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Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-405B

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UPDATE: This review is out of date, as it seems that I've been testing the model on limited, 8k context. Which would explain why it didn't remember anything and why it was "writing so well on high contexts". Eh. For now, take it with a MASSIVE grain of salt.

Howdy, I wrote a review about Hermes 3 405B and decided to share it here as well, just in case you (or others reading this) would be interested in some feedback and thoughts! Massive thanks for creating this amazing model and for allowing us to test it freely over on OpenRouter, I've been having a real blast. :) Without further ado, here's the review! Note: I mostly tested it in terms of creative writing and role-playing capabilities!

Hey there, role-playing squad! Hope you've been doing great! Because I for sure am, since I'm enjoying summer holidays in the always sunny Italy! Florence is especially beautiful at this time of the year. And gods, do I love Italian food (on my way to gain some weight by stuffing myself with pici all'aglione and bistecca alla fiorentina con lardo)! All the good things come from Italy, like cannolo or pineapple on pizza.

Usually, with my reviews, I target models which I can run locally, however — this time around — I've decided to give a shot to some larger models via OpenRouter, given that I'm temporary away from home. Oh, boy, how lucky I was to discover that Hermes 3 405B Instruct by Nous is currently available for free to test out! Yes, you read that right — go give it a try right now, if it's still available (spoiler for the review: it's good)! Thanks NousResearch so much for giving us the opportunity to play with it!

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? So, how do I run this model? I connected to it via OpenRouter, using SillyTavern as my frontend. As far as I am aware, you need to have any credits added to your account there to be able to use it (even if it won't be eating away any).
Link: https://openrouter.ai/models/nousresearch/hermes-3-llama-3.1-405b
It's also available on HuggingFace (I envy you, if you're capable of running it): https://huggingface.co/NousResearch/Hermes-3-Llama-3.1-405B

As for my settings, here they are. Please note that I was forced to work around what was supported!
Story String: https://files.catbox.moe/r1w3ld.json
Instruct: https://files.catbox.moe/yvn2tq.json
Parameters: https://files.catbox.moe/r1efnd.json

Okay, so let's get into the juicy stuff now! Firstly, I don't think I'll be able to go back to smaller models after playing with the big boy that is a 405B model. It just feels so much smarter than what I usually had to use… Alas, let's jump straight into the points, which are the most important things I pay attention to when testing a model.

• Context length: This one has 131,072 context! I tested it on the full thing, and it worked too, surprisingly! Models such as Mistral NeMo and Large wouldn't be capable of taking such lengths with their tight sizes. However, for personal use, I keep the context at 65,536 — I don't need more than that to be pleased, especially since Hermes struggles a bit with recalling stuff from the context itself (it's a big gripe of mine, but more on that later). The quality of outputs stays relatively the same on high contexts as on low, so that's a big plus!
• Prose: Ah, zero issues there. I like that it picks up on my style and tries to match it, especially with the amount of effort I put into my own responses. I don't think it will be an issue to those who like to write short replies, though — it's smart enough to be creative when the user isn't, so no worries there! It's also really great at humor, which is a must for me. The only issues I have are the occasional GPTisms, but it seems, we can't really escape those.
• Ability to stay in character: Perfect. My characters were able to recall their backstories and looks with zero issues, regardless of how many times I re-rolled. All on high contexts. Wow, amazing how big of an upgrade having an instruct format (such as ChatML, in this case) supporting a system prompt is! It sure would be nice if all other big model providers followed this example and had a PROPER SYSTEM PROMPT IN THEIR FORMAT, PLUS A GOOD SEPARATOR FOR ASSISTANT/USER MESSAGES, NO? But the French know better.
• Intelligence: Smartest model I've ever used, hands down. Capable of using sarcasm and detecting it too. Connecting facts and picking up on emotions expertly. No issues with switching roles between Narrator and specific characters. Lies and makes decisions on its own. No need to do any or to be good. Just wow!
• Censorship: Non-existent for me, but please keep in mind I only test it for smut! No issues with some more interesting kinks, plus writes some cool detailed descriptions for smexy stuff. Had some good reads.

Overall, the model is just great on all fronts thanks to its excellent instruct-following capabilities. However, it does have some issues which I'd like to tackle and provide some feedback, especially, since I noticed that folks over at Nous mentioned that they wanted to improve the role-playing capabilities of the Hermes.

• Repetition issues: Yes, this one is a plague in all long-context models, I've noticed. It just loves to reuse phrases it already used. It especially struggles on lower Temperatures, simply repeating the exact replies from earlier, word-for-word. This can be negated somewhat by using DRY and Repetition Penalty, but neither of those are supported for the instance on OpenRouter, so sadly, I had to work around it.
• Mediocre recalling of the context: While Hermes is exceptional at remembering its system prompt, it does forget a lot from the ongoing conversation. It really is annoying when the character responds with 'huh, you never told me that' to something you told them already, that IS in the context. It's strange that this happens, given that according to creators, the model was trained on multi-turn conversations… but maybe on smaller contexts? If any of the creators are reading this, please consider checking my dataset which is a one, continuous RP that lasts for over 200k tokens — it could be used to improve continuity capabilities, plus to teach group chats and role-play.
• Shivers down your spine: Occasional GPTisms pop out here and there. To me, personally, it's not such a big issue since I'm used to them, and I'm guilty of sometimes using them myself to describe some things, but to a lot of folks, they're a nightmare. They mostly stem from synthetic data.
• Repetition issues: Yes, this one is a plague in all long-context models, I've noticed. It just loves to reuse phrases it already used. It especially struggles on lower Temperatures, simply repeating the exact replies from earlier, word-for-word. This can be negated somewhat by using DRY and Repetition Penalty, but neither of those are supported for the instance on OpenRouter, so sadly, I had to somehow work around it.

Now that the feedback has been provided, we can get back to the good stuff! Overall, Hermes is amazing and I absolutely love it! I'll probably continue using it even if it starts costing money, haha! Here are also some cool chat examples of mine, which no one reads, but I provide regardless. I play as 2137, everyone else is AI.

The style really feels natural, for the most part. Good job on that!

No issue with switching between different writing styles for different characters. Neat!

It gets emotional sometimes. Heh. Also, here's a little example of the model lying, which is super cool!

Just two bonuses of the humor it does. Context: Columbina is blind (at least, in my head canon). Dottore just straight up murdered her there on the spot, lol.

And of course, for those of you who are cultured — an ERP sample. This time around, from my main RP, because it just so happened 2137 finally scored some (after 600+ messages, yes).

That's it! If you made it this far, thank you for reading and cheers! Hope you'll enjoy the model! See you again soon and take care! Special thanks to: NousResearch for creating the model, the folks over the Drummer's server for being overall a great bunch, Mü~ for wonderful art of 2137 that I got for absolutely free, and Lambda team over on OpenRouter for hosting the service. Ciao!