I've spent a lot of time wondering what to say about this game. On all accounts it should be a better game than the first one. The combat's faster, the music's much better and the game's been streamlined yet retains just as much content as the first game.

But where No More Heroes 1 shined for me was it's philosophy, it's core idea and how it tackled it's themes. Desperate Struggle has none of that, instead I get a game that's mediocre at best and infuriating at worst. Travis' character arc in the first game was made moot in order him to act as a funny man again, Shinobu is no longer the badass you knew but is just another sexy girl who wants to fuck Travis, and Sylvia seems to have learned nothing. Henry's cool here though so I'll give them that

I feel like the fatal flaw of this game can be summed up in Travis' new character design alone. He's made badass to fit with the game's tone and honestly? It fits, but its not NMH1 Travis. The Travis who looked like a tryhard nerd, the very same Travis who was poked fun at after every boss fight via embarrassing phone calls to remind you how much of a loser he is. For a game about assassins I guess it's fitting they committed one of the worst character assassinations I've ever seen

So yeah, I don't like this game. I don't like it's annoying boss design, I don't like how the bosses don't symbolise Travis' journey anymore and serve as filler. I don't like No More Heroes 2, but at the end of the day I'll fully admit it is more No More Heroes. It doesn't look and feel vastly different from the first, so I'd argue there is worth in experiencing this for yourself to see if you like it; even if during your playthrough you feel a sort of unease, as if something about this whole experience just isn't right

No More Heroes 2 does have some redeeming qualities. The visuals are improved, the boss fights are mostly more fun and creative, the soundtrack is arguably better than NMH1's. The opening hour promises more violent action, horny dialogue and intriguing narrative of a somewhat darker tone.

But then it doesn't take long for everything to start coming apart at the seams. Let's address the elephant in the room first -- Santa Destroy's no longer explorable and has been reduced to a list of shops, missions and side jobs. It's not like the city in NMH1 was particularly fun to explore, but it gave you with an opportunity to settle down and get a sense of this place. Santa Destroy used to have character, and now it's just a barely recognizable monochrome map screen. More importantly, city exploration helped with the original game's pacing. Having to earn money to enter the next proper level provided the player with some down time to wind down and goof off. Go dumpster diving, find lost cats, search for collectibles, do combat challenges. And this kind of work ethic was a tangible foundation of one of the game's themes.

None of that is present here. Jobs are still there (now functioning as cute and somewhat fun NES-style mini-games), but they only serve as a way for the player to earn money. Where to spend that hard-earned cash? Well, there are two swords for sale, one of which could even be considered useful. You can buy new clothes, but that also comes with another disappointment. Airport51 now sells goofy themed outfits and shirts you can barely see under the jacket. Part of the fun of going all "fashion souls" in NMH1 was that it reflected Travis's personality. Of course he'd be happy to proudly wear a MIAMI BASS t-shirt under a tacky white jacket. But a "nerd" or cyber goth outfit? That's Silent Hill bonus content levels of comedic.

The aforementioned broken pacing means that the player will go through the levels quickly, barely stopping in-between. And since the gameplay in the levels is mostly just mashing through waves of goons, it's doesn't take long to start feeling burnt out. The designers try their best by introducing different types of baddies and mixing them, but by the end they just give up and have you cut through an endless stream of enemies that all take way too long to kill. One of the end game levels starts with a 10-minute section of just fighting waves of dudes in a parking lot. That's it.

At least those levels lead to generally quite good bosses that never fail to put a unique spin on the usual fights. They're not always challenging, but my monkey brain still appreciates the spectacle. But herein lies my main complaint. In NMH1 all bosses were an important part of the narrative. Engaging with their personalities and various outlooks on killing as an activity served as a boost for Travis's tangible character growth. In NMH2 you get flashy and colorful characters that are mostly just archetypes of various facets of the entertainment industry, and that's about it. Not much of a foundation for thematic exploration. In fact, the interactions with the assassins are generally so brief the game tries to provide intriguing background info in disconnected monologues given by Sylvia in cutscenes, not in a dialogue with Travis.

