This review contains spoilers
I’ve written too much on this. The short version is that it fails to outdo, or even match the brilliance of the original. It’s a big Hollywood sequel that falls into the trap of believing bigger to be better. More playable characters, more opponents, etc. More depth? Not in the slightest. But at least it has a combat system that forces you to experiment with your tools and a kickass soundtrack.
Longer, more rambly, and disorganized version below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been thinking about the final hours of No More Heroes 2.
There's this screen in the Rank 2 level where you're walking past an apartment complex, and there's no music. Eventually, you reach the end of it and there's giant graffiti on one of the buildings: Travis' face in the style of Guerrillero Heroico. This is Desperate Struggle's plea to the player to recognize Travis as an icon, a rebel. In the cutscene after Alice's fight he butts heads with Sylvia, screaming "Look at this blood! We HUMANS are ALIVE!" It's his breakout moment, an outburst that's been bubbling ever since Sylvia brutally gunned down Ryuji many fights before.
And then after that, Sylvia goes over for sex and their fucking is so intense that the entire motel shakes while cartoon sounds play. That's No More Heroes 2, a game with real whiplash. The first game handled its drama and comedy with a lot of grace and knew exactly what it was doing, while Desperate Struggle flops all over the place. It leans hard into the power fantasy that 1 was parodying, with plenty of T&A and girls throwing themselves at Travis.
In this effort, Shinobu received a particularly thorough character assassination. Now she’s just a fangirl for Travis, and the whole deal is just creepy. She’s been made weaker in combat too: in the first game her ranking fight was a skill check, but in NMH 2 she's a low power character with a bad moveset. Most of the returning characters get raw deals too: Letz Shake has a real boss fight this time, but he only has two attacks! That’s less than the tutorial boss. New Destroyman’s fight has a novel concept, but since the boss is programmed to be a coward it’s boring and overlong. Henry’s level is cool but only lasts five minutes, which is a real bummer.
I don’t have enough gas in my tank to do a deep-dive on combat, but I will say that I enjoyed the changed mechanics here. The new camera and lock-on seemed simple at first but late-game engagements quickly made me realize two things: enemies WILL take advantage of your blind spots if you rely on lock-on too much, and getting knocked down will be the status quo if you’re not aware of your surroundings at all times. It’s a different ballgame than last time and I honestly like it.
I’ve read analyses online that dissect Desperate Struggle as a brilliant story about revenge, and while some of them are certainly neat, none of them overpower my gut feeling: the game tells its story in a shitty way. The expository cutscenes are a smorgasbord of titillation and bad soapy drama, and the cutscenes for bosses are often silent (fucking terrible for a hack n’ slash game btw), otherwise lacking in memorability. The two arguably most revered bosses in the game - Margaret and Alice - break this rule, and resemble the ranking fights from the first game. And that’s my main problem: where the original No More Heroes had a unified vision and meaning for almost everything, the second game just comes up short.
The most damning point of Desperate Struggle is that it will forever be a mediocre sequel to a great game. Nothing can save it from that reputation - no mods, updates, or remakes - because it is fundamentally flawed at its core. For now I'm soured on No More Heroes, and hope Travis Strikes Again will reignite my passion when I get there.
Longer, more rambly, and disorganized version below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been thinking about the final hours of No More Heroes 2.
There's this screen in the Rank 2 level where you're walking past an apartment complex, and there's no music. Eventually, you reach the end of it and there's giant graffiti on one of the buildings: Travis' face in the style of Guerrillero Heroico. This is Desperate Struggle's plea to the player to recognize Travis as an icon, a rebel. In the cutscene after Alice's fight he butts heads with Sylvia, screaming "Look at this blood! We HUMANS are ALIVE!" It's his breakout moment, an outburst that's been bubbling ever since Sylvia brutally gunned down Ryuji many fights before.
And then after that, Sylvia goes over for sex and their fucking is so intense that the entire motel shakes while cartoon sounds play. That's No More Heroes 2, a game with real whiplash. The first game handled its drama and comedy with a lot of grace and knew exactly what it was doing, while Desperate Struggle flops all over the place. It leans hard into the power fantasy that 1 was parodying, with plenty of T&A and girls throwing themselves at Travis.
In this effort, Shinobu received a particularly thorough character assassination. Now she’s just a fangirl for Travis, and the whole deal is just creepy. She’s been made weaker in combat too: in the first game her ranking fight was a skill check, but in NMH 2 she's a low power character with a bad moveset. Most of the returning characters get raw deals too: Letz Shake has a real boss fight this time, but he only has two attacks! That’s less than the tutorial boss. New Destroyman’s fight has a novel concept, but since the boss is programmed to be a coward it’s boring and overlong. Henry’s level is cool but only lasts five minutes, which is a real bummer.
I don’t have enough gas in my tank to do a deep-dive on combat, but I will say that I enjoyed the changed mechanics here. The new camera and lock-on seemed simple at first but late-game engagements quickly made me realize two things: enemies WILL take advantage of your blind spots if you rely on lock-on too much, and getting knocked down will be the status quo if you’re not aware of your surroundings at all times. It’s a different ballgame than last time and I honestly like it.
I’ve read analyses online that dissect Desperate Struggle as a brilliant story about revenge, and while some of them are certainly neat, none of them overpower my gut feeling: the game tells its story in a shitty way. The expository cutscenes are a smorgasbord of titillation and bad soapy drama, and the cutscenes for bosses are often silent (fucking terrible for a hack n’ slash game btw), otherwise lacking in memorability. The two arguably most revered bosses in the game - Margaret and Alice - break this rule, and resemble the ranking fights from the first game. And that’s my main problem: where the original No More Heroes had a unified vision and meaning for almost everything, the second game just comes up short.
The most damning point of Desperate Struggle is that it will forever be a mediocre sequel to a great game. Nothing can save it from that reputation - no mods, updates, or remakes - because it is fundamentally flawed at its core. For now I'm soured on No More Heroes, and hope Travis Strikes Again will reignite my passion when I get there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Man, you can tell this game wasn't written by Suda, because it pretty much lacks everything that made the first game fun, witty, charming, and unique in the first place, and feels like a glorified filler episode that you can easily skip going forward to TSA, except for the Kimmy fight and the second to last fight. Other than that, you can feel that they tried with the combat, but it feels very floaty in comparison to 1's tighter combat, the open world is borderline nonexistent, and it doesn't try to improve upon the so-so open world foundation set by the first game (even NMH3 tried that lmao) the levels feel frustrating (looking at you Shinobu) and the characters feel like caricatures of their previous incarnations (also looking at you Shinobu)
You know what? This game's Shinobu and her section represent everything wrong with this game; frustrating levels, half-baked boss and enemy design, unsatisfying gameplay, and shallow writing.
You know what? This game's Shinobu and her section represent everything wrong with this game; frustrating levels, half-baked boss and enemy design, unsatisfying gameplay, and shallow writing.
TRAVIS, IT'S KILL OR BE KILLED
No More Heroes 2 is weird, and in many ways at that. It feels like for every thing it does right, it does another thing very wrong. The sidejobs were made more fun with an interesting style, but their also completely optional. The combat is deeper and more frenetic than the first, but the fun, if flawed, open world was scrapped for a simple world map. The story takes the power fantasy that the first game parodied and plays it rather straight, only to change gears and continue the first game's message on violence, with even more character development for my boy Travis. And the endgame throws 3 amazing and emotional bosses at you in quick succession, only to end the game with one of the dumbest bosses I've ever fought. The entire thing adds up to a mixed bag, but it's a bag I did enjoy. Plus it's got a banging soundtrack and CAPTAIN VLADIMIR!!
No More Heroes 2 is weird, and in many ways at that. It feels like for every thing it does right, it does another thing very wrong. The sidejobs were made more fun with an interesting style, but their also completely optional. The combat is deeper and more frenetic than the first, but the fun, if flawed, open world was scrapped for a simple world map. The story takes the power fantasy that the first game parodied and plays it rather straight, only to change gears and continue the first game's message on violence, with even more character development for my boy Travis. And the endgame throws 3 amazing and emotional bosses at you in quick succession, only to end the game with one of the dumbest bosses I've ever fought. The entire thing adds up to a mixed bag, but it's a bag I did enjoy. Plus it's got a banging soundtrack and CAPTAIN VLADIMIR!!
Whoever wrote the "Downward fucking dog!" scene should get fucking fired. At least the music's good.
No More Heroes 2 is a strange beast.
