and that's why:

ATTENTION SPOILER WARNING FOR NMH1 AND NMH2!!!!!!!!!

Travis is a nerdy and lonely otaku with not much going on in his life. He’s at home, playing videogames, watching porn and wrestling movies and plays with his cat once in a while. And he’s not really happy with his life, his parents died and his girlfriend left him. When he starts to kill all those assassins, he’s enjoying it, it makes him feel excited and makes him forget all of his problems. He quickly became addicted to a never ending cycle of violence.
But he always feels like this can’t be everything life has to offer…he wants to know what life is about and if there’s a meaning in everything. Sometimes he asks if there is an “exit”, he wants to know what paradise is and where he can find it.
And now we come to Sylvia.
We know, Travis has a crush on her, but we’re never really sure about her.
She often seems to actually really like Travis, they even kiss once, but she always gives him the feeling that she is just playing him. Before Travis fights the first ranked assassin, she even tells him that she loves him.
Sylvia is also not really happy with her life and she just hides everything behind a cold and bitchy attitude. That’s why she loves her association so much, because it gives her excitement and it makes her feel alive and she also can forget about everything that went wrong in her life.
After Sylvia just dissapeared at the end of No More Heroes, Travis was very dissapointed. He was fighting against Henry, finding out that he is married to Sylvia and because Henry is Travis’ twin brother, also his sister-in-law.
As they are running along a never ending road he is still trapped in senselessness violence and still wants to find that “exit they call paradise”…

After he was trying to get out of everything, he was driven into the cycle of violence again. He was killing and killing, again heading for the garden of madness, because he wanted to revenge his friend bishop.
But as Sylvia said once: When you’re so focused on any goal, it can make you blind to what you truly desire…
And now we’re back at Sylvia again.
In No More Heroes 2 where she was sitting in that room, thinking she was talking to some stranger, we could see that she was also trapped, and with her eyes closed, she continued to endure her existence.
Every day was as joyless as the other…
After she told Travis that she and Henry are divorsed now and they finally slept together, she felt like maybe she would be able to open her eyes just a little.
At the end, Travis revenged his friend and fell off a building.
Now all the fights were over and he was still falling and still wasn’t able to find an “exit”.
But then Sylvia came along, caught him up and stopped his falling…
After she dropped him off at the Motel and dissapeared, he found her again in that “etablishment”.
She now realized that she was talking to Travis. After he walked away from the fights, Travis was “the no more hero” but at the end he was a real hero, by his own standards…Travis and Sylvia could open their eyes and both of them finally found….paradise.

So that was what I thought about the story…it’s not just about getting number one, or killing jeane or jasper to get revenge…that is just secondary. It mainly is about two lonely souls trying to find happyness and something "more", something that really matters in their lives. And they found it in each other.
Thank you very much for reading this and please tell me what you think!

i agree and if people disagrees they will go in my "you suck list" lol

I haven't played NMH2 yet but the story in the first one was good.
Nothing very original but the whole top 10 thing was great.

not original at all, its cliche and boring as hell.

lawlz, you practically created an account to tell us that. thats dedication

I0ve only played the firt one, and i think it has a regular history.

i started playing the first one but had to stop when my eyes started bleeding when i entered the town area which appeared to be from a ps1 title.

It's my second fave series ever,right behind Shenmue.

The original is an amazing game, and is one o the best new IPs this generation. The sequel blew hard. gameplay was tweaked for the worst, story was simplified into a 13 year old boys dream, and the entire game lacked the creative spark that is signature of Grasshopper games.

It was an interesting tale. Though I agree that it seemed about escape and realization. I personally found the storytelling to question if the fights were real at all. The story starts as Sylvia telling a story to the "stranger"/Travis and ends with Travis still listening. There you are assuming a break in the tale occurred for Travis assassin matches where in fact that's unlikely. It doesn't make sense to find her, leave then find her again. She is also telling the tale of the snow and match when Travis is going to see her at the beginning? nah it was one visit and one tale. Though you could consider that the entire story took place after. Though it doesn't make sense she went back the place while running a successful Competition Organization. It's more likely that's it's all fiction.

Much like the first one the entire Assassin matches could have been elements of fiction or dreams. Little Jeane could have imagined the entire NMH1 while gazing at the picture of two people trying to kill each other wondering how these people could have gotten there. Yes that means that little Jeane imagined killed.

My personal take in simple form was that in NMH1. Travis slowly fell into the Garden of Madness. Of the killing, the joy of killing the expression of pure vengeance the release of his pain boiled up. NMH2 took a turn. Yes he is more cocky, but I found Travis to be becoming more sane. Killing itself became meaningless and it was the bonds that really mattered in life. People weren't empty husks to kill they were the experiences that they would provide when you interact with them. People were of value. That's what NMH2 seemed to focus on.