing appropriately for the weather, bathing, shaving, etc. However, 90% of these mechanics are just "there." It's as if they had ten different teams "shitting" opinions about which mechanics to add to the game and added all of them at the same time.

You do things, a very inconsequential thing changes, you don't care about that mechanic anymore, and the game throws in another mechanic at you. The cycle repeats.

I guess they wanted to make this game some sort of "cowboy" life simulation RPG game? Or did they? Because the player has VERY MINIMAL control over how the story goes. They threw in another mechanic called "honor" that changes some dialogue in the game and changes the ending i guess, that's it.

And don't get me started on the freedom in missions because this game is likely the MOST restrictive open-world game in terms of mission design. You have to do everything just as you're told by the game, or you fail. Oh, you wanted to go slightly right instead of left? Too bad, "Mission Failed - Arthur left the squad."

They really thought they could get away with throwing very inconsequential choices in some missions. "Do you want to kill the single guy standing in front of you, or do you want your ally to do it for you?" Thanks a lot, game. Now I really feel "free." I can let my ally kill that guy so I can finish this mission without engaging with the only "gameplay" mechanic you have.

Another problem I have is the lack of progression. There is NO meaningful progression in this game; the first shootout you get into in the first scene plays out exactly like your last one in the game. Not every game should have skill trees or classes, but I don't think adding some progression mechanics to this 350 million dollar game would hurt.

Graphics...

Just for the record, I played this game on ultra graphics. The game looks beautiful sometimes; when you're riding your horse in the beautifully moonlit empty lands, it's hard not to be impressed. But the keyword here is "sometimes." The game is beautiful until you get close to anything. Oh boy, this game has literally the worst anti-aliasing issues I've ever seen (still hasn't been fixed after years; you need to install mods to LESSEN the issues). The game can look downright bad at times, especially when there is thick vegetation, trees, or rocks. Considering this game takes place in the wild west, everywhere is filled with those assets.

Character faces are bad too. Facial hairs look like blocks, faces look grainy and yellowish, making them downright disgusting to look at under some lighting conditions. I'm glad GTA 6 is not coming to PC on release because I cannot imagine how bad these issues would be if they tried that.

I really wanted to like this game, and I did a bit, frankly. A 3/5 is not bad at all. But just thinking about the possibilities and the potential this game had makes me visibly mad. And the fact that I gave it 3 stars after complaining this much still shows that the game had a lot going for it, just way less than it had the potential for.