It doesn't understand the first one. The power fantasy that the original makes a joke with becomes the fantasy the sequel sells for the player. Henry who was a Vergil parody for a hack and slash parody now becomes Vergil but the version of DmC, Shinobu becomes a fetishized character and Sylvia who was the way of the game literally says to the player that the game is a joke now becomes a kinda of femme fatale and a fetishized character too. And Travis even if the game start with him being a anime hero for the sake of the power fantasy, by the end becomes a character more aline with the way of Suda's writing. I could go on and on about this because it's all you see for the first half of the game, the minigames were turned into a way of grinding instead of a nice way to make the game flow better, the way the game deals with sexual content is way worse and so on. But at the same time, No More Heroes 2 does a lot of cool stuff.
The combat is amazing, as good as the first one. Melee being a full playstyle makes all Fire Pro Wrestling references cooler, the scenery being a big part of the fights makes everything so more dynamic and cool, the juggle combos. Is just very good, even more so with the multiple swords. Is just not as smart as Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3 with the enemies and bosses. But the boss battles in No More Heroes 2 are usually in between mid and very good, for some reason when you got the Ryuji fight the game decides to make every boss just as good as the first one and is in the final half that the game becomes great.
The power fantasy left, Travis becomes more like Travis, the text and cutscenes becomes good. Is like the devs suddenly remembered what makes No More Heroes 1 great and they decided to try that but with a vengeance story while dealing with the way those characters interacts with violence. And even the final boss is interesting, he is like Iwami from Yakuza 6, a shit guy trying to play the cool guy with a shit fight because he couldn't do anything.
Nobutaka Ichiki did a cool work, sure I would love to see Suda51 version (even more after discovering that the game was supposed to be inspired by Battles Without Honor and Humanity 2) but I liked his take and I hope someday he get a chance to make a big project of his own.
It doesn't understand the first one. The power fantasy that the original makes a joke with becomes the fantasy the sequel sells for the player. Henry who was a Vergil parody for a hack and slash parody now becomes Vergil but the version of DmC, Shinobu becomes a fetishized character and Sylvia who was the way of the game literally says to the player that the game is a joke now becomes a kinda of femme fatale and a fetishized character too. And Travis even if the game start with him being a anime hero for the sake of the power fantasy, by the end becomes a character more aline with the way of Suda's writing. I could go on and on about this because it's all you see for the first half of the game, the minigames were turned into a way of grinding instead of a nice way to make the game flow better, the way the game deals with sexual content is way worse and so on. But at the same time, No More Heroes 2 does a lot of cool stuff.
The combat is amazing, as good as the first one. Melee being a full playstyle makes all Fire Pro Wrestling references cooler, the scenery being a big part of the fights makes everything so more dynamic and cool, the juggle combos. Is just very good, even more so with the multiple swords. Is just not as smart as Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3 with the enemies and bosses. But the boss battles in No More Heroes 2 are usually in between mid and very good, for some reason when you got the Ryuji fight the game decides to make every boss just as good as the first one and is in the final half that the game becomes great.
The power fantasy left, Travis becomes more like Travis, the text and cutscenes becomes good. Is like the devs suddenly remembered what makes No More Heroes 1 great and they decided to try that but with a vengeance story while dealing with the way those characters interacts with violence. And even the final boss is interesting, he is like Iwami from Yakuza 6, a shit guy trying to play the cool guy with a shit fight because he couldn't do anything.
Nobutaka Ichiki did a cool work, sure I would love to see Suda51 version (even more after discovering that the game was supposed to be inspired by Battles Without Honor and Humanity 2) but I liked his take and I hope someday he get a chance to make a big project of his own.
This review contains spoilers
this is my second time playing this game and I'll be honest, i like it less. I'm gonna list what i dislike about this game, it will be kinda scattered, but whatever.
This game completely fails to understand what made the first game so great and just falls apart. Everything the first game does well, this game does poorly. there's more bosses, and most of them are bland and forgettable save for about 3. The humor in this is crude and forgettable. The first game had plenty of crude humor but it was all with purpose and written well. Travis jerks off his beam katana cause he thinks its funny and the fact that a grown man finds it funny is whats funny. It also accurately reflects his character; a loser. in this game the joke is that the battery meter is a dick, its like a boner, do you get it? They also make travis out to be some fucking cool guy that is badass and what not. I know in the first game he says cool one liners and kills people but travis was still a loser, its what makes him stand out and what makes him endearing. in this i really dont find his character unique. in the first game, sylvia is shown teasing travis as a means to further get him to murder and she is also always shown as sexual when talking to travis, and it always has to do with the story, this game turns sylvia into a brutally, poorly written, 1 note character who only serves to be fanservice. (granted i appreciate that they end up together). The first games jobs were "boring" (i found them extremely fun) and mundane because the life travis lives outside of being a killer is boring and mundane, it reflects that life can be boring and you can live your whole life without purpose. this game trades that for annoying, far too long snes games that are just sooooo bad imo. This games story is also really poorly written, since its just a less good version of the first game. Also, what is the point of making shinobu almost kiss travis, whats that serve? As far as combat goes, yeah i guess technically it is better, but the first one has a special charm to it that i absolutely adore, this one has alot of really spongy enemies and the wrestling moves are far less hype. In the first game, you could ride around town with your bike, the town was really unpopulated and the town felt dead. this really added to the atmosphere of everything and really made Travis's life feel boring, its all intentional. The second game removes that, which, i get it, some people don't care about the artsy or the meta aspects of the first game, they find it boring. but i dont, i loved that apsect, it makes the game soooo special and unique. Here's something that might be nitpicky, how the fuck did henry get beat by a boss he literally one shots in the first game?????? what was up with that??? speaking of STRANGE fucking decisions, why have travis kill 2 completely innocent black women, and say absolutely nothing, and then kill like 25 white cheerleaders and claim to feel bad for killing them. Whether or not thats intentionally racist as fuck isn't important, its just really REALLY bad writing and is also racist. Level design in this is also less good, every area in the first one felt really interesting, and cool. i couldnt wait to see what was next. this one every area kinda blends into one and other or just feels bland. the enemy design never changes and the bosses dont get introduced at the start of the level, hell most of them dont even have flashy names, they're just called "charlie mcdonald" or "chole walsh". I really do not like how this game presents its levels. I also can't for the life of me figure out what the fuck is up with sylvias weird "sexy" cutscenes. i truly don't know what the point of that is. The style in this game feels gross, and poorly done. Also i have no idea if this is a bug but at the start of every level, music doesnt play and i do not know why. truthfully, from a non die hard fans perspective this game is like a 2.5 or something, but to me, its a 1 because of how disappointing it is. This game is such a disappointment to me because i love the first one with all my heart and this one just does not understand what made the first one so great. it's a shame really.
This game completely fails to understand what made the first game so great and just falls apart. Everything the first game does well, this game does poorly. there's more bosses, and most of them are bland and forgettable save for about 3. The humor in this is crude and forgettable. The first game had plenty of crude humor but it was all with purpose and written well. Travis jerks off his beam katana cause he thinks its funny and the fact that a grown man finds it funny is whats funny. It also accurately reflects his character; a loser. in this game the joke is that the battery meter is a dick, its like a boner, do you get it? They also make travis out to be some fucking cool guy that is badass and what not. I know in the first game he says cool one liners and kills people but travis was still a loser, its what makes him stand out and what makes him endearing. in this i really dont find his character unique. in the first game, sylvia is shown teasing travis as a means to further get him to murder and she is also always shown as sexual when talking to travis, and it always has to do with the story, this game turns sylvia into a brutally, poorly written, 1 note character who only serves to be fanservice. (granted i appreciate that they end up together). The first games jobs were "boring" (i found them extremely fun) and mundane because the life travis lives outside of being a killer is boring and mundane, it reflects that life can be boring and you can live your whole life without purpose. this game trades that for annoying, far too long snes games that are just sooooo bad imo. This games story is also really poorly written, since its just a less good version of the first game. Also, what is the point of making shinobu almost kiss travis, whats that serve? As far as combat goes, yeah i guess technically it is better, but the first one has a special charm to it that i absolutely adore, this one has alot of really spongy enemies and the wrestling moves are far less hype. In the first game, you could ride around town with your bike, the town was really unpopulated and the town felt dead. this really added to the atmosphere of everything and really made Travis's life feel boring, its all intentional. The second game removes that, which, i get it, some people don't care about the artsy or the meta aspects of the first game, they find it boring. but i dont, i loved that apsect, it makes the game soooo special and unique. Here's something that might be nitpicky, how the fuck did henry get beat by a boss he literally one shots in the first game?????? what was up with that??? speaking of STRANGE fucking decisions, why have travis kill 2 completely innocent black women, and say absolutely nothing, and then kill like 25 white cheerleaders and claim to feel bad for killing them. Whether or not thats intentionally racist as fuck isn't important, its just really REALLY bad writing and is also racist. Level design in this is also less good, every area in the first one felt really interesting, and cool. i couldnt wait to see what was next. this one every area kinda blends into one and other or just feels bland. the enemy design never changes and the bosses dont get introduced at the start of the level, hell most of them dont even have flashy names, they're just called "charlie mcdonald" or "chole walsh". I really do not like how this game presents its levels. I also can't for the life of me figure out what the fuck is up with sylvias weird "sexy" cutscenes. i truly don't know what the point of that is. The style in this game feels gross, and poorly done. Also i have no idea if this is a bug but at the start of every level, music doesnt play and i do not know why. truthfully, from a non die hard fans perspective this game is like a 2.5 or something, but to me, its a 1 because of how disappointing it is. This game is such a disappointment to me because i love the first one with all my heart and this one just does not understand what made the first one so great. it's a shame really.
