Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is not the sequel Grasshopper Manufacture spent a decade promising. It is something stranger: a 2019 action-adventure built around a possessed console, a top-down camera, and a director working at his most personal. Released worldwide on January 18, 2019 for the Nintendo Switch, then later that year on PlayStation 4 and Windows by Marvelous, it is the third game in the No More Heroes series and the first Goichi Suda has directed since the original.
It is also, by Suda’s own framing, not a direct sequel to No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. It is a fresh start for Travis Touchdown. That distinction matters more than the marketing did.
Trailer, via NintendoAU.
A Trailer in Texas, Seven Years Later
The setup is the best thing in the game. Seven years after No More Heroes 2, Travis — now 37 — has isolated himself in a camper in a forest in Texas, playing video games. Badman, a former professional baseball player turned assassin, is on the run from the Smith Syndicate. The syndicate’s Dan Smith tracks him down, seeking retribution for being double crossed, and hands him a Death Ball on the condition that he kill Travis and use it to resurrect his daughter, Bad Girl.
Bad Girl is the boss Travis killed on his first climb up the United Assassins Association rankings. Badman is her father. When he ambushes Travis, the fight wakes the “Death Drive MK-II,” a dormant console in Travis’ possession. It absorbs them both.
The console reacts to Badman’s Death Ball, and the two get transported into the video game that’s contained in it.
Inside, the console’s AI construct, Death & Drive, explains the deal: the unreleased console was built by Dr. Juvenile, six Death Balls hold the only games ever made for it, and clearing all six grants one wish. Travis and Badman call a truce and team up to resurrect Bad Girl.
Skill Chips, Bugs, and a Second Controller
The structure is an anthology. Players move through multiple video games and defeat the bugs in each, with levels inspired by genres like platforming and role-playing. Combat stays a hack and slash, close to previous No More Heroes titles, with occasional perspective shifts and gimmicks tied to whichever game you are inside. Each one ends with a boss.
New here are “Skill Chips,” named after Gundam models, which unlock special attacks from a scattergun-type blast to an orbital laser. Two-player co-op runs on a single Joy-Con, with the second player as Badman. Travis can return to his trailer at any time to buy attire and access the Death Drive MK-II, plus “Travis Strikes Back,” a visual novel adventure mode where he searches the real world for Death Balls.
| Element | Previous No More Heroes | Travis Strikes Again |
|---|---|---|
| Camera | Third person | Third person and top-down |
| Structure | Ranking climb | Six games in one console |
| Co-op | None | Two-player, single Joy-Con |
| Special attacks | Series standard | Skill Chips |
What Suda Built Instead
Suda collaborated with numerous indie developers to fold elements of their games into Travis Strikes Again, and that collaboration is the point. The visual novel sections between Death Drive games carry the real weight. Over those seven years Travis married Sylvia Christel, a former UAA confidant, and had two children. He left them for their safety, because assassins kept coming.
That is a heavier story than the premise suggests. It also explains why Suda refuses to call this a sequel. No More Heroes 2 ended a ranking story. Travis Strikes Again starts a life.
The gameplay is the weaker half. Critics at the time praised the story and the imaginative presentation while finding the combat repetitive, and that split holds up. Six games means six sets of genre gimmicks layered over one hack-and-slash core, and the core does not carry that much repetition. The Skill Chips add range without adding depth. The trailer and the visual novel are where the game breathes.
The Score
Five months after launch, No More Heroes III was announced at E3 2019 — a follow-up to this game and a proper sequel to the series, released on the Nintendo Switch on August 27, 2021. Read in that light, Travis Strikes Again is a bridge, and bridges rarely get judged on their own terms.
This one should be. It is a messier, smaller, more personal game than the series it belongs to, and its best ideas — the truce, the family Travis abandoned, the wish that could undo his worst kill — are not filler between fights. They are the reason the fights exist. The repetitive combat is real, and it costs the game. But the story is the part that lasts, and it is the part No More Heroes III had to answer for.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
