Game Overview

Gameplay

The first hour makes a strong case for Travis Touchdown as an action hero because everything important happens at arm’s length. You lock onto enemies, dodge incoming trouble, carve in with the Beam Katana, then turn a close opening into a wrestling throw. It is messy, aggressive combat with the right kind of showmanship. You are not asked to admire a distant battlefield. You are asked to get in somebody’s face, survive the chaos, and make the finish look ridiculous.

Death Glove skills add welcome flexibility to the sword-and-grapple foundation. Projectiles let you reach out, slowing attacks create breathing room, and launchers can send enemies flying. Chips allow those abilities to be customized, while Slash Reel rewards can unlock Full Armor Travis, a powered mech suit that pushes the spectacle further. The basics are easy to understand, but the rhythm starts to click when you stop treating every enemy as something to mindlessly slash and start mixing movement, targeting, skills, and throws.

The ranking structure is also where the game both honors and tests your affection for the series. Like the earlier No More Heroes, it pairs assassin rankings with side work. Here, though, you must earn entrance fees through odd jobs and combat tasks before getting back to the headline fights. Mowing lawns, collecting litter, and suplexing alligators are amusing ideas, but the repetition can feel like an unnecessary toll between the parts you actually came to see. Optional Joy-Con motion inputs are there if you want them, though standard button controls suit the hectic fighting just fine.

Graphics

Combat on Switch has a loud, jagged comic-book punch. Travis, in his red leather jacket and blue jeans, cuts a huge white-and-purple Beam Katana arc across towering enemies with mint, white, black, and gold geometric armor. Pink square fragments burst from impacts against orange-red skies, rough rocky arena edges, and forests of angular stakes.

Those bold clashes give the battles a memorable look, especially when an alien opponent fills the frame. The same effects can crowd the fighters, though, so the exact shape of an enemy or attack is sometimes lost inside the bright slash effects and flying debris.

Story

This is not an alien-invasion story that asks you to take the fate of Earth with solemn seriousness. Prince FU and his alien assassins arrive, establish the Galactic Superhero Rankings, and hand Travis a reason to fight his way upward. That setup is mostly an excuse to send him after increasingly eccentric opponents, and it knows exactly how absurd that sounds.

The tone is the point. Crude humor, exaggerated violence, pop-culture fantasy, and fourth-wall jokes keep undercutting any temptation toward straight-faced superhero drama. Travis remains a good fit for that energy because he can be both the guy doing the saving and the guy making the whole situation feel knowingly stupid.

If you want a tightly sincere science-fiction plot, this will probably wear you down. If you want a parade of weird alien personalities wrapped around a familiar climb through ranked opponents, it has far more charm. Nintendo’s official No More Heroes III overview captures the broad setup, but the real draw is the way the game commits to making each step of that setup as overblown as possible.

Overall Experience

No More Heroes III is at its best when it stops making you pay the cover charge and lets Travis fight. The alien-ranking premise gives the series a fresher flavor than another run of ordinary assassins, and the combination of katana combat, grapples, dodges, and Death Glove powers makes those confrontations worth anticipating.

Its biggest weakness is equally clear: the repeated money-making requirements interrupt that anticipation. A strange side job can be funny once, yet it is hard not to feel the drag when another fee stands between you and the next major battle. The game asks for patience in a structure that should be racing toward its weirdest ideas.

That compromise is worth accepting if you already enjoy Grasshopper’s brand of unruly action and deliberately tasteless humor. You get a game with memorable fights, a wonderfully unserious cosmic premise, and enough combat variety to keep Travis lively. Just go in ready to tolerate some busywork, because the high points shine brightest after you push through it.

Retro Replay Score

7.5/10