(Videogame) No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Review Abridged

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is the second instalment of the No More Heroes series. It stars 30-year-old Travis Touchdown, professional assassin and shameless otaku (anime nerd), and takes place three years after the first game.

Since the last instalment, Santa Destroy, the city where everything takes place, has seen Sylvia Christel's United Assassination Organization transform from an elaborate prank to the real deal. Travis, the former champion, disappeared some time ago, leaving with him his title as #1. Now, for unknown reasons, Travis is back, and he's rejoining the ranked battles. He has to start from the beginning, which is for the position of # 51.

Sounds promising, right? Probably the single best thing about the original No More Heroes was it's cast of colourful and diverse psychopaths, and 51 matches is 5.1 times more than the original!

Don't get excited.

In NMH1, the bosses had two scenes: an introduction and an exit. Now, the introductions have been cut into about half, and there is virtually no exit. That's one quarter of the characterization they got in the first game.

So to get in as much as the last game, there'd need to be four times as many assassins. Fortunately, 51 is 5.1 times as many. They more than made up for quality with quantity, right?

Don't get excited.

There are 15 boss fights.

The third person you fight, Charlie MacDonald, is a football player with a squad of 25 cheerleaders, each one a ranked assassin. Together, they operate a gigantic robot mech and, every time they place a kill, each member goes up a level in rank.

So right there, half the assassins are dead in one battle.

And later on, there's a 12-man battle royale, where a single assassin takes ten kills before he's matched off against Travis.

And later on, Henry, as a friendly gesture, steals 3 kills just to lend a hand. All are made off-screen.

Suda 51 said about the original No More Heroes that he generally has a tendency to focus too much on plot and not enough on characterization, so NMH1 was his little experiment to see how things would go if he focused everything on characterization and completely disregarded plot. Well, I hate to say it, but maybe Suda 51 is falling back on old habits a little in this title.

Now, if you just did a little math and think there should be a few less fights than 15, a couple of the bosses aren't ranked above you.

Now, to list some things missing from the original, “No More Heroes” isn't written above the toilets before boss battles anymore, Sylvia doesn't call you on your cell phone before boss battles anymore, they don't write out the boss's name in giant letters and say it in a funky voice before starting a stage anymore, and the boss's no longer have individualized cronies.

To compensate for the lack of cell phone calls, Sylvia has her own cutscene before every stage, with a menacing description of the boss that awaits you. While there isn't an introduction that spells out your opponent's name before the stage, there is a special scene after you kill your opponent where their name is shown, and “dead” is spelled out beneath it. Okay, there is one “KO” and one “disintegrated” (those are so disappointing when you get used to “dead”). And if the lackeys aren't individualized based on the boss, they are randomly selected based on a universal stock selection, which is kind of high-tech.

The lackeys fight more interestingly, and they can be finished in four separate ways (excluding wrestling), which is better than NMH1's grand total of one finisher. Still, if you start on sweet (easy) difficulty, don't expect too much of a challenge out of them. One scene, where they just keep pouring the enemies down on you for a ridiculous period of time, exploits the fact that you can fight them for an indefinite period of time and never have to worry about being in any real danger.

Moving through town is a thing of the past. Now you select your location from an overhead screen and just appear where you like. There are no ranking fees, either. You still need to pay for new weapons and upgrades at Naomi's lab, for strength and health upgrades at the gym, and for clothes. To do this, you earn money through part-time jobs like in the last game. Unlike last time, these take the form of 2D minigames.

I approve of all these decisions, even though it was a big technological step back from the last title. The only issue I have is with the quality with which these ideas were implemented.

Gaining strength and health upgrades is harder than the game itself (at least on sweet difficulty). And I was playing with only half the upgrades. The mid-level upgrade challenges are harder than the final bosses of the game when you only have half the upgrades.

And while everyone told me I'd love the 2D minigames, I just... didn't. I thought the controls were bad and the concepts weak. In the strength upgrade game, the gym trainer throws weights and kisses at you, which you have to dodge, kick or punch. They never tell you how many blows it takes to lose, and if you surpass the amount, they don't end the game. They just let you keep playing until the timer runs out. You can't quit, either. Some of the regular money-making minigames also have this problem. Also, the guy who asks you to do the jobs has changed, and this new guy is just boring and vaguely dickish.

Sometimes it felt like I was putting more time and effort into upgrading and making money than I was playing the actual game.

There's another game at your house, which, if you beat, will unlock the theme song to Travis's favourite anime: Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly 5. It's... dumb. Like, I know it's a parody, and supposed to make fun of the genre it's ripping off, but it just feels dumb. Like, not good dumb. Bad dumb.

A good addition is that they've expanded the weapon roster. Now Travis can use the traditional Bloodberry, but he can also use a more standard Katana-like blade, a gigantic beam... pole, and dual blades. Each one has their benefits, too, so you get to pick your style.

Now, regarding Travis... let me start off by saying his attitude about killing is all wrong. In the last game, there was a different feel to the ranked matches. Travis was out for revenge, sure, but he also loved killing, and would relate with his opponents before each match based on their shared thirst for blood. He didn't kill out of hatred, anger, or necessity. He killed out of affection, respect and intimacy. And then he'd go home, play with his cat Jean, try on some clothes, watch some anime, and have a good night's sleep with a clear conscience.

In this game, Travis is out to avenge his friend Bishop. He's angry, and no one will stand in his way. It's natural to be angry. There's nothing special or unique about anger. You can find that in any run-of-the-mill, dark and edgy style game. He tells Sylvia that killing is his way of dealing with grief, he tells Copeland that he's using the fight to work out his anger, and he tells Dr. Letz Shake (I know, he comes back! Isn't that soooooooo cool?!) that he's only going to kill him because his big metal ass is in his way.

Now, what were those statements examples of? Hatred, anger, and necessity. The most normal reasons to kill. The entire game feels tougher, but less psycho. Even when he cools down a bit about his agenda and can see his opponents clearly as individuals, how does he feel? Regret that they have to die, and a desire to become a hero, and to end the ranking matches and save the assassins from this terrible fate.

There's no schizophrenic sensation of being a 27-year-old virgin loser who loves anime, cats and fashion, horny and desperate, short on cash with overdue rental videos and doing part-time jobs to make ends meet, who then goes on a bloody kill-spree.

In fact, in this game, he loses his virginity, he's acknowledged as the “Crownless King”, and all the people ranked above him kowtow in respect as he shows up, acknowledging that they will likely die. Travis doesn't care about them, and he has a hard time remembering those he has killed. This makes it seriously more difficult to get intimidated by an opponent. Your own home is filled with intimidating music, creating a feel that there is no separation between his life at home and his life as an assassin.

He's become your typical badass, with a few token exceptions. Travis! I didn't pick up this game because I wanted to be thug, or a hero! I picked it up because I wanted to be a psychopath!

He also never has any guilt about how his career as an assassin was what led to Bishop's death, even when he's confronted with the concept.

In conclusion, this game had a lot of good character concepts, but fell short on characterizing them individually. Most of the main characters took a major hit personality-wise, and there was too much focus on plot. A lot of the game's original spirit was lost.

It is, however, probably longer than the original, and the gameplay better. It's still a worthwhile game that I finished in two days over a span of 11 hours... My largest gaming binge to date. It still earns my recommendation.