No More Heroes 2 is Not About Revenge

Black sheep are a peculiar thing. Be it Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Devil May Cry 2, or Ninja Gaiden 3, all of these are seen as the absolute worse of their franchise (though Dial of Destiny might somehow be worse). In gaming, it typically happens to a series for a multitude of reasons, whether it be chasing market trends, a loss of veteran developers, budget and crunching, etc. I remember the first black sheep I had played being considered Megaman 8, and I can see why, but I still loved it regardless and even now I have fond memories of it. There’s one black sheep I’ve been thinking about lately, both due to my conflicting feelings of it and current world events, and that would be No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, the sequel to the sleeper hit released on the Wii in North America in 2010.

The first No More Heroes is in my top ten video games ever made, and for many is a masterpiece of narrative within video games. Taking place in the fictional setting of Santa Destroy, California, we play as Travis Touchdown, a 27 year old Otaku turned assassin who strives to be the best in the country, climbing the ranks of the United Assassin Association in hopes of becoming number one and sleeping with the head of the organization, Sylvia Cristel.

If it sounds like Travis is a bad person, he is. He is selfish, perverted (to the point of constantly not returning multiple pornos to his video store and leering at Sylvia), and views killing as euphoric. Yet despite this, you don’t hate Travis at all, because outside of that, he’s kinda sad. Bishop, the head of the video store is his only friend, he lives in near poverty in a hotel, and for every cool moment he gets in the narrative, he takes five more Freudian slips. One can immediately tell Travis is essentially trying to live out his heroic gaming fantasy, conquering bosses, ranking to the top, and getting a sweet woman out of it. In fact, the game continually enforces this idea of escapism within the world and gameplay. Travis makes 4th wall breaks, enemies spew out coins like their koopas, the main melody of the game is constantly remixed and is in every part of the game, the slot wheels give Travis different powers, and the UAA Assassins are set up as boss fights. Yet despite this, the game is quick to break that sense of escapism from you as well. Travis has to pay an increasing amount of money for each fight, and as such must do jobs like mowing the lawn and picking up trash as well as assassination missions, which can only be unlocked once you’ve done the corresponding blue collar job. It effectively mirrors our own experience, as games get more and more expensive, leading to us grinding harder at our menial jobs to get that sweet sense of escape before repeating the cycle over and over again. Santa Destroy is the most average town in the world, with Travis fighting through subways, alleys, the baseball stadium, outskirts, and other mundane locations. Essentially, every single part of the game is not only a deconstruction of gaming tropes (with Sylvia even possibly being a subversion of Princess Peach), but of the concept of escapism. Early in the boss fight against Death Metal, Travis monologues mid fight about this dreams of riches and women, only before realizing he’s trapped himself in the cycle Death Metal and every other assassin is a part of, chanting how he “can’t find the exit.” Nearly every single action he takes is to escape what is later revealed a traumatic past and desolate present, but the game continually reinforces that the only thing you can do is keep moving forward, and that the idea of “Paradise” is only a luxury for the dead.

It’s an incredible video game, both for its metacontextual and philosophical themes, on top of being a bloody fun romp, which alongside PlatinumGames’ equally underrated MadWorld, proved to be mature hits on an otherwise family friendly console as the Wii. By far the biggest success the developer Grasshopper Manufacure and its CEO Goichi Suda, who also directed the game, had seen since their Capcom game Killer7, a sequel was greenlit and put into development. Titled No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, the game would release 2 years later in 2010, following Travis returning as the protagonist against a new group of assassins and a new focus of revenge, boasting gameplay and graphical improvements. Upon release, the game received similar acclaim to its predecessor and actually being Grasshopper’s most acclaimed title, deemed better than its successor. Yet I called it a black sheep for a reason, cause for many Suda fans, it’s not at all and is considered a bad game.

