No More Heroes 3 - A let down or return to prominence?

[Love Machine]

NMH 3 was pretty kino, was exactly as I expected it to be.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

Never really got invested into Grasshopper Manufacture after playing Killer Is Dead. I heard their base company is down to 20 people after a bunch of partnerships.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

Never really got invested into Grasshopper Manufacture after playing Killer Is Dead. I heard their base company is down to 20 people after a bunch of partnerships.

I dunno if theres only 20 ppl left, I know while working on TSA Suda's crew was apparently composed of only 10 ppl, with the eventual helping hand in making shirts and the Hotline Miami guys for the final level. Recently Suda said that they were working on a bunch of new IPs, so take that as you will, I'm just glad hes still able to keep making games after so long.

He never really made anything as good as killer7 again, but his shit is so unique it would be a shame to see it go away.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

I dunno if theres only 20 ppl left, I know while working on TSA Suda's crew was apparently composed of only 10 ppl, with the eventual helping hand in making shirts and the Hotline Miami guys for the final level. Recently Suda said that they were working on a bunch of new IPs, so take that as you will, I'm just glad hes still able to keep making games after so long.

He never really made anything as good as killer7 again, but his shit is so unique it would be a shame to see it go away.

I liked Shadows of the Damned, to be honest.

 

[Deodar]

Whoever introduced suda to capeshit needs to be put down with him. That's all I can really say. RIP Henry, they really fucked him up.
Also the artstyle leaning more towards realism looks like total dogshit. The stylized models from NMH1 + NMH2 (2008-2010 respectively) look far better than this garbage. They made shinobu look like a man and neutered Bad Girl from being a trashy trailer bitch to Generic Airbrushed Anime Girl, which I guess is a win for the guys into the fanservice, but a loss for shinobu bros. I know the model is a transfer from TSA (i think) but I don't want to recognize that that exists.
As someone that liked the look and energy of the prior two games, NMH3 is just total dogshit. There's absolutely nothing to like about it. Characters are weird looking as opposed to cool (Velvet Chair Girl vs Captain Vladimir, you tell me which one is cooler) characters returning are there for 2 seconds or are brought back worse than before (Kimmy was done a disservice to say the least and Sylvia looks like shit, which is kind of a big deal considering she was the major hottie for both prior major games) and the actual story is just kind of boring.
I guess it isn't a series that should have a lot expected of it but compared to the other two major entries NMH is completely alien and it's not in a good way.

TLDR; girl not hot anymore also they fucked up henry what the fuck?

 

[Tachibana]

I dunno if theres only 20 ppl left, I know while working on TSA Suda's crew was apparently composed of only 10 ppl, with the eventual helping hand in making shirts and the Hotline Miami guys for the final level. Recently Suda said that they were working on a bunch of new IPs, so take that as you will, I'm just glad hes still able to keep making games after so long.

He never really made anything as good as killer7 again, but his shit is so unique it would be a shame to see it go away.

It certainly looks like that they tried to bite way more than they could chew. Cutscenes have horrible pop-in even 20 seconds in. I managed to soft lock myself in the open world a handful of times. The upgrade systems feel incredibly lazy, even compared to TSA that had a bunch of unique chips you could use.

The game was pretty damn kino at parts, but I can't help and feel that the game wasn't finished properly. The first 2 hours of the game are the best part. Presentation is top notch. Then the game has really high points and really low points.

 

[Skullomania]

Sat through the game for a weekend on Spicy and my consensus was I think the gameplay is the biggest improvement to the series as it feels a bit more fleshed out in the vein of other character action games like Devil May Cry and the like, although I wish there was different beam katanas you could use like you could in 2. Also the lack of additional wrestling moves is a bummer but my guess is they wanted the gameplay to feel focused and concise and I think they succeeded for the most part. The story and presentation are really where it's 50/50 for me. Visually speaking it's not the worst looking game ever and the art direction is pretty cool, but man Suda has been with the oily/greasy looking character design direction since the late part of the 7th generation of consoles. NMH 1 and 2 still look phenomenal in HD on Switch and while TSA wasn't quite the looker itself in reference to the 3D models, you at least weren't looking up close and personal to each and every one of the models to see how weird they could look at times. I really just like the flat color cel-shaded look his older games went for but it's not terrible. The story is where a lot of my qualms with the game reside. I'm not gonna bother with spoilers but I'm just overall mixed by the end due to how they handle the bosses and how flaccid everything felt leading to the end when it had such a strong start. I had a fun time but compared to the other entries, 1 and TSA stand as the better games. I put it along side 2 as an enjoyable game but I do not feel as strongly about them as those two other games. It's funny because I had relatively avoided TSA and had left it on my backlog for a long time but decided to beat it before I booted up 3 and I ended up really enjoying the game quite a bit compared to my initial mixed response to when it initially released.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

TSA is really slept on IMO. Now that the franchise is "done" it stands as #2 in my personal tier list.

