CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Note: This is post patch DmC, not pre-patch.
Oh, DmC: Devil may Cry. What to say about it? According to some, it's the reinvigorating rebirth of a series that had gotten a little long in the tooth. To others, it killed a beloved franchise. Going in I will admit that I am looking at the game through the lens of a Hack n' Slash fan as well as a Devil May Cry fan. I can't look at it any other way, so that may have colored my perception of the combat. With that said, this was my experience with it after replaying the game over a year later.
The Good
The art direction: Vivid, full of color, and almost surreal at times. From the upside down watery world of DmC's prison system, to the evil carnival, to the worlds just tearing themselves apart. It was all very well done, and the overall visuals were just a joy to watch.
The combat on a surface level was pretty good for what it was. If there's one thing I will give DmC's combat system, it's that it is good mindless fun. If I don't think too much about it, I feel like an unbeatable badass. It's when you get any further than a surface level that you start running into the numerous issues.
The main story up to Mission 16. I have to say, they did a lot better than DMC 4 did. None of the environments are reused, most of the assets seem unique (and those that are reused are done tastefully), and it gets into a good groove.
The Platforming compared to previous DMC games and in the bonus missions.
The combination of the song "Hey you, what the fuck is wrong with you" and the Mundus spawn boss fight. It went together brilliantly.
The Okay
The overall story. I appreciate that they tried to take on social commentary with the dark side of capitalism, the complacency of the masses, the propaganda of certain news stations, etc. I don't think it was anything amazing or ground breaking, but I can appreciate that they at least tried to do it. I also think that they set up enough that a sequel has potential to go interesting places (if they actually capitalize on it, unlike what they did in DmC).
The Bad
The dialogue and story can get obnoxious. Whether it be Mundus giving Lilith a "surprise from behind" and showing his "happy face" for no apparent reason; having the succubus swear for 90% of her dialogue (the entire sequence with the Succubus was one of the most obnoxious I've seen in a while); having Dante swearing for no apparent reason (I have no issue with swearing, but a lot of times it just sounds forced. That could just be a voice acting issue, though); the one liners that are hilariously out of place and sound added in at the very last second; and the myriad of other "try hard" moments where they are trying to be edgy but just come across as sophomoric. Much too often, any maturity (aka the social commentary) or wit is lost in the overabundance of these childish tantrums.
Besides being obnoxious at times, the story execution is rather bland (sometimes at key moments). Dante's backstory seemed oddly rushed. They tell a majority of it in a single mission (Mission 2) and it came across as more a summary of what happened more than anything else. Honestly, a lot of Dante's story seems rushed. They hint at stuff like the war between Angels and Demons and the war with the 3rd race the Nephilem, but that's all they are: little tidbits that never develop into anything. Nothing was really done with Dante's Angel heritage despite the hubbub that was made about it during development. Nothing was done with Angels period despite being mostly new ground in the DMC universe. Stuff like "You only see me as evil because I am a demon, open your mind" is brought up to Dante to make the story seem deeper but seldom does a point even get made with it. All other demons are much too animalistic or are as hammy evil as Mundus. And while Mundus gives a hammy speech about how Humans "wanted" and "needed" him, the fact is we see on numerous occasions he's doing utterly horrible things to humans and clearly isn't doing it for them. "Dante vs. Vergil", while it didn't come out of nowhere (they were hinting at the fact that Vergil didn't have pure intentions the entire time through the "With Mundus out of the way, who do you think will fill the void" line and the fact that he really didn't seem to care that his organization was gutted nor did he particularly care for Kat's wellbeing), didn't exactly feel natural in how the dialogue was handled and felt more like a "Whelp, we have to have Dante and Vergil fight to set up the sequel, so here we go" rather than a climactic moment. I just don't feel the buildup was sufficient for what they did with the characters. And the ending with Dante suddenly questioning who he was and suddenly started having issues controlling his demon side didn't have nearly enough build up and just felt tacked on for the sake of sequel bait. Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the stories of previous DMC games were masterpieces, but Ninja Theory was contracted specifically for their story skills. I expected better.
It runs out of steam by the end (Mission 16 and beyond). All of Mission 16's jokes about how those in Finance are "barely human anymore", about the elevator music, etc. all fall flat as can be. Mission 17 is a drag due to the constant wait during platforming. Mission 18 is the run of the mill "Get the generators running" shtick. The Mundus boss fight in Mission 19 is a letdown and the execution of Dante v. Vergil in Mission 20 is disappointing on top of having blatant sequel bait at the end.
