SO FINALLY "DEVILS THIRD", ITAGAKIS NEW GAME IS OUT or at least for us european and japanese folk..

Overall I see reviews are fairly negative :)

What do the european and japanese duders (and dudettes ofcourse, is that a thing?) think?

I may be going crazy from all the metal gear lately and maybe it helps I had my expectations pretty low to begin with since this game has been in development hell for so long...But having played a few hours of the campaign so far I freaking love this stupid game. Dont get me wrong this is definitely no Ninja Gaiden, its not that great of a game either, the melee seems a bit on the shallow side and the aiming really has a fucked up deadzone. I first turned the auto-aim off and raised the sensitivity to 15 (originally 10) BIG mistake, the sensitivity, turned it right back to original, left the auto-aim off and have found it to the most comfortable like that. I am already able to land a headshot most of the time and even though the aiming is way slower than in a typical tps or fps, it seems fast enough so far. It probably helps that the enemies aren't too bright but don't judge a man by his intellect ;) they definitely seem to be able to form a threat and overwhelm you if you don't dispatch them fast enough and arent mobile.

The game also doesnt really seem to require you to "call of duty" through the levels LT+RT ing everything. Theres plenty of ammo around and I found it more fun to run/slide around shooting from the hip and occasionally aiming properly and melee combo-ing any sucker getting close. The whole thing doesn't seem to have very much nuance but I find it very satisfying nonetheless ( for melee you basically mash light attack or heavy attack and have a guard button which can make you do a quick evade if you push the analogue stick in a direction). And the gore is stupefyingly great! You can shoot a guy's torso in half with a normal machine gun, blast away a whole body except for the legs with a shotgun or see the top of their head flying against the ceiling after a headshot. All the while your antagonist is spouting dumb one-liners, smoking a sigarette he lit up automatically after staying behind cover for 20 seconds and blood is spraying everywhere in a delightfully over the top way. Every few enemies you kill with melee you automatically do a sort of finishing move on and even though they are pretty over the top and gory they definitely happen a little often, swinging your camera around in a cinematic way, taking away all sense of direction for a brief moment.

And then we have the story and the cutscenes of which there seem to be more than I actually expected and OH MY GOSH do I love the stupid dialog and cutscene direction in this game so far. I talked about the intro earlier in another thread but boy, was it way stupider than I remembed it, lovely! And it even has what seem to be fun boss battles which I sorely miss from a lot of games these days. The first one especially was not very nuanced but it seems like this could be going places. I'm getting right back in after Im done posting this and have eaten some dinner, popped it in after work to check it out for a bit and those few hours flew by.

Wow that was longer than expected.

Long story short: I'm not sure what everyones expectations were but to me it seems that if like me you saw the trailers and it seemed like a silly, overserious, janky, gory ,action movie, "crazy japanese misconceived view on western stuff" good time to you. This seems to be exactly that.

Anyways, super curious if other people are enjoying this game too right now :)

I've been messing around in multiplayer and really enjoying it. I've pretty much only played Monster Hunter this year, and it is fun to play something with more free flowing movement and goofy combat.

Thanks for bumping this. Missed the intial post. Thanks for sharing impressions, I've been interested in seeing how this turned out (apparently not great but maybe still pretty fun!).

I have only played a couple of hours. I am enjoying it. It is a fun game. But I am a Itagaki fanboy, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

In terms of the combat I am still waiting for an epiphany. I want to say I am chaining slides, combos and finishers and alternating between shotgun and melee with ease. But I am not. I guess I am still trying to find the right mix. Or maybe there are upgrades or new combos/counters coming later in the game. Right now, the second boss is kicking my ass, hard. He mixes melee with (unblockable) projectiles and I find that my dodge isn't reliable enough to avoid taking dmg. And the guy has some very damaging attacks, including a ohk. I guess the NG crowd will be happy to hear that. And I am too. As long as I get the precision combat to still make it an uplifting experience.

But the jury is still out. It may be that I just suck :)

Not sure anybody is even reading here. Seems like the bad reviews have done their job shutting down any interest in this game.

Anyways, I am ashamed to say that I had to drop down to "casual" for the boss battle I mentioned. I am fairly sure I am missing key components of the combat and I will laugh at myself when/if I reach a decent level of skill in this game. But the spike was enormous. Could be a small balancing issue here.

But: I was still having fun. And finally beating him, even on casual, felt like a nice accomplishment.

@haniball: Yep my thoughts exactly, the previews and bad graphics did their part too though.

That said, I'm not sure I'd dare call it a really good game either. I mean, it really looks super shoddy technically(you just have to look in the direction of a large open space for the frame rate to go to absolute tit-wank) and does it not control very well. I've gotten past the 4th or maybe 5th boss yesterday(and havent played since) and gotten most of em in a few tries. They do get really intense and leave little room for error while the rest of the game is kind of easy if you pay a little attention.

And while I say the normal enemies are kind of a cakewalk they do start to throw kinda interesting mixups of enemies at you the further you get. And I've read a few reviews that did not dig the twist some way through SPOILER: with it suddenly being also shooting kinda zombies but not. I think its going in the right direction of stupid and it mixes it up a little bit gameplay-wise at the same time. I love the quick restarts when dying too.

The flow is kinda off in this game though (as in that there does not seem to be much of it), especially compared to stuff like Warframe where you can combo seamlessly from shooting while sliding to melee to walljump to crazy spinny attack AoE to shooting to whatever the fuck you want.

Stil, I find it a super fun and stupid game that is strangely satisfying even though it doesnt play super well. I'll be playing through the rest of the campaign throughout the week after work and then I think I'm going to try and get into some multiplayer sessions next weekend though I have little hope there will be anyone playing... I did hear that it is fairly popular in japan, does anyone know if matchmaking is global? Maybe we should gather a few on here who are interested (maybe in a separate thread though)

@lestephan:

I'll be jumping into some multiplayer sessions when the story is over. Have a feeling it will be a couple of weeks though.

But I took my Vita with me and my lil boy to the playground last night and finally finished the first chapter of NGS2+ on Master Ninja. And you know, Rasetsu is a bitch when you meet him that first time. And his grab is a ohk too. But I always felt like I was in control and if I messed up it was my bad. Of course I have spent countless more hours in NGS2 than in DT so maybe I am just not blocking, dodging, countering - whateber it is I'm missing - right. But while the tone and tasteless humor are pure Itagaki win, the combat and bosses so far remind me more of my hard run against Krauser in RE4 :)

But good to hear that he mixes up enemies in later chapters. That is something I was missing so far. he would through a bunch of melee guys at me at once or standard enemies with a couple rocket dudes mixed in but it didn't feel as strategic. But that may all come together in hardcore mode, who knows.

The action did sometimes give me a RE4 feel strangely :P

And yeah the controls aren't nearly as precise as in the ninja gaiden games either.

I play in bite size sessions. In the Japanese castle now. There was a section there I got through on pure luck. The minigun brutes actually focused on my helpers for a few seconds :) Definitely some difficulty spikes in the game.

Anyhoo, still having fun with it. Relying on melee wherever possible, which is not often enough. They make me use guns too often for my taste.

I tried the online once and gave up after one game. Nobody there was even trying to duke it out old style. All about the guns with the kids these days.

So is anyone going to start GB_East and GB_West clans for multiplayer, now that the North American release has happened? (Although I'm guessing very few people on this forum will get it.)

Too bad I'm in Australia and am at work (or sleeping) when any of the other PAL regions are playing. Hopefully (not likely) Nintendo will merge the servers.