Ranking the Bosses of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle from Worst to Best

hey everyone alex from cytoknox here and today i'll be ranking the bosses of no more heroes 2 from worst to best no more heroes 2 like its predecessor is a game about travis touchdown and in some cases shinobu killing an ensemble of nutty assassins this in turn results in plenty of boss fights exactly 50 more than the first game to be specific as a huge fan of this series i'm excited to finally put a ranking out for the second game of the trilogy let's get into it [Music] i've noticed that games in general have a habit of making optional bosses either really good or really lame kimmy howell unfortunately falls cleanly into the latter classification while she technically has a whopping two attacks she only ever uses one of them the spinny combo one not once in my entire fight with her did she use another move this may have been because i fought her like a [ __ ] and just spammed charge attacks but it's because of the same problem i criticized gene 4 in my video in the first games bosses fighting her normally is just not viable she ends the combo with an unblockable move so you can't just block the thing and dodging doesn't let you punish her afterwards at least to a degree that would matter i fought her twice since i forgot to record the first fight and just take my word forth that i tried my hardest to fight her like a man the first time around and was punished ruthlessly for my mercy the one thing i will grant this fight is that kimmy is at least one of the stronger personalities in the game and the idea of travis having gone from a hopeless loser to a celebrity with neurotic fangirls over the last few years is pretty funny to me [Music] million gunman is just a bland boring waste of a boss slot i can't imagine why a series revered for's memorable entertaining characters would bother making this guy he's rich hangs out in a bank and is a good shower the gun that's just about the only characterization he gets and it's not fascinating or amusing i'm not just putting him here because he's a dud of a character either the gameplay itself is lousy i actually don't hate the shinobu segment of the game nearly as much as some people but i will concede that the platforming is incredibly inconsistent and janky attaining any measure of precision with it is a pipe dream and you'd be better off trying to win a formula one race off a gallon of vodka the entire fight is based around using shinobu's vertical movement to track down million gunman who teleports around the arena using these doors in the wall so he can snipe you like a little [ __ ] when it comes to infuriating bs in this game the feeling of finally finding him just for him to scamper off somewhere else is second only to the window of death which i assure you will be discussed in due time the good news is that you're not likely to die here since he's a lousy shot for the most part he's got a fancy gun sure but clearly he never played metal gear solid 3. i've heard you can stunlock him by attacking him twice but not triggering the final blow of a combo which i've never tried but sounds like it'd look pretty funny he roll spams like it's dark souls 3 pvp but this game has far less generous iframe so it does him little good if i have to credit him with anything i guess he dies in a pretty cool way i'd say they gave shinobu some pretty cool executions given her propensity for slicing head to the mincemeat i think this is probably the boss i have the least to say about in the entire series she isn't comically dull like million gunman but she's so easy that she dies in like 30 seconds i did once hear that suda intentionally made this fight easy to serve as a break after the brutality of matt helms which i can see being true because that would be a very suda thing to do anyways all you get out of this fight is the knowledge that travis isn't into bdsm and a fancy jiggle physics showcase when you chop her into slices at the end travis really fumbled here a girl is finally into him and he puts a sword through her stomach i guess she did have evil green poison spit which would have made kissing a bit awkward if i had to find one thing i like about this fight i think the arena is pretty cool and the fight is harmless enough despite being unmemorable and short [Music] first off it's cool getting to briefly play as henry i'll acknowledge that the dash feature feels a little wonky to me but it's undeniably fun zooming around to dodge stuff the concept of henry having to fight off a fever dream imparted to his subconscious by all the magical girl anime travis watches on his couch is a creative one alright but i think novelty is what really makes or breaks this fight for someone the wide open dreamlike arena and bizarre boss design definitely make it one to remember but i recall getting bored quickly henry's energy ball attack though cool hits like a flea so you won't find much use from it instead it's all about dodging an attack punishing a few times then retreating this is a normal enough boss fight template but needs either dynamic changes or a really solid main move set to work for as long as the fight goes on once the humor of getting pimped slapped and blown up by a tiny anime girl with robot arms words off you'll be more concerned with how annoying it is when she dashes out of reach of your combos midway through at least you get to vent your anger by making her blow up at the end [Music] one complaint i see a lot about this game is that the bosses don't have cool names like they did in the first one honestly i kind of liked it