No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

• Genre: Action
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes
• Time Played: 9 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Pretty much just right for this one. Some individual levels or sections might have gone a little long, but overall game length was solid.
• Soundtrack: It has some bangers. Even just some of the more generic "music playing while not much is happening" is catchy.
• Why I played: Back in the day I really liked the first No More Heroes, and I started the original version of No More Heroes 2 for Wii right when it came out, but it just didn't grab me like the first. I've been wanting to play the newer games and wanted to finish this first.
• Did I cry: Not exactly the type of game to get emotional to.
• Jank: There is definitely some jank. Some jank that is arguably native to a lot of motion-control oriented game and specifically a lot of 3rd party Wii games. Even though modern versions have standard controls and I used those, you can still feel where it's coming from. The game is not polished and there is jank in every aspect of it. It's very rough around the edges and hasn't aged incredibly.
• Difficulty: The difficulty swings from mind-numbingly easy to frustratingly difficult at various points. The most difficult aspects though are arguably some of the jank, but maybe jank inherent to the games design itself. Stun-lock that you can't react to or counter in any way that happens in a few battles is maybe the worst offender as far as difficulty goes.
• Recommend to others: I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't already into No More Heroes. I'm not sure it's much better than the first, if at all. It's been a long time for a direct comparison, but it was more memorable for being what it was at the time. I don't think 2 really added anything the first didn't have. Other than the NES style mini-games.
  

I needed something low effort and just fun to play. No More Heroes is mostly that. I think it was randomly brought up in a conversation a couple days before I decided to play it and just thought to myself "I should play that". I was otherwise in-between games, so it worked out perfectly in the moment.

No More Heroes as a series is one of those games I call a "gamer's game", and when I say that, I don't mean something every person who likes games will like, but is something made specifically for people who likes games. It's too self-referential in the culture. Not just games, but other general media and pop culture things. Anime has really taken off in the past decade but when the first No More Heroes came out, it was a bit more niche of a hobby in the west, and people who had anime girls all over their house were only highest level of otaku. Now you can't go to youtube's home page without seeing Travis Touchdowns semi-permanent motel room in the background of someone's video.

Besides anime, there's shmups, nes-esque mini games, Star Wars references, wrestling, etc. etc. - there is no moment in the game that isn't referencing something else. It's crude, brash, and degenerate. Unabashedly so, which at least makes it a bit more charming than media that takes itself more seriously.

In the end 2 is just more of the same and while it was fun to play to get ready for some of the more modern iterations, it's nothing too special on it's own.