Let's save the thread, shall we?
1) Mikami's absence as 'executive producer' can never be known as to whether or not DMC2 sucked or not. However, it's important to realize that as a director -- Mikami's foray into action titles resulted in Pn03 and God Hand, two games that can't compare to DMC and DMC3's critical and commercial success.
2) Hideaki Itsuno and Tsuyoshi Tanaka came onboard the DMC2 project mid-way through development. I dont know about you, but changing the producer and director mid-way through a project isn't the best idea.
3) According to Hideki Kamiya, the go ahead for the "untitled action game to follow DMC1" occured before even DMC1 was finished. So this new team didn't even know that the elements that DMC1 were memorable were the very same elements they wanted to take away (close quartered combat, since of urgency, high level of challenge, Dante's persona etc. etc. etc.)
4) The project was changed. It was not a DMC sequal at it's beginning. It was rather an action game utilizing the DMC1 engine that starred some female bitch. (ever wonder why the story had more to do with Lucia than Dante, and that Dante had two lines, and that the only story relevance DMC2 had to the DMC univese was the art pic in the menu of Ebony and Ivory? Or why Lucia actually had more 'moves' and 'depth' than Dante himself? They wanted to make an action game that utilized DMC1's R&D but it wasn't meant to be a DMC game, however -- after DMC1's immense success right out the gate, management wanted to change it to a DMC sequal, they changed staff accordingly and brought in DMC3's director to so. I'd imagine any and all decent aspects DMC2 had was what Itsuno could salvage in less than a years development time. Imagine trying to make the sequal to the father of modern action games in less than year...yeah, DMC2 would be the outcome.
5) When asked about the quality of Tsuyoshi Tanaka's "producer" skills (to be blunt), the ever so open and 99.9% descriptive Ben Judd resonded with an ever so suprising "uh...no comment there."
6) There were many more Studio 4 staffers involved with DMC3. DMC2 was entirely a Production Studio 1 game which until this point, had very little experience with 3D games outside of Powerstone.
didn't most of the DMC1 team go on to make Viewtiful Joe 1
The DMC1 team is and was the best team Capcom had ever put together. They came straight off of Capcom's "other best game ever made" [resident evil 2] and went straight to DMC1 (their first next-gen game project at the time). The team consisted of:
Shinji Mikami (exec. producer) -- now freelance for Capcom
Keiji Inafune (exec. producer and GD of all R&D) -- now capcom's poster boy
Hiroyuki Kobayashi (producer) -- currently producing DMC4, high off RE4's success.
Makato Tschuyibasa (lead art designer) -- did some art for Basara, current project unknown.
Hideki Kamiya (director) - all star director, moved to Clover, keeps having his beautiful franchises butchered with shitty sequals (Resident Evil 3, Devil May Cry 2, Viewtiful Joe 2 etc.) left Clover with Inaba.
Masami Ueda (composer) - now current project unknown, truthfully I don't even know if he's still with Capcom, considering how he was all buddy buddy with Kamiya (he's been the main composer of ever Kamiya game) I'd imagine he left Capcom/clover with Kamiya and Inaba.
Astushi Inaba (lead programmer) - went to head clover, now left Capcom with Kamiya
DMC1 had all of Capcom's best talent working on the same project. After DMC1 was done, half of them went to make Viewtiful Joe, and the other half went to make Resident Evil 4.
