DmC: Devil May Cry

There’s no way for me to write a real review about this. This game makes me irrational. I hate this game way more than it deserves. See, there’s nothing exactly wrong with this game. But it is just plainly wrong.
The combat is seamless and accurate. It is incredibly smooth, similar to the God of War and Bayonetta games. It’s certainly pleasant to play in that regard.
The music can be pretty strong. Nothing as catchy as the battle themes from the 3rd and 4th games, but still good fun.
Naked Dante is too good-looking. It’s absurd.
Dante is also like, a frat boy in this game. This, too, just feels wrong. Not right at all.
There’s so many cinematic action sequences, which really are the opposite of what a Devil May Cry should be. It makes me think I’m playing the Naughty Dog version of the Devil May Cry games and it feels really dumb.
This is much easier than any game that precedes it (except maybe Devil May Cry 2) and that really misses the point of the learning curves of the best games in this series.
The color schemes in the limbo sections are really unpleasant. Just gross to look at.
The dialogue is really terrible and is worse than any other game I’ve played recently.
This is more dramatic and serious than any of the other games and it isn’t done well.
Also, this game is just wrong. It’s wrong, and plainly so. Don’t play it. It isn’t right.

Não te faz levantar da cadeira, mas é um jogo mais que acertado e uma visão interessante pra série que não vai voltar.

The only game in the series I have played is Devil May Cry 4 (referred to as DMC4 from now on). I thought that was an average game with plenty of limitations so only awarded it a 6/10. Although some fans were annoyed at this DMC reboot, I was impartial and would judge this game on its own merits.

The combat remains much the same, so you move with the left thumb-stick, jump with A, shoot with X, sword attack with Y, and B launches enemies into the air. Soon into the game, you get your first Angel/Demon weapons; an axe and a scythe which can be used by holding down the Right Trigger or Left Trigger respectively. Additional Angel/Demon weapons are found later into the game and can be switched out using the D-Pad. You also get a grappling hook which is used with a combination of the Triggers and the X button. This can pull enemies towards Dante, or pull Dante towards enemies. Outside battle, this is used as a grappling hook in specific areas. You can't lock onto enemies, but the game does a decent job of targeting so isn't a problem.

You are encouraged to launch enemies into the air and keep them from touching the ground, and to avoid taking damage. The combat has been vastly enhanced from DMC4 so there's a larger move-list. The simple sword combos you do start out with are YYYY, or YYPauseYYY, so there's nothing too complicated, but the complications come from the enemy types. It gets a bit more hectic when there's multiple enemies, but some are shielded or weak/resistant to either Demon or Angel weapons.

The game very much reminds me very much of Bayonetta since it contains hack & slash game-play and extremely over-the-top action. The game is fairly linear, but gives you a bit more freedom compared to DMC4 which usually constantly locked you in small rooms until you defeated the enemies. The camera is far better in this game too, often giving you control over the camera, rather than the locked and disorienting angles. The cut-scenes are usually just at the start and end of the levels, rather than giving you constant disruptions; so that's another improvement.

You collect items in a similar way to DMC4. There's red orbs which are dropped from enemies which can be used to purchase items and health upgrades. The white orbs are awarded based on your performance which are used to unlock new moves. You can get a refund on moves if you decide you don't like them. There are hidden keys to find which unlock doors within the levels which take you to challenge rooms. These challenges have a variety of ideas, including time-trial platforming, clearing out multiple enemies with a certain type of attack, or taking down a powerful enemy with a strict time-limit.

Dante is a hybrid of angel and demon; known as Nephilim. He meets a mysterious girl called Kat who explains that she can see into Limbo which is basically a parallel universe where demons reside. Dante will often get dragged into Limbo and have to deal with hoards of demons. The game takes advantage of the Limbo idea by creating a world that is visually stunning. Often, the scenery will morph in front of you, with roads being ripped apart to form platforms. Dante teams up with Kat, and meets Virgil who is soon revealed to be his brother and they plot to take down Mundus. He is a powerful demon who is essentially ruling over the humans after brainwashing them via the TV network and with spiked health drinks. There's plenty of swearing in the game, most of the time it feels forced just to make the game seem more edgy.