How do we get here? Starting off, Suda wasn’t at the helm of director as he was busy working on what would become Shadows of the Damned with Shinji Mikami. Instead, he was the executive director, with Nobutaka Ichiki taking the chair instead. It’s been debated how much exactly Suda was involved with this game, and for good reason, because the tonal and writing shift is immense. Gameplay wise, the game takes a few steps forward and a few steps back. Combat is noticeably improved, with more combos, actual hand to hand combat for stuns, more reliable throws, light and heavy attacks feel more distinct with a real sense of weight, and to top it off, Travis gets a new ecstasy gauge and different performing Beam Katanas. The Ecstasy Gauge is essentially his Devil Trigger, allowing him to access hyper speed, invulnerability, and more damage, while each beam katana adds new move sets such as the heavy Peony, combo heavy Camelia MK. 3, and my personal favorite, the Rose Nasty, a duel katana combination that has diagonal slicing. While Travis cannot switch mid combo, he can switch them out between fights, meaning you won’t be directly upgrading weapons like the first game but can choose what best suits your playstyle, as each weapon even has a distinct parry and dodge counter. There are more slot power ups as well, with the highlight being Travis turning into a Tiger and mauling people.

Yet I did say it had steps backwards. Combat encounters are much longer this time around, to the point of being a detriment. In particular, one parking lot segment last for minutes and just keeps going and going, feeling ultimately monotonous. Camera work is less stable as well, especially in close encounters, as there were times I’d be corner trapped by a bigger enemy. However, these do not compare to the gutting of the open world in favor of a hub map around Santa Destroy. While the open world felt boring and monotone, that was the entire point, to ground both the player and Travis into a sense of reality as I went into earlier. Plus there were neat collectibles like shirts, money, and Lovikov Balls, which gave you a power referencing the Killer7 every time you collected 7 of them. It also gave a sense of familiarity and connected you with Travis more, so it being gone instead of improved is a detriment, and it’s a pet peeve I have when sequels cut out flawed but important parts of a game’s design instead of improving them. Jobs still exist, but now paying for the UAA is no longer a thing, so your hard earned $LBS Can now be focused on clothes, beam katanas, and the gyms. As for them, nearly every job is now an 8-bit retro game, with the only job that isn’t being the trash collector. Suda noted only a few were meant to be, but the team had so much fun he had to tell them to stop making so many. Design wise they’re fine, as some are genuinely fun while others are tedious or a bit frustrating. It’s at its most frustrating with the gym, which has now become two games. One is a treadmill where you have to pull the stick in the right direction and the other is hitting dumbbells back and forth from your trainer, which I’m gonna go on record and say is the worst mini game out of the entire quadrilogy, especially on higher levels. Some players even skip out on the last one due to how hard and annoying it can be. I get the gym mini games in the first one were easy to do, but unlike the first game the gym is the only place you gain more health and combo extensions, making the grind even worse.

Players of the first might also be disappointed in assassination missions being gone as well, replaced by lackluster Revenge Missions, in which Travis kills his target and the mission ends. The reward for clearing all of them you might ask? Travis now can wear his clothes without his jacket. They are so disappointing that even Suda felt they should’ve done more with them.

This game’s real infamous reception from fans however, is all on its story and characters. Taking place three years after the events of the first game, No More Heroes 2 follows Travis after escaping from Santa Destroy due to being challenged and hunted by assassins in a tie-in comic book. Right off the bat, the game sets the tone with the tutorial being a boss fight against Skelter Helter, Cloud Strife ripoff and brother of the assassin Travis kills in the introduction and initial trailer of the first game, Helter Skelter (who is a Beatles reference naturally). Travis actually doesn’t even remember who Helter Skelter was, as we never fought him and he only knew him as the Drifter despite this battle taking place on the same rooftop. Travis does what a Travis Touchdown will do, taunting the brother into a battle in which Skelter’s hard hitting theme “Sling Shot” goes into high gear. Unlike the first game, which mainly used electronic and retro-esque compositions to enforce the feel of the game being a game, 2’s soundtrack is much more varied and in many people’s opinion being the best soundtrack in the series, incorporating Jazz, hard rock, J-Pop, hip-hop, and more into its soundtrack.

