No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: Margaret, Ryuji, Captain Vladimir, and Alice Twilight. Even Skelter Helter could be considered this since he wasn't very evil to begin with.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Henry's nightmare. He fights an anime girl with robot arms on her back who claims her mind and Henry's have merged and tries to kill him when he wants to leave. Why he's dreaming about killer anime girls is completely unexplained and he never mentions it to anyone afterwards.
    • It's implied the room Travis put him in had something to do with it. Outside forces can affect your dreams while you slumber. Notice when Henry awakes he notices the poster of the Bizarre Jelly 5 girls. Plus Travis tells him to keep it down as he was "watching" Bizarre Jelly 5.
    • There's also every possibility he's a closet otaku, maybe he and his brother aren't as different as they think.
    • Another possibility is that Henry and Travis's minds merged (as Mimmy claimed with herself instead of Travis) due to their close proximity (and them being twins?), and since Travis was "preoccupied" at the time with thoughts of Bizarre Jelly 5, Henry fought a personification of Travis' mindscape in that form.
  • Breather Boss: Cloe Walsh is the easiest boss in the game so long as you avoid her acid-spit kiss and poisonous Breath Weapon.
    • Captain Vladimir is also easy to beat. Up until he's low on health and begins to use his Kill Sat attack...
  • Contested Sequel: Though most people do still like it, whether the sequel is better or worse than the original game is a very contested point so far.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Pretty much the whole damned soundtrack.
  • Ear Worm: Try to tell me Margaret's boss music isn't. Even Travis says that it's "catchy as hell"!
  • Freud Was Right: Sylvia posits that to Travis, killing people is "just like getting off." He doesn't even blink.
    • As if that wasn't enough, the Peony gets bigger as Travis' "Ecstasy" Gauge rises. Speaking of said gauge, after a... certain event with Sylvia, Travis starts every fight with it completely filled.
      • An astute player will notice that the item that completely fills Travis' ecstasy meter is a porno magazine. And then there's the beam sword's power meter icon that looks strangely like a smiling red dildo. None of this is helped by the fact that the way Travis charges his swords seemingly looks like he's jerking off...
  • Fridge Brilliance: The reason why Travis didn't have his revelation until right after the second rank boss fight is because all of the other assassins he faced were either weird (Margaret), demented (Matt Helms) or non-talkative (Ryuji) enough to not think of them as anything more than obstacles on his way to get revenge (and even then Travis showed some amount of sympathy towards Ryuji and Margaret). It wasn't until someone semi-normal actually talked to Travis about how insane everything had become to make him realize how wrong the ranking fights are. Plus he was right next to getting his revenge so he'd be thinking more clearly by then.
    • Besides which, all of his opponents up to that point, sympathetic or not, all seemed to still enjoy the fight; Margaret was a Graceful Loser, sure, but she also spent the whole fight talking smack to Travis through her song's lyics; Ryuji was a Worthy Opponent who seemed to enjoy the fight just as much as Travis, and even Captain Vladimir, who Travis arguably showed the most sympathy for after defeating until Alice, mistook Travis for an alien and forced Travis to kill him. Simply put, while Travis was starting to have his doubts before, meeting Alice, the only person in the competition who seems to truly hate being a part of it, made it all hit home.
    • Also, why Travis wears all of his katanas on his belt, instead of leaving them under his bed like in the first game. As well as being more convenient to the player, it's to prevent a situation like in the end of the first game, where he's caught unaware and unarmed.
    • Bizarre Jelly gets expanded from three to five members. Bizzare Jelly 5. BJ 5. B Js. Blowjobs.
  • Fridge Horror: One of the revenge missions shows construction work occurring on the beach... the same beach where Holly Summers' remains were buried in the last game.
  • Goddamned Bats: "Gettin' yer jollies?!" Guns aren't quite the broken weapon they were in the first game, but they're still annoying as hell. Also a contender are those knife-wielding pricks, who tend to block most of your strikes and like to knock you off-balance while you're distracted by a much more important foe.
    • The good news about gun mooks is that, stamina-wise, they're the weakest in the game. One step-in slash is often enough to kill them.
    • Enemies with both regular and beam katanas are pretty obnoxious, too, as they have more health than at least most of the regular mooks you face, and are REALLY good at smacking you around if you're not careful. Chainsaw mooks sort of count as well, as all their attacks are unblockable and if you get hit, say goodbye to a good chunk of your health meter. While chainsaw mooks by themselves aren't too difficult if you're wielding the Peony (which interrupts all their attacks,) it's when they're mixed in with a group when they're the most dangerous, as they can sneak up on you if you're distracted by another enemy (ESPECIALLY when a grappler mook gets ahold of you).
  • Goddamned Boss: Stop flying in the goddamn air, New Destroyman!
  • Holy Shit Quotient: Significantly upped. Skelter Helter tearing off his own head in his death scene kicks off the game, though it's briefly upped on both sides of the fourth wall right before the fight against Jasper Batt. Jr, who has three of henchmen come in and literally deliver Travis the heads of Shinobu, Henry, and Sylvia on platters. None of them turn out to be dead, however: It was just a Mind Screw aimed at both the player and Travis.