It can be very offputting at first for someone thats coming from NMH 1+2, especially after a 10 year gap in releases, but once the initial shock wears off it reveals itself to be a pretty neat little game. Its got decent gameplay mechanics, a great soundtrack and a very personal story. Overall I prefer the 6-7 videogame bosses of TSA over the "10" galactic superheroes of 3 in terms of overall design and aesthetic, they just looked so cool and had so much personality.

Those final moments of the game, especially the last visual novel segment and the little gameplay teaser at the end, got me super hyped for NMH3, which, in retrospect, didnt fully deliver all that was promised. Also Credits song maintains the tradition of being kino.

 

[Skullomania]

Oh god I totally forget to mention the music. Compared to the previous entries, it's the most "serviceable" of the entries which is criminal. I'm a huge fan of Masafumi Takada so his stuff in 1 albeit are not as varied as 2, are very iconic. 2 has an outstanding OST overall and one of the biggest upgrades from 1. TSA's credits theme is honestly beautiful thematically and standalone, the entire OST is a solid track list overall. Jumping into 3 there are some neat tracks, but none of them are as memorable or varied as any of the previous entries. Idk, 3 was a nice return to the original gameplay design of 3rd person character action hack n slash with improvements to focusing on the battles primarily and really improving the main gameplay loop, but other aspects of this game felt phoned in to an extent. It ain't broken and it's not a bad game, but it could've used some more time in the oven. There are aspects to it I will give credit to like I feel the game has some commentary on modern media franchises, fanbases, consumerism, and some other stuff I probably missed but part of me feels like I'm reaching for something that isn't as fleshed out as anything done in NMH 1,2, and TSA; not by a fuckin longshot. I also wonder if Suda ever intends to revisit No More Heroes after 3.

Spoiler: Ending Spoilers

The post credits scene feels more like a jab at Marvel post credits but at this point I expect Suda to either kill it off now or deviate further in a new entry. I haven't a fuckin clue at this point I enjoy the mans' works but TSA felt like a more proper return to pure Suda insanity than whatever we got from NMH3.

I guess time will tell. I have a lot to say about 3 and a lot of it comes off more negative than positive when I really don't hate this game, it just feels like slightly wasted potential with some great highs and very questionable lows.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

Skullomania​

Before the game came out, when asked if there was a possibility of 4 happening, he used to answer saying that it would depend on Marvelous and if they wanted to make it, but the day the game released he went on twitter and said that it was the end of the franchise and Travis' journey.

Discussing it here and on other places, I've come to believe that this is most likely true and that the cliffhanger is a reference to 1, where it also ended in a big cliffhanger that was never supposed to be solved (NMH 2 only happened because 1 was a sleeper hit).

I would like to see a fully realized NMH4 happening, just take the core gameplay of this one, buff it up, add some more Death Chips, customization options, more beam katanas and stop throwing out boss designs, bam, you'd have probably the best NMH game ever. But, being realistic here, even if Suda changes his mind, it would probably take another 10 years for it to come out.

Keeping my hopes up for Hotel Barcelona until then.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Just finished it, really enjoyed it.
Story was weak, but the characters and scenarios are great.
Gameplay was super satisfying.
Music felt generic at first, but listening again I really liked a lot of the themes. The regular battle theme is great.

 

[Raiken]

The game at the core was good, but the overworld and minigames where ass.
If you look at the map you can see that half of it is not used, they would have been better off to focus it to be Santa destroy itself.
Damon Tower for instance is a short halway with level one enemies and then the finale boss, that it shows up on the map suggested it would have been and area. There is so much corner cutting that it feels like this is not the game it was supposed to be.
The story is so far removed from how the series started that it feels so much more like a sequel to TSA then the other two.

It's still funny that he made the last boss the CEO of EA when he worked on shadows of the dammed.

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

Did performance ever get patched to be better in this?

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

Did performance ever get patched to be better in this?