although i do think it's lame that you only learned their name after you killed him half the time there's sort of a mystery to the normal name assassin since their name doesn't tell you squat the name matt helms doesn't tell you anything and i forget what i originally expected him to be like but whatever it was it definitely wasn't this fat masked pyromaniac ghost toddler he also has the same voice actor as mimi make of that which you will a flamethrower that's also an axe is an awesome idea for a weapon that sounds straight out of tf2 although unfortunately matt helms is about as fun to fight as a wm1 pyro matt loves two things slamming his axe on your head and pissing fire on your general direction which would be much more palatable if he didn't live in tyler durden's house from fight club the hardest part of this fight is not getting caught in all the random junk littered around the room and the path to the health chest is so needlessly labyrinthine that it makes me feel like a little kid solving a cereal box maze he also has a nasty tendency to stun lock you with his molotov cocktails which are far more effective than they are in bloodborne one sort of neat redeeming factor is that a decent amount of the furniture in this fight is destructible which can both remove some of the frustration and add some rare environmental interactivity into the mix lastly as much as i usually love the voice work for travis from robin atkins down i always feel blue bald by the way he says full power in the finisher i always expect him to see it like full power go or something like that but he just kind of like says it normally and for some reason this drives me nuts every time is this just me or do any of you feel this way i'm genuinely curious i think most people put jasper at dead last and i know i'll have to do some talking to explain this while i definitely can see why i cut him some slack for a couple reasons first off i think the idea of an intentionally awful final boss is pretty damn funny no more heroes in general is a series very unconcerned with remaining a serious tone for the finale and this is the most flagrant case of that in the entire trilogy the game building up this sinister mastermind only for it to be a [ __ ] who talks like he was raised in a diet of tap water and beyond burgers was a great carpet pull in my opinion a lot of the jokes are obvious like the hilarity of the final phase being a goofy looking macy's parade foot with laser eyes but one subtle gag i never noticed for years is that while henry says he'll be fighting jasper's quote ring piece goons he's just hanging out by the bar in the side of the room doing absolutely nothing during the second phase thanks bro that's a damn shame too since i could have really used his help against that instant killing teleporting cheating lousy garbage phase i'll get back to that though since i prefer to go phase by phase and going over a boss like this the first part sucks all he does is drive around in his stupid-ass car and yell travis every few seconds i had to pause my game to google how to kill him at one point because i stopped doing damage for no clear reason as it turns out the game expects you to randomly try entering a beam katana clash with his car when he charges at you with nothing indicating that you should try this but a heap of bullsh once you get that down though you get to the main part of the fight that everyone dreads the car was lame but relatively harmless once jasper starts cycling sarms the effects are devastating with him having learned a multitude of infuriating new tricks in the process some such gems include the ridiculous pizza flip attack in the teleport he has hands down the most unfair teleportation based moveset in any game i've ever played putting the likes of noob cybot and albert wesker to shame this is compounded by his love for hurling you out of the aforementioned window of doom which kills you instantly regardless of your health i had no idea this was even a mechanic so i was apoplectic with indignant rage when he did this to me just as i was finally about to take him out the only real pluses to this evil phase that i like how he looks and his theme titanium bat is one of the best in the game in my opinion anyways once you drop kick roid rager jasper out of his own window phase 3 begins where he's now transformed into a balloon with laser eyes for some reason i think this phase is probably the one i have released to say about beyond the bizarre premise is fairly simple and not too hard it was originally going to be foul with glastonbury which i think would have been cool but sadly was cut due to time constraints i honestly like a good deal of the things that make up this fight and find it to be one of the funniest things in the series but i can't in good faith put him any higher than 10th because comedy alone isn't enough to carry a character to the top of the totem pole [Music] let's shake his back and fortunately this time henry is too busy being a star wars reference to be a [ __ ] snatcher getting sliced in half didn't seem to cause much lasting damage save for giving him a real funny way of talking and a bit more of an ego i guess i'd be feeling pretty good about myself if i'd cut that earthquake's charge time from 10 seconds to 3 seconds that's a pretty huge margin for a pr even with that improvement though i have no clue how henry lost to this guy the uaa must be staging these fights a wwe style whenever travis isn't around anyways the fight is real simple and doesn't change one bit throughout it's either earthquakes or lasers with no in between i don't really know why i