Yeah, I said I suffered through DmC in the anime thread, but if we're gonna talk about it, we'd better do it here. I played through it once on Nephilheim... or however you spell it, doing no deaths/no items for each level clear, and well... it's a game. It plays naturally. Combat is pretty seamless and flows well. But... uhm, that may be it?
The problem with the gameplay is that in general, it's too easy to stay in the air where it's safe. Launcher -> Roulette/Double Up -> Angel Lift gets you really high in the air, away from most enemies' reach, it's pretty braindead to do, and you can do it as often as you want to never hit the ground... well, until you kill whoever you're juggling, in which case you can use Demon Pull or Rake to get someone else up to you. Rinse, repeat - most combat is flowchartalicious. Vergil is a little better about this - it's harder to stay in the air as him, but he still has aerial abuses.
Later in the game, they get better about this, but only so much, and this never really changes for the most part. I remember some levels being harder simply because of environmental hazards - pits you can fall down, floors that damage you, and that stuff... and that type of difficulty is more frustrating than giving me some enemies that, even when I know them, need some reflexes and planning to take down.
The morphing levels were amazing... though they'd often give way to platforming sections that got old after a while. I do like the idea of the world literally being out to get you on principle, so maybe someone out there can refine it so that it's not a chore to deal with.
The writing sucks hard. The story is pretty laughable. Boss fights are comically easy, once you know the fight. Dante's Devil Trigger is not interesting at all, but at least it comes with cool graphical effects. Vergil's Devil Trigger is nice, though.
Edgy Dante doesn't have any good lines and says nothing memorable. He doesn't show any conviction to some moral cause, and he acts like complete gutter trash. About the only good thing I can say about his character is that he acts like a normal dude. Thus, I guess it's easier to fit yourself into his shoes rather than original Dante, who comes off as a larger than life superhero... well, it would be easier if Edgy Dante weren't being an emotional punk. But the other thing is that there already was an emotional punk character in the DMC universe - his name was Nero. And Nero was much more likable than this guy, because he didn't come off as gutter trash. Edgy Dante... well, he might have his name, but he'll never have his fire.
Even with all I've said, DmC still is a complete game, and by action game standards, it's at least good. It's just most of the problems I have with it are game balance related. While it's better than DMC1, it's only better because DMC1 came out at the beginning of the PS2's lifespan when this game was the first of its kind, while DmC came out at the end of the PS3's. DMC3 and DMC4 are still better than this game.
It's weird that I'm playing a game I don't like so I can play another game I do, but I hope seeing DmC lets me appreciate DMC4: SE a bit more. Guess it's time to pop that in and forget this game existed. At least the price was right (~1800 yen for both the game and Vergil's Downfall).