NMH2 actually takes on quite a few things narratively -- Travis is confronted with the consequences of his actions in the first game, not just in the way of a revenge plot that kicks things off, but also in that he has become a proper figure of myth, an inspiration to many "performers" that want in on the new assassination entertainment craze and to wearied souls that just want to find an out of this vicious circle of bloodshed. Travis is no longer a goofy otaku that he was a game ago. I mean, he still jacks off to anime and occasionally acts as a gullible oaf, but he's mostly proper cool now, no longer posing. He's a knight on a noble quest, and in the end he gets the girl and finds paradise. And this is fine. After all, NMH1 did lay down considerable growth for his character. But it doesn't feel like Travis has moved anywhere internally throughout this journey. In fact it's his relationships to other people that make progress instead. There's a romantic attachment to Sylvia, an unwanted mentor position with Shinobu, and begrudging respect shared between Travis and Henry. It's almost as if this thread of Travis finally making a set of close connections should intersect with the ongoing exploration of grief and revenge that takes most of the place in the plot, but there's no connective tissue here.

A lot of the game feels like it's missing something, be it weapons, open world exploration, level variety or thematic focus. NMH2's development cycle was infamously rocky, with Suda being mostly hands off with the game and some aspects having been changed almost last minute. And there's an occasional glimmer of detail that shows this game never quite reached its aspirations in full. Travis's motel suite is getting redecorated with every collectible you find. Every shop can be fully explored for no real reason. Santa Destroy is mostly finished in the credits sequence. Hell, there are two bonus characters with unique movesets that are barely utilized. Unfortunately, this isn't quite enough to excuse the flaws the game has. And quite frankly the last hour or so of your playthrough is guaranteed to leave a sour aftertaste. But I can't help but think it would not be fair to dismiss the game outright. It's jank but not soulless.

You know, the biggest reason this one feel weaker is because it is inconsequential. Everything is given to you, while the first one made you work your ass on dumb annoying jobs and showed you how pathetic that is, that helped with the pace of the game and you felt some kinda of uh accomplishment when you got it.
Here, after removing the requirement and making the bosses easily accessible you wonder why you should care about them, not only it is easy to fight them, there is a lot of them and just a few are iconic and are going to be remembered.
Also, they really toned down the difficulty, you know? Almost all of the ranking battles you can win making a LOT of mistakes, i even checked more than once if i was on the lowest difficulty. I feel like they tried too much to improve on what most people complained about the first one, like the empty and clunky open world and dumb annoying side jobs but i felt like they just removed a lot of personality with it and while i do think the nes like minigames are super cute, there is no incentive to play them since you dont really need it, you know? What you gonna do with the money? Buy tshirts you dont see? Well, you see them when you complete the revenge missions if you get the no jacket but even then you are already finishing the game so whatever.
But, while trying to improve on what the first one, they got some things right, the ost here is way better i love this song. The combat feels way better and it is way cooler. And BEST of all, they added a super cute cat minigame, it was all i was hyped for, taking care of that fat ass cat jeane. Okay, i made her lose weight, yay i won.......
But yes, while i feel like the gameplay is way better here, i cared way less about characters and all, so in the end, it was a slightly worse game for me.

um retrocesso em basicamente tudo, só o combate que teve algumas melhorias, a adição de novos personagens jogáveis e a trilha sonora que é incrível, de resto a história é fraquíssima, enrolada e sem foco, o mundo aberto foi totalmente cortado e substituído por teleportes em cada local do mapa, todos os minigames foram substituídos por versões 8-bit extremamente chatas e mal feitas, sem contar que o jogo tem basicamente o dobro de chefes e a maioria deles não tem metade da qualidade do primeiro jogo, só se salvam os 4 últimos e olhe lá, uma das coisas que incomodam também é como o travis simplesmente virou outro personagem, raramente ele age do mesmo jeito que no 1. no geral, é um jogo que tenta se expandir muito, ser mais bonito, ser mais bem feito, ser mais cinematográfico, e isso acabou fazendo ele ser inferior ao primeiro

No More Heroes 2 is one of the most confusing game sequels I ever tried to wrap my head around. I can't decide if this is pure genius, or if they just fundamentally misunderstood what the original was about. Gōichi Suda wasn't completely hands-on with the Sequel, since he didn't even want to make a sequel in the first place. By his own admission, he didn't expect No More Heroes to blow up the way it did. Grasshoppers game before NMH, Killer 7, wasn't a mega hit, but sold just enough to make them get some amount of notoriety. So it was entirely realistic to expect NHM to play to that same small but loyal niche audience Killer 7 did. That assumption couldn't have been more wrong. No More Heroes sold way better than anyone expected, especially in the west, so a sequel was inevitable. Suda then handed over the game to this Assistant Director, Nobutaka Ichiki, while Suda oversaw the character and scenario writing. Keeping that mind, I think it's 100% more clear why No More Heroes 2 feels so confused. One side wanted to make a legitimate action game with a deeper meaning to it, while the other side, probably Suda, wanted to double down on the bonkers meta aspects. That doesn't mean there are no deeper elements to it, in fact both sides come together quite beautifully. And for all the silly jokes it makes about sequels, how gamers don't really want context, this is a very smart continuation of what No More Heroes buildt.