The lack of a Hard Lock on: I was against this from the moment they announced it, and I still see this as an inexcusable omission. In previous Devil May Cry's, I never had to worry about whether or not I would be targeting/attacking the specific enemy I wanted to. Not so in DmC. Every so often, one of my attacks misses. Much too often, I'll whip pull myself to or pull the wrong enemy to myself due to the absence of a hard target lock. The soft lock just doesn't work as well as it needs to. And it just gets worse as they start putting more and more enemies in the same room.
The Angel weapons are extremely unbalanced. They have a low damage output, which means that they also give noticeably fewer style points compared to Rebellion and especially their Demon weapon counterparts. Aquilla's style point output is just horrible and Osiris' isn't much better. Why use angel weapons and get 3,000 points for several combo strings when for a single Arbiter string can net you 4,500 to 5,000 points or over 10,000 for the same amount of effort?
The regular enemies are rather basic and a step down from previous entries. Devil May Cry 4's enemies had 3 to 5 moves for lower tier enemies and 6 to 12 moves for higher tier enemies. They interacted with each other, formed different strategies when together (especially Angelos and Biancos), and weren't color coded (more on that later). DmC's enemies had 2 to 4 moves. That's it. Moreover, their attack patterns and overall AI can seem extremely basic at times. Even DMC 1's enemies seemed more complex than what we are given here.
The Bosses are also very basic. Mundus' Child: Avoid the AoE when far away, dodge the knife attack when close, hit the weak spot. Bob Barbas: Avoid his 2 attacks, hit the weak spot. Mundus: Avoid his 2 slams, jump off the platform from the lava, avoid projectiles, hit the weak spot (he's basically a reskin of Poison, to be honest). In DMC 3/4 they just seemed to do more (some DMC 4 bosses had 10 to 12 attacks). Heck, even compared to other series/games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Ninja Gaiden it just falls flat.
The scoring system is much too lenient. The first time through I was getting nothing but S ranks with a few SS ranks. That didn't happen in Devil May Cry 1, 3, or 4. That didn't happen in Bayonetta. That didn't happen in Ninja Gaiden, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, or really any other hack n' slasher I've played that ranks you. The ranking system is there to judge me on how I did. There should never be a point where I say to myself "Man, I completely fucked up that time around, I'm totally going to have to redo it" only to be awarded the next to highest score of a SS, leaving me bewildered on how I got that. Part of the reason I replayed DMC 4's campaign (besides loving the combat system, though there was Bloody Palace for that) so much was to figure out how to get good enough at the game to S rank every mission (I will admit to never being able to SS rank all missions in DMC 3), same with Bayonetta and all the others. With DmC, I never felt the need to since the score system was essentially handing out high scores to me left and right. I have purposefully died and used items and I still get an A or S just to test it. It's too lenient.
The Devil Trigger... It's nigh useless. At most, you can fully use it once per level and/or have several very short bursts and because of how it forces enemies up in the air, I can only focus on one at a time most of the time. It's just not too helpful besides knocking out the occasional foe I can't be bothered with and for a quick heal.
The difficulty. I played on Nephilem the first time through and I still didn't have that much of an issue. Many of the enemies aren't aggressive enough and before the patch, with the OP dodging, messed ranking system, etc. it was a joke.
Color coded enemies. Why, oh why, did they think this was a good idea (especially on higher difficulty levels where the designers apparently though it was a great idea to constantly put opposing colored enemies together in groupings)? It's not fun to take them out and just becomes tedious when you have several of them in a room on top of having other enemies to deal with. It limits the moves I can use against the enemy (the "ghost" variants are especially annoying since Angel weapons are weak as hell and don't net a lot of points for my trouble) and becomes a game of either keeping the other color variant off screen or spamming Aquilla on the "ghost" variants while I wail on the "rage" variants. It just gets tedious.
