Devil May Cry Series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I understand novelizations and comics in stuff like fighting games or platformers, which are scant on actual story content to begin with, but for big budget stuff like Halo and DMC, and especially RPG's, I agree.

Yeah, I can understand it for fighting games (though, even then you can still tell great stories in the actual game itself), as well as any low-budget kinds of games, but big-budget, high-profile games really don't have that excuse. To go back to my problem with Halo's story-line being mostly told in the novels, it tells a ton of major events that directly involve the Master Chief which are completely left out of the main games. To me, stuff like novels and comics should be used to expand the lore of a series and primarily only be dedicated to spin-off stories and expand on side characters. All of the major events should be told through the games, though.

I think the manga and anime for DMC actually had the right idea in primarily choosing to focus on Dante's regular missions. The ones that are too small to be part of the actual games. Of course, both the manga and anime were rather underwhelming, but if handled by a better team of writers with a better series director they could do a great job of expanding on the World of DMC. They could do their job of pumping you up for the next major DMC game, which itself shouldn't rely too heavily on you having read or watched any of the spin-off stuff, but have enough nods to that stuff to reward huge fans who are into it. The main point, though, is that a new game should have a story that works as a great stand-alone piece, even if you don't know anything about DMC outside of the games (or ideally, even if you haven't played any of the previous DMC games).

Considering it's implied that Dante and Vergil were seperated until they were in their late-teens, I doubt they'd have trained under the same master. Speaking of which, I also wouldn't mind a game elaborating on what Dante and Vergil did pre-DMC3, since the first novel is now out of continuity.

Yeah, their fighting styles aren't really anything alike, either. I mean, clearly Vergil's master didn't teach him Air Hike.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, uh, yeah....I just got through mission 3 on Dante Must Die mode. Remember how I kept complaining about Very Hard mode being too easy until toward the end of the game? Now I miss that mode.

If any of you guys thought that the Cerberus fight was easy and no big deal on Normal or Hard mode, then play them in Dante Must Die mode and he'll make you his bitch. Yeah, I had to resort to that cheese method of switch-canceling between Ebony & Ivory and Spiral while standing at the leftmost corner of the room in order to defeat him. Using that method, I botched things up and got hit by him twice during the fight, and literally had less than a 3rd of my health left (and keep in mind that I have 19 bars of health, at this point). I know that Gigapede won't be a problem for me, but Agni & Rudra certainly will.

Oh, and as I've read on DMC boards before, DMD is the mode that will make enemies that you didn't even know could be difficult your biggest pain in the ass. On my first time playing through mission 3, I got killed within 5 seconds by Enigmas. FUCKING ENIGMAS!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, today I got 3 achievements in DMC: HD Collection (all of them were from DMC3). One achievement was for completing all of the secret missions in the game, of which I still had a few that I hadn't completed until now. The second was for maximizing Dante's health bar, and I have to say that I'm actually surprised that there were still 2 blue orb fragments that I had completely missed during my numerous times of having played through the game. Those were REALLY well hidden, since I was sure that I had explored every inch of the game by this point. The final achievement I got was for killing 100+ enemies during the end credits, since I realized that I still hadn't done that yet, and it was an easy achievement to get. On the other times that I had beaten the game, I always got up to 99 enemies and the credits ended before I had a chance to finish off the hell Vanguard. Now that I was actually concentrating, though, I managed to kill off 133 enemies before the end of the credits, and I got the achievement for that as well as the bonus ending with Vergil about to go off and fight Mundus. Heh....The 2 best villains of the series squaring off against each other. Out of the things that you could show us, Capcom, that's what you choose to skip?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So I finally got around to playing DmC, and I finished my first run through the game on Nephilim difficulty. Overall the game was just what I predicted it would be. It's an above average hack n' slash game, yet it doesn't really measure up to the older games where it really counts. The combat is fun, but despite having a lot of combos to pull off, it lacks the practicality of actually getting good at them from the older games. Additionally, the enemy design is the most bland and generic in the entire series. The AI in this game isn't interesting in the slightest, and from what I've played of Son of Sparda mode so far, that doesn't really change much. And yeah, I've already gone into it before, but the story and characters are ass for anyone who actually takes the time to stop and look at everything that's wrong with it, of which there is quite a lot.

Still, on a pure gameplay level, the game is fun, and it does seem to have some replay value to the point where I would play it again. Overall, this is how I currently rank the games:

1. Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (Special Edition)
2. Devil May Cry
3. Devil May Cry 4
4. DmC: Devil May Cry
5. Devil May Cry 2

I'll let you guys know if if I feel any differently about this game after a second play-through. For now, though, I'm going back to DMC3 to finish off the rest of my DMD run.

[Rynnec]

Are you going to go through the Vergil's Downfall DLC, E-K? That's the part of the game that looks most appealing, gameplay-wise.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Probably, but not until after I get through the other games that I got for Christmas.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've made a few minor changes to my preferences in DMC3, overall.