All the characters have evolved in meaningful ways, there are consequences for even minor things that happened in NMH, and the world has changed in a way that is in line with the events that took place around Santa Destroy. One of the biggest criticisms this story gets is that they supposedly ignore that the UAA was revealed to be a scam and a ploy from Sylvia to get rich, but now it's treated like it's 100% real. Yes, it was all a big joke in the first game, to both Travis and the player, where they thought they worked toward some meaningful goal, until it's revealed right before the end that we all been played for suckers. The game builds up to that joke, signposts Sylvia being a red flag in pretty much every cutscene, and it's completely in Travis character to fall for all of it. Travis still became Number 1 in the end, but walked away basically into self exile. And this is where the Sequel picks up. His absence and the resulting legend of “the crownless king” has now turned assassinations into a commodity, a mega popular trend. And Silvia, being the gold digger she is, takes complete advantage of that boom. What was once a small-time scam is now a legit business simply because it will make her a fuck tone more money. It all makes sense within its own framework. Travis basicly gets roped back into the game because of a revenge plot reveald by the brother of the 11th ranked assassin killed in the trailer for NMH 1, who is also the first boss. Bishop, the owner of Beef Head Video and Travis best friend, gets killed, setting him on a revenge mission to work himself up the ranking again to get the one responsible. Travis has noticeably changed though, having become a lot more reserved and looking for some kind of meaning in his life. And with changed, I don't mean what a lot of people have defined for themselves as change, aka that he has to be a completely different person now. That is not what change means, because no matter how far you go, even a real person doesn't completely change their personality as they get older. Everyone keeps certain core aspects that define them, while maturing into other directions and dropping minor things. And Travis is a fantastic example of this. There is definitely a growth in his personality. He is not as hyped up anymore, he has people he visibly cares about just as much as he is still a weeb deep down seeking the thrill of a good fight. He's not above bouncing off the wall or jerking off to his favorite Moe, but when it comes down to business, he is much more reversed. Old Travis would have probably taken advantage of Shinobu, but new Travis, while he still a horn dog, doesn't seem to care. He has much more defined goals that give him a legitimate human connection with other people and isn't just looking for fast and cheap thrills exclusively

Travis is growing from a snooty teen into a man. The way he goes off on Sylvia on multiple occasions for disrespecting Assassins he has legitimately grown respect for is beautiful. They are my favorite moments of Travis character's arc, and Robin Atkin Downes does a phenomenal job as Travis. You completely buy every line from him. In a game overflowing with mediocre bosses these are the highlights and I think it's not coincident that they are what give Travis life. He is not tired of violence, he is tired of meaningless violence. The endless waves of goons and tired retreads of bosses he already fought. It's another fun reflection on Video Games itself, and I think it no coincident that the longest, most draining level is the one right before the fight with Alice Twilight. The final straw for Travis character arc. The level before you fight her is this endless kill march through a somber sunset. You start the level walking by a giant graffiti mural of Travis face plastered on a building, which I think perfectly represents not what he sees himself as, but what the world sees him as. This giant icon, adored by everyone but himself. The following level has enemies just pour in wave after wave to the point of exhaustion while remixes of the main theme play, only to be interrupted by this beautiful melancholic melody that could have come straight from Silent Hill. And the music for No More Heroes 2 was in fact created by Akira Yamaoka, who was working for Grasshopper at the time after resigning from Konami in 2009. His soundtrack is phenomenal and blows the original games OST out the water. His music is a big part of what makes moments like I just described work so damn well. It's my highlight of the game, no doubt. Contrasting that is the ending, which left me downright confused. I think it's supposed to represent Travis and Sylvia finally breaking free from the cycle of video game violence hinted all throughout the story and becoming actual 3 Dimensional characters having a real human connection with each other beyond being cardboard cut-outs exchanging funny quips. After all, the game's actual framing device is a conversation of a mysterious man, totally not Travis, talking to a stripper, totally not Silva, in a shady sex phone booth where she poetically describes what happened in Santa Destroy. They then ride into the sunset together on Travis Motorcycle as the credit's role. But I could also be totally overanalyzing it, and it's all just incompetent storytelling, very possible.