Naturally, Travis beats Skelter Helter, with the game now taking the death blow mechanic of swiping your controller (or joystick) in a direction to finish off your opponents and making it the finish for bosses. In Skelter’s case, it is immensely brutal, as Travis cuts off his head only for it to land back on his neck, cutting to a victory card declaring Skelter Helter “DEAD.” After this, the elusive Sylvia pops up, making fun of sequel continuity and how boring it would be to learn of Travis’ fall from grace, to which he sees her point. Using sex and the promise of the fabled “Downward Dog” position, as well as teasing Travis to the point of a beam katana pop and a nose bleed, Travis agrees to climb up the now 50 ranks of the new UAA to become number one, again. Skelter Helter, however, has other plans.

Somehow still alive, he taunts Travis with a grave threat, promising to shackle the bonds of vengeance that drove him to Travis before ripping his own head off. As we are about to see, this statement comes to truth, with the game cutting to Beef Head Videos and Travis’ only friend Bishop being brutally murdered the same night by hired assassins. The next morning, his head is thrown through Travis’ motel window in a paper bag, leading to him screaming in anguish. Fueled by vengeance, he meets Sylvia and finds out the head of the rankings is responsible, setting himself on a war path towards the top. If you played the first game, and are a bit surprised and confused by this angle of a story, I share that sentiment. No More Heroes already had vengeance interlaced into its main plot, as it’s revealed that Travis actually joined the UAA to fight his former love Jeane, only to find out she was taking vengeance for their father abusing her and ruining her life. Travis even mentions that vengeance begets vengeance, and the game turns his vengeance into revealing it was just another part of his want for an escape from his trauma and forcing him to effectively grow up and handle it like an adult instead of constantly finding an exit away from. What more could you say about vengeance? On top of this, how does the UAA exist now? Wasn’t it revealed it was all an elaborate con Sylvia wrapped Travis into, not existing at all?

Unfortunately we don’t really get a concrete answer into the latter questions, and the former’s answer is on the surface the same answer Travis already has. As such, No More Heroes 2 seems to be a retread of similar plot points with the subtlety of a brick. Bosses no longer are these layered personas of people in the same cycle Travis is in acting as a wake up call, but are mostly dime a dozen killers with great boss themes and mechanically fun fights but nothing narratively significant outside of a few. Travis himself occasionally shows that egg-faced personality we love him for, but now he is acclaimed as the “Crownless King”, and nearly every assassin praises him as such, despite the first game making it clear he is a bad person. The game is overall more melodramatic as well, being much more theatrical in comparison to the more darkly subdued nature of the first game, leading to zany moments feeling less special in my opinion. Worse yet though, is this game’s “viewpoint” on women.

The first game makes a clear effort to show Travis is emotionally stunted when it comes to women. Not only is he a massive porn addict, he is routinely shown to be seen as a joke to the women he fights, and on top of that, he’s not really the vicious killer he seems to be. Holly Summers shows this fully, as he cannot bring himself to kill her due to being a woman. In a way, the game calls this out as not chivalry, but him not seeing women to be warriors the way men are, bringing shame to Holly and forcing her to kill herself. It shows misogyny is not just about being intentionally sexist and discriminating against women, but are also latent views that might seem like they have good intentions but ultimately do not. This does indeed tie into his trauma with Jeane, and by the end of the game he is able to finish her and set her free from the shackles of vengeance she was in, not making the same mistakes as he did with Holly. Shinobu Jacobs and Bad Girl are also examples of using women to reveal Travis’ character. With Shinobu, she’s a reflection of both media worship and needless revenge, as she envisions herself like the Samurai of old films, wanting to reclaim her family name and take revenge for her father and mistaking Travis as his killer (it was most likely his twin brother Henry). She reflects the same mistakes Travis does, and he actually spares her, leading to her helping him at the end of the game.