Devil May Cry 2: Grasshopper Manufacture edition.
Though I do not particularly enjoy doing this, for this review I will primarily be comparing this game to other titles. I believe this game doesn’t really form its own distinct identity outside of “The Sequel of No Mo Heroes” and as a result it’s really difficult to talk about it as though it were an independent work that stands on its own.
No More Heroes, like many SUDA51 games, is an incredibly multi-faceted work with brilliant commentary on a wide range of topics relating to video games and human life, but No More Heroes 2 lacks any of this clever writing and game design that has made Grasshopper Manufacture such an endearing company up until this time. It makes sense since SUDA51 did not serve as director and his role of writer is somewhat ambiguous as well for this game, and it shows.
In my review of No More Heroes, I specifically focused on the game’s commentary on the repetitive nature of video games and how it uses an intentionally poorly structured game loop to highlight this repetitiveness among other things. This structure is completely changed in this game. Now, you are able to directly go into the rank battles one after another without having to pay the ranking fee. The side jobs are still present in the game, but are completely optional. The annoying unfun side jobs of the original which mirror jobs in real life have been replaced by much funner 8-bit style arcade games. What these changes do is make the game much better paced and better structured from a gameplay perspective, but ruins some of the artistic goals of the original.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the game made up for it with its own ideas and themes, but it does not. This is why I say that this game has no separate identity outside of simply being the sequel of No More Heroes. Its primary theme, revenge and the cycle of violence, is something already present in the original. It is just far less subtle in this game. All the humor, the characters, and the tone of the original is preserved and dumped directly into this one as well. In fact, in some ways this game is even a flanderization of No More Heroes. The sexuality has gone waaay up and so has the general ridiculousness. This game WILL make you look at Sylvia’s breasts and even if you avoid one cutscene with a zoom up on them it will eventually catch you slacking.
Even the core narrative of this game is, frankly, a rehash of the original that lacks any of the deliberate commentary of the original. No More Heroes 2 copies No More Heroes whenever it can and makes reckless changes without really thinking very hard for why the original is designed the way it is. This is why at the top of this critique, I compared this game to Devil May Cry 2. They are actually decently similar games in many ways. Both lack the director of the original game they’re a sequel to, both are far more ridiculous than the original in their events (DMC2 has demon tanks and helicopters and this game has mech battles and weird giant batman parody babies), both are pretty pointless sequels, and both completely misunderstand what made the original good in the first place.
Now of course, DMC2 and this game is not a 1 to 1 comparison. No More Heroes 2 is far better than DMC2 and succeeds in many of the aspects the latter fails, and I honestly might be stretching a lot with this comparison, however I feel like they fall into similar pitfalls.
Despite all of this, I still reasonably enjoyed my time with this game. Even if it does not quite have the wit of the original, it most certainly has its charm, and that may be enough for me. The gameplay is still extremely button mashy but so much fun, Travis is still a loveable jackass, and you’re still able to play with Jeane the cat though she’s gained a bit of weight. Most of the things I enjoyed about this game were already in the original, however. Still, 3 whole extra stars to this game for making playing with Jeane more interactive. Very excited to see what SUDA51 does with her in NMH3!
Though I do not particularly enjoy doing this, for this review I will primarily be comparing this game to other titles. I believe this game doesn’t really form its own distinct identity outside of “The Sequel of No Mo Heroes” and as a result it’s really difficult to talk about it as though it were an independent work that stands on its own.
No More Heroes, like many SUDA51 games, is an incredibly multi-faceted work with brilliant commentary on a wide range of topics relating to video games and human life, but No More Heroes 2 lacks any of this clever writing and game design that has made Grasshopper Manufacture such an endearing company up until this time. It makes sense since SUDA51 did not serve as director and his role of writer is somewhat ambiguous as well for this game, and it shows.
In my review of No More Heroes, I specifically focused on the game’s commentary on the repetitive nature of video games and how it uses an intentionally poorly structured game loop to highlight this repetitiveness among other things. This structure is completely changed in this game. Now, you are able to directly go into the rank battles one after another without having to pay the ranking fee. The side jobs are still present in the game, but are completely optional. The annoying unfun side jobs of the original which mirror jobs in real life have been replaced by much funner 8-bit style arcade games. What these changes do is make the game much better paced and better structured from a gameplay perspective, but ruins some of the artistic goals of the original.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the game made up for it with its own ideas and themes, but it does not. This is why I say that this game has no separate identity outside of simply being the sequel of No More Heroes. Its primary theme, revenge and the cycle of violence, is something already present in the original. It is just far less subtle in this game. All the humor, the characters, and the tone of the original is preserved and dumped directly into this one as well. In fact, in some ways this game is even a flanderization of No More Heroes. The sexuality has gone waaay up and so has the general ridiculousness. This game WILL make you look at Sylvia’s breasts and even if you avoid one cutscene with a zoom up on them it will eventually catch you slacking.
Even the core narrative of this game is, frankly, a rehash of the original that lacks any of the deliberate commentary of the original. No More Heroes 2 copies No More Heroes whenever it can and makes reckless changes without really thinking very hard for why the original is designed the way it is. This is why at the top of this critique, I compared this game to Devil May Cry 2. They are actually decently similar games in many ways. Both lack the director of the original game they’re a sequel to, both are far more ridiculous than the original in their events (DMC2 has demon tanks and helicopters and this game has mech battles and weird giant batman parody babies), both are pretty pointless sequels, and both completely misunderstand what made the original good in the first place.
Now of course, DMC2 and this game is not a 1 to 1 comparison. No More Heroes 2 is far better than DMC2 and succeeds in many of the aspects the latter fails, and I honestly might be stretching a lot with this comparison, however I feel like they fall into similar pitfalls.
Despite all of this, I still reasonably enjoyed my time with this game. Even if it does not quite have the wit of the original, it most certainly has its charm, and that may be enough for me. The gameplay is still extremely button mashy but so much fun, Travis is still a loveable jackass, and you’re still able to play with Jeane the cat though she’s gained a bit of weight. Most of the things I enjoyed about this game were already in the original, however. Still, 3 whole extra stars to this game for making playing with Jeane more interactive. Very excited to see what SUDA51 does with her in NMH3!
this game kinda sucks. I cant really lie. Really neat ideas but its kinda just ass.
i don't want to look at this game right now.
- Bishop!!! -
Con está secuela estoy dividido.
Pq?
Pues pq el juego quito el modo libre por el mapa, los trabajos extra son poco utiles pq ya no se pide dinero para los combates, la mayoria de asesinos se sienten más planos y con poca presentacion.
Y lo que menos me gusto fue la forma de mandar el mensaje sobre la violencia a los jugadores, antes la forma de hacerlo era sutil y uno se daba cuenta sin tener que mirar a Travis gritarlo a los 4 vientos.
Lo que si me gusto fue como mejoro el combate y como cada espada tiene una forma de usarse con ciertos combos.
Los graficos aquí ya se notan muy bien.
Y pues siguen con la crudeza, sangre y violencia tanto que hasta te permite pegarle a kimmy howell y sylvia le dispara a un niño xD.
Igual la musica está buenota 9/10
Ahora hay unas pequeñas secciones donde puedes usar a Henry y a Shinobu(pero se sienten toscos a la hora de jugar, en especial por los saltos de Shinobu)
Por fin pudimos mirar como el Travis la pone y deja de ser todo un Virgo, y ahora solo es un Otaku, trastornado, sucio, grosero y medio degenerado.