Game received a patch september of last year that fixed a bunch of bugs and overall improved performance, but the game still runs pretty subpar all things considered.

Dont think there were any more patches after that and theres no word on a PC version, so were stuck with laggy shitty overworld

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Dont think there were any more patches after that and theres no word on a PC version, so were stuck with laggy shitty overworld

So I'm bumping this thread to mention that there have been confirmations of various ports for No More Heroes 3, but... also to say, jesus fucking christ.
I just watched a longass video going over the story's plot and characters, beat by beat, with some complete scenes interspersed. What a self-indulgent clusterfuck.

Spoiler: sperging

YOU MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND THIS SCENE, HAVE YOU TRIED ANY OF MY OTHER EXCELLENT GAMES THAT HAVEN'T RECEIVED AS MUCH ATTENTION AS THE NO MORE HEROES SERIES? And like - I really like SUDA's weirdness in the original NMH, in Killer7, in the Silver Case / 25th Ward, etc. But this shit's completely fucking different - the weirdness and bizarre storytelling in those games nevertheless fit their themes and added to the charm. Here? It's just... gaudy. Yeah, it looks cool, and some of the music and animation is killer, but it's like having a cake that's fuckall but frosting.

Even if you suppose that it has anticorporate or anti-superheroes-homogenizing-creativity themes somewhere baked into it, it's... still juvenile, surface-level analysis presented pretty flatly that proceeds to go on and contradict itself. Fuck corporations, but please buy my other games and continue to consume. Fuck superheros' boring, tired backstories and tropes, but here's some boring backstories and the power of friendship conquers all at the end. Some of the lines - especially the fucking rap sequence - made me actually have to pause the video in the background and take a break from how bad the dialogue was. NMH1 has some major themes in it, but you can completely ignore them and just enjoy it as cheesy dialogue to the backdrop of a stylish-but-basic action game. Even if I suppose that the most egregious shit, like the ending cutscene, is itself at-face a parody of stupid superhero bullshit... okay? So you parodied consumer bullshit, by making a game that's nothing but consumer bullshit in which you threw a bunch of your super-special OCs?

It feels like SUDA's "return to form" only in that he hopped back into the writer's chair and decided to pen the same sort of goofy, wacky shit Grasshopper has been "known" for since NMH2. The kind of tepid hogwash that, while always visually interesting and goofy at a glance, has absolutely no staying power. I think he's really lost his touch. He should just make shit he wants to, rather than "trying to please the audience's expectations," because right now I'm expecting him to churn out All Filler No Killer7.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

So I'm bumping this thread to mention that there have been confirmations of various ports for No More Heroes 3, but... also to say, jesus fucking christ.
I just watched a longass video going over the story's plot and characters, beat by beat, with some complete scenes interspersed. What a self-indulgent clusterfuck.

Spoiler: sperging

YOU MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND THIS SCENE, HAVE YOU TRIED ANY OF MY OTHER EXCELLENT GAMES THAT HAVEN'T RECEIVED AS MUCH ATTENTION AS THE NO MORE HEROES SERIES? And like - I really like SUDA's weirdness in the original NMH, in Killer7, in the Silver Case / 25th Ward, etc. But this shit's completely fucking different - the weirdness and bizarre storytelling in those games nevertheless fit their themes and added to the charm. Here? It's just... gaudy. Yeah, it looks cool, and some of the music and animation is killer, but it's like having a cake that's fuckall but frosting.

Even if you suppose that it has anticorporate or anti-superheroes-homogenizing-creativity themes somewhere baked into it, it's... still juvenile, surface-level analysis presented pretty flatly that proceeds to go on and contradict itself. Fuck corporations, but please buy my other games and continue to consume. Fuck superheros' boring, tired backstories and tropes, but here's some boring backstories and the power of friendship conquers all at the end. Some of the lines - especially the fucking rap sequence - made me actually have to pause the video in the background and take a break from how bad the dialogue was. NMH1 has some major themes in it, but you can completely ignore them and just enjoy it as cheesy dialogue to the backdrop of a stylish-but-basic action game. Even if I suppose that the most egregious shit, like the ending cutscene, is itself at-face a parody of stupid superhero bullshit... okay? So you parodied consumer bullshit, by making a game that's nothing but consumer bullshit in which you threw a bunch of your super-special OCs?

