Why "No More Heroes 3" is Hot Garbage. (3/4)

Anyway here's the problem on my part, in the original games, you paid the UAA fee to get into the ranking battle the next day. You then enter a cutscene, then go to a series of areas relating to that level and then you get to the bosses' room. Like for example in NMH1, the 8th ranking battle (Shinobu Jacobs) has you go around killing grown assassins in a school and then finally meeting Shinobu, where she takes you to a different abandoned part of the school and the boss fight takes it from there. So, what does that sound like to you? It sounds like you go from different places to different places right? 

Well not in NMH3. 

It's the same thing. 

Over, and over and over and over again. 

Instead of exploring different unique maps and going up your way to the final boss, instead, you just go to the boss directly. Yup, no more fighting your way through enemies and exploring anymore. It feels...really lazy and people who played the game will know I left out something. Yes, there ARE different areas in the game, you don't have to stay in Santa Destroy, there are different areas like Thunder Dome, Perfect World, Call of Battle, and Neo Brazil. But they're all boring. Yes, the 4 different places you can visit during the game have nothing to them. They might as well be all the same. They just look different that's all, and one of them you can't even explore fully, you have to enter 1 particular mission in the game just to get inside a section that has collectibles (yes there are collectibles but they aren't as fun as collecting the wrestling masks or concept art) and yes I'm talking about Thunderdome. Apparently, there was a massive part of Neo Brazil that got cut because the switch port couldn't handle it...which sounds off because there ARE switch ports that can run perfectly fine with large areas (by switch standards, Bayonetta 3 for example) so I just think it's just rushed development because this game has been stated to be rushed (which I'll get into later)

Speaking of switch ports, I played all of the No More Heroes games on my switch and they all ran perfectly fine...except the 3rd one. The 3rd runs like straight ass in the switch port. When you're on your motorcycle driving in free roam (y'know a mechanic NMH1 had and it ran perfectly fine) the frames drop dramatically, especially when you put your bike in boost and it's just really sad to see. I kinda avoid riding because I keep crashing into stuff but that sounds more like an issue on my part than anything. 

The bosses aren't really interesting either. I don't want nostalgia to blind me from genuine criticism of NMH3, but I feel like NMH1 had more memorable bosses, (or bosses I just personally liked) like Badgirl, Speed Buster, Henry Cooldown (oh boy we're going to get into him in a minute.), Shinobu, Harvey Moiseiwitsch Volodarskii, Holly Summers, Destroyman, (he's also in NMH3 because he just keeps coming back), Dr. Peace, Etc. They were all cool bosses with some fun gimmicks and attacks to them. NMH2 has some cool bosses as well, (Nathan Copeland, Matt Helms, Captain Vladimir, Ryuji, Mimmy) but some of them are not (Chloe Walsh) 

NMH3 has no interesting boss stages or cool-looking boss designs. The boss designs look too geometric and boring like, yeah, duh they're aliens, but as an artist myself I feel like Bayonetta 3 and No More Heroes 3 have the same problem with boss designs. In No More Heroes, the bosses had their unique personalities and unique boss stages. One of my favorite bosses/stages from the NMH franchise is Captain Vladimir, he wears an old, worn-out Cosmonaut suit and has electric cables sticking on his back. He also seems to be stuck on the floating seat of his destroyed spaceship, not knowing he's dead from the space race (so he's a ghost) In his boss fight as you continue to fight him, the sky turns from nightfall to sunrise as the cables on his back slowly start to disappear (showing that he's a fken ghost)  Or in NMH1, when you fight Speed Buster, not really a boss fight since you make no direct contact with her, but you have to watch out for her giant laser by going into abandoned houses as you slowly inch your way toward her and destroy her laser canon. But it becomes more difficult because she fires off her laser cannon every 5 seconds, as you become more closer to her the time that you have to hide in the houses before she fires it again becomes minimal. Granted, it's the same thing over and over but it's a boss fight that'll keep you on your toes.     

With Bayonetta, the angels had different looks to them, yeah they were all the same species but you could tell which one was which if you played Bayonetta enough. (No joke, when I was playing Bayonetta 3 for the first time, I thought I was replaying a boss that I already defeated, but it turns out they're two different enemies that look EXACTLY alike.) But putting that aside, NMH3 and Bayonetta 3 have the same problem. The bosses for NMH3 and the enemies/bosses for Bayonetta 3 lack personality, unlike the other games. Instead of fighting someone like Matt Helms, you're fighting Mr. Blackhole. Instead of fighting Lustitia, you are fighting... blue-gray thingies.

(Matt Helms)

(Mr. Blackhole)

(Lustitia from Bayonetta 1)

(Homunculi from Bayonetta 3) 

Don't get me wrong, there are 2 boss fights from NMH3 that were pretty fun, and it's Velvet Chair Girl's boss fight and Midori Midorikawa. The whole first part of Velvet's Chair Girl's fight is that you play musical chairs then Velvet Chair Girl kills herself since she lost. Her pet Ohma gets upset and tries to kill you with his laser beam shouting "ADRIAN" every time he does it. ("Adrian" could be Velvet Chair Girl's real name or it's a Rocky reference. Most likely it's a Rocky reference since in another Kill The Past title "Flower, Sun, and Rain" has the same gimmick.) Another boss I like is Midori Midorikawa particularly because of the 1st person horror section it has, I feel like that was really well done and it gave me some good jumpscares.   I also really liked the music during the "musical chairs" sequence. Granted, it's not my style of music, (I'm saying like I didn't have that song stuck in my head for 3 weeks) but it is an ear worm. That's another thing I want to get into which is the music. More like a lot of things on this rant, it's COMPLETELY opinionated. So, I'm not gonna go too harsh on the music. There are some bangers in my opinion in No More Heroes 3, (like "Musical Chairs", or "ITADAKIMASU) and it feels like the style of music has leaned more toward trap hip hop since TSA, (which is fine in my opinion, because "Welcome to Hell" from TSA has to be one of the BEST NMH songs in the franchise) but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the jazz elements in NMH2. 

But, at the same time now that I'm replaying NMH1, each game has its different style of music.  For NMH1 it was more electronic or club, for NMH2, like I said before it has jazz elements and a bit of rock in it, for NMH3 it's more hip hop based. That's all I have to say about it, I'm not going to get too deep into the music because it's more stylized preference than anything.

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