Bad Girl is the runaway star of the boss roster from the first game however, and it doesn’t surprise me that Suda decided to Dragon Ball her back into the series in Travis Strikes Again. The #2 ranked fight of the game, Bad Girl is a nasty, violent person despite her Princess appearance. The first action we see her take is mindlessly knocking cloned gimps back with her baseball bat before taking a beer on her couch. She laments that it’s just the daily grind, and despite Travis calling her a “bad girl”, she points out the hypocrisy in his statement, saying he is just as nasty despite thinking he’s not. As she rightfully points out, an assassin and perverted killing machine are in essence the same thing. In fact the similarities between her and Travis are more than just their perversions. Both have a sexual edge, both see killing as a game, with Travis being a gamer and Bad Girl into softball, and both of them even have a traumatic past due to their father figure that lead them to become killers as TSA would reveal. On top of being an adrenaline rush of a boss fight with the best boss theme in the whole series, Travis doesn’t even kill her, as despite giving her a mortal wound, she keeps beating and beating into him with her bat until he concedes, using the fact that even if he forfeits, the wound will kill her and by that technicality he’ll still win.

I say all of this about the way 1 purposefully turns Travis’ (and possibly the player’s) male gaze on its head in a smart way because this motif is straight up gone in 2. Sylvia, for starters, is way more sexualized, wearing revealing clothing and even a g-string at one point. Travis’ male gaze is never seen as perverse, both men and especially women seem more obsessed with him, his beam katana specialist Dr. Naomi has her breasts somehow grow larger, and then there is Shinobu. After the first game, Shinobu had somewhat of a personality change. While not in the presence of Travis she is a cool-headed and strong fighter like the first game, now sporting a robot arm and actually being playable for a couple of levels, albeit with some bad platforming. However, when she is, she refers to him as master, seeing herself as a student and even being romantically interested in him later in the game. Her bosses even reflect the weird way this game perceives women, as her first boss fight has Million Gunman be surprised a girl is fighting him, and her second boss fights is against the returning Destroyman, who has been split into two personalities, one of which consult makes sexual comments and insults towards Shinobu.

By far the worst moment though comes up in the literal first level. It stars off really strong, as the game has Travis mowing through mobs at a high pace at the beat of the best remix of us theme “Kill or be Killed”, now having vocals and a funky jazz beat. As he reaches the room of the boss, Nathan Copeland, the cutscene stats where after a few words, Copeland decides to throw the two women at his side a Travis. Rather than dodge, the two clash with the women between, trading blows as each woman is eviscerated in the process.

It is a moment so out of left field, both for the game and for Travis as a character. This moment was actually tweeted out months ago on Twitter and pretty much split the fandom. While some see that it’s meant to show despite how enduring Travis is he is still not a good person, others point out that it is very distasteful, and that Travis from the first game wouldn’t do this at all, and it further emphasizes the way women are seen in this game, especially in comparison to the first game and even past Grasshopper projects. It should also be of note that Suda has said he’d only use sexuality if it meant something in the plot, and the games he actually directed without publisher interference either have really stark points about sexuality or they are absent like the last few games from Grasshopper, so for this game to treat sexuality this way doesn’t really feel like Suda’s style either.

I’d say it is the worst part of the game, but then there’s the final boss, Jasper Batt Jr.

Straight up, this entire three phase boss fight sucks, and is the worst fight in the entire series. Revealed to be the one who ordered Bishop to be killed, Batt tells Travis that it was for revenge against the Pizza Bat assassination missions from the first game, who were his family. He did everything in this game to essentially kill Travis, even faking the deaths of Henry, Sylvia, and Shinobu before Henry comes in and helps Travis in phase two, revealing the heads to be fake. Both of these phases are bad, with the first having an awkward clash moment you’re supposed to lose, and his second buffed up phase being hard hitting and having an attack that can actually kill Travis instantly should you be even close to the window of the room. His third and final phase sees him inflate to a massive monster, and even Henry dips out, noting he has standards and cannot be associated with it. I get why it’s bad. In the grand scheme of revenge not being worth it and childish, you wouldn’t be able to sell that point unless you made it actually not width the effort, and as a Drakengard fan, I do like it from a gameplay idea, but considering everything else seems to fall somewhat flat, this does not help the game’s case at all.

