"An over-the-top brawler powered by absurdity."

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is the newest game from the twisted mind of Suda 51. This time around, the zany brawler comes in a more streamlined package than the first, trimming the fat to bring you more ridiculous action.

Desperate Struggle stars Travis Touchdown, the anime/videogame loving assassin, as he battles his way up the ranks of the UAA once again. This time, Travis is trying to take down the number one assassin to avenge the death of his friend, Bishop. But even if you haven’t played the first game, jumping into the second shouldn’t have you too confused. In fact, the characters even playfully break the fourth wall in the beginning to mention that some players are skipping the first game and don’t care about the past events.

No More Heroes 2 is, for the most part, a brawler. The controls feel very similar to the first game, though combat is a little more fluid this time around. You no longer have to be locked on to perform an emergency evade (dodge roll) and the camera now does a much better job of following you. Travis can perform attacks both with his beam katana and with his fists and feet. These attacks are performed using buttons with the angle of the Wii Remote determining a high or low attack. Switching between high and low as well as between slashes and punches can lead to extended combos.

When an enemy’s life is almost depleted, it’s time for a deathblow. Though this is technically a Quick Time Event (a mechanic most gamers dread by now) involving a swing of the Wii Remote in a given direction, it actually feels great and accents the button-based combat brilliantly. This is largely due to how forgiving they are. The purpose of the QTE’s becomes a chance to pull you into the action rather than to give you an opportunity to fail. The combat is a great mix of buttons and motion control that rely on neither too heavily.

"You can buy clothes... like Space Glasses."

If an enemy is stunned, you can perform a wrestling move on them. This is also done with well executed, motion-based QTEs. Unlike the first game, Travis will automatically stab an enemy after the wrestling move, eliminating the need to do so manually. This basically turns wrestling moves into an alternate form of deathblows, speeding up the combat in the process.

If you can deal enough damage without taking damage yourself, you can enter Darkside Mode. There are several different things that can happen, depending on the results of a quick slot machine. While some are fairly ordinary like slowing all enemies down, another involves you transforming into a tiger.

There are several different beam katanas you’ll acquire throughout the game. While these don’t have any visible stats, they effect your fighting style greatly. Some are better for taking on faster enemies, others for larger groups, and so on. It’ll also be convenient to obtain extra beam katanas since they each have their own battery gauge. While you can recharge any katana by shaking it, it’s often best to switch weapons instead when you’re in the heat of battle.

The game’s strongest aspect is the boss battles. Each fight feels unique and, with a few exceptions, the bosses are very memorable. While one battle has you dodging wall lasers and missiles fired from a cult leader/hip hop artists’ ghetto blaster, the next has you fighting a football player in a giant robot made out of his own cheerleaders. Almost every boss is a treat. Strangely, though, a few of them don’t have stages leading up to them which is a bit disappointing. Luckily, those are the minority.

"Each boss battle has its own unique flavor."

While the ranked battles that progress the story are now free to enter, you can still do odd jobs to earn cash for clothes, beam katanas, and stat upgrades.  These jobs (with the exception of one) are done in 8bit mini games. For the most part, they are pretty fun. One has you playing a version of Pipe Dream where you must run around and pick up the various pipe fittings and carry them, Captain N style. Another has you playing a Mach Rider clone to deliver pizzas.

You’ll also play retro games to increase your stats. There are two gym mini games; one for health and one for attack. With each success, they get both harder and more expensive.  The problem with this is that you must pay for each attempt. If you fail to do well enough, you won’t get the stat increase and your money will still be spent. You can easily blow through your cash with failed exercises if you’re not careful.

The open world of the first game has been completely removed in favor of a stylized menu. Rather than padding the game by forcing you to drive through a mostly empty city, you’ll spend the extra time fighting 50% more bosses (that is definitely a good thing). There are still collectibles to accumulate in your motel room, but they’re all found within the ranked battle stages. While at your motel, you can play with your cat, change outfits, and even play a SHMUP on your TV among other things.

"Training and side jobs are both accomplished through 8bit mini games."

To mix things up a bit, you’ll play as two other characters for a small portion of the game. These characters, Henry and Shinobu, each have their own abilities. While the boss fight as Henry is a nice diversion, the Shinobu missions felt lackluster. This is mostly because Shinobu, unlike other characters, can jump. Unfortunately, she can’t jump well and there are some incredibly frustrating platform sections that feel really sloppy. The game was obviously not designed with jumping in mind. There are also a few optional Revenge Missions. But other than an aesthetic prize from completing them all, there’s not much point to them as they seem to award you very little money.

The visual style looks better than ever. Both the menus and the in game graphics look great, and the music works well, too. On the flip-side, there are a few aesthetic aspects of it that lack polish. You’ll find plenty of invisible walls throughout the game and enemies will often repeatedly spout the same line over and over again. It’s hard to tell if this is another result of Suda’s strange sense of humor or an honest oversight. Either way, it gets a bit annoying.

It should be noted that, while I would consider much of the game to be “immature”, the game has a “Mature” rating for a reason. Despite being stylized, Desperate Struggle is quite violent, has plenty of swears in the dialogue, and has its fair share of sexual themes. It’s far from subtle, so if you’re offended by this you should steer clear.

No More Heroes 2 is very fun. While the combat isn’t especially deep, it’s very satisfying. And thanks to the streamlined setup, you’ll be fighting more than anything else. Playing the first game after finishing the sequel feels like a convoluted mess by comparison. While not perfect, Desperate Struggle is a delightfully absurd action game worth checking out.

"Despite popular belief, this is a screenshot and not something framed on my wall."