And if you actually read this far, first of all thank you so much, that's not all a given. Secondly: I think I made it very obvious that I'm of the opinion that everything surrounding the game is far more interesting than its actual gameplay. So to finally close off this insane ramble, I'm just gone quickly say what I thought of the gameplay. It's basically the first game, but heavily streamlined for the worst. Combat is mostly the same, except for different weapons this time like the double beam katana, which is really awesome, and being able to store your special powers instead of them being activated immediately. Most of the bosses are awful this time, and the addition of Shinobu and Henry as playable characters does not help. They control really stiff and combat is even more limited than it already is with Travis. The Open world is entirely replaced with a menu now, which is a shame because Santa Destroy had so much potential. They just didn't bother and scrapped it entirely. Side missions are much worse across the board, since they replaced the gym and jobs with very bad NES style minigames instead of the variety we had before. Where before I wanted to play at least some of the better ones for extra cash, I now never want to engage with them again. And since there is almost no point to money anymore I have no reason to do them anyway. The combat missions were hit with the same unfun stick as well. You can debate how fun they actually were before, but at least we had some variety in the challenges. They are now called revenge missions and there are only two types. Kill Everyone or Kill the Target. You would think at least you'll get some kind of cutscene, since these are the guys who basically kicked off the plot. Nope, just kill the same boring assholes over and over again. I dropped all the side content pretty fast, only forcing myself to do them for the 4 Combat upgrades you can buy, then entirely mainlining the story. Which makes the game so much shorter than the first game, just by virtue of most of the content sucking. I suppose if you're a big fan of No More Heroes like me, you will at least get something out of it, but overall I much prefer the first one over this gameplay wise.

If you ever wanna know what the definition of "missing the whole point" is, look no further than No More Heroes 2. It's like if someone looked at the satire and irony of NMH1 and decided to make it a real thing.

Despite some well intended attempts at adding a bit more depth to the (intentionally) shallow combat of the first game by giving Travis a selection of new lightsabers that change up the pace and provide some tactic advantages to the player, it ends up feeling less visceral and "orgasmic" than NMH1, with sword hits that dont feel as immediate and cathartic, an aspect that was integral to the NMH experience.

NMH2 feels like it's trying at every step to one up the first game's more cartoonish elements, but instead of understanding why those worked before in the first place and how it built up to them in meaningful ways, it just throws wackyness at the screen with no real purpose other than for it's own sake. Bosses that before made you question the nature of the game itself now only exist to fullfill the player's basic expectations of a regular action game. Side characters that were used to juxtapose the more grounded elements of NMH1 with its more bizarre and out of place moments are now just trope-y anime walking cliches.

Even the side gigs are wrong. Now they amount to pixel retro based minigames that all look and sound the same, further distancing themselves from the mundane and muted minigames of the first game that gave character and uniqueness to Travis and his surrounding lifestyle.

Whatever pretenses at saying something about the nature of sequels that NMH2 might have had, like the onslaught of enemies in the later levels that bordeline on mindnumbness or Travis' frustration and jadedness with the whole "being number 1" affair, it ultimately ends up falling flat on it's face because it never feels like an intended goal.

It's not a bad game. The soundtrack is amazing and on it's best moments it provides some great bursts of spectacle. But Travis get's the girl in this one. That's what we wanted, but is that what we really needed?

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Following my little marathon through the No More Heroes series, we have the second numbered title: Desperate Struggle. Serves as the direct continuation of the events of the first game, while not really having some of the elements that made the first entry so famous in the first place. Personally I immediatily noted the difference from the beginning, having a more eerie and mysterious presntation, at first. This game talks about consequences and the perpetual-neverending cycle of violence, which are themes that already were touched in No More Heroes. It's all view from a different perspective this time.

No More Heroes 2 starts off with a bomb...not a literal bomb but the death of Bishop, which if you don't remember was the guy that sold you wrestling tapes in the first game. Travis is heavily affected and looks up to Sylvia for answers, she tells Travis to join the rankings again, this time they're official. Travis once again is locked with a promise that may or not be fullfiled at the end, getting to the top is the only way of getting that answer. It pretty much is the first game plot, all over again. Just more of the same, right?

