No More Heroes III (Switch)
In Spielberg’s film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, an alien ends up lost on Earth, but by befriending a young boy the kind extraterrestrial is able to head back to the stars. In the opening of No More Heroes III, something rather similar seems to be happening, an anime cutscene shows Damien discovering a cute furball named FU after it crashed on Earth and helping him build a rocket to return home. FU promises to return in twenty years though, and when he does, not only has Damien grown into a cutthroat businessman, FU has undergone some significant changes. The alien prince grew into an arrogant ruler who wipes out entire planets for fun, and after busting out of space prison, he has decided to come to Earth to conquer it as well. Believing it to be more fun if he made a game of it though, FU allows Earth to throw whatever it likes at him and his nine allies, but while it seems no hero can stand up to these killers from the stars, the passing assassin Travis Touchdown steps forward once more, happy to work his way through the “Galactic Superhero Rankings” to rid this world of what he seems to consider a nuisance more than a world-ending threat.
Nor More Heroes III builds off the previous games quite heavily, including continuations of character stories from the first two titles and including bits of Travis Strikes Again with little concern for catching people up to speed if they’re new to the series. At the same time though, the world of No More Heroes III heads in plenty of wild directions where it happily pursues whatever strange or indulgent idea it came up with that there really isn’t too much story lore to lock someone out of enjoying the eccentric approach to story structure. No More Heroes III does do some character work but mostly focuses on its two main villains, the plot checking in on Damien’s unease about FU’s activities at parts but also taking time to have FU’s mental state shown quite well. There are moments where you see the unhinged killer who will take out anyone he likes casually but there are also points where he shows he does value some of his friends who came along for the conquest of Earth. He’s a slave to his emotions at time, letting rage lead him to doing things he wouldn’t normally do, but despite having some charismatic appeal and some good voice work backing him up, it doesn’t feel like the game is downplaying his genocidal nature but instead making him a villain who does pose an enormous threat but is more fascinating for his layered personality.
Travis Touchdown on the other hand almost doesn’t seem to be taking things seriously. The story segments itself it into episodes for each member of the Galactic Superhero Rankings you’ll be taking on, the word “episode” almost rather literal since they all start with an opening and closing credit sequence and even imitate the Netflix bumper a show someone’s binge-watching might see. At the start of these episodes though, you often find Travis not worried about which murderous being from the stars he’s facing next but instead sitting on his couch talking with a friend about the cinematography of the Japanese director Takashi Miike. Travis may be happy to kill these world-conquering aliens, but he doesn’t even let grievous injury to his own allies upset his way of life much. He’s not apathetic and will step forward to protect his friends in the moment, but he’s also going to take some time to complain about a certain video game to a boss in a rant that really feels like it’s something coming from the game director Suda 51 himself. In fact, the hands of the director and developer Grasshoper Manufacture are all over this experience and while that does lead to some overindulgent moments, the kind that held back Travis Strikes Again, here they are better handled and weaved into a game that is already a technicolor tapestry of delightful absurdity. One of the major boss battles for example actually begins with you playing competitive musical chairs against her and characters happily address the audience or the tropes of science fiction and video games that crop up. Sometimes the game’s willingness to swerve off into insane new directions will seemingly deny you what looked like an interesting idea, but then the ones that replace it are just as compelling or integrate elements from the series’s broader history.
No More Heroes III revels in oddity and happily shifts away from its third-person laser sword swinging action if it has an idea for something new it can show you, and while that cavalier irreverence risks going off the rails at parts, it is all held together by the fact this might be the best the No More Heroes series has ever been in regards to combat structure and control. Because FU’s gang of aliens have organized under the Galactic Superhero Rankings, Travis has to properly face them in order and even complete a process to earn the right to face off with each one. He’ll need to not only clear Designated Matches against small groups of alien enemies first, but he’ll also need to earn enough cash to pay an entry fee before he gets that chance to face a creative and stylish boss fight. The beam saber combat comes up most of the gameplay types you’ll encounter even though the game loves to get experimental with how to design an encounter or activity, and while this willingness to deviate from the normal gameplay leads to some of the most memorable and amusing moments, the battles are still well structured. Your beam saber has a quick attack and a strong attack you can mix together as needed but the weapon will eventually need to recharge. Shaking it to restore its energy is surprisingly swift compared to previous entries but still discourages aimless swinging, but the committal nature of some combos also means you won’t really want to wildly attack because even the simplest enemies in No More Heroes III pose a genuine threat.
