Fbh
Member
Due to a variety of reasons I ended up pushing back DMC5 through the year but I saw a good deal for it during Black Friday so I finally picked it up. Having just finished it though I have to say that while I definitely had fun with it and I totally plan to play through it again... I can't help but be rather disappointed.
Combat is still really fun and responsive with some good depth if you want to get into combos and max out the rankings, even V ,who feels rather gimmicky and was the least enjoyable part, was fun enough and ok as a way to change up the pace and add some variety. I also really liked all the new weapons, both the arms from Nero and the new Dante weapons were fun to play with and incorporate into combat. But everything else about the game felt like a big step back.
The art style is rather ugly, this new Capcom engine is definitely well optimizes as this was running at basically locked 60fps (during gameplay...cutscenes were all over the place) on mostly high settings at 1080p on my laptop with a 1050ti. But the character models have a strong uncanny valley vibe to them. They look pretty realistic when they are still but in motion they look off, not to mention that IMO a more realistic art style doesn't fit the japanese/anime style of what's happening on screen. After years of the franchise having stylized visuals it's rather hard to see this:
As Dante.... and not some dude doing DMC cosplay. ( And don't get me started on Trish)
But even beyond that the world is just boring. DMC4 had flaws and made you visit every place twice but at least there was some variety to the level design and locations. Here you spend the first half of the game in mostly ruined streets, ruined subway stations or abandoned parking lots, and then halfway through it's like they completely gave up and the rest of the game is almost literally just a bunch of hallways with the same 2-3 "underworld" textures repeated over and over. The level design was also basic as hell, gone are the slight puzzle and exploration elements of previous games, here it's mostly a linear path from one combat arena to the next.
And finally, the golden orb thingies are OP as hell and you get WAY too many of them. And yeah I know I don't have to use them but even if you ignore them they sort of take the tension out of it.
As I said, I still had fun with it and definitely want to play through the new difficulty and NG+ to play around with the stuff you get towards the end and don't get to use a lot before it ends. But overall it was rather disappointing to see the franchise take several steps back in its first proper sequel in more than 10 years.
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