like this fight because the concept sounds awful on paper i think it's because it's cool getting to face off against a guy who technically had like a whole game of build up beforehand and fighting a giant robot brain is a pretty unique concept that makes it stand out easily it's like if speed buster from the first game was actually fun that's a good comparison both are waiting games but let's shake's earthquakes are far less tedious and lengthy to contend with and the second move the lasers are actually sort of hard to dodge since they spend so much time building up that it deeks me out just like the blue smelter demon this is yet another mediocre boss with a fun character which is something that comes up a lot in this game really case in point the next boss on my list a lot of my commentary on let's shake can be transferred over to new destroyman since the reason for his ho-hum ranking is the same destroy man especially this particular incarnation of him is my favorite character in this series but man does this fight suck at times i think the concept of a guy with two personalities getting cut in half and rebuilt into two dudes is a great idea for a gank boss and looks awesome to boot one of my favorite character designs of all time to the point that i actually drew him myself not too long ago this fight really could have been great with a few tweaks one destroy man is the melee fighter and the other is the reigns support which sounds like a classic recipe for success but just trust me that it does not play out like it should for a number of reasons firstly the arena is way too damn big traversing it to go from one destroy man to the other is impractical and drags the fight out way past the fun zone this issue is compounded by the vertical element of the arena where once again you must utilize shinobu's clunky inconsistent jumping to navigate the area the result is a lot of time spent spamming jump while running into storage crates only for a disembodied destroy beam to herald the arrival of an off-screen ranged attack sending you to the floor i still don't totally get why destroy man loves hanging out in warehouses so much anyways the fight is all right other than that it's pleasant enough when you're just fighting the melee destroy man for example he's got some classic shock moves like he had in the first game but is not without new tricks he now has a super move that he can only use if both his halves are still alive where he tries sucking you into a spirit bomb he forms with his penis laser oh yeah i forgot to point out that he's rerouted the destroy spark to his schlong instead of his hand which is now paired with a pretty funny looking animation and speaking of funny that intro cutscene is my favorite in this series i know all the dialogue by heart with the only other cutscene i know that well being dr pieces in the first game destroy man or at least a blue eye destroy man is so amazingly sleazy that it never fails to crack me up also the way he scrambles to pick up his arm is really funny to me it's got this perfect amount of clunkiness to it that really sells his buffoonery and of course he's graced with another awesome shinobu execution this being my favorite in the entire series the way shinobu spins around on the sword is up there with ryden punching armstrong's stomach as one of the funniest little video game beatdown moments to me all in all a rather average boss fight gameplay-wise that's carried by fantastic well everything that isn't the gameplay if you actually expected this game to have 50 bosses charlie is the unlucky bearer of bad news half the entire rankings list is made up of him and his hoes which can combine to form a giant mecca called santa death parade because why wouldn't they be able to do this that line about fighting you with all his hoes still cracks me up every time since he's just so nonchalant about it this is the weirdest fight in the game by virtue of it being the only one where you're controlling glastonbury an enormous gundamesque robot travis has sitting around under death metal's pool which i always forget travis owns after the events of the first game it plays like a fighting game but both glastonbury and the santa death parade have pretty limited move sets you're either jumping over lasers or blocking punches for the most part with travis just using sword swings and jump kicks in response you can block and use some fancy special moves so it's not just a total mindless slugfest once you get into the rhythm it's pretty easy but i still find it to be a fun break from the usual routine and it's a creative one for sure if i have one gripe it's that the finisher is really confusingly annotated and i always think that i have to tap the buttons in order instead of all at once so the coolness of flinging him into outer space and vaporizing him is slightly dampened by the awkwardness of me taking five to ten seconds to figure out what i'm supposed to do seriously i always forget this it makes me feel like a total [ __ ] anyways charlie is pretty cool and has a relatively fun fight so i give him slightly above average [Music] marks as first bosses go skelter helter is really damn hard in my opinion he does a hefty amount of damage and has attacks for all ranges so it's tricky to escape his aggro to charge up or get a break my fight with him here isn't awful but it's not particularly impressive i'll say that i think his design is pretty neat he's like an edgier cloud strife but if his buster sword had a beam component and he had a cool gun i thought he was a great idea for a first boss since it was more or less like getting to fight