Devil May Cry Series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I beat DMC3 on Hard mode. Overall it wasn't much harder than Normal, but that may only be because the game allows you to keep all of your acquired weapons and upgrades form previous play-throughs on the harder difficulties. Even though, though, I didn't notice the enemy attack patterns changing up that much (I did notice that some bosses now used new or upgraded attacks, though), and if they did more damage than on Normal mode than I certainly didn't notice it. Also, they seemed to take about as much damage as on Normal mode as well.

I played through the first mission on Very Hard and NOW I can notice some clear changes. Enemy attacks seem to do nearly triple the amount of damage that they did on previous difficulties, and they seem to attack a bit more often than before. That said, they still seem to go down just as fast as in previous difficulties, which I actually really like since I hate drawn out battles from enemies that are total attack-sponges, anyways (I especially hate boss fights that are designed like that). Also, I decided to try and go with the Gunslinger style for this run through the game (which I still currently only have at level 1). I mainly alternated between Sword Master and Trickster when I played through both Normal and Hard mode (and I have both styles maxed out at level 3). I figured its time for me to change things up with a style that I barely ever touched until now. I feel like it could be really useful if I find out how to properly apply it to certain situations, but for now it definitely makes my actual gameplay worse than it was before in terms of my skill level, since its at a low level and I currently don't know how to properly utilize it to my advantage. That, and I'm so used to the abilities granted to be my Sword Master and Trickster that I'm still so used to using only those 2 styles, so it feels weird when I press the style action button and just have Dante shoot some more.

Also, as far as my guns go, I have all of them maxed out at level 3 except for Artemis, which I currently only have at level 2, but I only need a few thousand more red orbs to be able to afford its level 3 upgrade, and then I'll officially have all of Dante's weapons (both melee and ranged) fully maxed out at their top levels.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've decided to go ahead and rate the DMC3 boss fights because....I'm bored and can't think of anything else to do right now (and I'm starting with Cerberus, since I don't count the Mission 2 boss as a real boss despite it having a health bar):

Cerberus: (5/5) - This is a perfect first boss fight to the game. Its challenging and will force you to learn that you can't just button mash your way to victory, but its also a really fun boss fight once you learn how to fight him properly. Its creative in that each of this 3 heads utilize different attacks, so its easier to predict what he will do once you realize which head does what when its at the center, and its a ton of fun to stun-lock this guy if you catch him at the right time when he's reeling back in from his charge forward move.

Gigapede: (3/5) - This boss fight is more weird than anything else. Really, its probably the easiest boss fight in the game once you realize what to do, but it is still pretty fun to jump on his back and wail on him with melee attacks while he's completely defenseless to do anything about it.

Jester (1st Battle): (3/5)- Its kind of laughable and easy, but it goes by quick and it doesn't last too long, so I find it to be a mild little amusement, if nothing else.

Agni & Rudra: (5/5) - This is a very fun boss fight for how fast-paced and dynamic it is. Its a pure sword-to-sword....to sword fight. It may be 2 on 1, but its still completely fair if you know how to properly evade Agni's and Rudra's attacks. You can choose to either focus on killing one of them first and then having to fight a powered up version of the other brother, or if you find that form to be too much to deal with, then you can wisely whittle away the health of each of them while keeping both alive until they both only contain a mere sliver of health, in which case you can finish them both off quickly before one has the time to grab his fallen brother's sword. Its a cleverly designed battle that's just fun to play through.

Vergil (1st Battle): (3/5) - Its a pretty simple battle and Vergil only utilizes a few attacks here. Its fun for what it is, but you can clearly tell that Vergil isn't utilizing his full potential here, and thus the boss fight feels a bit too one-note (at least on Normal and Hard mode).

Leviathan: (4/5) - Yeah, sure, this is a pretty basic boss fight in that you just have to weaken his secondary organs to open up his central one, and then you have to take down the health of his primary organ in order to kill it, and you basically rinse and repeat the process until you destroy that organ (and consequently Leviathan). Its a very simple concept but its still fun and satisfying to play.