Along the same lines of the issue with color coded enemies, the game, as it goes on, has a bad tendency of introducing more and more ways to limit how you can attack. Some enemies can only be attacked from behind, some need angel weapons, some need demon weapons, others can only be attacked in one specific spot, while others need a specific combination to drop their guard (demon weapons against shields, the wail on them). This isn't inherently bad, it's just the way Ninja Theory did it that I have an issue with. And on higher difficulties, this issue is highlighted because, as mentioned, higher difficulties have a tendency to group color variants together in the same room on top of spamming several high level enemies (Witches, Dreamrunners, and Butchers galore at certain points). It is constantly limiting which combos I can use and when I can use them and after a while, fighting these enemies just gets tedious. I don't mind difficulty (obviously), I do mind tedium.
Things the patch fixed
Lag from switching between weapons. It still happens, but it seems better.
The hilariously OP Demon Dodge.
Distribution of points seems a bit better.
Invincibility frames while dodging were reduced.
It seems a bit more difficult to raise your style meter.
The fact that your style meter never dropped unless hit, meaning the second you got up to SSS (which was extremely easy until the patch), you stayed there no matter what.
The game was average. Don't get me wrong, the combat on a surface level is more enjoyable than many of its contemporaries (Ninja Gaiden III, Killer is Dead, Lolipop Chainsaw, etc). When I wasn't thinking too much about it, I did find enjoyment out of it. However, for its pedigree, that's just not good enough for me. It is nowhere near its predecessors (Devil May Cry 1, 3, 4), it's spiritual successor (Bayonetta) or other high tier character action games (Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden II, Metal Gear Rising, etc). It falls apart on when one takes a deeper look (I'm not even talking about stuff like Jump Cancelling. I don't care about that. Enemy layouts, AI, attack patterns, etc. are all worse) at the combat. Regarding the story, it's under cooked at best and obnoxious at worst. Overall, the game was my biggest disappointment of 2013.
Tl;dr
Positives
+Visuals and art direction
+Combat on a completely surface level
+The main story up to Mission 16
+The platforming compared to previous games
Okay
/The overall story had potential and I liked that they tried for social commentary.
Negatives
-Story and dialogue can be obnoxious
-Story execution is lacking
-Runs out of steam by Mission 16
-No Hard Lock On
-Angel weapons are unbalanced
-Enemies are too basic for my liking
-Bosses are also too basic for my liking
-The score system is too lenient
-The Devil Trigger was useless
-The difficulty
-Color Coded enemies
-Tedious enemy layouts along with enemy design limiting comboability
Oh, DmC: Devil may Cry. What to say about it? According to some, it's the reinvigorating rebirth of a series that had gotten a little long in the tooth. To others, it killed a beloved franchise. Going in I will admit that I am looking at the game through the lens of a Hack n' Slash fan as well as a Devil May Cry fan. I can't look at it any other way, so that may have colored my perception of the combat. With that said, this was my experience with it after replaying the game over a year later.
The Good
The art direction: Vivid, full of color, and almost surreal at times. From the upside down watery world of DmC's prison system, to the evil carnival, to the worlds just tearing themselves apart. It was all very well done, and the overall visuals were just a joy to watch.
The combat on a surface level was pretty good for what it was. If there's one thing I will give DmC's combat system, it's that it is good mindless fun. If I don't think too much about it, I feel like an unbeatable badass. It's when you get any further than a surface level that you start running into the numerous issues.
The main story up to Mission 16. I have to say, they did a lot better than DMC 4 did. None of the environments are reused, most of the assets seem unique (and those that are reused are done tastefully), and it gets into a good groove.
The Platforming compared to previous DMC games and in the bonus missions.
The combination of the song "Hey you, what the fuck is wrong with you" and the Mundus spawn boss fight. It went together brilliantly.
The Okay
The overall story. I appreciate that they tried to take on social commentary with the dark side of capitalism, the complacency of the masses, the propaganda of certain news stations, etc. I don't think it was anything amazing or ground breaking, but I can appreciate that they at least tried to do it. I also think that they set up enough that a sequel has potential to go interesting places (if they actually capitalize on it, unlike what they did in DmC).
The Bad
The dialogue and story can get obnoxious. Whether it be Mundus giving Lilith a "surprise from behind" and showing his "happy face" for no apparent reason; having the succubus swear for 90% of her dialogue (the entire sequence with the Succubus was one of the most obnoxious I've seen in a while); having Dante swearing for no apparent reason (I have no issue with swearing, but a lot of times it just sounds forced. That could just be a voice acting issue, though); the one liners that are hilariously out of place and sound added in at the very last second; and the myriad of other "try hard" moments where they are trying to be edgy but just come across as sophomoric. Much too often, any maturity (aka the social commentary) or wit is lost in the overabundance of these childish tantrums.