his brother helter skelter who died in the intro to the first game well simple he puts up a good fight and gives a pretty cool speech despite getting decapitated which i think gives him major style points [Music] nathan is a criminally underrated boss in my opinion i think he's the most chaotic boss in the game bar none it's extremely dynamic and is actually a decent challenge for only the second boss every quarter of his health you take away prompts him to do a little dance and bring out an additional stage hazard which starts out manageable but quickly turns batshit insane by the end of the fight his penthouse makes sense fortress looked like a mcdonald's playground with all the lasers gunshots explosions conveyor belts and other craft flying around he even has exploding flower pots for some reason his big old stereo arm things fire rockets that take out like half your beam katana energy should you try blocking them which means you gotta spend a lot of the fight scrambling for cover to recharge there is a side room you can hide in that has a health and energy refill but that's about the only reprieve you can get you have maybe 10 seconds of safety in there before nathan barges in to start hooting like michael jackson and pissing missiles towards you which have insane knockback if they actually connect and i gotta mention his walking animation of course which is one of the best i've ever seen in well anything period cracks me up every time the way he dances around like that the fight constantly changing to get crazier and crazier is really appealing to me and i think makes it one of the least repetitive fights out there nathan himself is cool too although i think that far more amusing than any of the dialogue is that exchange of blows with a massacre of pair of hookers between them the absolute disregard for collateral damage here is hilariously macabre and some nice slapstick if you can call it that lastly his death is pretty dope getting cut in half at the waist is a flashy way to go befitting of a guy with as much style as nathan and i thought closed it all up nicely [Music] the end game is undoubtedly the better half of the game in my opinion given the last four bosses on my list are all from the home stretch of the game while i think margaret is definitely the weakest of them all she's still great and i don't have many issues with her fight the most famous part of her fight is her theme philistine which has sparked an endless debate over whether the us or japanese version of the song is better i personally much prefer the us version as you can tell by my choice in what to use as the background music for this segment i find the japanese version's excessive auto-tune sound really annoying but with it absent in the english version it's pretty good so that's my two cents on the real point of contention here anyways the fight is best when it's in the cat and mouse phase in the beginning where you're trying to pinpoint her location and getting close while she sends out explosive sniper rounds your way she can rest on top of the billboard to take pot shots at you but a little known fact i discovered is that enough hits actually makes the billboard fall down and become inaccessible for her which is a neat touch once you close in on her she still has a couple melee attacks to fend you off but they're not too hard to work around over time i'm more or less into the loop of running in making her do something then running back in afterwards i normally hate bosses running away but i wouldn't mind margaret having some sort of distance making move to escape your onslaughts i'm sure this is partly my fault for slashing down her sniper perch though so i admittedly brought this on myself margaret moonlight is a nice reprieve after her stupidly long stage and though it loses a bit of its initial fun after you catch up to her it's not a major drop in quality so i'd still put it down as a good fight [Music] continuing the trend of getting to fight bosses who were shafted in the first game ryuji fights like a spiritual successor to darkstar or at least what i imagine he would have been like before gene let's shake him that motorcycle sumo match at the beginning is awkward to control and way too long but once you get it down it's more than made up for by the awesomeness that makes up the remainder of the duel unlike most of the rankers ryuji isn't much for conversation and pretty much gets right into things once you show up the arena where you fight him is beautiful looking and makes for a great spot to settle in for the match for 7th rank he has a pretty similar moveset to travis given he also uses a beam weapon but his special move summons a huge energy dragon to come after you that i find extremely hard to avoid even if i just run away it sometimes catches up to me which can be annoying but honestly it's so cool that i don't mind it you can block it but it eats battery almost as bad as nathan's rockets the sword play itself is really fair and i found myself feeling a sort of camaraderie with ryuji over time as i got better and better at clashing swords with him his death at the hands of sylvia marks the beginning of the endgame story arc with travis beginning to seriously question the morality of the uaa i found it cool how the finishing command that usually kills the boss just leads to a stalemate here further showing how balanced this battle between dragon and tiger was as symmetrical of a duel as you'll find save for travis vs henry ryuji was a worthy opponent who i always enjoy fighting and it's a shame that he was given the exact same theme as matt helms for some reason [Music] captain vladimir is a pretty bizarre boss but definitely awesome looking hence why i put him on the thumbnail he looks a lot like the fury from metal gear solid 3 which makes me wonder if suda ever played that game since that's like the third time it's come up in this video alone he's a spectral soviet cosmonaut who thinks he's still in space and in the midst of the cold war this raises a lot of questions like how the hell is this guy the third ranker did he kill the old ranker by accident or something and more fortunately the game doesn't seem to care that much and spends the intro cutscene demonstrating that you'll need to focus on avoiding attacks from his satellite the volk this thing's wheelhouse is lasers which it can fire in smaller bursts or one mega laser that looks like it really hurt if you got caught up in it vladimir himself can send rocks at you using telekinesis or something but they whiff as long as you aren't standing still so it's sort of a non-threat he also has a laser that comes from his own head that you can actually enter a beam katana clash with oddly enough this fight is honestly really easy but it's one of my favorites for the cool atmosphere and the ending primarily i like the look of the windmill filled cornfields and the dusk-like time of day that it takes place during the ending where he finally regains his sanity and gets one last look at the sky on earth is pretty touching considering how little you know about him and when you deal the finishing blow to break his helmet you can hear him say something about the earth that i can't quite make out which is interesting for once travis manages to convince sylvia to bug off and let him rest in peace which is probably for the best because i'm not quite sure what happens when you suck up someone's ghost into a vacuum but i somehow doubt it works exactly like it does in luigi's mansion captain vladimir is a highly unique and enjoyable fight that is well deserving of his favored status in the community [Music] lastly at number one i have everyone's favorite boss alice twilight or alice moonlight if you subscribe to that fairly plausible fan theory that she's related to margaret moonlight in some way she's burning photos of her old life when you show up to her haunt a zoom of which reveals her with a husband and child as well as some of her children with margaret this detail is never mentioned in any dialogue or anything which i find makes it all the more interesting she is much more of a climax than jasper and mai and many people's opinions because her fight essentially ends the arc that's been running for the back end of the game her reluctance to leave the rankings is tragic but ultimately self-imposed and when travis comedically tells her to just leave it's far more impactful than it seems at face value because he's actually right she can in theory just do what travis did in the ending of the first game where he just passed the mantle on to henry and turned to doing god knows what in his free time alice is fittingly fought a twilight on the roof of an apartment complex a setting that is at once both mundane and visually appealing it makes the fight feel much more personal somehow almost intimate alice's theme is also the best in the game in my opinion a haunting mixture of sounds and motifs that while intense also sounds decidedly somber to me the atmosphere of this fight is one of the best in any game i've played and it really is a major selling point alice herself is an example of great character design too that one shot of her silhouette towering over travis as she activates the asura 6 is a great one she's basically general grievous if he was a hot girl in a skull bikini which works way better than it sounds like it would the fight is fast-paced and engaging with plenty of cinematic-looking dodging going on aided by the flare of evading a wielder of six beam katanas the multitude of moves she has such as firing them off as projectiles and spinning the tail thing around are pretty cool and most of her moves are i-frameable which is fun it encourages you to stay close and fight normally instead of running away and dashing back after a combo ends like so many bosses make you do alice's death beyond simply being cool has some fascinating symbolism wherein her blood coats travis almost entirely being the only instance in the entire series where someone's blood actually stays on him after he kills them holly summers literally blew herself up in his face and he was still spotless for example but here he's totally drenched this is in my opinion meant to symbolize the nature of the ranked fights finally setting in and travis realizing the futility of his titular desperate struggle that scream of despair at the end is also some great voice acting i think this very intentionally was meant to overshadow jasper as a means of showing how hollow revenge is once achieved tying back to that comment skelter helter made in the beginning of the game before ripping off his own head for excelling in basically every category i consider alice not just the best boss in the game but the best in the series if i had to choose one thanks so much for watching and i hope you enjoyed with this second game out of the way only the third remains to rank which i'll cover sooner or later that's all for now deuces

Channel: Cytonox

Views: 6,844

Keywords: Suda51, No More Heroes, Kill The Past, Grasshopper, Wii, Switch, Nintendo, Bosses, Ranked, Worst to Best, Ranking, Boss fight, Travis Touchdown, Beam Katana, Desperate Struggle, No More Heroes 2

Id: qSs1R6Od8iQ

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021