No More Heroes III

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Got it preordered. As of right now it seems like it might turn out the best game in the series.
I paid off my pre-order back in June. I am all ready for next friday. I plan on taking the day off just so I can play it for the whole day. I do love the quality of life improvements they brought from what I seen so far. That said, I noticed that the frame rate is that janky whenever you're going to the open world. This is nothing new, but I'm hoping they can least keep it at a stable 30 for the open world sections. The combat sections all run at 60 FPS. I've also noticed that they taking certain elements from Killer Is Dead. Most notably, the ability to upgrade your dodges. And it looks like dark stepping is no longer a hidden mechanic. I do admit, that I would have preferred not to do required money for the ranking fights again. I feel that is unnecessary after the second game got rid of them. With that said, I'm excited and give me a chance to break out the Switch again.
 

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I have not seen the video yet, and won't watch until after being a couple hours in to the game. But for those curious.

 

PsychedelicDiamond

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You know, the regular cover art of the game is fine and all. Drawn by a popular comic book artist, I understand.

IMG_20210827_111931.jpg

But the reversible one? Now, that's the good shit.

IMG_20210827_112036.jpg
 
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The written reviews are umm...not fantastic. Shame.
I'm not reading them, nor do I trust them. It's a Suda 51 game. At this point you're either knowing what you're getting into, or don't. I already knew the Open World part was going to be barren and not much to do. I already saw that coming, but I just care about the combat and boss fights. Which is what you're going to be doing most of the time anyway. Side activities are fun as usual, so no big deal. Also, Easy Allies loves this game. They're one of the few professional reviewers left I trust.


I just picked up my copy of the game. I'll be installing in a few minutes, and I'll be playing later today.
 
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PsychedelicDiamond

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Finished it yesterday. It have very complicated feelings about it. On one hand, it jumps the shark hard and feels like a middle finger to anyone who actually took the No More Heroes series seriously. On the other hand, that's obviously the joke.

It's probably the most spiteful game I've played since Metal Gear Solid V. It's a very mean spirited parody of... well, a lot of things, really, but most notably the series itself, modern media and the culture surrounding it and I gotta respect its commitment to it. Characters are flanderized into pop culture reference spouting shadows of their former selves, fan favourites like Shinobu and Bad Girl are sidelined for most of the game, people from other games show up without context, only to deliver their catch phrases, none of TSA's suggestion of the series getting more serious and introspective are paid off and dropped in favour of references to a continuity we never actually get to see, Buckaroo Banzai style, and it all culminates in empty spectacle not even trying to make sense.

It's a lot to take in and I'm not sure how I feel about it, fluctuating between "I'm kinda offended" and "Well, that's the point, isn't it?". On a meta level it's a biting satire on shared universes, nerd culture and the associated consumerism, crossover events, media being stuck on endless sequels, reboots, remakes and spinoffs. If the original NMH's credo was "Punk's not dead" then NMH3's is "Pop is dead.".

I get it. I respect it. But I really think Suda should make something more serious next.
 
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Here's the rest for those interested.


Adam Sessler and G4 are back. And their little skits still suck.​
 

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What a way to end a game! This game had like 5 endings!

  • FU is okay as a boss battle, but I found him annoying. Once you know his tactics, he get easier, but fuck him for spamming certain moves over and over. At least he does not have any one hit kills.
  • The game has a true final boss after beating FU. Damon, from TSA and the one who gets treated like shit, is the true mastermind. He's less a boss and more of a cathartic beating. First you fight him in a cut-scenes with a giant mech battle. You get the mech from Damon X Machina. The final battle is a Smash Bros stage! Travis could not get in to smash, so this the next best thing!
  • Henry Cooldown has this weird face-heel-turn that does not make any sense, even if you take TSA into account and has this crazy retcon. Apparently, him, Travis, and Jeanne all had the same father, living in the same house, and they all ran way. Only to get captured and all have their minds rewritten. Which explains why Henry no longer has the Irish accent. I know about the original voice actor Flynn is in some deep trouble, so I already know the real reason. It's a retcon that was not really necessary and it's like Suda didn't know what else to do with Henry. He comes off as this eviler, pettier version of Vergil and a copy of Broly. The boss fight with him is awesome and I consider him, Kimmy, and Destroyman are the best boss fights in the game.
  • The my grandson and children from the future plot twist I saw coming half a mile away. It's so silly and so Suda.
I am glad Suda once again got to make the game he wanted and put some closure on the series. I consider this the best game in the series, gameplay wise. While the stance system is gone, and Travis no longer has multiple weapons, he's given a decent sized move list for this type of game and combat. Though that still does not excuse locking the dash and charge attacks behind having to buy them. Travis may only have one weapon it has elements and combinations of all his previous Beam Katanas.

The 3 fights before the actual boss fight gets repetitive after you get to the last few areas. The side activities you are less likely to do if you just want to finish the game, and find the exploits of just selling your materials for more cash. I know by the time I got to rank 6, I found so many ways to get cash faster outside of the collectible quests and such. The game even seems to agree with the player once you get the Death Man Card and take it to Bishop after meeting the man in the after life.