Desperate Struggle and No More Heroes are two sides of the same coin. At their core they're the same, a 3D hack and slash game but the two differ from each other in tone, themes, presentation, variety and overall direction. It made me appreciate aspects of the original that I totally overlook, and made me appreciate some of it's changes to the main formula as well. I talked a bit about expectations in the first game, how they easily suberted most of what you could expect from the title, making it somewhat unique even at the time of it's release. Desperate Struggle however, is much more in your face narratively speaking. No More Heroes had underling themes that for the most part went unnoticed at first, but once digging on a deep analysis you'll start to know why things are the way they are. The sequel aims, for something that appears to be a continuation of it, without any of it's merits. You see, the first game story was hidden within each boss personalities and how this affected Travis through it's adventure maturing in the meaningless business of killing and death. This time they tried something different, it's all about the show and spectacle through the superficial and the instantly gratifying moments, when it comes to the bosses at least. Because there are several flaws within No More Heroes 2 narrative structure that goes in all kinds of different ways just to end up in the same road, overcomplicating the unnecessary and making what could've been a good story fail because of it.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Desperate Struggle came with a ton of changes for the possitive as well, one instant example I can think of is the gameplay. This time around it looks more presentable and it's much more enjoyable, well, at least for me. It is a huge improvement from a presentation standpoint while still retaining what made the original mechanics so addicting in the first place. It's also expanded by giving you the opportunity to have up to different 4 sword in your personal blade arsenal. Another remarkable aspect is the music, at least compared to the first it blows out the water. It's not that the original compositions were bad really, this time is a matter of showing up their talent. Several well known composers were hired to make this game music score, it's a night and day difference from variety, instrument and even lyrics are present such as the case of: "It's Kill or be Killed" or "Phillistine". It truly is a solid score that I wasn't expecting to enjoy this much. They also did a great job expanding the already established universe with returning characters of the past game, serving as an indication of Travis progression. We start to know more about certain characters that for better or for worse were shrouded in mystery in the first game. Most of these aspect I just mentioned I thought were objetively good changes, not just for Desperate Struggle alone but for the No More Heroes franchise as a whole.

Different for the worst, too. It lost some of the charm of the original. in my review of the first game I mentioned how tedious most of the work to gain money was, never realising that well, even being a tedious slog it's a good distraction from the base game that also served as one of the main incentives for the story as well, outside of killing the main bosses. This time in Desperate Struggle we have a case of oversimplification without wanting to really fix the issue in hand, take for example the Open World. Santa Destroy's city while not the best, had it's charm and that could've been fixed with an honest approach but they take it all out in favor of player feedback. You know, players sometimes don't really know what they want and that was the easy way out of the problem, just get rid of it. As much as I disliked No More Heroes Open World, it was a good base for things to come but they ditched it. For better or for worse, you get the ranked battles instantly. The Minigames are not gone though, but they were replace by 8-Bit representations of set job. Think about the Coconout Collector minigame in the original but in 8-Bits, that's pretty much it. They're a lot of fun honestly and I prefer it over the original to some extent. Now that money isn't a issue to enter the rankings, it's not that important now outside leveling Travis stats up. Again, this sequel is much more in your face so it somewhat makes sense to make most aspects that people at first found annoying or unnecesary in the first game streamlined to get to these best parts instantly. The Bosses also suffer a case of slight case of simplification across the board. Aside from increasing the numbers of it, their significance quality decreased immensely. As I said before in No More Heroes most bosses had their own personal motives ways of seeing life, death in battle. This was a constant and for the better part of it, in Desperate Struggle I didn't really found a partciular reason that instantly spoke me. Sure, their personality was set by just the looks of the presentation alone, but outside of it their motives were hard to read in the little screentime each of the assasins, most of them shine again from presentation alone. Which again, can be a good thing or not compared to the original title.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle leaves me with a sense of just being confused of what really wants to be. Strive to be better than it's older brother? Or just be something different and first the apparent flaws the original have? The original game wasn't planned to have a sequel to begin with, it was a round work that surprisingly worked in favor of Grasshopper Manufacture from a business perspective and a sequel was inevitable to keep the series momentum afloat. Suda51 was credited in No More Heroes 2 as an Executive Director while busy in a lot of other projects at the same time. While this doesn't leave a clear indication of what he specifically did in this project in particular, we can just guess his involvement wasn't as prevalent as in the first No More Heroes 2 and others decided to took the role. No More Heroes while being a flawed game in my eyes, it was a brilliant take on the meaningless and the mundane that is life and death. Desperate Struggle wants to be different, but how different can you from something that is too unique and centered to begin with? Fix what the original did wrong, just on the superficial aspects of it and change it enough to make it feel different. Just not really understanding what made the original click in the first place. It's like going from Resident Evil 4 to Resident Evil 6, from Dark Souls to Dark Souls II, from Max Payne to Max Payne 3.