Con está secuela estoy dividido.
Pq?
Pues pq el juego quito el modo libre por el mapa, los trabajos extra son poco utiles pq ya no se pide dinero para los combates, la mayoria de asesinos se sienten más planos y con poca presentacion.
Y lo que menos me gusto fue la forma de mandar el mensaje sobre la violencia a los jugadores, antes la forma de hacerlo era sutil y uno se daba cuenta sin tener que mirar a Travis gritarlo a los 4 vientos.
Lo que si me gusto fue como mejoro el combate y como cada espada tiene una forma de usarse con ciertos combos.
Los graficos aquí ya se notan muy bien.
Y pues siguen con la crudeza, sangre y violencia tanto que hasta te permite pegarle a kimmy howell y sylvia le dispara a un niño xD.
Igual la musica está buenota 9/10
Ahora hay unas pequeñas secciones donde puedes usar a Henry y a Shinobu(pero se sienten toscos a la hora de jugar, en especial por los saltos de Shinobu)
Por fin pudimos mirar como el Travis la pone y deja de ser todo un Virgo, y ahora solo es un Otaku, trastornado, sucio, grosero y medio degenerado.
Good game with good gameplay but MAN the story makes me scratch my head and pisses me off thinking about it more
Achei bem melhor que o primeiro, gameplay melhorada e mais divertida, fases mais legais, SEM O MUNDO ABERTO CHATÃO, e bosses (alguns são meio sem carisma) mas a maioria é bem daora.
Tem umas surpresas aqui e ali que são iradas também, acho que coisa meh desse jogo pra mim são algumas paradas que eles fazem em alguns bosses e o boss final que é bem broxa. De resto, curti demais a experiência, to animado pra jogar o 3.
Tem umas surpresas aqui e ali que são iradas também, acho que coisa meh desse jogo pra mim são algumas paradas que eles fazem em alguns bosses e o boss final que é bem broxa. De resto, curti demais a experiência, to animado pra jogar o 3.
This review contains spoilers
NOTE:EMULATED ON DOLPHIN. THE PC PORT IS A FUCKING DISASTER DO NOT RECOMMEND.
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is a strange sequel. In some ways I prefer this one due to the much stronger pacing and general improvements to the gameplay. But at the same time I'd rather go back to the first game because its story wasn't so fucking boring.
Starting off strong I'd say that NMH2 gameplay wise is a remarkable improvement across the board. No shitty overworld and a lack of money required for assassinations makes the overall pace feel so much faster and I'm all for that. Combat has seen some changes too with an overall more simplified (but still just as fun) control scheme, alongside some new mechanics like Katana switching mid combat and the tension gauge. While in the original you never had much reason to change back to a previous upgrade the weapons in 2 are distinctly different from one another and benefit in different situations. Peony for example is your general crowd control tool with its extended range while the Rose Nasty is the fastest in the game allowing for better DPS. The tension gauge on the other hand acts as this games super mode, allowing Travis to go haywire on enemies which helps with a lot of the bigger fights (and some bosses if you're good at not getting hit). Another change I absolutely adored was what they did with the side jobs, as instead of drab mini-games they are instead all video game inspired and much more fun this time around. This videogame inspiration also carries over to the training which has also seen some changes. While it is a bit sad to see the combo extenders gone and the attack training can be a nightmare in the end, I still rather liked them and would say they're slightly better this time around. Also holy FUCK is the soundtrack in this one an absolute blast, with tracks like Dose Of Innocence and Philistine being absolute bangers.
It isn't all good sadly which takes us to the biggest issue with NMH2: the tone and story. While the original had some moments of humor and zaniness it was still a mostly bleak experience with a loser protagonist that challenged the player to think about all that has happened. In 2 a lot of this is thrown out the fucking window for a more light hearted and wacky experience. From fighting a giant robot controlled by a Jock and his groupies to a dream sequence with a literal anime girl, 2 is much more blatant this time around and loses a lot of charm for it. Another awful change is to Travis Touchdown, as this time around the game decides to make him the "Hero" of Santa Destroy and to be idolized by some of the assassins. To me this kinda goes against the entire point of the original and makes for an all around less memorable experience, which is not helped when the game blatantly copies things from NMH1 (the Alice fight narrative wise is just Holly Summers again). On the subject of bosses I didn't have nearly as much problems as I did previously but they're still not that good save for Kimmy,Ryuji, and Alice. Most of my issues is just how nothing a lot of them are, with most being pretty damn easy due to just how much damage you can do in the mid to late game. Not helping this is when the game decides to switch up from Travis to let you play as Shinobu WHO FUCKING SUCKS. Going from dope ass wrestling moves to a completely worthless jump kit and back to back AWFUL bosses make this section a chore to get through (atleast the Henry exclusive fight is good). People tend to rag on the final boss as well and while I do think his second phase is a fucking nightmare (mainly the walls) I didn't think it was the WORST OF ALL TIME. A much more minor flaw is the general lack of side content, with only the aforementioned side jobs and some cookie cutter revenge missions being all you get.
At the end of the day I can't really choose if I'd take NMH or Desperate Struggle. On some days I'd happily return to mowing the grass if that meant experiencing 1s more unique moments. But on some other days I just wanna watch heads roll and not care about things like grinding out money or exploring a bad open world. About on par I'd say.
7/10
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is a strange sequel. In some ways I prefer this one due to the much stronger pacing and general improvements to the gameplay. But at the same time I'd rather go back to the first game because its story wasn't so fucking boring.
Starting off strong I'd say that NMH2 gameplay wise is a remarkable improvement across the board. No shitty overworld and a lack of money required for assassinations makes the overall pace feel so much faster and I'm all for that. Combat has seen some changes too with an overall more simplified (but still just as fun) control scheme, alongside some new mechanics like Katana switching mid combat and the tension gauge. While in the original you never had much reason to change back to a previous upgrade the weapons in 2 are distinctly different from one another and benefit in different situations. Peony for example is your general crowd control tool with its extended range while the Rose Nasty is the fastest in the game allowing for better DPS. The tension gauge on the other hand acts as this games super mode, allowing Travis to go haywire on enemies which helps with a lot of the bigger fights (and some bosses if you're good at not getting hit). Another change I absolutely adored was what they did with the side jobs, as instead of drab mini-games they are instead all video game inspired and much more fun this time around. This videogame inspiration also carries over to the training which has also seen some changes. While it is a bit sad to see the combo extenders gone and the attack training can be a nightmare in the end, I still rather liked them and would say they're slightly better this time around. Also holy FUCK is the soundtrack in this one an absolute blast, with tracks like Dose Of Innocence and Philistine being absolute bangers.
It isn't all good sadly which takes us to the biggest issue with NMH2: the tone and story. While the original had some moments of humor and zaniness it was still a mostly bleak experience with a loser protagonist that challenged the player to think about all that has happened. In 2 a lot of this is thrown out the fucking window for a more light hearted and wacky experience. From fighting a giant robot controlled by a Jock and his groupies to a dream sequence with a literal anime girl, 2 is much more blatant this time around and loses a lot of charm for it. Another awful change is to Travis Touchdown, as this time around the game decides to make him the "Hero" of Santa Destroy and to be idolized by some of the assassins. To me this kinda goes against the entire point of the original and makes for an all around less memorable experience, which is not helped when the game blatantly copies things from NMH1 (the Alice fight narrative wise is just Holly Summers again). On the subject of bosses I didn't have nearly as much problems as I did previously but they're still not that good save for Kimmy,Ryuji, and Alice. Most of my issues is just how nothing a lot of them are, with most being pretty damn easy due to just how much damage you can do in the mid to late game. Not helping this is when the game decides to switch up from Travis to let you play as Shinobu WHO FUCKING SUCKS. Going from dope ass wrestling moves to a completely worthless jump kit and back to back AWFUL bosses make this section a chore to get through (atleast the Henry exclusive fight is good). People tend to rag on the final boss as well and while I do think his second phase is a fucking nightmare (mainly the walls) I didn't think it was the WORST OF ALL TIME. A much more minor flaw is the general lack of side content, with only the aforementioned side jobs and some cookie cutter revenge missions being all you get.
At the end of the day I can't really choose if I'd take NMH or Desperate Struggle. On some days I'd happily return to mowing the grass if that meant experiencing 1s more unique moments. But on some other days I just wanna watch heads roll and not care about things like grinding out money or exploring a bad open world. About on par I'd say.
