There Ain’t No Ticket to Paradise - No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Rant.

The Cycle Continues.

For a while I’ve wondered why No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle was absent from my Wii collection, but it’s clear to me after rebuying and replaying it, that it’s because it’s a terrible game, and an unworthy sequel to the original.

In my very first playthrough of this game, I finished it and walked away disappointed.

Nowadays I don’t have the patience for shitty video games anymore, so I put the game down and stopped playing.

That is why this article won’t feature any GIFs, and why I’m calling this a rant and not a review.

Chocolate Chips On An Arsenic Cookie.

It’s not all bad though, there are some minor changes in this game that keep it from being a total disaster compared to the original.

The mini-map is improved carrying over what used to be an upgrade in the original No More Heroes, as a standard feature: The positions of enemies and even treasure chests are now displayed on the mini-map.

I love when a characters moveset returns in a sequel unaltered, then gets added onto; a famous example being Banjo-Tooie starting with all of the moves from the first game, without the player having to re-earn them back.

It’s a small touch of continuity that is much appreciated.

No More Heroes 2 removes the entry fee requirement to advance the story from the first game, mostly for story purposes, but now the player can only grind for cosmetics and new weapons.

The slot-machine special moves from the original game return, but now can be stored and unleashed with the touch of a button; yet the ease of earning them this time around, requires their damage output to be nerfed.

Melee attacks are now launched quicker than the previous game, but they kept the wrestling moves as powerful as before.

Travis’ motel is no longer just a fancy menu, the player can walk around it freely, and it functions as it did in the original game.

Thankfully Travis now carries all his beam katanas into battle on his belt, so the player can freely switch weapons, which causes a brief pause in the action, where a short animation plays out.

Sort-of-real-time-weapon-swapping beats having to go back to his motel.

All these changes might have been appreciated much more, if they were in the original game, but they’re in this one, and it sucks, and none of this stuff changes that.

Cyanide Sprinkles On Poison Ivy Ice Cream.

What I’m about to go over aren’t major changes or changes that can be bundled in a single category, so I’ll itemize a few small annoyances I noticed on this playthrough.

End-of-boss-fight-cutscenes now have motion-based QTEs, why bother? Why not just have them die in the cinematics?

Motion-based QTEs in general just feel less responsive, as if the game is having trouble reading my inputs, plus it takes more effort to win the QTE games now.

Money is constantly displayed on screen at all times as it was in the original, making it difficult to farm for cash outside of Ranked Missions, where the players money total is displayed.

Ryan’s Gym is inferior to Thunder Ryu’s Gym, Ryan’s Gym only has two button-based training mini-games, on of which is a boring treadmill where the player has to keep from falling off.

The second mini-game is a reflex test where the player has to attack thrown objects and duck a blown kiss from his personal trainer, this issue is that there’s input delay on Travis’ moves in a game about quick reflexes, see the issue.

Thunder Ryu’s Gym training in the original No More Heroes had three motion-based mini-games where the inputs required of the player were on display, and the motion controls were intuitive and easy to pull off.

As I stated before these issues aren’t the core problem with No More Heroes 2, but they do hold this game back even further, and it adds to the piles of things that make this game inferior to the original.

They Gentrified Santa Destroy.

I thought Santa Destroy in the original No More Heroes was underwhelming, but it had a lot of potential, as it laid the foundation for what could have been a great interactive metropolis.

The game’s story even gave a great excuse for the developers to renovate Santa Destroy, but they dropped the ball hard in No More Heroes 2, by cutting the city entirely and replacing it with a menu representing the city, I believe they missed a great opportunity here.

In this city menu Travis’ money count isn’t displayed, so in order to view it, the player has to load an interactive area where they can freely walk around, then enter the pause menu to view it.

What is the purpose of adding all these extra steps and obscuring vital information from the player?

Some of the buildings that Travis can enter are fully interactive, such as his motel and the various shops, I supposed to make up for the loss in interactivity removing the city has caused?

Loading Santa Destroy is most likely the justification for the frequent loading times in the original No More Heroes, but this game STILL has just as much loading , with less gameplay between, so it’s even more annoying.

Removing the city doesn’t seem to have sped the game up much, so it wasn’t really worth the trade off, and it ended up creating a worse experience in the end.

Shit On My Dick Or Blood On My Beam Katana.

A running theme one might notice, is that I abhor terrible camera systems; it’s a problem that hasn’t really gone away since 3D video games hit the market, poor cameras are why the 5th generation of consoles(PS1/N64/Sega Saturn) has aged so poorly compared to the other ones.

A quick side note: I’m only using the Wiimote and Nunchuk combo, I can’t comment on the Classic Controller Pro, as I don’t own one, if anyone does I’d love to hear about it.

I don’t understand how Grasshopper Manufacture managed to screw this up in a SEQUEL, when the original’s camera system was just fine.

The D-pad’s previous function allowed the player to fully control the camera, pushing up or down tilted the camera up or down, and pushing left or right panned the camera left or right: It was simple and effective.

The trade-off of having the D-pad be used for directional dodge-rolls in all directions, at all times isn’t worth it.