Besides being obnoxious at times, the story execution is rather bland (sometimes at key moments). Dante's backstory seemed oddly rushed. They tell a majority of it in a single mission (Mission 2) and it came across as more a summary of what happened more than anything else. Honestly, a lot of Dante's story seems rushed. They hint at stuff like the war between Angels and Demons and the war with the 3rd race the Nephilem, but that's all they are: little tidbits that never develop into anything. Nothing was really done with Dante's Angel heritage despite the hubbub that was made about it during development. Nothing was done with Angels period despite being mostly new ground in the DMC universe. Stuff like "You only see me as evil because I am a demon, open your mind" is brought up to Dante to make the story seem deeper but seldom does a point even get made with it. All other demons are much too animalistic or are as hammy evil as Mundus. And while Mundus gives a hammy speech about how Humans "wanted" and "needed" him, the fact is we see on numerous occasions he's doing utterly horrible things to humans and clearly isn't doing it for them. "Dante vs. Vergil", while it didn't come out of nowhere (they were hinting at the fact that Vergil didn't have pure intentions the entire time through the "With Mundus out of the way, who do you think will fill the void" line and the fact that he really didn't seem to care that his organization was gutted nor did he particularly care for Kat's wellbeing), didn't exactly feel natural in how the dialogue was handled and felt more like a "Whelp, we have to have Dante and Vergil fight to set up the sequel, so here we go" rather than a climactic moment. I just don't feel the buildup was sufficient for what they did with the characters. And the ending with Dante suddenly questioning who he was and suddenly started having issues controlling his demon side didn't have nearly enough build up and just felt tacked on for the sake of sequel bait. Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the stories of previous DMC games were masterpieces, but Ninja Theory was contracted specifically for their story skills. I expected better.
It runs out of steam by the end (Mission 16 and beyond). All of Mission 16's jokes about how those in Finance are "barely human anymore", about the elevator music, etc. all fall flat as can be. Mission 17 is a drag due to the constant wait during platforming. Mission 18 is the run of the mill "Get the generators running" shtick. The Mundus boss fight in Mission 19 is a letdown and the execution of Dante v. Vergil in Mission 20 is disappointing on top of having blatant sequel bait at the end.
The lack of a Hard Lock on: I was against this from the moment they announced it, and I still see this as an inexcusable omission. In previous Devil May Cry's, I never had to worry about whether or not I would be targeting/attacking the specific enemy I wanted to. Not so in DmC. Every so often, one of my attacks misses. Much too often, I'll whip pull myself to or pull the wrong enemy to myself due to the absence of a hard target lock. The soft lock just doesn't work as well as it needs to. And it just gets worse as they start putting more and more enemies in the same room.
The Angel weapons are extremely unbalanced. They have a low damage output, which means that they also give noticeably fewer style points compared to Rebellion and especially their Demon weapon counterparts. Aquilla's style point output is just horrible and Osiris' isn't much better. Why use angel weapons and get 3,000 points for several combo strings when for a single Arbiter string can net you 4,500 to 5,000 points or over 10,000 for the same amount of effort?
The regular enemies are rather basic and a step down from previous entries. Devil May Cry 4's enemies had 3 to 5 moves for lower tier enemies and 6 to 12 moves for higher tier enemies. They interacted with each other, formed different strategies when together (especially Angelos and Biancos), and weren't color coded (more on that later). DmC's enemies had 2 to 4 moves. That's it. Moreover, their attack patterns and overall AI can seem extremely basic at times. Even DMC 1's enemies seemed more complex than what we are given here.
The Bosses are also very basic. Mundus' Child: Avoid the AoE when far away, dodge the knife attack when close, hit the weak spot. Bob Barbas: Avoid his 2 attacks, hit the weak spot. Mundus: Avoid his 2 slams, jump off the platform from the lava, avoid projectiles, hit the weak spot (he's basically a reskin of Poison, to be honest). In DMC 3/4 they just seemed to do more (some DMC 4 bosses had 10 to 12 attacks). Heck, even compared to other series/games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Ninja Gaiden it just falls flat.