7/10
A downgrade of the first game in many ways. The story isn't as fun, the bosses aren't as memorable, and the overworld minimap is lacklustre. There's one chain of side missions called "Revenge Missions", which amount to nothing much. There's literally no point in grinding out the minigames for cash as there's nothing much to buy.
The bosses are so much worse than the first game, with literally only 2 of them that I would call "cool" off the top of my head.
The bosses are so much worse than the first game, with literally only 2 of them that I would call "cool" off the top of my head.
this game is actually pretty fun when you dont have little devils in your ears telling you how bad it is all the time
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.
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
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)
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)
One time I was speaking to this pathetic loser about the original No More Heroes, he said that he only played the first game, he loved it due to how "badass" he thought the idea of an otaku assassin was, but how disappointing it was that he didn't get the girl in the end. This game was made for people like him, so take that as you will.
really tried to force myself to finish this because i thought there'd be anything of worth here but outside of takada's soundtrack (which might actually be some of his best work) there really isn't.
it's like a suda game made by people who think suda's games are only composed of random movie references (90% of Sylvia's scenes in this are just an awful Paris, Texas pastiche for no real reason other than shoving her tits on your face) and over-the-top "what were they on making this 🤣🤣" humor. without suda's manic character writing and personal reflections on alienation with the repetition and aimlessness of daily life (which the methodical structure and mostly empty open world of the first game contributed to) it just feels like a cheap and exploitative power fantasy. it's noticeable suda was more hands-on with TSA because just from what i've played of it, it already feels way more self-reflective and well thought-out than this dreck.
it's like a suda game made by people who think suda's games are only composed of random movie references (90% of Sylvia's scenes in this are just an awful Paris, Texas pastiche for no real reason other than shoving her tits on your face) and over-the-top "what were they on making this 🤣🤣" humor. without suda's manic character writing and personal reflections on alienation with the repetition and aimlessness of daily life (which the methodical structure and mostly empty open world of the first game contributed to) it just feels like a cheap and exploitative power fantasy. it's noticeable suda was more hands-on with TSA because just from what i've played of it, it already feels way more self-reflective and well thought-out than this dreck.
Quite possibly one of the worst experiences a video game can offer in which the previous game is all at once disregarded, constantly referenced to, spring-boarded off of, and completely ignored.
What minor improvements are made to missions, side-jobs, and combat (and I truly mean minor) are more like apologies for what a wet noodle of a game this is.
Bosses are some of the most miserable encounters since they vary from being mediocre to genuinely infuriating. Everything that is said for this games story or philosophy, or what it has to say about Travis is vapid and even if done purposefully so it's still leaves you wondering what the fuck happened to the pitiful loser that drove any interest in the first game.
This game's biggest crime is what they did to Naomi and pretty much every characters re-design good god. It's like they got Eiichiro Oda to purposefully bastardize what good can be found.
Still completely necessary to the KTP collection, even if it takes that to a whole new level of metatext
What minor improvements are made to missions, side-jobs, and combat (and I truly mean minor) are more like apologies for what a wet noodle of a game this is.
Bosses are some of the most miserable encounters since they vary from being mediocre to genuinely infuriating. Everything that is said for this games story or philosophy, or what it has to say about Travis is vapid and even if done purposefully so it's still leaves you wondering what the fuck happened to the pitiful loser that drove any interest in the first game.
This game's biggest crime is what they did to Naomi and pretty much every characters re-design good god. It's like they got Eiichiro Oda to purposefully bastardize what good can be found.
Still completely necessary to the KTP collection, even if it takes that to a whole new level of metatext
This review contains spoilers
this game has never clicked with me, and, for a long time, i used to think of it as more of a personal failing than anything qualitatively wrong with this game. i recall very few things about my first playthrough of this game. i don't remember exactly when in my life that i played it (just that i was a teenager). i don't recall how i felt about playing the game while actually playing it. all i really remember is that, ironically, i forgot most of it. i remembered the grocery store, the final level and boss, and i vaguely recalled the fights that led up to it. but i didn't remember them in the way i remembered NMH1. there wasn't any shinobu, a boss that demanded i learn not only competency with the game's systems, but also with punishing when bosses left themselves open. i'm not saying there aren't bosses like that in the game, just that i don't remember even doing that learning process. i remember "it's kill or be killed", a few jokes, and that's it. for all intents and purposes, this game was completely disposable to me for a long time. no more heroes 1 is one of my favorite games of all time; you can see how i would want to equate this more to me being a distracted and immature teenager rather than this game being just that exceptionally devoid of impact.
and now, having replayed it, i get it. i get why i didn't remember this game. it's because it's not memorable.
okay, i know that was a lot of build-up to a relatively tame insult, but work with me. regardless of how you felt about no more heroes 1 as a video game, there was essentially one thing you couldn't deny about the game: it had flavor. it was doing something unique. the execution is for all to argue and debate, but you couldn't point to many contemporary games on the wii that were doing something like NMH1. of all the things you could possibly fuck up in a NMH1 sequel, removing the memorability from it has to be the singular worst mistake you could make. it also begs the question of how could you do that? how is it even possible to syphon the personality out of a NMH game and make it feel forgettable?
you can't explore santa destroy anymore, a change i suspect was largely motivated by the bevvy of critiques against the game for having an empty open world. it was ironic and satirizing the trend of open worlds with nothing actually happening in them, but i get it, you got a lot of dings against you for that one. the problem is that in removing this world, you have to replace it with. . . something. and NMH2 doesn't. so you don't have to pay for fights anymore, meaning money serves less of a purpose, not to mention naomi has a grand total of Two (2) things to sell you in the entire game. all you really need money for are the upgrades ryan'll give you. so, you're far more likely to barely spend any time in between missions dicking around. NMH1 had pacing inherent to the game with making the player get money. it made the combat sections that much more memorable because they were separated by mundanity. some people hated it and said it made the game boring, but they missed the point in that the mundane elevated the profane. when you don't have that time to ponder and anticipate, you lose payoff. it doesn't help that the mini-games in this game are far more hit-or-miss, and while they have slightly more retro-game charm to them, that doesn't excuse how awfully some of them play (i.e. the coconut and space mini-games). you're going to more than likely just go from assassination mission to assassination mission and it will likely blur together like it did for me.
and when it does come to the assassination missions, they leave much to be desired. the game starts out pretty strong with its first few levels, but then slowly it starts to decline. eventually you get to levels that have no music playing during them, or are just empty "drive along this road for 3 minutes and reach the boss" moments. some assassination missions don't even have levels. i eventually had to look up what the dev period for this game was. it had about 2 years, which is not terrible by any means. i get that not every single part of the game can be a home-run, but there's such a gigantic lack of content relative to the first game. let me repeat: there's no open world, less worthwhile mini-games, no collectibles, less levels, no sylvia phonecalls, and less to buy. again, i don't subscribe to the theory that sequels need to be bigger and grander than their predecessor, but NMH2 cuts out so much content and replaces it with nothing. i can't help but feel like this is just a hollowed out game as a result.
the assassins in this game suffer the most in regards to lack of personality. i think this problem is more systemic than "they really struck out on bosses this frequently", because most bosses have next to no lines of dialogue, little build-up, and are disposed of with little impact to travis. they try to have a holly summers moment with ryuji, but considering that ryuji literally does not speak once and has no introduction beyond "im on a motorcycle and japanese 😤", why should i care? i mean, holly didn't have that many lines, but you still got a very strong idea for who she is and the fact that she chose her own death and the way she did it made her memorable. ryuji dies because. . . he lost to travis and sylvia wanted to troll. okay. complete flop of a moment, and they linger on travis' reaction to try and imply that this is some turning point for him. it just doesn't work.
the real kiss of death here is that i actually detest a large portion of the boss fights in regards to gameplay. let's just come right out and say it: this game is mostly bad boss fights with very few good ones. in the spirit of 13 sentinels, i will now go over every fight individually and delineate things about it that stand out to me.
helter skelter: awful fight once you get past the tutorialized section of it. i firmly believe most people tend not to notice how bad this fight is because by the time you actually start it, he has half health. he suffers from a common problem in this game, which is "has a no wind-up or tell move that comes out extremely quickly that can break your guard and often leads to a follow-up attack that will do a lot of damage". you can dodge the follow-up attack typically, but there is no way you're capable of reacting in time for the lead-up. almost every boss in the entire game has it, so this is more a universal complaint than unique, so i won't mention it in the following summaries. but still, fuck man. outside of that, he's just a boss where you have to wait for him to use the one combo that leaves him vulnerable, and if you exercise any level of proactive aggression, he punishes it immediately. it's a very boring and poor fight to start with.