Nevan: (4/5) - This is yet another boss that's really simple when you find out how to properly evade all of her attacks and defeat her. I did have a lot of trouble with her at first, but after a while I learned her patterns and then she became ridiculously easy to fight, as her attacks are actually some of the easiest to evade out of any boss in the game, especially if you have Air Hike and are also using Trickster while fighting her.

Beowulf: (3/5) - This boss gave me a lot of trouble at first, but like most bosses I found a way to fight him that was pretty straightforward and easy. In this case, it works to have Trickster and also to be as aggressive as possible. Whenever he tries to use the cages on you, just run up and get behind him and wail on him with any weapon of your choice, and he'll be defenseless to do anything about it while he's stuck in the animation of stomping to make a cage fall down and will then try to throw the cage at you to no avail (since he can't turn around and aim at you if you're standing behind him). In most cases, you can just stick next to him and continue attacking him mercilessly. Whenever he tries to attack you himself and do his fist-pound move, just use trickster to safely dash out of the way (you get i-frames from doing the Trickster dash, as well). Then you can continue to repeat the process of unapologetically bashing the guy's brains out.

Jester (2nd Battle): (2/5) - This guy was kind of amusing before, but with the introduction of that stupid ball that he stands on, it becomes harder to hit him and it just drags out the battle. It doesn't really become much harder, but it does become much more of a nuisance, and its then that you realize that you would have just been better off skipping this fight altogether, since unlike the first fight with Jester, this one is actually only optional, and in the original version of DMC3, even the first Jester fight wasn't mandatory, so he's a pretty pointless boss.

Greyon: (3/5) -This boss is hilariously easy once you realize that you can just jump on top of the cart that he's carrying, and just keep attacking that (which whittles down his health since apparently the cart counts as part of his body, and vice versa since he's part of the cart). Fighting him the normal way isn't really that much fun, IMO, but its is fun to just use whatever you want while riding on the cart as he pulls it along (yes, he actually carries you on it, which is pretty funny), and all the while he can't do a single thing to damage you except for when he does a teleportation move, which throws you off the cart leaving you to sometimes get hit by one of its spikes before he completely disappears from the screen. Other than that, nothing else he does can hit you while you're on it, except for those bubbles of his that slow down time (but those don't do any actual physical damage to you, so they're just a nuisance more than anything else). Overall, the fight is OK, but its really only saved by that fun trick to ride along with Greyon while simultaneously kicking his ass.

Vergil (2nd Battle): (4/5) - This one is suitably more challenging than the first, but Vergil is still pretty easy here and still doesn't utilize his full arsenal of moves, so its merely just one step up from the first fight rather than the complete package.

Lady: (2/5) - This boss battle is....more pathetic than anything else. She's not hard or frustrating....just silly and uninteresting to fight. And....yeah, that's about all I can think to say about this boss fight. Overall, its pretty forgettable.

Jester (3rd Battle): (2/5) - Its just slightly more of the same bull-shit as the 2nd battle with him. Yeah....and that's it.

Doppleganger: (3/5) - Another REALLY simple boss that's still fun to fight just because you can wail on him when he's stunned from the light. Its ridiculously easy to avoid his attacks. All you have to do is move from shutter to shutter, attacking them to open them up and reveal the light, and you move around the room until you illuminate all of it and give Doppleganger no shadows or dark corners to hide in. Whenever he tries to attack you, all you have to do is merely jump....and that's it, he'll miss you, and you can just carry on your marry way. Its simple and easy, but its still pretty fun to feel like your on top of something so close to the end of the game, when everything else is going out of its way to be as hard as possible for you.

And then we get to....