The scoring system is much too lenient. The first time through I was getting nothing but S ranks with a few SS ranks. That didn't happen in Devil May Cry 1, 3, or 4. That didn't happen in Bayonetta. That didn't happen in Ninja Gaiden, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, or really any other hack n' slasher I've played that ranks you. The ranking system is there to judge me on how I did. There should never be a point where I say to myself "Man, I completely fucked up that time around, I'm totally going to have to redo it" only to be awarded the next to highest score of a SS, leaving me bewildered on how I got that. Part of the reason I replayed DMC 4's campaign (besides loving the combat system, though there was Bloody Palace for that) so much was to figure out how to get good enough at the game to S rank every mission (I will admit to never being able to SS rank all missions in DMC 3), same with Bayonetta and all the others. With DmC, I never felt the need to since the score system was essentially handing out high scores to me left and right. I have purposefully died and used items and I still get an A or S just to test it. It's too lenient.
The Devil Trigger... It's nigh useless. At most, you can fully use it once per level and/or have several very short bursts and because of how it forces enemies up in the air, I can only focus on one at a time most of the time. It's just not too helpful besides knocking out the occasional foe I can't be bothered with and for a quick heal.
The difficulty. I played on Nephilem the first time through and I still didn't have that much of an issue. Many of the enemies aren't aggressive enough and before the patch, with the OP dodging, messed ranking system, etc. it was a joke.
Color coded enemies. Why, oh why, did they think this was a good idea (especially on higher difficulty levels where the designers apparently though it was a great idea to constantly put opposing colored enemies together in groupings)? It's not fun to take them out and just becomes tedious when you have several of them in a room on top of having other enemies to deal with. It limits the moves I can use against the enemy (the "ghost" variants are especially annoying since Angel weapons are weak as hell and don't net a lot of points for my trouble) and becomes a game of either keeping the other color variant off screen or spamming Aquilla on the "ghost" variants while I wail on the "rage" variants. It just gets tedious.
Along the same lines of the issue with color coded enemies, the game, as it goes on, has a bad tendency of introducing more and more ways to limit how you can attack. Some enemies can only be attacked from behind, some need angel weapons, some need demon weapons, others can only be attacked in one specific spot, while others need a specific combination to drop their guard (demon weapons against shields, the wail on them). This isn't inherently bad, it's just the way Ninja Theory did it that I have an issue with. And on higher difficulties, this issue is highlighted because, as mentioned, higher difficulties have a tendency to group color variants together in the same room on top of spamming several high level enemies (Witches, Dreamrunners, and Butchers galore at certain points). It is constantly limiting which combos I can use and when I can use them and after a while, fighting these enemies just gets tedious. I don't mind difficulty (obviously), I do mind tedium.
Things the patch fixed
Lag from switching between weapons. It still happens, but it seems better.
The hilariously OP Demon Dodge.
Distribution of points seems a bit better.
Invincibility frames while dodging were reduced.
It seems a bit more difficult to raise your style meter.
The fact that your style meter never dropped unless hit, meaning the second you got up to SSS (which was extremely easy until the patch), you stayed there no matter what.
The game was average. Don't get me wrong, the combat on a surface level is more enjoyable than many of its contemporaries (Ninja Gaiden III, Killer is Dead, Lolipop Chainsaw, etc). When I wasn't thinking too much about it, I did find enjoyment out of it. However, for its pedigree, that's just not good enough for me. It is nowhere near its predecessors (Devil May Cry 1, 3, 4), it's spiritual successor (Bayonetta) or other high tier character action games (Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden II, Metal Gear Rising, etc). It falls apart on when one takes a deeper look (I'm not even talking about stuff like Jump Cancelling. I don't care about that. Enemy layouts, AI, attack patterns, etc. are all worse) at the combat. Regarding the story, it's under cooked at best and obnoxious at worst. Overall, the game was my biggest disappointment of 2013.
Tl;dr
Positives
+Visuals and art direction
+Combat on a completely surface level
+The main story up to Mission 16
+The platforming compared to previous games
Okay
/The overall story had potential and I liked that they tried for social commentary.
Negatives
-Story and dialogue can be obnoxious
-Story execution is lacking
-Runs out of steam by Mission 16
-No Hard Lock On
-Angel weapons are unbalanced
-Enemies are too basic for my liking
-Bosses are also too basic for my liking
-The score system is too lenient
-The Devil Trigger was useless
-The difficulty
-Color Coded enemies
-Tedious enemy layouts along with enemy design limiting comboability