Rather than heading through levels and facing off against small groups of enemies, you’ll usually only encounter more standard enemies in the Designated Matches or optional Defense Missions. Here you begin by facing some pretty easy creatures called Bones that are more like humanoid fodder than legitimate threats, but once you have a handle of the battle basics, Designated Matches begin to roll out more advanced and dangerous aliens. You’ll have to come to understand how these new enemies behave as the Bones are phased out in favor of the new foes, there being a good deal of creative ideas like the Leopardon who places down teleportation points around the arena so it can escape to snipe you and some more standard but still deadly concepts like some foes who can better guard against your blade and strike quickly to catch you if you’re being sloppy. Here’s where your additional abilities come in though, Travis able to do things like Perfect Dodge where some well-timed evasion slows down time and lets you hit foes while they’re vulnerable. Grabs can lift stunned enemies and slam them down for heavy damage, and when a foe is killed you spin a roulette that can grant advantages against the remaining enemies like getting free throws for a period, brief invincibility, or wilder ideas like briefly enabling power armor that is usually reserved for the space battles instead.
The space battles do involve Travis freely moving about in outer space firing at big impressive monsters and foes, but they are not too common while still having some enemy designs that shake up how you fight them even within this small subset of battles. Back on solid ground though, the most important bit of battle variety comes from a set of quick access powers you are given fairly early on that open up your attack options a good deal. A drop kick that’s great for launching enemies back and leaving them open to attack, a slow down effect where perfect dodging isn’t required, a zone where enemies who enter will be pelted with light projectiles, and a psychic shove for splitting up enemy groups all open up new strategies and the time they need to recharge is fairly short so they’re commonly available. Since these slightly disruptive abilities are easy to weave into your attack strategies the enemies are made tougher to compensate, leading to battles with regular baddies sometimes a close affair that requires some thought and the right approach to win. Funnily enough, the boss battles are perhaps a bit less well-balanced, many fights not lasting particularly long once you understand any tricks they’re utilizing because you have a good set of tools to deal significant damage. It won’t take the wind out of the sails of many encounters because they usually are made up of more than just the normal fight, either some strange gameplay twist accompanying them or suitably entertaining cutscenes making up for a boss battle that lacked some oomph, but there are still some unique mechanics that help the better balanced boss fights stand out as exciting conflicts.
Earning the right to fight the bosses isn’t just a matter of fighting in these small self-contained Designated Matches. Rather than having levels, you explore a few areas on your bike looking for things you can interact with. Admittedly, the areas you explore, while different in themes like the war-torn beachfront of Call of Battle or the normal urban area of Santa Destroy, are rather ugly open spaces and run poorly with bad textures and rendering issues at times that thankfully never impede play but still do seem rather lacking. There’s not too much to do in these open areas either, the player likely to rely on their radar to find points of interest like the self-contained Designated Matches or the money-making minigames. Travis can earn cash by performing some odd jobs, some of these things like mowing lawns while others involve wild ideas like helping the coastguard by blasting giant bipedal gators with a cannon. Even a standard sounding one like picking up trash can have the odd complication like needing to suplex gators that lunge at you, but these do all work fairly well as minigames without requiring you to commit to any one type too much if they don’t click with you. There are enough money-making opportunities both in these tasks and in things like the Defense Mission battles, but there are a few tasks involving finding things scattered around town like trading cards or perhaps the clearest sign that No More Heroes III wants to make an enjoyable experience over making a point: grabbing scorpions. In previous games, the scorpion collection missions were agonizing and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle even brought it back as a joke on how bad it was to play, but here scorpions are skittering around town and you can easily grab them if you approach from behind. Rather than being an agonizing task with little reward, it’s a quick little challenge in a game where you can often easily earn enough cash that you only need to pursue what interests you and thus the tasks are made interesting to justify time spent with them.