All in all, before recently I agreed with most that 2 is the worst for these reasons, and while I still think it is, I’ve been thinking about it a lot as of late. After the release of 3, a lot of people, including known Youtuber and Suda fan GhenryPerez noted how 3 took similar motifs from 2, feeling like a redo in many aspects, something I could see, since he was fully at the helm this time. However, something kept drawing me to 2. At the time, Suda said it would be the end of the series but a possible sequel would happen in ten years (something we thought was a joke but ended up being true), so why end the franchise like this? Travis does mature, but he seemingly re-learns what he does in the first game. After rewatching some cutscenes, something shifted. Throughout the story, Travis becomes dissolute with the killing, even becoming visibly upset around Sylvia. At one point, he notes that fucked up as assassins are, they are people. This culminates in a speech after killing #2, Alice, which I’ll quote in its entirety:

See that? Now THAT was a battle! Look at this blood! We humans are alive, even if we are assassins! Doesn’t matter if it’s a video game, movie, drama, anime, manga, WE’RE ALIVE! People shed blood and die! This isn’t a game! You can’t just selfishly use death as your tool! THIS is Alice’s blood! I bet you’ve already forgotten she’d existed! Same way you would’ve forgotten about me! And THAT’S why I’m tearing down the UAA!

At first, like many, it felt odd to suddenly have a “life matters” theme shoved to the forefront, as Travis is still a killer and still kills after this, but when I look at this quote again, what pops out are the last lines about using death as a tool, and Travis being forgotten. He was supposed to get his comeuppance and die at the end of the first game, and earlier in the game after a grueling match against the assassin Ryuji, Sylvia guns him down instead of an honorable death. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more this theme of assassins being seen as expendable came up more and more until I reached a conclusion that I feel No More Heroes 2 is about. As the title says, this is not a game about revenge.

Let’s take it from the top. The game begins with Travis out of character, not by mistake, but by choice. He doesn’t feel like the Travis we grew to love, the one who had honor, the one who realized this route brought him no peace, the one who walked away. Travis at the beginning feels like a caricature of himself, his most notable aspects turned up to eleven with his nuance gone. He reminds me in many ways of Deadpool, and even though I think the execution of the moment with Copeland is still distasteful and could’ve been handled better, by this point Travis isn’t really himself. His fight fight against football star Charlie MacDonald also feels equally hollow and unsatisfied despite the huge mecha spectacle. He seems strangely remorseful, especially about the cheerleaders. As the game goes on, he even spares Kimmy Howell, a co-Ed and crazed mega fan. It isn’t a women thing, as he easily kills sadist Cloe Walsh, but more and more this persona begins to crumble until the point I feel it truly falls apart; Shinobu’s advances.

After she defeats both Million Gunman and New Destroyman, Shinobu tries to come into Travis romantically, and in what can only be something Travis says, he rebuffs her, noting that he’d feel like “that creepy teacher in porn.” Shinobu, heartbroken, leaves for the rest of the game, and this decision from Travis at the time was seen as a mistake by some fans, especially since he chose Sylvia instead. Looking at this scene now it is clear as day why. The pervy teacher line is crass, but it’s Travis saying in his way he feels like he would be taking advantage of her in his position as her mentor and being years older than him. Remind me, who else did Travis know was an assassin, had romantic feelings for him, and was taken advantage of by older men including a mentor figure?

That’s right, his sister Jeane.

Looking at this moment now, it becomes very clear this game is a purposeful fantasy. Travis is getting what he so craved in the first game, the fame, the women adoring him, even the riches, yet none of it truly satisfies him, and he ends up becoming sick of it all, to the point he wants to take a hammer to the system and tear it down. This is all crystallized in Alice Twilight’s boss fight, where she laments that assassins come to the UAA only to be trapped in this spectator sport of endless violence, unable to leave with their only options being to fight or die. They all want to know what makes Travis so special, why he can leave, and why even though he comes back, he is the only one to be able to topple the system at play. With this in mind, I now see what his quote at the end of the fight is actually about. Fighting to Travis isn’t about the money or fame, it’s a way of life, an artform, yet people like Alice are used for their talents and then discarded and forgotten once they’ve been stripped of all their passions and dreams, only wishing for it to end. If it wasn’t for Travis surviving the first game, it would happened to him as well. It’s not just Alice either. From Margaret Moonlight, to Captain Vladimir, an astronaut used thinking he’s still in space, to the vengeful spirit of Matt Helms, who in actuality is a child who was abused and haunts his house before being burned down by the UAA, to every other assassin in the game, they are all used to make the UAA richer and gain more consumers of the sport. More and more I realized this game is not about revenge. In actuality, it’s about capitalism and its affects on the artists under the brutal regime of more profit at the cost of creativity, passion, and even their own lives. By doing so, No More Heroes 2 becomes what most critics and non-fans of Suda’s work see it as; pure style over substance.

