Revisit the streets of Santa Destroy for a bit more of the old ultraviolence.

I don’t usually like to spend too much thought discussing video game stories, but I will make an exception for Suda 51 games, as the story is usually so intrinsic in understanding the game design choices he makes. No More Heroes 2’s plot is just a mite bit simpler than that of the first game. There are fewer complexities to be found, and the ending feels somewhat flat. Nevertheless, the gameplay has gotten a huge refinement in between installments, and in that respect No More Heroes is a laudable sequel.

No More Heroes 2 starts out similarly to its predecessor. Travis Touchdown acts as a surrogate for the pathetic otaku that Suda 51 sees in himself (and presumably, all of us playing the game). Travis finished the last game at the top of the assassin’s ranks, but as we join him for this adventure, we learn that he’s been kicked all the way down to rank 51. Now, how all of this works is fairly unclear, especially since the ending of the first game heavily implied Travis's death, as well as the possibility of Sylvia giving birth to his child.

That’s all beside the point, though. The important thing is that Travis is no longer at the top of the charts, and so is going to have to try to climb the ranks yet again by slicing his way through scores of assassins and bathing in their blood. The feeling of déjà vu is sustained through the game’s first boss encounter with Skelter Helter, the brother of NMH’s Helter Skelter. After making short work out of the ill-fated sibling, the real impetus for Travis’s bloody ascendance is revealed: Bishop, Travis’s best friend from the first game, has been killed in cold blood.

In many ways, No More Heroes 2 is the inverse of the first game. It starts off with some serious shattering of the fourth wall rather than ending with this trick. You are only given each assassin’s name after you dispatch them rather than before their stage. Each boss encounter is framed not with a phone call through the Wiimote’s speaker, but with a conversation through glass with a faceless stripper. Gone are the open-world gameplay and waggle-based job missions. In their place is a simple menu for destination selection and nifty 8-bit-styled minigames for the jobs. Everything that isn’t a boss encounter has been improved objectively, while the boss fights themselves tend to have less weight and variety than they did in NMH 2’s predecessor

The core gameplay of the title remains largely similar to that of the first game. Slice your way through legions of enemies as you work your way to an encounter with that level’s assassin. In between these missions, you find yourself doing similar things as in the first game. Travis will have to perform menial jobs to earn money for various upgrades, cut up random thugs in short revenge missions, buy clothes and customize his outfit, and let’s not forget playing with Travis’s cat, Jeane. Each of these various gameplay elements, while similar to the ones seen in the first game, have been refined slightly, and are more enjoyable than the last time we saw them. The motion control implementation is handled the same way as in the first game and it's still just as visceral. Finishing your enemies off with a flick of the wrist and watching them erupt in a fountain of blood and cash is still just as fun as it was two years ago.

It’s strange to say, but despite the polish applied to most aspects of the game, No More Heroes 2 never quite lives up to the high standard set by its predecessor. Unlike in the first title, Suda 51 was not the primary director of No More Heroes 2. It’s hard to say whether his shift to executive director was what ultimately brought this game down, but it certainly feels that way.

In the first title, each boss fight had a certain gravitas to it that was built up by very subtle touches. Every encounter with one of the game’s ranked assassins felt like something I had never experienced before. In contrast, Desperate Struggle’s bosses all sort of bleed together. There’s absolutely no weight given to your confrontations with most of them, and outside of a select few, they were all mostly uninteresting. Furthermore, Travis can pretty much dispatch them all in the exact same manner. Sure, there are some serious standouts like Charlie MacDonald and Captain Vladamir, but for the most part, I had more fun with everything else in the game than I did with the Assassination missions.

None of that should be taken to mean that this is somehow a bad game. It’s not. It’s still one of the Wii’s best, and does feature that trademark Suda 51 irreverence in certain situations. There’s plenty of fan service to be had, including a pretty much unbelievable Bizarre Jelly 5 theme song animation that I couldn’t have appreciated more. Desperate Struggles also features a stunning cameo by one of my favorite Japanese filmmakers, Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer), whose movies I had always pegged as being one of Suda’s influences. No More Heroes 2 is undeniably fun to play, and its packed to the brim with plenty of charm and personality. It’s just too bad that for the most part, this doesn’t extend to the boss encounters or story itself.

There's one other area where the game falls slightly short of its predecessor, and that is its audio design. The music, while good, doesn't offer the same level of fabulousness that the first game did. This is entirely due to the fact that Masafumi Takada was nowhere to be seen on this project. Some of his awesome songs from the Darkside OST of No More Heroes made into the game, but I've heard those a bunch already. I wanted something new and incredible to listen to. Akira Yamaoka contributed 3 fairly rocktacular songs, and there are definitely some great chiptunes ditties throughout the 8-bit stuff, but the immersiveness of the first game's soundtrack isn't really present.

A lot of people harped on No More Heroes when it released for its technical shortcomings. It had a laggy framerate, subpar visuals, and a bland open world. What it lacked in those areas, it completely made up for in its clever and inventive scenario and boss design. I always found it unfortunate that people raised these complaints about that title, as I felt like they completely missed the point of the game. Unfortunately, most of the changes made to No More Heroes 2 seem to have been designed to appease the people who disliked the first game. While this may ultimately sell more copies of Desperate Struggle, where does it leave people like me who appreciated the first game not in spite of, but because of its flaws?