No More Heroes 3 hits PC, but it's the Switch version for some reason

Travis Touchdown and his beam katana.
(Image credit: Grasshopper Manufacture)

Update 10/13/22: Publisher Xseed has subsequently posted an update to Steam promising a patch that will "improve some of the visual elements in this version, including draw distance."

In addition, it also says patches are incoming for the first two games on Steam, which are widely regarded as pretty poor ports. Xseed has "brought the effort to address these issues in-house. This has delayed things and we apologize for the lack of communication up until this point, but rest assured that we will provide further information as soon as we are confident that we have patches in releasable shape."

Original story follows.


The original No More Heroes is the Grasshopper Manufacture game that lands for me. 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.

Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

Read more
Two rising ronin facing each other
Rise of the Ronin is another crappy PC port, performance patch coming 'soon'
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
Monster Hunter Wilds
I wish Monster Hunter Wilds' open world and changing seasons were ambitious enough to justify its PC performance woes, but they've yet to truly wow me
Majima in a pirate outfit with a shark in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii review
Both Spider-men leap into action in Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man 2 swings straight into hard crashes, performance issues, and a very mixed Steam rating: 'Issues up the wazoo'
Spider-Man (Miles Morales) crouching on a ledge at the Raft super-prison in Spider-Man 2.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 review
Latest in Action
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Assassin's Creed Shadows immersive mode - Naoe holding a tanto in her hand as two guards fall to the ground behind her.
Assassin's Creed Shadows' first hotfix addresses stability issues and a photo mode crash
A plastic duck dressed like a circus weightlifter
The 5th highest-rated game on Steam in 2022 is back with a multiplayer sequel
Ragnarok Battle Offline
After punishing my graphics card with Monster Hunter Wilds, I've returned to the rock-solid frame rates of my old hunting grounds: Windows XP
A unique aspect of Japanese architecture turned out to be a key reason the Like a Dragon games can reuse assets so effectively—and deliver more compact, memorable open worlds than western cities
Naoe looking at the wrist blade in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Ubisoft says don't compare Assassin's Creed Shadows' success to Valhalla: The latter launched in Covid's 'perfect storm' and feedback on platforms 'less affected by review bombing' is stellar
Latest in News
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
An image of a golden first place award from Geoguessr
'We're actually getting GeoGuessr on Steam before GTA 6': the Google Street View puzzler arrives on Valve's platform this April
Napster client circa 1999
Former music-pirating platform Napster to be reborn rather ironically as a metaverse for musicians to connect with their fans after $207 million deal
The snazzy red and black HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless headphones float in a teal void. The microphone is attached to the headset.
The best wireless gaming headset is now even better in the Amazon Big Spring Sale, boasting a more than $50 discount
A chip being held up in an Intel fab
Intel is reportedly 'working to finalize commitments from Nvidia' as a foundry partner, suggesting gaming potential for the 18A node