It feels like SUDA's "return to form" only in that he hopped back into the writer's chair and decided to pen the same sort of goofy, wacky shit Grasshopper has been "known" for since NMH2. The kind of tepid hogwash that, while always visually interesting and goofy at a glance, has absolutely no staying power. I think he's really lost his touch. He should just make shit he wants to, rather than "trying to please the audience's expectations," because right now I'm expecting him to churn out All Filler No Killer7.

You talking about the Ghenry vídeo? If so hes a sperg that overanalyzes the shit out of Suda's games. His TSA vid was pretty cringy with him trying to find meaning in every single fucking line. NMH3 video being 4+ hours long is simply overkill.

As far as my opinion goes I dont think Suda's washed up, but he shouldve sticked with his own ideas instead of listening to the fans on this one. Open world drained a shit ton of the games resources and in the end It was borderline pointless.

NMH3 wouldve been the perfect NMH game If It had this gameplay with TSA's writing and 2's customization options, but alas, this is all we got.

Hey, at least theres a PC version coming out, so thats something

 

[Mega Black]

Just finished this last night and, honestly, it felt like a fucking chore the whole way through. It felt like it was a chore for Suda that he didn't really want to make. The whole game is phoned in and 'cuhrayzee' which is NOT the direction I wanted the series to keep heading in after 2. TSA gave me some hope that he could dial things back and get a little more introspective if he went into the final game while sitting in the director's chair, but that was clearly not the case. It smacks of being unfinished and it feels a lot like the game was rewritten partway through development. The Superhero shtick doesn't even really come up again past the very opening cutscene, which itself felt like a false advertisement for the tone.

Characters were butchered, the story was retarded, the gameplay was sub-par. I wish Travis could be more of an actual character again rather than Suda's self-insert. All in all, I hated it with every fiber of my being.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

You talking about the Ghenry vídeo?

Yeah, I watched that, but less for his analysis - who cares - and more just to see what was in the game. Most of his 'analysis' videos are anyways just summaries. I was otherwise totally blind, beyond Yahtzee's quick little blurb on it.

The one interesting point he brought up before I got bored was the idea that Suda really didn't want to make this game and really hasn't wanted to stick to the Travis idea since 1. But even there, it's like... man, there are so many better ways to put that into a narrative, even one with his characteristic aplomb and mystique.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

Yeah, I watched that, but less for his analysis - who cares - and more just to see what was in the game. Most of his 'analysis' videos are anyways just summaries. I was otherwise totally blind, beyond Yahtzee's quick little blurb on it.

The one interesting point he brought up before I got bored was the idea that Suda really didn't want to make this game and really hasn't wanted to stick to the Travis idea since 1. But even there, it's like... man, there are so many better ways to put that into a narrative, even one with his characteristic aplomb and mystique.

I agree. He did that a lot with TSA and even some other Kill the Past games before. I loved the way he incorporated previous games indo the visual novel segments or even full on "in game sequels" like Damned: Dark Knight.

At this point he said hes done with the franchise (the PC Port is being done solely by the publisher) and Grasshopper will move on to develop new IPs with their New chinabux, which Im hyped for.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Finished the third game so necroing the thread.

This game might be the most "Jumping the Shark" game I've ever played. It's the terrible case where a studio doesn't wrangle its tard in charge and the result is a product which has no coherency or design, though at least Suda finished the game unlike Kojima. The gameplay is better but far more limited: No different swords and no customizable skills, meaning once you get all of them you pretty much seen everything the game has to offer. The combat feels good but starts repeating itself in the second half of the game. It also does the insanely annoying thing of having no way to quickly rise from knocking back and no invincibility frames while on the ground, so a couple of times half my health went due to enemies attacking me while on the ground without letting me get back up. The slot system also has potential to make fights completely trivial. I'd rather the game given large arena with multiple enemy waves rather than a slog of a loading screen, fight 3 enemies, loading screen, back to overworld.
The story is basically nonsense and devolved to the issue that if it's all a joke then why should anyone care. Having aliens be the baddies removes the entire fucking point of previous games where Travis actions where terrible because he kills other people for his own needs. Now Travis is essentially the hero because no one gives a shit about a group of genocidal aliens who are going to destroy the earth, he is no longer the loser otaku but a straight up power fantasy.
In the end of the day the third game is a nice spectacle but I doubt I'll remember anything a week from now, even if the aliens got slightly more screentime than the human opponents in previous games they are bland in design, fight and soundtrack.

Also I "obtained" the game on PC and the control was ass, and the menus are terrible though it might be due to no steam support. The game is like 10 hours which is pretty terrible.