The original No More Heroes is the Grasshopper Manufacture game that lands for me (opens in new tab). This studio is mostly represented by its creative lead Goichi Suda, aka Suda-51, and is behind a long list of offbeat and unusual titles. Everyone who’s into the studio’s games has a favourite, whether it’s Killer7 or Shadows of the Damned, but the highest compliment I can pay Grasshopper is that, good or bad, it’s never boring.
No More Heroes is arguably its most successful title (it’s certainly the one with the most subsequent entries) and last year saw the release of No More Heroes 3 on Switch. Then yesterday it finally popped up on Steam, but there may be a couple of reasons not to get too excited.
I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but the first eyebrow raiser is the price: this costs $44.99 / £44.99, which is a hefty chunk of change for a game that I fully expect to be a jankfest. It does feature a 10% launch discount but, y’know: whatever.
A bigger complaint in the early Steam reviews however is that this is an upgraded port of the Switch version, not the shinier PS5 / Xbox rerelease. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, as I thought it looked great anyway on Switch and the main thing this comes with is an uncapped framerate, but it is weird that there’s a more technically advanced version of this game and it’s not the one ported to PC.
No More Heroes 3 divided the critics on release and was always going to do so: you either meet these games halfway and revel in the trashier elements and slapped-together feel, or you have a bad time and wonder why anyone likes them. This release has caught me on the hop but, despite that price tag, I’ll be going back to Santa Destroy: it’s kill or be killed with the world’s premiere otaku assassin! It may be great, it may be middling, but I know it’ll be memorable.