nathan copeland: i mean, at least he's better than the guys he's sandwiched between. he's appropriately easy as far as early bosses go, only real difficulty comes from when his environmental hazards start stunlocking you. i barely remember anything he actually does because he's so easy to just whale on without him retaliating much.
charlie macdonald: literally not even a fight. the gimmick wears thin almost immediately and is brainless to overcome. why even include this in the game.
kimmy howell: definitely one of the few fights i like in the game. has a fun and quirky introduction that makes her honestly the most memorable character introduced in this game. only complaints i have for her is that her moveset is fairly simple, and her projectile is such a nonfactor. it definitely feels like she could've stood to have maybe a little more complexity, she's very easy to solve and her AI lacks aggression. but, again, this is a fight i like, if only because i remember it pretty vividly.
matt helms: hey look, one of the worse fights in the game! his molotov attack is buttfucking stupid in regards to him not being interruptible while using it + it breaks guards + it lingers on the ground. all you need to do is subtract one of those things and the attack becomes balanced and fine. in general i just dislike his whole adult baby vibe and the fight itself is one of the rare cases of "spamming attacks and being mindlessly aggressive is in your best interest" for the duology. his lore is completely lame too, you couldn't come up with something more interesting than "he's a spooky ghost who killed his parents!!!"?
cloe walsh: nothingburger of a boss both in aesthetic and fight. she has such low HP that you can cream through her fairly quickly, meanwhile her attacks are so telegraphed that you have to be not paying attention to be in any real danger. you'd think her being both in a high security prison and also having magical poison abilities would give her at least a little room to talk about who she is or what her deal is, but the game seems to want to get rid of her as quickly as possible.
dr. letz shake: fun idea to have him come back, but then you run into the obvious problem of "how are you going to make fighting a giant machine work in this type of game?", and, ultimately, they don't. he has only 3 attacks, one of which is just a basic "get off me" move. the joke outstays its welcome because it wasn't even particularly funny in the first place.
million gunman: cool fight theme, literally nothing else remarkable about him outside of him being possible to infinite (low attack into 2-3 high attacks will make him take some damage, then start dodging, and then he'll try to retaliate with a move you can punish before it launches, repeating the cycle).
new destroyman: hey look! another god awful fight! having one of the destroyman halves spam projectile moves is infuriating to deal with, difficulty be damned. i know the cheese strat of hiding in the upper right corner so that you can isolate the red eye and blue eye just does nothing, but that doesn't fix the fight. even when you do it that way, you're still going to have to play grabass with the blue eye half for at least 5-10 minutes, if not longer. all of this is exacerbated by the fact that shinobu's combos have such terrible finishing lag that your only safe option is to just spam sonic sword. either way, it's an objectively horribly designed fight.
ryuji: on this replay, i distinctly remember thinking "this is the first actual boss fight that feels like it could belong in NMH1"; that only really applies in terms of his fight's design, though. ryuji, as mentioned, is another nothingburger. i would probably like his fight if his shiteating dragon wasn't such a liferuiner. i've had the damn thing pinball me back and forth between hit boxes while guarding until my battery ran out and i died. trying to do anything to ryuji while the dragon's summoned is futile because you might as well be playing smash bros. with items on at that point. you can lock him down in a combo and the dragon will zoom into you without warning. you're better off just waiting until it disappears, so add that to the list of bosses where waiting is the most reliable strategy. ryuji himself has a decent moveset and learning how to answer his attacks genuinely feels good, it's just that shitty dragon that's the problem. . . what's that? motorcycle fight? no, we're not even going to talk about that.
mimmy: is it bad that i like this fight. i feel like it's bad because it's the easiest fight in the entire game. just spam charge attacks and use the invincibility frames to avoid damage. at least it has a good fight theme.
marge: i've never understood the hype behind marge. the location is gorgeous from an aesthetics point of view, but her fight is so stupidly easy it feels like a genuine error to place it this late. it slots in better between like, kimmy and matt helms. she genuinely does such little damage and the attacks she has are very obviously telegraphed. combine that with the abundance of health drops that spawn (excluding bitter mode obviously) and i can't imagine many people died to her. she's one of the endgame bosses and she feels like babymode. i mean, i do still like her fight, but it always feels like i'm bullying someone with a handicap.
captain vladimir: completely worthless fight. why is an astronaut an assassin. why is he floating. whatever. he has probably the "least likely to ever hit you" instakill, can shoot very easily dodged lasers, and can throw rocks at you. that's about it. it's also comedic at the game's expense when they try to have an emotional moment when he dies. who is this fucking random soviet astronaut and why is he #3.
alice twilight: going to say nothing revolutionary when i say that she's far and away the best boss in the game on every front. great cutscene introducing her that gives us the idea that she has an interior life that we'll never get to know + a fight that's designed very well + a unique fighting style + an extremely great fight theme. the only bad thing i can say about this fight is less at the fight's expense and more the game's: why play this game for this fight when heroes' paradise already has it? lol
jasper batt: everything wrong with this game can be traced back to this character. both in design and also in lore. and also yuri lowenthal. genuinely one of the worst final boss fights in a game that i've played in recent memory, potentially in the top 5. i would literally prefer if the game just ended on a fake-out with no fight than this shitshow. teleporting punch moves that have no telegraph and will break your guard? Fuck you.
these fights suffer from being either too gimmicky or too unbalanced (both for and against the player). i think you can also argue that personality-wise so many of these fights fall short because we're given nothing to work with on any level. who is cloe walsh? why should i care? who is million gunman? why should i care? who is captain vladimir? why should i care? hell, matt helms and ryuji share the exact same boss theme despite being complete polar opposites both in setting and design. i'm not going to say that every single boss in NMH1 was a winner (even though i unironically think they were), but at least i could describe them with more than like, two adjectives. i truly could not say the same thing about most of NMH2's bosses. what this ultimately means is that when there's so few boss fights i actually like, i have next to nothing to look forward to in the game. it's just "oh i have to THAT fight now, great" over and over again. ironically, despite having 15 bosses, the game feels so much shorter and less developed compared to the first game's 10. you can argue quality > quantity, and surely that's part of it, but i think another part of it is just that NMH2 lives in the shadow of the first game.
NMH2 has this huge issue of being up its own ass. it takes itself far too seriously when the first game was going in nearly the opposite direction. sure, 1 had plot twists and serious moments, but they were always underlined by how absurd the setting is. the characters play everything straight, it's the fact that they exist in this world that not only allows deathmatches, but makes it this mundane bureaucratic exercise. hell, one fight in the game gets prevented just because travis wasn't following protocol. contrast this with NMH2, where travis is suddenly viewed as a god by everyone and even gets his face painted as a mural che guevara style. the assassins you fight will literally talk about how they've been waiting to be killed by him in this cultish way, and it all doesn't work when the first game's ending reveals that the UAA was all a scam set up by sylvia to milk travis for money, not to mention that travis was a gigantic loser for falling for it. in NMH1, travis is a tragic yet pathetic character. in NMH2, travis is the opposite, an epic force meant to change the world for the better. it's so out of place and unfitting for the setting of santa destroy. you exchanged nihilism and apathy for optimism and redemption without any of the work to earn it.
it's one thing for a game to have a bad sequel, but i think going from where NMH1 left off, you were doomed no matter what. you literally sequelize the game that said "too bad, no sequel for you", where do you go from there? it's equally baffling because suda was involved in both projects, so we can't sit here and say it was a case of losing the visionary of the series. what happened? not only does this game take itself too seriously, it's about as funny as a fucking funeral. i just want so badly to find anything about this game to like, but it feels ironically a victim of its own malaise. NMH1 made fun of itself so much that it's impossible for me to take this setting as seriously as 2 wants me to. NMH1 wanted me to take this wacky setting for what it is and see what happens when people play it straight. NMH2 wanted to franchise it.
and now, having replayed it, i get it. i get why i didn't remember this game. it's because it's not memorable.
okay, i know that was a lot of build-up to a relatively tame insult, but work with me. regardless of how you felt about no more heroes 1 as a video game, there was essentially one thing you couldn't deny about the game: it had flavor. it was doing something unique. the execution is for all to argue and debate, but you couldn't point to many contemporary games on the wii that were doing something like NMH1. of all the things you could possibly fuck up in a NMH1 sequel, removing the memorability from it has to be the singular worst mistake you could make. it also begs the question of how could you do that? how is it even possible to syphon the personality out of a NMH game and make it feel forgettable?