There are a few more elements at play in No More Heroes III such as a secondary currency called WESN that can be used to upgrade your abilities and a crafting system where deliberately arbitrary rewards from battle can be made into chips that you equip for different conditional bonuses. Things like weakening one attack type to strengthen another or lowering your defense for a strength boost make up these equippable chips, but dying isn’t too devastating since you just restart the fight you were in and you can buy sushi as well that can heal you up or provide boons midbattle. You can unlock new outfits by speaking to T-Shirt Aliens who have different conditions you need to fulfill during regular combat like using enough throws, and there are even minor substories that are often silly and a bit unsubstantial but an amusing diversion feels right at home with how off the wall much of the game is already. The actual gameplay ideas are all well honed to make the activities entertaining to engage in, so seemingly once that was all set into place, the development team embraced whatever they felt like in terms of presentation and plot. While it’s not always coherent because of it, especially when the game censors certain media elements its characters bring up just to be safe, it’s still an electric ride through imagination between all the blood-soaked alien assassinations.
THE VERDICT: A glorious expression of wherever Grasshopper Manufacture’s imagination strayed, No More Heroes III can get away with its potpourri of eccentricities not only because they’re fascinating and bold divergences from what one might expect, but because there is still an excellent action game on offer that is given the space it needs to still drive the experience. You are provided with a strong set of options in battle and even in the self-contained Designated Matches where you face regular enemies you are still given stiff competition in order to draw out more than just hack and slash play. Side jobs take the form of fun minigames that don’t restrict you from progressing much and deviations in mechanics for single boss battles or the space fights still are well constructed to execute their ideas in interesting interactive ways. Its willingness to follow its whims while also executing on them well ensures No More Heroes III remains a thrilling ride even when it gets a bit scatter-brained or indulgent.
And so, I give No More Heroes III for Nintendo Switch…
A GREAT rating. No More Heroes III really does feel like a game that builds on what came before it and thus it’s hard to recommend it without first playing at least the original two games, but it is because it is the kind of game that will stick to its guns on plucking out unexpected references to its past and real world media that you get the kind of attitude that makes the adventure such a fascinating one. No More Heroes III is not a stationary story about taking on a set of bad guys from outer space, and since it does do things like take some time to build up FU you still get a plot at the center worth paying attention to even though Travis is happy to deviate off and fight bosses who aren’t even on the rankings or play strange games with his foes. If Travis was a more serious character perhaps we wouldn’t get him engaging as wonderfully with the many eccentric personalities he faces off with who bring their own strange subversions to how the game might play or present itself, but while sometimes it does start to lose some of its context and coherency as its writing and action become unbound by conventions, you aren’t ever made to stray too far from the beam saber battles. It is messy at times sure, especially in visual elements or how long you might need to listen to opinions on Miike’s movies, but things do at least gel well in building up a personality for the game itself, this not merely a set of random events but almost an unfettered performance of whatever Grasshopper Manufacture wished to express.
Some games likely could have survived on the already compelling dark twist to the story of a child befriending an alien, but No More Heroes III is a smorgasbord of entertaining concepts all thrown together with the binding being the effective execution of the beam saber combat system. The action provides a good enough range of options and enemy types to again possibly be sufficient on its own, but this game is interested in more than just traveling the expected road and instead presents a platter of unique ideas that it seems to delight in serving and it took the time to craft its offerings well enough for the player to enjoy. It is an acquired taste in some ways, hence why it works best after playing the other No More Heroes games to ease you into its personality and design approaches first, but it also surpasses every previous No More Heroes title once you are primed for the wild action and off-kilter creativity on display.