I have come to the conclusion that the staff at Vanillaware is made up of a bunch of wizards who use very powerful magic to make the graphics for their games. The above screenshot alone is enough to cause a “double take“. And yet, that is nothing compared to seeing “Muramasa: The Demon Blade”  in motion. The game somehow managers to look like a moving painting, and I don’t say that lightly.

But Muramasa’s graphics are already becoming increasingly well known. The story that really must be told is that of its gameplay. After all, the prettiest game in the world (which this just might be) is nothing without fun and engaging gameplay to back it up.

Fortunately, Muramasa has this in spades. Though it’s often labeled an “Action RPG”, the game’s primary focus is on the action, with RPG elements backing it up more subtly. While traversing the luscious 2D environments, you will have random encounters, but they will not take you to a separate battle screen. Instead, enemies will appear by popping out of the ground or dropping from the ceiling as you ready your blade.

I was shocked at how many different attacks you can perform in battle right off the bat. All of your standard attacks are performed with a combination of directional stick input (or pad if you prefer) and a single attack button. Using this method, you can perform standard slashing combos, uppercuts, stabs, jumping somersaults, zig-zagging air dashes, dodge rolls, blocks, and more.

What’s even more amazing than the sheer number of actions that can be performed is how fluidly they can be linked together. Chaining each move allows you to take on ridiculous numbers of enemies at once, while racking up huge combos. The combat feels very reminiscent of the 3D Ninja Gaiden games, but on a 2D plane (not to be confused with the combat in the 2D Ninja Gaiden games).

To make things even more interesting, Muramasa has you equip three swords at once. You will only attack with one at a time, but you can switch between the three at the push of a button. This has several uses. Each sword you acquire in the game has a “secret art” that consumes “soul power”. This is essentially a special attack, specific to that sword. There is a surprising variety in the secret arts including creating phantoms of yourself, shooting ground waves, spinning around rapidly in the air, and performing elemental slashes… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

"Got a pesky Tengu problem? Call Momohime!"

Besides secret arts, each sword has its own attack power. Most swords even have a bonus effect such as “no poison”. They’re also divided into two categories: blades and long blades. The regular blades allow you to perform numerous quick slashes while the long blades will cause each attack to be a slow, but powerful swing.

The swords’ individual abilities are not the only reason to switch between them, however. Every time you block an enemy’s attack, it will consume some of your soul power (just like using secret arts). If your soul power is completely depleted, your sword will break. Thankfully, all swords will heal themselves and regain their soul power when they’re sheathed. As an added bonus, switching swords will periodically cause you to perform “Quick Draw”, an attack that damages all the enemies on screen.

When you boot up the game, it will ask you which character you want to play as. The two characters have their own independent stories, and progress for both is stored in a single save slot. Though they both have the same move set, Momohime’s attacks are much faster while Kisuke’s are slower and stronger. Interestingly, the game’s difficulty setting can be adjusted at any time from the pause menu.

The map structure gives off a “Metroidvania Light” vibe in that, while set up in a much simpler manner than either Metroid or Castlevania, every level is still connected in one giant map. Rather than special abilities granting access to the next areas, each blade gained from a boss allows you to break barriers of a specific color.

Speaking of bosses, Muramasa’s are a blast to fight. Each one is visual masterpiece. On top of that, each boss fight has a distinctly different feel. I was always excited to see what the next boss would be like.

Beating bosses is actually one of two ways to obtain new blades. The game also lets your forge them. The forging menu is set up as a giant branching tree. In order to unlock a blade, you must have all the ones that connect to it above. Because the blades from bosses can’t be forged, much of what is unlocked depends on which bosses have been defeated. Once a blade is unlocked, you must spend “spirit” (obtained from eating recovery items) and “souls” (obtained from defeating enemies and collecting them on the map). No other materials are necessary for forging.

"While fighting giant centipedes, I managed to get a 650+ hit combo."

You will, however, need materials for cooking. When not engaged in battle, you can use the recipes and ingredients you find and buy to make food. Some of the recipes are for food that must be eaten immediately while others let you make recovery items that can be used in battle. Even cooking looks beautiful in Murasama. Each dish has a completely unique and detailed animation to go along with it that looks so good that I regret how many times I played the game on an empty stomach.

The music in Muramasa is also great. Though most of it consists of traditional Japanese instruments (much like Okami’s soundtrack), it’s also occasionally spiced up with rocking guitar or electronica. The mix of styles gives it a unique sound. Quite possibly my favorite touch is that when a battle is initiated, other instruments are dynamically layered onto the existing song rather than abruptly switching to “battle music”. This makes the transition in and out of battles even more seamless and satisfying.

One of my only real complaints with Muramasa is how often assets are reused for different areas. Fortunately, they’re so breath taking that seeing them again isn’t too big of a deal, and usually they will add different lighting effects to make it less noticeable when it does happen.

Each character’s story takes roughly 8-10 hours to beat. Though it is the same overall map, Kisuke starts on the far west while Momohime starts on the far east. The characters have entirely different stories, bosses, and blades. Also, each boss has their own unique section of the map leading up to them.

Fortunately, the game doesn’t stop there. After clearing both stories, you will be able to access new ares and fight many optional bosses. You will also be able to share blades between the two characters, unlocking even more forging options where the characters’ trees overlap. Only by using blades obtained after your first play-through will you be able to obtain the other endings.

“Muramasa: The Demon Blade” is not a game to be ignored. Not only is it one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen, it’s also an extremely fun game that proves that 2D gameplay still has what it takes to compete with the 3D HD franchises of modern day. Its fast pace and fantastic execution keep it constantly entertaining, and places it as one of the best experiences available on the Wii to date.

This review is based on a copy of Muramasa: The Demon Blade provided to us by Ignition Entertainment.