....Arkham: (1/5) - ......................Fuck this boss fight..........just....just fuck it to hell. This is the polar opposite of what makes a DMC2 boss fight bad, though its just as bad if not worse than any of those (that even includes the helicopter boss). Easily the most dreadful part of this game (thank god you only have to fight this douche-bag once). This ass-hole uses some of the cheapest attacks out of any boss in the series. Those stupid worm things that he excretes from his body are so fucking annoying to evade, especially since they home in on you and do a TON of damage if they hit you. Those stupid eel things that he summons when he goes into hiding are nothing but a fucking annoying way to drag out the battle while they can also easily chop down your health since those damn red eels can juggle the hell out of you if you get hit in a bad spot. But that's not enough. Believe it or not, the boss fight actually gets even WORSE when Vergil joins the fight. The first time I played through the fight I thought that it was kind of cool to have Vergil by your side, and I did beat him on the first time that I got to the point where Vergil comes in, but I didn't realize that I just merely managed to get lucky on that go-around. Upon replaying the fight on Hard mode, I came to realize just how useless Vergil is. He's actually not computer controlled. He mimics your moves, and you constantly have to summon him to your side if you want him to attack what you want him to attack. In this case, its better off to just ignore him completely. The problem is that his inclusion into the battle handicaps both your Devil Trigger and whatever style you have equipped, which effectively reduces your own offensive ability forcing you to either rely on him or just play through the rest of this battle with this unfair handicap, which is basically what I had to do. And speaking of Arkham, what a shitty and disappointing look for a final boss to have. The whole encounter was him was being built-up as this epic encounter in which he'd take on all of the powers and presumably the form of Sparda, and that would have made for an epic boss battle. Instead what we got was a purple blob of oozing shit (I'm serious, that's exactly what he looks like). Its unimaginative, completely disgusting to look at, and easily makes for the worst boss fight that this game has to offer. Even the few other crappy boss fights look like absolute masterpieces in comparison to this one. Man, what an utter waste this fight was....

Vergil (3rd Battle): (5/5) - And then we get a complete 180 and the game saves itself with this brilliant final boss fight. Vergil finally realizes his full potential and comes at you with his full arsenal of attacks. Its not some gimmicky giant final boss that's an utter joke (a la DMC4), nor does it completely change the rules of the game in order to try and grant you with something epic (a la Mundus, though I did still enjoy that boss fight). Its basically an intense 1 on 1 battle between 2 extremely skilled and powerful brothers. Its challenging but fair, and its completely dynamic in that it can either be as slow or fast-paced as you want it to be, as Vergil effectively reacts to your movements. If you take your time and try to stall things out, so will he, by wisely trying to use ranged attacks on you while standing his ground. If you try to go all-out and wail on him, he'll counter with an onslaught of ferocious melee attacks of his own. There is no one single right way to approach this battle, as there are multiple strategies that work, and all the while there is not guaranteed easy way out other than a player's own level of skill. This is essentially DMC3's equivalent of the Doppleganger boss fight from Ninja Gaiden. Its the best boss fight in the game. Absolutely brilliant.

[Foggle]

I agree with most of your ratings, though I would give Vergil a 4/5 rating, since I honestly found him pretty hard the first time I fought him.

Arkham is the worst boss in the DMC series, save for maybe the helicopter in 2. Even once you figure out that you can easily beat his worms by jumping and spamming the rocket launcher, the second half of the fight is still hell because it takes away your styles. Countless times, I tried to press circle to dodge, only to summon Vergil to my side and get butt-blasted by Arkham. Argh.

[Foggle]

To clarify, I meant Vergil 1. Vergil 3 is totes a 5.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I agree with most of your ratings, though I would give Vergil a 4/5 rating, since I honestly found him pretty hard the first time I fought him.