Now the only way to move the camera is reset it behind Travis with the camera reset button, or to have it painfully careen toward an off-screen enemy with the lock-on button.

Either option is inadequate compared to having full camera control outside of locking-on to enemies.

In the original No More Heroes locking on to an enemy, changed the context of the game’s controls, making it so all of the player’s actions and the game’s camera movement were all relative to the locked-on enemy.

Using the D-pad for directional dodging was fine in this context, because the game took over control, and it was done so well, that the change on function was seamless.

Travis now has full 360° movement regardless if the player is locked-on or not, thus the lock-on function has been rendered meaningless, because it no longer tethers the player’s actions and the camera together in relation to the enemy the lock-on is supposed to be focused on.

The original No More Heroes had a zoomed in camera that was close to the action, but Travis’ legs were cut off from view, and the player could only see him from the waist up.

Travis’ character model didn’t take much screen real estate, letting the player have enough information about their surroundings.

The tip of Travis’ head & feet are nearly touching the top and bottom of the screen most of the time, and he takes up far too much screen-space, the enemies showing up on the mini-map sort of makes up for this, but then the player is starring at a tiny part of the screen most of the time.

If a camera system is working properly, the player most likely won’t notice, and I didn’t praise the camera in my No More Heroes 1 review because a functioning 3D camera system should be a standard feature of a 3D video game.

Who’d I Kill Again?

None of the game’s bosses leading up to the moment where I put the game down left much of an impression on me, their introduction scenes zip by real fast, and the player likely won’t even know their name until the game tells the player after killing the boss.

Furthering an issue with the first game, once the player figures out the boss’ tricks, they no longer pose any real threat.

Now, however, the game can’t fall back on the fact that the bosses were interesting people to listen to make up for it.

They lack impact, and add nothing to the story because both Travis and the player just blow through them too quick to leave an impression on the player.

All the game’s story event are invalidated by one simple fact; Travis summons a huge anime-style mech for one boss fight, so easy, all I had to do was button mash to win.

There’s no logical reason why Travis can’t use this weapon to go straight to the main bad guy: The story brushes it off and says the Association won’t allow any further use of it, but who the fuck could stop Travis at this point?

Fuck the association, Travis should’ve just exacted his revenge and moved on with his life, and no one would be stupid enough to stop him.

What’s a Moe?

I wouldn’t blame anyone for putting this game down, around the same point I chose to, I’m referring to the two back-to-back Shinobu levels, and covering why I think this was another MASSIVE missed opportunity.

The player can control the boss character Shinobu from the first game, her controls are very similar to Travis’, but with some minor tweaks to distinguish her from Travis.

Her charging attack opens up two options; she can send a couple of sword-beams while standing still, or keep her charge while running, for a running attack.

An advantage of her steel katana SHOULD be that the player doesn’t have to maintain it during battle, because it’s not an energy weapon., but why would No More Heroes 2 let the player have fun with an overpowered side character?

Nope, the player now has to worry about the upkeep of Shinobu’s sword because the developers didn’t put much thought into how she would play, as the reader will see as I continue.

Instead of a melee combo, Shinobu can leap in the air, then perform a diving attack if they so choose.

An annoying aspect of her fighting mechanics, is that she taunts after a sword attack combo, the player isn’t left open by this, but they also have to wait for a taunt to finish before proceeding.

Since she has a combat orientated jump in a game with an awful camera, of course there’s shitty platforming segments, where it’s never clear if she can make a jump successfully, and sometimes a jump to ascend a platform will have her slide down the platform instead: Just what the game needed.

Her fist boss fight includes all the frustrating elements of her levels, and the game in general.

The boss is a gun-totting asshole with two “fully-automatic” revolvers that either stun-lock the player OR quickly drains the player’s sword energy until their guard is broken, then they get stun-locked, both of which cause Shinobu to lie on the ground helplessly until the player button-mashes her out of her paralysis.

The boss has an attack where they can ricochet their shots off of walls, and since the camera is also a major boss in No More Heroes 2, the player will often be blind-sided by an explosive-tipped bullet they couldn’t see.

The worst part of this fight is that the boss can disappear from the room it’s being held in, where they can’t be damaged, leaving the player waiting for the fight to continue.

Getting the opportunity to play as another character should be a treat, but this shit is so unbearable, that it reminded me exactly why I hated this game, and this is where my second playthrough ended prematurely.

I Want No Part of This Travesty!

It’s rare that a flawed video game get the opportunity of second chance with a sequel, the video game market is very unforgiving and volatile, one that rarely rewards critical/financial failure with anything other than obscurity.

It’s the duty of the developers of a cult classic to take this opportunity to improve on the original and show everyone why it deserved to fulfill the potential of the original.

We’ve seen success stories like Nier: Automata deliver on that promise, but No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is the polar opposite of that.

No More Heroes 2 inherited all of the first game’s problems, downgraded many notable features, created its own issues, and squandered a rare opportunity, few developers get in the video game industry.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is inferior to its predecessor from both a story and gameplay standpoint, it ain’t worth finishing, it ain’t even worth playing, skip it!