No More Heroes is back in a new spin-off titled “Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes”. Paying homage to independent gaming, the spin-off follows titular lead Travis Touchdown, an assassin who climbed the ranks slicing and dicing his way to victory after victory with his beam katana. Along the bloody journey Travis made an enemy of the father of now deceased assassin Bad Girl whose out looking for revenge against Touchdown.

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is a 2019 action-adventure, hack and slash game, it is developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Xseed Games. It is currently available on PC, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch.

Editor’s Note: A review copy of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Complete Edition (on PS4) was provided by Xseed Games in support of this review. Medium to near complete spoilers for Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes may be present within this review.

Travis Touchdown returns in the latest installment of No More Heroes.

It feels like it’s been ages since we last jack charged Travis Touchdown’s beam katana and the series upon its return in ‘Travis Strikes Again’ still isn’t afraid of trying new ideas to go along with the new tech it’s built on. A lot of “Travis Strikes Again” sounds fun on paper and I’m glad that Suda51 was appreciative of independent gaming enough to use such a popular IP as his personal love letter to the indie games industry. However, some of the execution isn’t quite there. It’s already a bit of a problem that the lack of motion controls for a No More Heroes game is off putting enough and it shows that traditional combat mechanics just aren’t quite as fun for the IP.

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes uses different gameplay styles from independent games to spread out it’s level design.

THE GOOD: ‘Travis Strikes Again’ takes a stab at a different approach from the hack and slash gore fest No More Heroes is known for. While the hacking and slashing is still here, this story is a little more light in tone compared to previous games. This is explained in the story as if Travis has either retired from assassination work and would like to take it easy in life now, or he’s on the run after being hunted down by a powerful organization known as the Smith Syndication (Killer7 says hello), possibly even both. After learning the ins and outs of the mysterious Death Drive MK-II console, Travis and Badman; the father of Bad Girl who was initially out to seek vengeance on Travis have now teamed up planning on using the wise granted upon completion of the games inside the Death Drive to resurrect Bad Girl. The death ball challenges are represented as homages of classic indie titles, which Suda clearly has gained a newfound respect for.

Travis Strikes Again continues to move the story of Travis Touchdown forward in time and tech.

If you love Suda51’s work outside of the No More Heroes realm then you’ll probably fall in love with ‘Travis Strikes Again’ as it confirms that No More Heroes, Killer7, Killer is Dead, and The Silver Case all exist within the same universe as certain characters from each game having cameos. I really liked some of the gameplay tweaks and ideas Suda was going for such as co-op and a slight change in mechanics with every mini game played throughout. There’s also a bit of a skill tree that players equip “skill chips” to for upgrades to Travis. The traditional hack and slash mechanics return, just not with motion controls, hopefully this will be patched in with a future update. The story is represented by a classic visual novel like style for its cut scenes.

No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Again is a rare spin-off that continues the world building of the main game.

THE BAD: Though one can appreciate Suda’s efforts in showing respect to the independent gaming industry, not every idea was able to be executed to it’s fullest in ‘Travis Strikes Again’. Which is understandable, not every idea meshes well with another. There’s also some grinding issues with with gameplay, granted it doesn’t go crazy basically forcing the player to become dependent on any real-money microtransactions, but it’s annoying enough to a point where I can see people getting disinterested for awhile and then coming back later. I was also somewhat disappointed in the lack of PS Move and motion control support for the “Complete Edition” on Playstation 4.

Lack of motion controls takes away from No More Heroes’ unique flavor in Travis Strikes Again.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes while not the greatest return of the beloved more mature marketed Nintendo franchise is an excellent example of what should be considered from a spin-off starring the main character of a series. With pieces that move the story forward tying directly into the next main installment of the game while providing more background and story beats for surrounding characters all with a bit of fan service for Suda51 die hards in a neatly put together package that’s a good distraction from the aforementioned No More Heroes III which is still a few months away from release.