My 2nd favorite DA combo is Agni & Rudra and Beowulf. On DMD mode, I ALWAYS have Beowulf equipped. It's hands down the single most powerful weapon in the game if you know how to use it right. It also has Rising Dragon, which is hands down the single strongest attack that Dante has available to him in this game. DmC's replacement for this weapon, Eryx, and it's replacement attack being just a generic uppercut, is an utter joke compared to Beowulf (as well as its DMC4 counterpart, Gilgamesh).

Also, my style preference is now like this:

1. Sword Master
2. Royal Guard
3. Trickster
4. Gunslinger

On DMD mode, Royal Guard is actually my most used style. This difficulty practically forces you to at least get decent at using it.

[Rynnec]

Well, over a year after its initial release, and I finally played through all of DmC (sans the Vergil DLC) since it was free on Playstation Plus. To sum it up, it was...okay. Not too bad, but nothing really standout about it either as far as gameplay is concerned, and is a bit on the boring side. I did like how the game actually rewards you for exploration, and I wouldn't mind seeing some of the weapons in a proper DMC game. Most of the enemy demons, with the exception of the Dreamrunners, suck, even ones that should be awesome like the chainsaw guys. Likewise the bosses were pretty lame as well, the only boss that I would say is outright fun is Vergil, and even his boss fight is a joke compared to his boss fights in the main series.

Overall, it was alright. Shit story aside, it's something you can play on a slow sunday afternoon. If I can get a points card sometime this week, I'll play through the Vergil DLC and post my thoughts on that, since I hear its closer to the classic series in terms of difficulty and combat.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Pretty much my thoughts on the game. It does improve somewhat on Son of Sparda mode where they at least mix up enemy sets on you to force you to strategize, but the problem is that the enemies in this game have only 1 or 2 attacks at best. Enemies, and especially bosses, had so many different attacks and abilities in previous games. It's what stopped the feeling of repetition since they kept doing different shit tou you, and you had to learn how to fight against all of it. This game just doesn't have anything interesting like that going for it, and the combat is inferior to previous games as well for various reasons that I don't think I need to get into since you all probably know what I'm talking about. If this game were it's own original IP I wouldn't care. But I don't get why it had to be a DMC reboot. Neither the shit story nor the inferior gameplay seem to justify it at all.

[Rynnec]

Enemies also rely on cheap gimmicks like being invincible during certain attacks, or only being vulnerable to certain weapons, which just makes them annoying to fight against instead of hard.

I probably would've liked this game more if it didn't have the DMC name, and it was more of a platformer with hack'n slash elements. Like you said, it didn't need to have the DMC label on it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I just "beat" DMC3 on DMD mode. I put it in quotation marks because I didn't exactly due it by what hardcore fans would consider the legitimate way, which is to play it on Yellow Orb mode and use no items at all (I've beaten the game on Yellow orb mode, but only on Normal difficulty). To be fair, I didn't use any items during the first half of the game on this difficulty, and up until the last 2 chapters I only maybe allowed myself one or two healing items at most, and only for boss fights. But once it came to Arkham and Vergil, I just downright lost my patience. With Arkham the damage that you deal to him is pitiful at best, and in turn he can utterly destroy you with just a single attack. It's fucking ridiculous and a badly designed boss fight, so I have no qualms about spamming items to defeat him. With Vergil, while he's my favorite boss in the game, he's just plain not fun on this difficulty setting, because he spams his Devil Trigger which allows him to rapidly heal and negate all of the damage that you've done to him. You can use Quicksilver to slow down time and knock him out of it, but since you have limited DT to work with, yourself, you can't always rely on using it for how often Vergil enters into his DT state. In this case I really needed the healing items to make it through the fight. I could practice and get better at the game, but I wasn't motivated since this difficulty is frustrating more than fun, and honestly has soured my opinion of the game a little bit. This is still my favorite DMC game, but Very Hard mode is where it peaked, and I probably should've just left it at that. At any rate, I've clocked in close to (if not more than) a hundred hours with this game alone, so I'd say that I definitely got my money's worth. Now I plan to go back to DMC1 and try and work my way up that game until I conquer DMD mode, which I hear is much more of a fun challenge than with the sequels/prequel.

[Rynnec]

Doesn't the infinite DT outfit you get for beating Very Hard make DMD more bearable?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Doesn't the infinite DT outfit you get for beating Very Hard make DMD more bearable?

It does, but I refrained from using it EXCEPT for on the Geryon fight which was a nightmare on DMD mode. However, using a super character is considered cheating by the general fan community (though, to be fair, the game will still kick your ass if you don't have the skill to properly evade enemy attacks), so I wanted to do it the right way as much as I could. I would've used it on Arkham as well, but there was no point since you can't use DT for the second half of the fight, anyways. Also, it'd be useless on Vergil since you will want to use your DT to activate Quicksilver (which does still drain your gauge even if you are using a super character).

I would probably use a super character to clear Bloody Palace mode, though, as I don't have the patience to do that normally.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, as I've been playing more of DMC1, a realization has only just hit me about it: the enemies in this game are fucking weird. Seriously; Plasmas, Shadows, Sin Scissors....who the hell came up with these things? Naturally I love it and it's a big part of this game's appeal.

[gunswordfist]

Still my favorite cast of enemies ever.