No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

Hey look, it's me with a new post! I finally finished No More Heroes 2, after a good month or two of procrastination. You know things are bad when you procrastinate at playing video games, of all things. As I mentioned in the first no more heroes post, I imedeately started playing this game after the pain in the ass that happened to me at the end of the game. I ended up fighting through the first 2 bosses and tweeting about it in the process.

As you can see from these posts, I did in fact have more fun with the sequel. It's apparently a minority opinion, but I just overall enjoyed the sequel more. I'll do my best to explain my reasons, so let's get right on to it.

No More Heroes 2 takes place 2 years after the first game. Travis Touchdown has returned to Santa Destroy after vanishing for a few years after the events of the first game. While he was away, the City of Santa Destroy has grown into a full fledged city, with tall buildings and junk and is ruled over by the corporation of Pizza Batt (Previously Pizza Butt in the first game, which is a far better name.) The CEO of Pizza Butt, who happens to be the 1st ranked assassin, has killed Travis' best friend, Bishop, the dude who would always bring your bike to you in the first game and worked at the video store. In order to get revenge on Rank #1, you gotta fight your way through all 51 ranks of the United Assasins Ascociation, which is no longer a huge scam like in the first game. The story feels a lot more personal than the first game, since you're out for revenge rather than just doing it for the funsies. Bishop was such a cool guy, he would always bring your bike to you if you pressed 2 on your wii remote. Now that's dedication! He probably had to walk all the way to your bike because you were to lazy to do it yourself. What a great friend.

And yes, you heard read that right. 51 ranked fights! That means 50-ish boss fights, right? Nah, not really. There's only about 15-ish actual boss fights in the game, most of the other ranked members are either workers for other bosses or end up getting killed off screen. This seems to be common criticism of the game, and yeah, I can see where they're coming from. It's kind of disappointing to think there's going to be 50-ish boss fights, but in reality there's just 15-ish. I myself like most of their explanations for how the other ranked fighters die, but yeah it is kind of a filthy lie, especially since the back of the dang box says there's advertises 51 fights! Filthy liars!

LIES

Another thing a lot of people don't seem to enjoy is the games length. It only takes about 10 hours to beat, and there's no overworld for you to drive around. Frankly, the removal of the overworld was one of my favorite parts of the game. I don't think it added much to the first game, all it was there for was a way to pat out the game to be longer than it should have been. Grinding hours to get enough money for the swords was nothing but pure torture and I hated it. I don't care if the made the game longer, it didn't have enough substance to it for me to get much enjoyment out of it. Without it, the game would have been just as long, if not shorter than the second one. Let's be real, no one played this game for the missions in between ranked fights, they played it for the damn ranked fights. Granted, I would have proffered if they tried to improve the overworld rather than flat out remove it, this is Sonic Adventure 2 all over again!

But if there's no overworld, how do you make money? I'm glad you asked. In this game you get money by doing jobs like in the first game, except instead of being mini games, this time they're 8 bit mini games like an old NES game. Some of these are stupidly fun, they didn't feel like chores I had to do in order to make money to get further in the game, they felt more like I was playing an old arcade game of sorts, a separate game that rewarded me in the main game with cool swords and money, not to mention unless you want to get all the clothes, you'll barely have to grind with these.

The Rose Nasty, a new sword in the game

Speaking of cool swords, unlike the first game where swords were direct upgrades of eachother, in this game you can switch out swords on the go, with them all having different properties and upsides to eachother. During a stage or boss, I could switch swords just for the heck of it, whether it be to better fit the situation, or just to change things up. My personal favorite was the Green Beam Katana thingy, due to it's speed and color. I do feel like the dual beam katanas definitely outrank other swords in the game in terms of damage and speed, for sure.

Combat felt a lot nicer, too. There's a few factors that go into this, but the main one being that high and low attacks feel more distinct from eachother, with high attacks being quick and weak while low being slow but powerful. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it just feels a bit more balanced for the most part. One thing I love about this game is that it gave you the option to use a Wii Pro Controller instead of the Wiimote and Nunchuck. At first, I thought to myself: "Psssh, why would I use anything aside from the wii remote, that would just ruin the game's charm!" Then I actually used the pro controller and never used the wiimote and nunchuck again. It's so much easier to do high and low attacks with the Pro Controller, especially since someone thought it would be a good idea to remove the high/low indicator from the first game. With the Wii Remote, you hold it upwards to do high attacks and hold it forwards to do low attacks, then press the A button to swing. With the pro controller, you just press X or Y. It makes things so much easier, you can alternate between the two attacks at the simple press of a button, it makes things so much easier.

Another feature of this game was being able to play as Shinobu. Her gimmick is that you can jump with her. That's it. Let me just tell you that this game engine was not made for jumping. At all. For starters, there's a half second delay between when you press the button and when you actually jump, which is the worst. Second of all, this is an action game, mixing platforming into the mix just doesn't work, If there's one thing I never wanted to do in No More Heroes, it's miss a jump then have to spend a minute going back to where I was originally to try it again. The best concept for a boss fight in this game is ruined by having to do it as this character instead of Travis. Half of the charm of these games is Travis himself and him killing dudes with a Beam Katana. These sections have you play as a character who isn't Travis and don't have you using a Beam Katana, you've taken away everything I love about this game, dang it! There's also a section where you play as Henry, your half brother dude. At least he has a Beam Katana, so they got one half of what makes these games fun.

Overall, is No More Heroes 2 better than the first? I dunno. I do think it's a less frustrating game, however. There were less moments where I just got stuck or spent hours grinding for money and two bosses that made me want to tear my hair out. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! I will say that the first game left much more of an lasting impression for me, for better or worse. Overall, if you had issues with the first game, you'll likely prefer this one. Maybe next time I play the first one I'll have a better time playing, maybe the next time I play this one I won't like it as much. At the end of the day, they're both good games you should totally check out if they interest you.