Well, I gave Vergil a different rating for each fight with him (the 1st one got a 3/5, the 2nd a 4/5, and the final one a 5/5, based on the increasing level of skill it took to fight him). Keep in mind that I'm basing all of these ratings off of my experiences with these bosses on Normal and Hard mode, which for the most part weren't too different (I hear that they get A LOT harder on Very Hard and Dante Must Die mode, though). I found the first fight with Vergil to be pretty easy because I was using Trickster at the time (and it was still only level 1, at that). The process is really simple. You try to attack him, but he'll block you, and then he'll immediately attempt to counter you. So, as soon as he manages to successfully block your attack, do a Trickster dash TOWARD him (this is important), as he'll initiate his counter-attack, but you'll past through him unscathed due to the i-frames provided by the dash animation. At that point, you are directly behind him and in the perfect position to stun-lock him with any weapon of your choosing until he breaks out of the stun and blocks you again, at which point you simply just repeat the process with another dash until he is really low on health. At that point he'll teleport to the center of the battleground and do a power-up animation. He'll then try to use ranged attacks on you or dash towards you and use an aggressive melee attack on you. In the former case, just stinger him and continue wailing on him while he's stunned and he'll do go down. In the latter case, just use your Trickster dash as before and keep smacking the shit out of him until he's dead. Its actually a really simple process that doesn't take much practice to get down.

Arkham is the worst boss in the DMC series, save for maybe the helicopter in 2. Even once you figure out that you can easily beat his worms by jumping and spamming the rocket launcher, the second half of the fight is still hell because it takes away your styles. Countless times, I tried to press circle to dodge, only to summon Vergil to my side and get butt-blasted by Arkham. Argh.

Its even worse on Hard mode, since his worms do even more damage to you, and they are actually harder to avoid than on Normal, since you have to realize that jumping once isn't enough because it still homes in on you for a little longer (you have to run in a circular motion, jump (but don't do a double-jump), land, and then jump again. Its pretty stupid. And when he does hit you with one of those worm things, he'll be a cheap bastard and hit you with one of his tentacles while you're stunned from that attack to deal out a shit-ton of extra damage. Its the most infuriating thing ever when you can't effectively dash away or use your style of your DT to your advantage thanks to this ass-face's cheap enemy design.

[Rynnec]

One thing thath helps make Vergil less useless in the Arkham fight is to just sit back and shoot him, since Vergil mimics whatever you do, he'll just keep wailing on Arkham with a combo. So essentially just sit back and shoot him while Vergil does all the leg-work. I also think you can counter his worm/tentacle attack by repeatedly summoning Vergil.

[Foggle]

Yep yep, Vergil 1 is quite easy now, as I learned that very strategy after a few deaths against him.

Its even worse on Hard mode, since his worms do even more damage to you, and they are actually harder to avoid than on normal, since you have to realize that jumping once isn't enough because it still homes in on you for a little loner (you have to run in a circular motion, jump (but don't do a double-jump), land, and then jump again. Its pretty stupid. And when he does hit you with one of those worm things, he'll be a cheap bastard and hit you with one of his tentacles while you're stunned from that attack to deal out a shit-ton of extra damage. Its the most infuriating thing ever when you can't effectively dash away or use your style of your DT to your advantage thanks to this ass-face's cheap enemy design.

I always jump twice anyway, just to be safe, since sometimes one jump isn't enough even on normal! Seriously, fuck that boss.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, BTW, I never actually mentioned this but as far as DMC3 and 4 go, I actually don't use the games' standard control schemes. Way back when I was playing DMC4, I had a hard time adjusting to using the "Y" button (I play on an XBOX360 pad of course, since that's the console I own, and as far as I'm concerned it works excellently for 3D action games) for normal attacks, and using the "X" button for shooting since I was so used to playing NGB and NG2 all of the time. I then realized that the game gave you the brilliant option of adjusting the controls any which way to your own personal preferences, which is something that I feel EVERY action game should have. I immediately made changes that were more suitable to my play style.

