To be perfectly frank and honest i'm going to try my best to not come across as a condescending dick when describing the reality of the new Devil May Cry game compared to the old ones, but when some people say that it's basically as good as or better than the old Devil May Cry games in nearly every single way (and then scratch their heads as to why it hasn't sold well, or blame 'idiots' for not liking it because of "no floppy white hair") it's hard not to.
To begin with i'll give you my credentials when it comes to Devil May Cry. I have played and completed every single Devil May Cry game there has ever been and i have completed them all on every single difficulty setting. I also bought the Devil May Cry HD collection and got the full 1000 gamer score as well as getting the full 1000 gamer score in Devil May Cry 4 & the new DmC. Across all the games i have some of the best scores in the entire world and currently i am 20th overall in the new DmC game on the xbox360. In short i am one of the top couple of hundred Devil May Cry players in the world.
Now before i get in to the more technical side of why the new DmC isn't as good as previous ones, i first want to address 1.) The need to "reboot" the franchise in the first place. And 2.) The elephant in the room which is the style/look of the game plus Dante himself.
The simple fact is the previous Devil May Cry game (Devil May Cry 4) was the best selling Devil May Cry game there has ever been, which shows that the franchise wasn't in decline nor was it stagnating at an unexceptable level, Devil May cry was in fact selling well and its sales and popularity were increasing. Beyond that regardless of if you even particularly liked the Devil May Cry games, Dante himself was a VERY iconic character in terms of his appearance and personality and generally he was well liked within the gaming community. So for Capcom to come along and decide to reboot the entire franchise by handing it out to a different developer and allowing them to significantly change it was a bizzare choice indeed. And quite rightfully so fans of the series had every reason to raise questions and/or be annoyed by this, especially as they decided to hand the franchise to Ninja Theory, a developer who has never been able to release a game or a fighting engine which is to the quality of Devil May Cry 1, 3 or 4.
Now whilst i'm sure some people might find a few people that didn't like the overall look of the new DmC i think you'll find most don't mind the new art style and colour pallet that's been used. The main problem with the look of the game is what they've done with Dante, and that's because Dante himself was never the problem with the franchise. It's like looking at the Sonic games and saying "yeah the problem with the Sonic games is Sonic is blue, if we changed his colour to purple then that'll fix everything." The look and personality of Dante was never the problem, in fact it was pretty much prefect, the problem with Devil May Cry 4 was the level design, needless back tracking and replaying the same bosses multiple times whilst most of the bosses weren't interesting and/or technical enough. So instead of just trying to fix these problems Ninja Theory needlessly went ahead and changed a much beloved gaming icon and turned him from being a very unique and cool looking guy with a funny, witty off the wall personality, in to a pretty bland looking, angsty, brooding, annoying, unfunny teenager who comes across more as a douchebag than the "ultra cool guy" that old Dante was. Then for no reason again they decided to change the pronunciation of his name from Dante to "Donte", i mean why what's the point? It's like Nintendo deciding from now on they're going to call Mario "Morio", it's so stupid and again you're only going to annoy the fans.
And finally before i start talking about the more technical side fo the game i want to quickly talk about the cut scenes and voice acting, and whilst i could go in to great detail about those as well (i won't because i've already written too much) the bottom line is even tho they are more "western" now and don't have those awkward "japanese dialogue quirks" they are still very hit and miss and some of the voice acting delivery at times is simply atrocious.
But here's the thing, despite all of the above, the vast majority of the Devil May Cry fanbase would forgive all of those problems if the actual core fighting of the game was as good as or better than Devil May Cry 3 & 4. But the fighting engine isn't better, it's not as good as, it's worse.
To begin with you've got the style system, in every other Devil May cry game the style system rewarded players who used varied combos in quick succession and if you stood still for too long then the combo would disappear. This was a main staple of the series and took a great deal of skill to achieve and it was also well loved. Now you have a system which is pretty much just purely based on damage dealt, and once you reach a letter grade, their is no time limit for it to disappear. This now means that all players have to do is learn two or three moves and spam them and they'll get the best ranks and scores which removes most of the skill and joy of what makes Devil May Cry what it is. And to reach the tripple SSS rank in old DMC games actually used to mean something because it took time, a lot of skill and a varied move set, now you can reach SSS in a matter of seconds from most enemies (across all levels and difficulties) by abusing the broken demon dodge system. Beyond that the combat is slower, there are less weapons and less moves in the game, unlike the old games this game automatically locks on to the nearest enemy for you taking away your control of who you try and hit, which ends up causing so many unnecessary problems especially as Ninja Theory have decided to add so many enemies that have projectile weapons and enemies that can only be hit by certain types of weapons. The weapon balance isn't very good, demon weapons are too overpowered and angel weapons are too underpowered so when you have to fight angel enemies they take far too long to kill and the encounters becomes boring and monotonous. The boss fights whilst they might look dramatic are a total joke as they're far too easy due to their limited attacks of which nearly all can easily be dodged and they have obvious weak points that end the fights far too quickly. Not to mention that all the boss fights have cut scenes that take place during the fights themselves which sucks you out of the flow of action which just makes the fights even worse. Devil trigger is also now completely overpowered and "noobified", instead of enhancing a players attacks like it used to, it's now more like a free pass to destory all enemies in the room as they float helplessly in the air. And then last but not least in Ninja Theories infinate wisdom they've decided to remove the taunt button, again one of the most loved and staple parts of the franchise, it fitted well with the cocky character of Dante and if the player managed to successfully pull off the taunt it would raise the style bar.... but now it's gone, sigh.
And to address a few other points, the platforming in the game is hit and miss and on multiple play throughs becomes very boring and tiresome. No matter how much Ninja Theory says otherwise reducing the frame rate from 60 frames per second to 30 frames per second makes the game worse and contributes to its slower feel, the camera isn't great and finally taking out game content in this new DmC that has been in there from the start of old Devil May Cry games and charging money for it is the final kick to the fanbase's nuts.
Overall DmC is still a decent game, it's just not up to the standard of Devil May Cry 3 or 4 and Devil May Cry fans have every right to complain.