Not a bad game by any means, but it is a dissapointing evolution that tried to be like it's older brother. Older brother isn't perfect nor correct, but was authentic.

I remember liking this one nearly as much as the original back in the day but it actually kind of sucks? The combat is still fun enough and the music is still incredible but everything from the core mechanics to the art style to the writing feels like a huge step down from the first game. No More Heroes 2 gets so much wrong that I'm genuinely shocked it was made by the same company at all.

The story is nonsensical and completely incongruous with that of the original No More Heroes. The basic premise of Desperate Struggle simply doesn't work if you know what happened in part 1. Travis goes through almost the exact same arc as before except without depth, meanwhile every character is sucking him off by calling him a hero (which bafflingly seems to be how the writer thought of him as well) and the cutscene camera won't stop zooming in on Sylvia's tits and ass to the point where it comes across like the kind of wish-fulfillment action game NMH1 was parodying. Even the script itself is limp this time around, with most new characters being barely defined and many jokes either falling flat or drifting into cringe territory. Also, I know they're doing a samurai thing with Shinobu being Travis' apprentice (not that the subplot actually goes anywhere), but having a black woman refer to a white man as "master" every five seconds (not even an exaggeration) for the better part of an hour was certainly a choice. Charitably, I suppose you could argue that Grasshopper was trying to lampoon unnecessary direct-to-video sequels since so much of the first game was already making fun of movies like Star Wars, but that would have been a hard sell even if Suda51 had been at the helm again.

The gameplay is just all-around worse too. I hope you like getting knocked down because it happens several times per minute in this game. Every fucking attack knocks you down in No More Heroes 2. You will often get knocked down, stand up, and then immediately get knocked down again because you have no i-frames and the enemies continue attacking while you're on the ground. The final boss also consistently does this really cool thing where he knocks you down, waits for you to get back up, and then knocks you down again before you have a chance to block or dodge. The original No More Heroes featured very few gun-toting enemies because the developers knew ranged enemies aren't fun to fight in a melee-based game, so of course this one has at least three per room, and their shots knock you down from across the map, ignoring your blocks seemingly at random. I have more issues with the game design than just this, but most of them (like the lack of open world and unfinished everything) have already been extensively documented by other people.

All that being said, I still had a fair amount of fun with this game, as the motion-controlled brawling action entertains my monkey brain regardless of how well-designed it is. Some of the jokes made me laugh even though the script feels like it was written by and for teenagers, and I'll continue listening to the OST for many years to come. I doubt I'll ever revisit No More Heroes 2 again, but despite feeling utterly disappointed in comparison to my memories of it, I don't think the time I spent replaying it was wasted either.

i spent most of my playthru having fun but tbh kinda bewildered! this does not have the immediately appreciable high level thruline of the original, which ig is the result of suda not being the director? everything feels much more isolated, moving from island to island of maximalist pulp, disrupting the endless cycle repeatedly with formula twists and suprises. it only rly started to make sense when i decided to focus on the Commodification aspect, a sort of texas chainsaw massacre 2 take where everything is louder and grosser and more colorful because now all the horror is being sold for mass entertainment.

its pretty good, but i think it might work less as a capital s Statement (even compared to the original, which i can understand ppl finding a bit Passe in current year) and more like...a decently sturdy framework on which to hang all the big varied colorful bosses and setpieces. as excuses go, and the even further collapsing of the reality of the world into pure abstraction (thru among other things, the removal of the hub world and lack of tactility to the 8 bit minigames), u could do a lot worse, and if the game lives or dies on the big setpieces with a slight (and ever increasing) Nightmarish Tint, it mostly works. the boss sequencing and general ramping of drama and tone in the runup to the finale is particularly striking, and makes the whole game feel more cohesive in hindsight,,,,alice is probably the best boss and best dramatic samurai movie moment in either of these, but even she wouldnt be as felt without the immediately preceding fights setting the stage so well.

theres an almost Snyder Watchmen quality to this where im wondering if im underrating this because, as it engages with the original material as essentially pure pulp, it may understand it and its appeal better then i or anyone else who just wants to wax about it does. i think that might explain and add vibrancy to a lot of things. maybe not the self-parodic levels of lecherousness tho, which i never rly got along with (tho all other aspects of the cutscene direction are stellar, perhaps even eclipsing the original). all this said, u get to play with the cat, thats gotta be worth something

(advice to anyone playing these on pc, the bizarre Running In Windows 7 Compatibility Mode trick fixed the crashing in both games for me)