For Dante in both DMC3 and 4, I have the standard attack button mapped to the "X" button instead of "Y" (the equivalent of square instead of triangle on the PS2/3 controller), which not only feels more natural to me given how used to Ninja Gaiden I am, but also has a practical use in that the "X" button is right next to the "A" button, making it feel much smoother to pull of one of DMC's more advanced techniques in the form of jump canceling. I still suck at my timing for jump canceling, but I've been able to actually pull it off successfully in the middle of combos every now and then since my standard attack button is mapped adjacent to my jump button, so I can just slide my fingers across easily to go from one to the other. Now, I've heard that more hardcore players actually map the jump button to RT/R2 in order to have more precise timing of their jumps in relation to their attacks, but that's about where I draw the line. For me, jumping in games has ALWAYS been on one of the face buttons, and at that it has almost always been on the lowest button of the controller. That's just the way I have grown up playing video games, so there's no way that I'd be willing to invest the time to map something as essential as jumping onto a shoulder button, no matter how much more precision it may offer me. So, I retained my jump as the "A" button, and I moved my ranged weapon attack button to the "B" button, which is once again reminiscent of the Ninja Gaiden controls which I am so used to. For me, it works just fine since now I'm used to controlling that way in DMC3 and 4, as well. Now, for Dante, my style button is mapped to the "Y" button. This feels fine to me since I've grown pretty used to it. I especially feel right at home while playing with the Sword Master style (my personal favorite style in the game) using this control scheme. It very much mimics NG's X and Y, heavy and light attack, control scheme, and while DMC and NG are 2 very different games, the actual controls feel very comfortable to me when I play them this way, since I'm so used to it. And that's about it for my changes with Dante. I didn't bother tampering with any of the shoulder buttons and such.

With Nero, its a tad different. I still have my normal attack mapped to "X" like with Dante, but I leave the Devil Bringer arm alone at the "B" button, and "Y" is just for taunting. I actually have shooting for Nero assigned to the RT button, as I found out how useful Nero's charge shot is once you realize that you can continually charge it up mid-combo if you hold down the shoot button while attacking enemies. This is also extremely useful on bosses, even up to the harder difficulty settings. Now, of course it is impractical to attack while holding down the shoot button if its mapped to a face button, so I mapped it to RT which I can comfortably hold down and release in the middle of any combo I want in order to deal out a ton of extra damage and also get a lot of style points added to my score in the process. It took me some getting used to in order for this control scheme to work out, but it felt very rewarding when I finally got used to it. The only problem is that it causes me some confusion whenever I switch between the play-style of Dante and Nero. Needless to say, though, I haven't played DMC4 in a while, so I have no doubt that his control scheme would feel awkward as hell to me if I went back to playing him now.

At any rate, I just thought it'd be interesting to share my own personal control preference as a little fun fact of sorts.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I got up to mission 5 of DMC3 on Very Hard mode. The main cause of difficulty in this mode is that enemies do A LOT more damage to you and are also a bit more aggressive. Also, in some cases, tougher enemies appear earlier in the game, though this doesn't happen quite as much as it would on a game like Ninja Gaiden Balck and such, as for the most part the enemy placement seems to remain the same throughout the majority of the game.

At any rate, its still a sufficient challenge, and it basically gives me much less room for error than before. As for my status, I currently have all of my devil arms and guns fully upgraded, and I have 8/9 Devil Trigger slots, as well as 75% of my max possible Health Bar (I still have a few secret missions to clear, as well as a few more blue orbs to buy, in order to max it out the rest of the way). Now, as for my styles, I have both Trickster and Sword Master maxed out at level 3, however, I still only have Gunslinger and Royal Guard each at level 1, and I have been trying to play more with those styles during this play-through. The problem is that they do me very little good on this difficulty when they are at such a low level and I can only utilize their most basic functions. For that reason, I may end up going back to an earlier difficulty in order to gain some more experience with those styles, and hopefully level them up at least once, each. I'm not sure if Gunslinger will really be all that useful to me, though, but I can definitely see the use in Royal Guard on higher difficulties. If you can master that ability, it can be insanely powerful against tough enemies.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I played some more DMC3 today, but I didn't make any progress in Very Hard mode as I went back to Easy mode (which I hadn't even touched before) just for the sake of leveling up and practicing with my Gunslinger and Royal Guard styles. The problem here is that I couldn't practice much if only because the enemies are significantly weaker on this difficulty and die with just a few hits. They are extremely fragile to the point in which I found it more challenging to keep any enemies alive long enough for me to practice on since if I botched a counterattack with Royal Guard and hit them without a charge-up from a block, the enemies would still take significant damage anyways and only a few mess-ups would kill them off, so I'd be winning either way. Its then that I realized that I hadn't played Bloody Palace mode yet, so I thought I'd try that out instead.