Other random thought: to make the series come full circle I decided to do the last boss battle with Travis's default Bizarre Jelly 5 first from the first game. It felt fitting and nostalgic.

Any thoughts you want to corroborate on @PsychedelicDiamond? If something spoilery, can you please put in the spoiler liner or box. Thanks.
 
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BrawlMan

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PsychedelicDiamond

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What a way to end a game! This game had like 5 endings!

  • FU is okay as a boss battle, but I found him annoying. Once you know his tactics, he get easier, but fuck him for spamming certain moves over and over. At least he does not have any one hit kills.
  • The game has a true final boss after beating FU. Damon, from TSA and the one who gets treated like shit, is the true mastermind. He's less a boss and more of a cathartic beating. First you fight him in a cut-scenes with a giant mech battle. You get the mech from Damon X Machina. The final battle is a Smash Bros stage! Travis could not get in to smash, so this the next best thing!
  • Henry Cooldown has this weird face-heel-turn that does not make any sense, even if you take TSA in to account, has this crazy retcon. Apparntely, him, Travis, and Jeanne all had the same father, living in the same house, and they all ran way. Only to get captured and all have their minds rewritten. Which explains why Henry no longer has the Irish accent. I know about the original voice actor Flynn is in some deep trouble, so I already know the real reason. It's a retcon that was not really necessary and it's like Suda didn't know what else to do with Henry. He comes off as this eviler, pettier version of Vergil and a copy of Broly. The boss fight with him is awesome and I consider him, Kimmy, and Destroyman are the best boss fights in the game.
  • The my grandson and children from the future plot twist I saw coming half a mile away. It's so silly and so Suda.
I am glad Suda once again got to make the game he wanted and put some closure on the series. I consider this the best game in the series, gameplay wise. While the stance system is gone, and Travis no longer has multiple weapons, he's given a decent sized move list for this type of game and combat. Though that still does not excuse locking the dash and charge attacks behind having to buy them. Travis may only have one weapon it has elements and combinations of all his previous Beam Katanas.

The 3 fights before the actual boss fight gets repetitive after you get to the last few areas. The side activities you are less likely to do if you just want to finish the game, and find the exploits of just selling your materials for more cash. I know by the time I got to rank 6, I found so many ways to get cash faster outside of the collectible quests and such. The game even seems to agree with the player once you get the Death Man Card and take it to Bishop after meeting the man in the after life.

Other random thought: to make the series come full circle I decided to do the last boss battle with Travis's default Bizarre Jelly 5 first from the first game. It felt fitting and nostalgic.

Any thoughts you want to corroborate on @PsychedelicDiamond? If something spoilery, can you please put in the spoiler liner or box. Thanks.
Not that much. A lot of the stuff with Henry implies some connection to the greater lore of the Sudaverse.

You know, having multiple bodies, something having awakened in him after his brainwashing wore off, the one cutscene where one of his clones met up with Damon invoking Killer 7

It's one of those things that sort of imply that there is a different story going on behind the scenes that Travis, and the player, don't really get to see. There are a few little breadcrumbs like that, like all the pedestrians being Androids, multiple characters implying they've had their memories altered at some point, Travis having that weird neck brace when wearing his casual outfit in the beginning... it all suggests that there is something shady going on. Either that, or all of those are remnants from an earlier draft of the story, but a lot of Suda's stories withhold important pieces of context so that the player can never quite figure out what's going on. NMH3 doing the same would be in character.

I enjoyed the horror game parody leading up to Midori, I felt it was a bit of a shame that she was really the only boss who had that kind of buildup. Didn't care for the actual bossfight but, you know, that at least made her stand out.

There was a lot of stuff about the ending that I felt a bit lukewarm about. After the first phase of the fight against Fu it felt like Suda was just trying to find more and more sharks to jump. First Fu turns into... a Kirby Final Boss, pretty much, then you get a mech battle, then you get a They Live reference, then you get a Smash Bros. battle and then you get a chibi style cutscene involving the king of all cosmos and Travis' time travelling grandson. I mean, I get it, introducing outlandish twists at the last minute and never elaborating on them was also what NMH1 did, I just felt NMH3 pushed that gag past the point of actually being funny.

That said, there are moments I liked. I feel like Damon was kind of a better realized version of Jasper Batt from NMH2. Both are wormy rich guys who have a grudge against Travis, but NMH3 actually made a point of fleshing out Damon. I kinda like his relationship with Fu. Behind all the zany stuff, there was this story there about those two childhood friends who haven't seen each other for twenty years and it turns out, they don't really have anything in common anymore. They really did a good job of making Fu feel like that douchebag friend who just showed up on Damon's doorstop to move in with him./SPOILER]

So, you know, it was pretty good. It's not the best No More Heroes game, it's not, by a long shot, the best Suda game and after TSA I expected a bit more. But it doesn't feel like a lazy retread like a lot of NMH2 did, you could tell Suda was passionate about some of these ideas.
 
