"Punk's not...excuse me...Punx not dead."
With the release of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Grasshopper Manufacture has returned to the fictional city of Santa Destroy, CA to continue the story of assassin Travis Touchdown. Having climbed the ranks in the original No More Heroes, Travis has left the United Assassins Association (UAA) and has spent the last three years wasting away in his room full of otaku delights, including an obese cat named Jeane, a vertically scrolling shooter that only offers one level of play and a short, loli-filled animation called Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly 5 that contains many of the cliches of moe.
However, for some reason, despite the fact that he hasn't fought for three years, Travis still carries a sub-standard beam katana just in case anyone tries to kill him, and this decision pays off when Travis crosses the path of Skelter Helter, the brother of Helter Skelter from the original game. Travis easily dispatches with Skelter Helter, and Sylvia lets him know that he's now ranked 51st in the UAA.
Don't get overly excited, though, because Travis isn't going to fight 50 bosses before he climbs to the top of the ranks once again. The number of boss battles is comparable to the number of bosses in the original No More Heroes, which makes Grasshopper's decision to start from rank 51 a misguided one. The only explanation for this mistake is that Goichi Suda is a madman, and that he often goes by the moniker Suda 51, which is a pun based on the Japanese for the words "five" and "one." ...Oh, and that he enjoys putting the number 51 in his games as much as he can.
The frustration continues from there until the end of Travis' second story. The hotly-contested open-world elements of the original No More Heroes have been cut entirely, but the game still has obscenely long loading times that occur when entering and exiting locations in Santa Destroy. The added convenience provided by the menu system is nice, but, sadly, there is no equivalent to the hidden shirts and the ball-collecting mechanic that was lost. Ranked matches no longer require entry fees, but the quest for new beam katanas and clothes, as well as the process of developing Travis' strength and stamina are still as much of a grind as they were in the original game. The retro-styled minigames that provide Travis side missions are initially kitschy, but each of them does not offer enough variety or length, making repeated playthroughs necessary to afford all of Travis' expenses.
Adding to the annoyance of No More Heroes 2 is the fact that one of the additional playable characters doesn't have an equivalent to the slot-machine system that enables Travis to become powered up on occasion after using a finisher to kill an enemy, unnecessarily limiting the experience while playing as this character. This character introduces terrible platforming elements to the No More Heroes series, which never needed to occur. The additional characters also interrupt the established flow of the game, making the moment that Travis can return to help Jeane lose weight one of the most satisfying episodes of the journey.
The main way that No More Heroes 2 advances the beat-'em-up action of the original No More Heroes is to allow Travis to carry multiple beam katanas with him at once. This allows him to switch from one blade to another when his current sword runs out of juice, which is a nice upgrade. During the beam katana swapping animation Travis is immune to enemy attack, making a switch possible even if he's surrounded by three fat men wielding chainsaws. And, for you fans of shounen fighting anime and manga, there's even a tournament! The way that this sequence is handled is representative of No More Heroes 2 as a whole. The tournament is rough, uneven, seemingly unfinished, not needed, random, uncalled for, and it's over quickly.
Punk will not die, as long as pseudo-garage developers like Grasshopper Manufacture continue making games. Games that appear to spring fully-formed from the head of an auteur. Games containing universes that are not fully explained, and therefore can offer the player anything, no matter how absurd these sights would seem in a game that was more grounded. That's the way to approach No More Heroes 2, with the knowledge that the game contains the absurd and that it enjoys reveling in the sheer stupidity of it all.
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