DMC is a massive improvement over DMC4. It's a great action game, with a wonderful aesthetic.

The brooding nature of our not really new protagonist works better than expected but worse than hoped, with a narrative that is a bit generic and dull but is at least the most cohesive thus far. The environment, however, stands up to snuff, with the fragmented city being a great portrayal of demonic forces in a modern state, and the gameplay has just the right amount of variety, with some honestly good platforming, to be just interesting and exciting enough the whole way through. A lack of boss fights and some tedious enemy design bog things down some, making it sit in the middle of the series hierarchy.

To be honest my main problem with this isn't that its a reboot, isn't that the characters are polar opposites of how their original DMC characters were, or even that this game was made into some weird hipster fashion showcase. No, my problem is just the game feels a bit generic and not too different than any other hack and slash adventure game. It sort of has a Bayonetta vibe in terms of gameplay, and actually thats the one thing I can praise, the gameplay is smooth, and its fun to kill things in this game. But once you get past that, everything else is a bit downhill, I didn't care much for the design, I'm just not into the whole punk rock vibe or whatever the game was trying to pull off, the dialogue is often times really cringy, and the story wasn't all that memorable. Plus the boss fights in this were kind of lame and I just didn't find myself remembering much of this. I mean did we really need a Devil May Cry reboot as well, they could have just made this completely original instead of trying to loosely base things off the original series and make a few bucks of the name.

Dmc surpassed all my expectations of the game. I love the franchise, so i was doubtful when Ninja Theory was making a new entry considering their very spotty curriculum, but this one became one of my favourite games of the year.

Ninja Theory did a really great job in revitalizing the series, making dante the centre of attention again. Storywise it is a bit silly, filled with corny moments and bad voice acting. Then again those are trademarks of DMC, a series which has always been very self aware and this shows through. I understand people being upset about the new look and attitude, and while they are definitly not what i would associate with the series, they have never been what the focus of the series is. They are ignorable, and ultimatly not that big of a flaw.

Visually it is very impressive. They use a broad range of colours and everything looks so stylized. There is a huge amount of creativity, and that results in some very memorable stages. It has a few glitches here and there, and i noticed some texture popping, but nothing that impacted the actual experience significantly.

The gameplay is really excellent. The combat is really fluid and can be extremely deep, yet it is also very accessible at the start. The lack of target lock allows for a much bigger amount of player freedom when it comes to movement. The combat is extremely fluid, and between grabs, air combat, alternating meelee weapons and ranged weapons it can be a bit chaotic at first, but its always a pleasure to play. The enemies themselves are very diverse, and the game is at its biggest difficulty when the crowds get more and more mixed enemy types. The game rewards fast reactions and thinking, but there is also some sort of strategy against more tougher enemies that cant be beaten by simple button mashing. The boss battles are relatively few, but each are well done and memorable. It can be a hard game but you always feel that you have the right weapons at your disposal, and at its best moments it is very gratifying. Besides the combat, the game also offers some platforming sections which can be challenging, but no sort of puzzles. Perhaps this is for the best, Ninja Theory clearly knows that the combat should always be the focus of this series, and this game is better because of that. The definitive version added a few extra things to make the combat even more satisfying.

The story is quite short, but it encourages multiple playthrough through the tougher difficulties and to unlock more side missions. I can definitly see myself returning to it time and time again. It still seems however that a couple of the levels were made out of unfinished ideas, or that they could have been developed a bit more. There is a big difference between the amount of content of each mission, some taking 5 minutes while others taking over 30. It would also have been nice to have the "bloody palace" like in the previous games of the series.

All in all, a really great hack n slash game. I cant say that its the best of DMC i have ever played, since DMC3 is a favorite of mine (perhaps my most played ps2 game), but it is definitly a cut above the solid-but-disappointing DMC4. I need to place more hours into it to decide if it really is the pinacle of the series or not.