you can't explore santa destroy anymore, a change i suspect was largely motivated by the bevvy of critiques against the game for having an empty open world. it was ironic and satirizing the trend of open worlds with nothing actually happening in them, but i get it, you got a lot of dings against you for that one. the problem is that in removing this world, you have to replace it with. . . something. and NMH2 doesn't. so you don't have to pay for fights anymore, meaning money serves less of a purpose, not to mention naomi has a grand total of Two (2) things to sell you in the entire game. all you really need money for are the upgrades ryan'll give you. so, you're far more likely to barely spend any time in between missions dicking around. NMH1 had pacing inherent to the game with making the player get money. it made the combat sections that much more memorable because they were separated by mundanity. some people hated it and said it made the game boring, but they missed the point in that the mundane elevated the profane. when you don't have that time to ponder and anticipate, you lose payoff. it doesn't help that the mini-games in this game are far more hit-or-miss, and while they have slightly more retro-game charm to them, that doesn't excuse how awfully some of them play (i.e. the coconut and space mini-games). you're going to more than likely just go from assassination mission to assassination mission and it will likely blur together like it did for me.
and when it does come to the assassination missions, they leave much to be desired. the game starts out pretty strong with its first few levels, but then slowly it starts to decline. eventually you get to levels that have no music playing during them, or are just empty "drive along this road for 3 minutes and reach the boss" moments. some assassination missions don't even have levels. i eventually had to look up what the dev period for this game was. it had about 2 years, which is not terrible by any means. i get that not every single part of the game can be a home-run, but there's such a gigantic lack of content relative to the first game. let me repeat: there's no open world, less worthwhile mini-games, no collectibles, less levels, no sylvia phonecalls, and less to buy. again, i don't subscribe to the theory that sequels need to be bigger and grander than their predecessor, but NMH2 cuts out so much content and replaces it with nothing. i can't help but feel like this is just a hollowed out game as a result.
the assassins in this game suffer the most in regards to lack of personality. i think this problem is more systemic than "they really struck out on bosses this frequently", because most bosses have next to no lines of dialogue, little build-up, and are disposed of with little impact to travis. they try to have a holly summers moment with ryuji, but considering that ryuji literally does not speak once and has no introduction beyond "im on a motorcycle and japanese 😤", why should i care? i mean, holly didn't have that many lines, but you still got a very strong idea for who she is and the fact that she chose her own death and the way she did it made her memorable. ryuji dies because. . . he lost to travis and sylvia wanted to troll. okay. complete flop of a moment, and they linger on travis' reaction to try and imply that this is some turning point for him. it just doesn't work.
the real kiss of death here is that i actually detest a large portion of the boss fights in regards to gameplay. let's just come right out and say it: this game is mostly bad boss fights with very few good ones. in the spirit of 13 sentinels, i will now go over every fight individually and delineate things about it that stand out to me.
helter skelter: awful fight once you get past the tutorialized section of it. i firmly believe most people tend not to notice how bad this fight is because by the time you actually start it, he has half health. he suffers from a common problem in this game, which is "has a no wind-up or tell move that comes out extremely quickly that can break your guard and often leads to a follow-up attack that will do a lot of damage". you can dodge the follow-up attack typically, but there is no way you're capable of reacting in time for the lead-up. almost every boss in the entire game has it, so this is more a universal complaint than unique, so i won't mention it in the following summaries. but still, fuck man. outside of that, he's just a boss where you have to wait for him to use the one combo that leaves him vulnerable, and if you exercise any level of proactive aggression, he punishes it immediately. it's a very boring and poor fight to start with.
nathan copeland: i mean, at least he's better than the guys he's sandwiched between. he's appropriately easy as far as early bosses go, only real difficulty comes from when his environmental hazards start stunlocking you. i barely remember anything he actually does because he's so easy to just whale on without him retaliating much.
charlie macdonald: literally not even a fight. the gimmick wears thin almost immediately and is brainless to overcome. why even include this in the game.
kimmy howell: definitely one of the few fights i like in the game. has a fun and quirky introduction that makes her honestly the most memorable character introduced in this game. only complaints i have for her is that her moveset is fairly simple, and her projectile is such a nonfactor. it definitely feels like she could've stood to have maybe a little more complexity, she's very easy to solve and her AI lacks aggression. but, again, this is a fight i like, if only because i remember it pretty vividly.
matt helms: hey look, one of the worse fights in the game! his molotov attack is buttfucking stupid in regards to him not being interruptible while using it + it breaks guards + it lingers on the ground. all you need to do is subtract one of those things and the attack becomes balanced and fine. in general i just dislike his whole adult baby vibe and the fight itself is one of the rare cases of "spamming attacks and being mindlessly aggressive is in your best interest" for the duology. his lore is completely lame too, you couldn't come up with something more interesting than "he's a spooky ghost who killed his parents!!!"?
cloe walsh: nothingburger of a boss both in aesthetic and fight. she has such low HP that you can cream through her fairly quickly, meanwhile her attacks are so telegraphed that you have to be not paying attention to be in any real danger. you'd think her being both in a high security prison and also having magical poison abilities would give her at least a little room to talk about who she is or what her deal is, but the game seems to want to get rid of her as quickly as possible.
dr. letz shake: fun idea to have him come back, but then you run into the obvious problem of "how are you going to make fighting a giant machine work in this type of game?", and, ultimately, they don't. he has only 3 attacks, one of which is just a basic "get off me" move. the joke outstays its welcome because it wasn't even particularly funny in the first place.
million gunman: cool fight theme, literally nothing else remarkable about him outside of him being possible to infinite (low attack into 2-3 high attacks will make him take some damage, then start dodging, and then he'll try to retaliate with a move you can punish before it launches, repeating the cycle).
new destroyman: hey look! another god awful fight! having one of the destroyman halves spam projectile moves is infuriating to deal with, difficulty be damned. i know the cheese strat of hiding in the upper right corner so that you can isolate the red eye and blue eye just does nothing, but that doesn't fix the fight. even when you do it that way, you're still going to have to play grabass with the blue eye half for at least 5-10 minutes, if not longer. all of this is exacerbated by the fact that shinobu's combos have such terrible finishing lag that your only safe option is to just spam sonic sword. either way, it's an objectively horribly designed fight.
ryuji: on this replay, i distinctly remember thinking "this is the first actual boss fight that feels like it could belong in NMH1"; that only really applies in terms of his fight's design, though. ryuji, as mentioned, is another nothingburger. i would probably like his fight if his shiteating dragon wasn't such a liferuiner. i've had the damn thing pinball me back and forth between hit boxes while guarding until my battery ran out and i died. trying to do anything to ryuji while the dragon's summoned is futile because you might as well be playing smash bros. with items on at that point. you can lock him down in a combo and the dragon will zoom into you without warning. you're better off just waiting until it disappears, so add that to the list of bosses where waiting is the most reliable strategy. ryuji himself has a decent moveset and learning how to answer his attacks genuinely feels good, it's just that shitty dragon that's the problem. . . what's that? motorcycle fight? no, we're not even going to talk about that.
mimmy: is it bad that i like this fight. i feel like it's bad because it's the easiest fight in the entire game. just spam charge attacks and use the invincibility frames to avoid damage. at least it has a good fight theme.
marge: i've never understood the hype behind marge. the location is gorgeous from an aesthetics point of view, but her fight is so stupidly easy it feels like a genuine error to place it this late. it slots in better between like, kimmy and matt helms. she genuinely does such little damage and the attacks she has are very obviously telegraphed. combine that with the abundance of health drops that spawn (excluding bitter mode obviously) and i can't imagine many people died to her. she's one of the endgame bosses and she feels like babymode. i mean, i do still like her fight, but it always feels like i'm bullying someone with a handicap.
captain vladimir: completely worthless fight. why is an astronaut an assassin. why is he floating. whatever. he has probably the "least likely to ever hit you" instakill, can shoot very easily dodged lasers, and can throw rocks at you. that's about it. it's also comedic at the game's expense when they try to have an emotional moment when he dies. who is this fucking random soviet astronaut and why is he #3.