I probably should have just done that in the first place. The enemies in this mode seem to be set to have their default amount of health pertaining to Normal mode, which means that they are more ideal to practice combat on. Through this mode, I got my Royal Guard skill up to level 2, plus an additional 30,000 EXP towards maxing it out at level 3, and I also got myself around 30,000+ red orbs in the process. For my first time attempting Bloody Palace mode in this game, I suppose I didn't do to bad. I got an achievement for passing 666 floors (I didn't actually pass that many floors, but I have no idea how the whole process works in this mode). I died right after fighting and defeating Vergil, since I only had a small sliver of health left after finishing the battle with him, and died immediately after one hit to the next enemy on the next floor. The reason I did so crappy on this particular battle is because I wasn't used to fighting him with Royal Guard, and no matter how perfect my timing was, he could just break past my guard, making the skill pretty useless in my encounter with him, so I ended up getting hit a lot being that I'm used to evading his attacks with Trickster. At any rate, this game's version of Bloody Palace is noticeably easier than DMC4's Bloody Palace (which is ironic considering that this is the harder game, overall). I found it much easier to clear floors in this game and barely even took any damage until my fight with Vergil, in which I fucked up royally and lost nearly all of my health. That said, if I were playing with a style that I were more comfortable with such as Trickster or Sword Master, I have no doubt that I could have made it much further along in this mode than I did (and this was my first attempt, as well). In DMC4, you start encountering tougher enemies as early on as before reaching the 20th floor, and on top of that you also have a cumulative time-limit to deal with, so that can screw you over as well. That said, I still like DMC3's Bloody Palace mode better if only because I just like DMC3's enemies more, since I have more fun fighting them (with a few annoying exceptions, though that is easily negated by DMC4's own set of annoying enemies).

[Rynnec]

(I didn't actually pass that many floors, but I have no idea how the whole process works in this mode).

Basically:

Water tower/portal thing = advance 1 floor
Electric/Wind tower/portal thing = advance 10 or so floors
Fire tower/portal thing = advance 100 floors

You also get a green orb that replenishes a significant amount of health each time you go through a water portal, the only time you don't is if the water portal leads you to a boss floor (I'm not sure which floors have a boss).

A useful method in the Bloody Palace is to keep going through fire portals, and only go to for a water portal when you're low on health. Naturally this has its drawbacks, as you're pretty much SOL if you happen to run into a boss when your health is low. I cleared 3912 floors with this method.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So then, the lightning portal is useless, I take it?

Yeah, I figured the different portals take you up by different amounts of floors based on which one you pick, but I wasn't sure how it worked. I do like this whole branching structure of the mode, though. With DMC4, you just have a linear trek from floor 1 to 100 with no possible variation to it, which I feel makes it a bit less interesting, personally.

Anyways, on my first time through Bloody Palace mode, I made it to floor 747, and once again I only really died because I was ill-prepared for the Vergil Boss fight (I actually encountered him with near full health, as well). If I were to play through it using a style that I'm more comfortable with, I don't doubt that I could make it at least twice as far as that on my next attempt.

[Rynnec]

The lightning portal is useful if you want to pace yourself or feel overwhelmed by the higher-level enemies.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, going by the fire portal will usually ensure that you fight tougher enemies in exchange for moving up 100 floors, whereas going by the lightning or water portals will typically grant you with weaker enemies (with the exception of boss fights) but progress you by far fewer floors, is that correct?

[Rynnec]

More or less.