  • I Am Not Shazam: Letz Shake is the man with the mohawk; Dr. Shake is his father, the earthquake machine.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Gettin your jollie- Chicken shit. Gettin your jollies? Chicken shit. Gettin your jol- Chicken shit.
    • Nathan Copeland's BLESS YEW!
    • Everything Million Gunman says during his fight can become tiresome...
    • New Destroyman's laugh. It doesn't help that one of him never stays still either.
  • Mostly Narmless: When Travis fights Ryuji, he'll shout out "Come out, dragon!" Sounds corny, but it's kinda difficult to mock what he said considering he's about to summon a fucking dragon!
  • Nightmare Fuel: The setting for the fight against Matt Helms, and of course Matt Helms himself.
  • Nintendo Hard: The special difficulty mode in the "Bizarre Jelly 5" game. Just unlocking it requires you to beat hard mode without dying once, a feat in itself, but just beating special mode at all is even harder. Words do it no justice.
    • Jasper Batt Jr. is, oddly enough, pathetically easy on Sweet (then again, so are the other bosses), and as much of a pain he is on Mild, he's still somewhat manageable. On Bitter, however, the kid gloves come off; he still has the teleport punches that take extremely precise timing to dodge, only this time he hits harder and spams them more often, not to mention he, like the other bosses, has more hit points. Taken Up to Eleven with Deathmatch mode where you not only have to fight him on Bitter difficulty, but with the added challenge of no health pickups and no checkpoints.
  • Scrappy Level: Both Shinobu stages. Playing as Shinobu wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't force you to take advantage of the fact that she has a (rather clumsy) jump, in the form of quite a bit of platforming. The camera doesn't help matters, as it's very easy to fall off a building and have to go a long way back to get back up. Fortunately the enemies don't respawn.
    • Her fighting could also use some polishing. She ends combos with a drawn out sheathing of her sword and a not as drawn out but still drawn out sheathing of her sword. This isn't an issue when you're fighting mooks since she usually fights them in such small groups, but it sucks some of the fun out the two boss fights. The fight with New Destroyman is good only on the virture that it's the fight with New Destroyman.
      • It's a good idea to not even finish the combos most of the time because of the drawn out animation. You're not vulnerable and you can start a new chain almost immediately afterward.
    • In her stages, the jumping, while awkward, wasn't the main problem. Yeah, you'd have a terribly difficult time trying to get up a platform at times, but this wouldn't be so bad if you only had to do it once. If Shinobu only left platforms by jumping or getting knocked off by enemy fire rather than running off by accident, the platforming sections of her stages would've been a lot better.
    • The graveyard in Matt Helms' stage is annoying to play through, particularly because there are at least three chainsaw mooks, and three other giant mooks with axes.
      • This level isn't too difficult if you have the Peony. If you dodge their attacks fast enough, the sword will get longer and longer, and you'll be able to cut down multiple enemies simultaneously.
    • The parking lot outside Margaret's stage. It's just a Zerg Rush of probably upward of fifty mooks, killing them over and over. It also has tons of gun mooks, so many of them that if you don't get rid of those quickly, you will die.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The scorpion mini game was generally considered the worst one in the first No More Heroes. So, as a joke, its the only mini game that carries over into the sequel, badly clashing with the seven other 2D mini games. If anything, it's even WORSE this time. Even though there are first-aid kits scattered throughout the job site this time, they're all only one-use kits, and unlike the first game you can't dash to make it to them in a hurry if you get stung (in fact, if you get stung you go even SLOWER.) Add to that the fact that the tall grass is taller and more dense this time, making it even harder to see the scorpions, and the fact that the scorpions can dig to escape from an easy capture, or ambush you, and can sting you when you're trying to pick them up. Luckily you don't have to play it at all.
    • The motorcycle stage in the Ryuji fight was also a huge pain. The controls for Travis' motorbike were clumsy and slippery, and trying to knock Ryuji off the cliff was difficult due to the fact that his bike is impossible to knock away while he's boosting. And in the higher difficulties, he relies on his boost a lot (like every five to seven seconds or so).
      • Amusingly enough, the fact that he boosts more on higher difficulties make the fight a lot easier: just park near a cliff, wait for him to start the boost, then move out of the way and watch.
  • Tear Jerker: Vladimir's death; the poor man has been trapped in space for a long time that he has no idea that he's back on Earth. When Travis defeats him, Vladimir rises up into the sky, spending his last few moments realizing that he was home at last. "Glory to the Soviet Union" indeed.
    • Alice's death. All she wants is Travis to remember her and Travis complies. The last thing we see from her before she's split in half? A small smile...*sniff*
  • That One Boss: RYUJI. He's the only boss who's a pain to beat even after you figure out all his moves. You have to dodge at precisely the right moment or you'll get hit. And then there's that dragon attack...
    • Nathan Copeland, Matt Helms, and Alice are also quite challenging.
    • Just about everyone on Bitter mode. Even Skelter Helter is frustrating to beat.
    • See Nintendo Hard for the entry on the infamously cheap Jasper Batt Junior
  • Too Cool to Live: Any assassin the player thinks is Badass, Crazy Awesome, or just plain cool-looking.
  • Uncanny Valley: After you go up the second escalator in Pizza Batt Tower, there is a store right in front of you that is actually called "Uncanny Valley".
    • All of Charlie MacDonald's "groupies" look and sound exactly the same.
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