Everything about this game, both intentional and unintentional, is about trying to appease to a broader audience and get more fans while wiping away the nuance of what once was. Women are eye candy, the bosses are one-note, spectacle takes center stage, Santa Destroy becoming a bustling metropolis instead of an average city, and most importantly, Travis is seen as a hero to enable the power fantasy of both himself and the player. You can’t have your main character be a critique of players who buy the game, that’s not why people love Travis. No, people love him cause he’s funny yet badass, a Deadpool-like character who’s meant to be a wacky assassin right? With this, the game’s subtitle becomes very clear. It’s not about the desperate struggle of revenge, it’s about the desperate struggle of finding yourself in a job or career where all your passion and hard work are cast away, commercialized for maximum profit while you waste away until the corporate overlords forget about you and move on to the next big thing. No wonder Batt looks like a mascot of a big corporation and is a CEO of one.

Fans of Suda should also know the big man himself would suffer a similar fate. As mentioned earlier, Suda was working on a project known as Shadows with Shinji Mikami, with the publisher being EA, and knowing EA, this wasn’t going to end well.

While it was intended to be based upon the works of Franz Kafka and an art house style game, EA pressured Suda into changing so much of the initial project most of his ideas were scrapped, as EA wanted Suda’s style but none of his substance while they wanted Mikami to imitate Resident Evil 4. Speaking about the project in 2012, Mikami noted:

Shadows of The Damned] became a completely different game. That was a bit disappointing. I think Suda was unable to create the scenario he’d originally had in his head, and he rewrote the scenario several times. I think his heart was broken. He’s such a unique creator, so it seems to me that he was not quite comfortable with making this game.

Suda had effectively become like the assassins and Travis in 2, used by a bigger corporation that stripped away any sense of nuance or actually substance in favor of what would appease the markets and be a big hit. Yet it’s message is not just relevant for Suda only. As years pass, more stories of immense crunch and the mistreatment of workers in the entertainment industry are more widely known. Even a masterpiece of a film like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had terrible production, leading to many quitting the project and doubting its sequel would make the 2024 release date, adding to a growing trend of artists being mistreated and used. At the time of writing this article there’s even a writer’s strike going on due to how overworked and underpaid writers are. Gaming is no secret to this issue as well, with one of the most acclaimed games in recent memory, The Last of Us Part II, suffering from immense crunch, yet the game won best game direction at The Game Awards its release year.

Despite this, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Travis makes sure to keep his word, toppling both the UAA and Batt, ending the game by being a hero in his own standards, the “No More Hero.” Clumsy as that title is, it makes sense as to what Travis represents in that story, and as he lands on Sylvia’s bike at the end of the game, he calls her the thing he’s been searching for the entire time; paradise. It isn’t a place, or even locked to death, it’s finding your own path and being with the people you care about. Yes, she’s a terrible person, but so is he, and it feels more real for him to be with someone like her, someone who doesn’t worship him, who will bicker and even argue, but at the end of the day still loves him for him.

After looking back, it’s still my least favorite in the franchise, and the most flawed writing wise, but I no longer think it’s all bad. Flaws and all, I still think it’s worth giving a shot, and who knows, maybe you’ll come out with a different reading than I did. To me though, No More Heroes 2 is not about revenge. It’s about setting your own path, not allowing your art, your hard work being used and exploited, fighting against any system that tries to tell you your work has or doesn’t need substance.