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Not that much. A lot of the stuff with Henry implies some connection to the greater lore of the Sudaverse.

You know, having multiple bodies, something having awakened in him after his brainwashing wore off, the one cutscene where one of his clones met up with Damon invoking Killer 7

It's one of those things that sort of imply that there is a different story going on behind the scenes that Travis, and the player, don't really get to see. There are a few little breadcrumbs like that, like all the pedestrians being Androids, multiple characters implying they've had their memories altered at some point, Travis having that weird neck brace when wearing his casual outfit in the beginning... it all suggests that there is something shady going on. Either that, or all of those are remnants from an earlier draft of the story, but a lot of Suda's stories withhold important pieces of context so that the player can never quite figure out what's going on. NMH3 doing the same would be in character.

I enjoyed the horror game parody leading up to Midori, I felt it was a bit of a shame that she was really the only boss who had that kind of buildup. Didn't care for the actual bossfight but, you know, that at least made her stand out.

There was a lot of stuff about the ending that I felt a bit lukewarm about. After the first phase of the fight against Fu it felt like Suda was just trying to find more and more sharks to jump. First Fu turns into... a Kirby Final Boss, pretty much, then you get a mech battle, then you get a They Live reference, then you get a Smash Bros. battle and then you get a chibi style cutscene involving the king of all cosmos and Travis' time travelling grandson. I mean, I get it, introducing outlandish twists at the last minute and never elaborating on them was also what NMH1 did, I just felt NMH3 pushed that gag past the point of actually being funny.

That said, there are moments I liked. I feel like Damon was kind of a better realized version of Jasper Batt from NMH2. Both are wormy rich guys who have a grudge against Travis, but NMH3 actually made a point of fleshing out Damon. I kinda like his relationship with Fu. Behind all the zany stuff, there was this story there about those two childhood friends who haven't seen each other for twenty years and it turns out, they don't really have anything in common anymore. They really did a good job of making Fu feel like that douchebag friend who just showed up on Damon's doorstop to move in with him./SPOILER]

So, you know, it was pretty good. It's not the best No More Heroes game, it's not, by a long shot, the best Suda game and after TSA I expected a bit more. But it doesn't feel like a lazy retread like a lot of NMH2 did, you could tell Suda was passionate about some of these ideas.
As mentioned before with the second game, Suda was not even in the director chair that time. He took an executive producer role. I do like the second game, but it did have its problems. I actually like Jasper and Damon both. While Damon is definitely a better version of him, my problem with Jasper was more so the gameplay. I hated his boss fights. I hate that second phase so much. Story and thematic wise he worked fine. But yeah, Damon definitely has better build up; especially if you played Travis Strikes Again.
 
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It was a very stylish game and that's all I can really say for it. I only watched an LP so I can't say if the gameplay is any more fun than the previous NMH games (read not very). I didn't find the game's commentary on video games exceptionally clever, and the plot was window-dressing and explicitly did not matter. I was, like others, confused by Henry's change of personality and accent, and also by the return of Bishop, who had died in NMH2.

I agree with Yahtzee that the JRPG section was exceptionally tedious in it's execution. It may have been much more clever if some degree of subtlety had been used, but the characters just don't stop banging on about it. It's an incredibly obvious reference to one of the most popular video games franchises of all time, people will get the joke even if they don't spend 5 minutes talking about how the characters from it look *********. I think it would have been much more clever if they had simply dropped it in without commentary, similar to the musical chairs battle, and then let you break out of it as it does.

It does have the most end credits sequences of any game I've seen, however.
 
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It was a very stylish game and that's all I can really say for it. I only watched an LP so I can't say if the gameplay is any more fun than the previous NMH games (read not very). I didn't find the game's commentary on video games exceptionally clever, and the plot was window-dressing and explicitly did not matter. I was, like others, confused by Henry's change of personality and accent, and also by the return of Bishop, who had died in NMH2
Despite some drawbacks, this game has the best combat in the entire series. You don't get multiple swords, but your weapon morphs based on what type of attack you do (light or heavy, or a mix & match between the two), so it more than makes up for it. The death glove chips definitely add spice to thecombat and it makes it more stylish. The reason why Bishop is back, because it's not the same Bishop. It's his younger brother from TSA. Henry sudden turn to villainy I still consider a big head scratcher, even if you take TSA in mind. At least it went to the best boss battle in the game.


agree with Yahtzee that the JRPG section was exceptionally tedious in it's execution. It may have been much more clever if some degree of subtlety had been used, but the characters just don't stop banging on about it. It's an incredibly obvious reference to one of the most popular video games franchises of all time, people will get the joke even if they don't spend 5 minutes talking about how the characters from it look *********. I think it would have been much more clever if they had simply dropped it in without commentary, similar to the musical chairs battle, and then let you break out of it as it does.

I agree with the RPG section as well. Though there is a way to make it end faster: Going to the run command allows Travis to move. You can literally slice up the RPG commands, so you can skip the entire first section without much delay. I wish I found that out sooner.