alice twilight: going to say nothing revolutionary when i say that she's far and away the best boss in the game on every front. great cutscene introducing her that gives us the idea that she has an interior life that we'll never get to know + a fight that's designed very well + a unique fighting style + an extremely great fight theme. the only bad thing i can say about this fight is less at the fight's expense and more the game's: why play this game for this fight when heroes' paradise already has it? lol
jasper batt: everything wrong with this game can be traced back to this character. both in design and also in lore. and also yuri lowenthal. genuinely one of the worst final boss fights in a game that i've played in recent memory, potentially in the top 5. i would literally prefer if the game just ended on a fake-out with no fight than this shitshow. teleporting punch moves that have no telegraph and will break your guard? Fuck you.
these fights suffer from being either too gimmicky or too unbalanced (both for and against the player). i think you can also argue that personality-wise so many of these fights fall short because we're given nothing to work with on any level. who is cloe walsh? why should i care? who is million gunman? why should i care? who is captain vladimir? why should i care? hell, matt helms and ryuji share the exact same boss theme despite being complete polar opposites both in setting and design. i'm not going to say that every single boss in NMH1 was a winner (even though i unironically think they were), but at least i could describe them with more than like, two adjectives. i truly could not say the same thing about most of NMH2's bosses. what this ultimately means is that when there's so few boss fights i actually like, i have next to nothing to look forward to in the game. it's just "oh i have to THAT fight now, great" over and over again. ironically, despite having 15 bosses, the game feels so much shorter and less developed compared to the first game's 10. you can argue quality > quantity, and surely that's part of it, but i think another part of it is just that NMH2 lives in the shadow of the first game.
NMH2 has this huge issue of being up its own ass. it takes itself far too seriously when the first game was going in nearly the opposite direction. sure, 1 had plot twists and serious moments, but they were always underlined by how absurd the setting is. the characters play everything straight, it's the fact that they exist in this world that not only allows deathmatches, but makes it this mundane bureaucratic exercise. hell, one fight in the game gets prevented just because travis wasn't following protocol. contrast this with NMH2, where travis is suddenly viewed as a god by everyone and even gets his face painted as a mural che guevara style. the assassins you fight will literally talk about how they've been waiting to be killed by him in this cultish way, and it all doesn't work when the first game's ending reveals that the UAA was all a scam set up by sylvia to milk travis for money, not to mention that travis was a gigantic loser for falling for it. in NMH1, travis is a tragic yet pathetic character. in NMH2, travis is the opposite, an epic force meant to change the world for the better. it's so out of place and unfitting for the setting of santa destroy. you exchanged nihilism and apathy for optimism and redemption without any of the work to earn it.
it's one thing for a game to have a bad sequel, but i think going from where NMH1 left off, you were doomed no matter what. you literally sequelize the game that said "too bad, no sequel for you", where do you go from there? it's equally baffling because suda was involved in both projects, so we can't sit here and say it was a case of losing the visionary of the series. what happened? not only does this game take itself too seriously, it's about as funny as a fucking funeral. i just want so badly to find anything about this game to like, but it feels ironically a victim of its own malaise. NMH1 made fun of itself so much that it's impossible for me to take this setting as seriously as 2 wants me to. NMH1 wanted me to take this wacky setting for what it is and see what happens when people play it straight. NMH2 wanted to franchise it.
Bravo Suda(?)
We're reaching previously unheard of levels of dripless
Holy hell, Travis is just like me (literally) through gameplay. The entire thing was me struggling to find the key weakness in the boss and pulling through, I died a few times throughout but it played out pretty average? The whole thing was dumbed down, while the key points were good it didn't stand out for anything in particular except its crazy fun gimmick. Motion controls were the bomb, I felt like I was shadowboxing some grunt in real time. That one swing attack that had you drive your beam katana forward by swinging your right joycon had me stressing during some fights. That one gimmick single handedly saved this game, spectacular.
This game is frustratingly so close to being great. It made some needed improvements compared to the first, but the removal of the open world is a shame that gives less personality to the world. However, this game still has some of my favorite boss designs and fights in any game. Kimmy, Cloe Walsh, New Destroyman, Ryuji, Margaret, Vladimir, and Alice are all great highlights to me. The story is on par with 1, but the ending cutscene gets me every time. But god that final boss is so bad. Amazing soundtrack that I actually go back and listen to.
Final score: 8/10
Final score: 8/10
so gas. you're actually a brainlet if you hate this game. travis is awesome. his girlfriend (forgot her name because i was too busy staring at her big breasts) is so hot lol. shinobu is the ultimate waifu because she loves nihongo almost as much as me. this game is so cool. travis is cool. cute girls, big boobs, suda51 FOR LIFE.
Принято НМХ2 ругать, но мне очень даже зашло. Точно не хуже первой части, а в каких то моментах даже лучше.
Геймплей тут разнообразнее. Видов врагов стало больше, сами они стали больше отпор давать, стали жирнее, но их количество в целом поменьше. И вроде ковыряешь их больше, но это все равно не душно, так как тут ещё добавили механику типа ярости, юзаешь её и ебашишь врагов со скоростью света. А ещё тут дают поиграть даже за двух других персонажей, у них геймплей отличается не так сильно, но сам факт уже вносит разнообразие.
Опенворлд и гринд ради продвижения дальше убрали, и это охуенно. Работы стали 8-битными мини-играми, стали комплекснее и интереснее, их задрачивать интересно, как игры на Денди, где с каждой попыткой получается лучше. При том так то их задрачивать даже не обязательно, если хочешь заработать деньги на прокачку и шмотки, это плюс. Ну и просто разнообразить геймплей после резни.
Боссы в целом тоже немного разнобразнее стали, при этом сохранив колорит и стиль. Плюс темы музыкальные у большинства хорошие, в первой части у меня практически ни одна тема во время игры слух не зацепила. С босса советского космонавта даже всплакнул чут чут... Но вот довольно большая ложка дегтя это первая стадия финального босса. Она сама по себе скучная и душная, так ещё и для её прохождения нахуй не понятно что делать и ничего не намекает. Только с подсказкой пацанов понял, что надо было с боссом столкнуться, хотя на протяжении всей игры механика столкновения не требовалась для продвижения в боссфайте. Разрабы могли кучей способов хотя бы намекнуть на это. По сути моя самая большая претензия к игре.
Сюжет харош, но концовка в первой была мощнее. Честно сказать, я сюжет понял не до конца, не понял всю эти линию с женщиной, с которой кто-то говорит по мере прохождения игры. Если бы понял, может понравилось бы больше. Но вот сама идея про месть мне нравится больше, чем тупо секс в первой части. И в целом история тут подается интересне в процессе прохождения и размазана по всей игре лучше , когда как в первой части на тебя вываливают все в конце практически.
Геймплей тут разнообразнее. Видов врагов стало больше, сами они стали больше отпор давать, стали жирнее, но их количество в целом поменьше. И вроде ковыряешь их больше, но это все равно не душно, так как тут ещё добавили механику типа ярости, юзаешь её и ебашишь врагов со скоростью света. А ещё тут дают поиграть даже за двух других персонажей, у них геймплей отличается не так сильно, но сам факт уже вносит разнообразие.
Опенворлд и гринд ради продвижения дальше убрали, и это охуенно. Работы стали 8-битными мини-играми, стали комплекснее и интереснее, их задрачивать интересно, как игры на Денди, где с каждой попыткой получается лучше. При том так то их задрачивать даже не обязательно, если хочешь заработать деньги на прокачку и шмотки, это плюс. Ну и просто разнообразить геймплей после резни.
Боссы в целом тоже немного разнобразнее стали, при этом сохранив колорит и стиль. Плюс темы музыкальные у большинства хорошие, в первой части у меня практически ни одна тема во время игры слух не зацепила. С босса советского космонавта даже всплакнул чут чут... Но вот довольно большая ложка дегтя это первая стадия финального босса. Она сама по себе скучная и душная, так ещё и для её прохождения нахуй не понятно что делать и ничего не намекает. Только с подсказкой пацанов понял, что надо было с боссом столкнуться, хотя на протяжении всей игры механика столкновения не требовалась для продвижения в боссфайте. Разрабы могли кучей способов хотя бы намекнуть на это. По сути моя самая большая претензия к игре.
Сюжет харош, но концовка в первой была мощнее. Честно сказать, я сюжет понял не до конца, не понял всю эти линию с женщиной, с которой кто-то говорит по мере прохождения игры. Если бы понял, может понравилось бы больше. Но вот сама идея про месть мне нравится больше, чем тупо секс в первой части. И в целом история тут подается интересне в процессе прохождения и размазана по всей игре лучше , когда как в первой части на тебя вываливают все в конце практически.