The return of Travis Touchdown on Nintendo Switch, after the conversion of the first two chapters, it was obvious: No More Heroes 3 resumes the good done in the first two episodes and tries to merge them into a single game, animated only by the incredible fighting power of its protagonist, but will Trevis’s charisma be enough to make this third chapter something unforgettable?
The first hour of the game is incredible: an anime-style presentation announces one of the craziest alien invasions ever seen, complete with a new ranking of the strongest assassins in the entire galaxy, too strong a call for the protagonist; a presentation that suggests all the best of the previous chapters, with eccentric villains, tons of blood and jokes that break the fourth wall continuously. But sadly, under the hood, the engine is not as powerful as one would expect.
The graphic part is absolutely not up to the explosive ego of its protagonists, bare settings on the verge of minimalism literally clash with psychedelic colors and fighting animations, which remain the true fulcrum for the duration of the title and the only moment in which the game maintains a stable frame rate and superior graphics to the rest; out of the fighting, inopen world borrowed from the first title is the aesthetic flatness, the continuous pop-ups as we move between a fight with minor characters and some ridiculous minigame to stretch a broth that has a truly indefinite flavor.
I know the boss fights are adrenaline-pumping and over the top, the whole outline of No More Heroes 3 lacks bite, it is as if the author wanted to fill the moments between one match and another with nothing, both on an aesthetic and narrative level, because the few ideas that support the project they had all been distributed between introduction and boss fight; a shame really because the previous chapter recently revived on Switch, despite its ten years of age, is much better from every point of view.
a rollercoaster of emotions No More Heroes 3, held up by the class of its protagonist, foul-mouthed, anarchic, always beyond the limit, able to make you forget the half-disaster of the game only with the combat phases and a few apt sentences, and nothing more; this latest episode of the saga does not live up to the past, getting stuck in a B-game with some flash of incredible power and nothing more, hoping that a patch can at least fix the frame rate and stability of the game, No More Heroes 3 is a game we wouldn’t recommend except to fans. more avid of the saga, and even the latter could turn up their noses … an opportunity thrown away, in what could really be an epochal game.