- No More Heroes
- No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
Goichi Suda was only an executive director for this sequel. He had begun to take a step back in development of his studio’s games to work more in concepts and business, keeping the place running, and it creates a series of messy releases in the company’s history as a result. No More Heroes 2 is where that became visible, and started a trend of releases where something felt off compared to previous major releases from the studio.
The theme of the second No More Heroes switches from a minimalist series of chip beats to a jazzy funk piece describing how awesome Travis is and how much he wants to bone Sylvia. The opening scenes have Travis slicing off the head of a Final Fantasy reject who wields a big gun sword, Sylvia kissing the hilt of his beam katana while it’s next to his crotch, and said beam katana erupting out while Travis makes an orgasm yelp. Oh, and then the decapitated head starts talking and Travis’ video store owning friend from the first game is murdered by a bunch of masked thugs on a cold winter’s night. Also, the game’s initial opening upon starting with no save data has Travis describing saving your game as taking a number two.
There has never been a more perfect introduction to a game.
No More Heroes 2 is a mechanical switch up, taking the rough and restrictive mechanics of the first game and giving them a greater sense of flow. Travis can roll and dodge easier, his walk cycle has a flow to it, and it’s easier to pick up on combo beats from watching how enemies reacted to each hit. You also now have multiple beam katanas to switch out with, each with a radically different fighting style and use. That said, enemy behavior is still simplistic, and it can become easy to get locked into combat rhythms.
The open world has been removed for retro minigames that are way more traditionally fun and simple than the cumbersome ones from the first game. There are 8-bit takes on the coconut collecting and training segments from the last game. There’s a pizza delivery game that looks like Mach Rider, a plumbing game amusingly titled “Lay the Pipe”, and a steak-carving game called “Man the Meat”. There’s also an expanded version of the vertical bullet hell-style shooter Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly, based on the in-game magical girl anime. You no longer have to pay fees to move onto the next boss encounter and can go at your pace, depending on how much cash you wanted to use on upgrades or new clothing to wear. There are also sections where you could fight as Shinobu and Henry from the first game, each with their own fighting styles and exclusive bosses. Henry’s fight stands out as one of the series highlights, easily, as you’re placed in an open field to dash around with his super speed. It’s way more fun to play than the last title. Shinbou’s platforming is awful, sadly, and there’s still clunk to the actual flow of fights due to how some enemies reacted, but everything else is an improvement.
Still, something was lost in the process. This was about the time Grasshopper games started to get more crassly indulgent, feeling much more like self-obsessed fantasies for the creative team than the stranger creations they were before. Different staff heading up projects definitely had an impact, even if Suda was still heavily involved, and what some of these individuals brought to the table didn’t hit the same.
Travis is notably less pathetic here, and he finally gets to have sex and is apparently a sex god (judging from all the animal noises that comically play in the background). The joke of an obsessive sword fighting expert still being an huge loser is lost, and the story doesn’t have that same weight this time. The theme of revenge is poorly explored, put aside up until the end of the game, and the running commentary on violent media is much more slap and dash, getting only one real moment of note where Travis outright grabs the camera to vent about how worthless the lives of his world seem to be that feels vapid after taking nine ranks to get here.
Our villains are also far less interesting, barely getting proper introduction or lacking the same powerful personalities of the last guard. Margaret Moonlight, the game’s most popular boss needs her boss theme to do that for her (granted, it’s a fantastic boss theme). There was a shift in direction that hasn’t aged as well. It just lacked that same thematic complexity that drove so many other Grasshopper games.
But it got far more press than the first game. Audiences were enthusiastic that they were getting rid of the over world and trying to make everything more fun. People mostly just wanted to return to that insanely creative world and its messed up, hilarious, complex characters. Travis had become a favorite gaming protagonists for many, and he still is. But that itch just didn’t get scratched in the sequel. That’s not to say it’s not worth your time.
Mechanically, it is well beefs up above the first game, and the actual fights with the bosses themselves are still fantastic, especially against Margaret Moonlight and Ryuji. It also has the same style of the first game cranked up to eleven, with the unnerving mood replaced with pure on black comedy, and it works. The script is hilarious, and we get a lot more development of the main cast. It’s definitely a great entry in Grasshopper’s works, it’s just lacking that same brilliant extra bit of narrative to suck you in. No More Heroes is a game that stays with you, Desperate Struggle just didn’t have that effect, even later entries downplaying its impact.
That may explain the overall lower sales, with remakes of the first game outright outselling it. And keep in mind this was a Wii release, a console everyone and their grandma had. Suda seemed done with the story of Travis Touchdown, despite ending this sequel with a cliffhanger, and he had moved onto other projects with other creatives and business partners.
The first No More Heroes worked because it was an encapsulation of the transitional period between Suda’s strange early phase to his more conventional style today. It was a perfect storm of all of Suda’s best qualities, and the wonky mechanics even added to the mood of the game was trying to make at times. It’s perfectly flawed, while the sequel is just too flawless. It has no grit or edge, just more showmanship, wearing airs of cultural nods instead of further examining them. It can entertain, but it doesn’t really get you thinking. The best Grasshopper games keep you asking questions far after they finish, and the first game did that almost effortlessly.
It seemed like No More Heroes was just that special little gem we’d never see again. The modest budget experiments started dying off in the new age of ballooning costs for massive profits, and the age where there were No More Heroes in the world died in the process. After all, you don’t get to be number one forever; someone’s always gunning for you.
Then something weird happened. A new No More Heroes game was announced for the Wii U, and it was absolutely not what anyone could have ever possibly expected – just like how a proper No More Heroes game should be.
Links:
A Deep Dive Into Every No More Heroes Minigame
Screenshots gathered via captures of longplay by Spazbo4 at World of Longplays
