I got an email from redbox giving me a free rental so I checked out their selection and DmC was the only game available that I can beat within that time period. Is there anything I should know before I go get it? I've played every DMC game and Bayonetta so I'm fairly familiar with this kind of game.

If you can get past the change in Dante's look, then it's a fantastic game. I expect even more so if you like Bayonetta and the previous DMC's (which you said you've played). Awesome boss fight design, too. That's pretty much all there is to know.

@golguin: Nope. Just have fun duder! Still one of my favorite games this year!

I just rented and beat it like yesterday! It was alright.

Its a fun game with some great design. Particularly in the bosses and environments. Some friends of mine didn't like the way the platforming handled, but I never really experienced those issues myself. My main issue was the lack of lock on, but after awhile you get used to it. If you go in expecting it to be like the older games and for it to be the best dmc game yet then you'll probably be disappointed, so try to avoid that attitude.

Based on your prior experience you should probably play on Hard, I did and didn't regret it. The game is still more than managable at that difficulty, only go Normal if you are really worried about finishing it before you have to return it.

If you enjoy those types, I think you're gonna like this one. The combat doesn't feel as snappy and responsive as some other games in that genre, but it's still a lot of fun, and filled with some of the best level design I've seen in a character action game. If you are somewhat proficient in these types of games, you should consider bumping the difficulty up to hard, because on Normal, it's only occasionally a challenge.

Just play it on Nephilim and enjoy! It's a pretty solid, fun game with pretty visuals and not bad story telling.

What these guys said. I feel that with your experience you will even find Nephilim to be far too easy.

C'mon, that's not true. Every boss is "push a button for free damage" - one of them absolutely literally.

I guess I would say that the art design and creativity was the most impressive part of the game for me. The gameplay is a lot of fun. But the art is what pushes it above and beyond. After about the 1/3 mark is when things really get good.

I thought that harder difficulties weren't available at the start. Don't you first have to beat the game on normal to unlock the harder modes?

How much time is added from normal to hard? I don't want to fight larger waves of enemies that just add time to the gameplay. I have to beat the game within the rental period.

I bought it on sale for around $15. Totally worth it, and it probably would have been worth full retail.

The game is actually really good, and did not deserve the flack it got for the Developer's poor communication skills/response to fan feedback.

don't feel dirty about it,FUN FACT: its actually a very good game.

@golguin: Equivalents of Easy, Normal and Hard are available from the start. I assume beating any of them starts unlocking the higher tiers, of which there are many.

I don't know the specific differences between Normal and Hard but I finished the game on Hard in under 10 hours according to the game clock.

I guess I'll go with the hard setting. Game is in my hand and I'm set to go.

@golguin: Good luck and have fun. Don't go into it thinking you'll hate it - it's a surprisingly well put together character action game considering the developers past releases, and the levels are really amazing.

Dodge offset works a bit different than Bayonetta and other platinum titles but I feel it's easier to pull so you'll have no problems.

This game is definitely no Bayonetta.

I started the game on Nephilim difficulty and the enemy AI hasn't really been that bad.

The no lock on wasn't an issue until it was and I was taking hits from those flying cupid enemies in the church as I was doing my combos because I couldn't target them specifically. I've also had issues trying to target the chainsaw dudes to kill them right away and using the hook things on someone else. The same goes for the shield guys.

Enemy invincibility from specific weapons is a terrible design choice. When I saw my first blue dude I thought I might be able to hit him with the blue scythe and the neutral Rebellion, but it's only the blue scythe. I can imagine it being a huge pain when I meet the eventual red dudes and there is a mixed bag. The yellow invincibility from the chainsaw dudes is pretty annoying since I don't have the charge move that apparently breaks it at max charge.

The dodging isn't really good, but I didn't notice how bad it was until I fought that fat dude (only gets damaged by Blue Scythe right?) in the church and I kept trying to dodge out of my combos with no luck. I immediately bought the angel and demon dodge right after that fight so I'll see if that fixes the dodging issue. I keep expecting a Bayonetta level of dodging and smoothness, but it's currently not happening.

How far am I into the game? I'm at Virility stage 5.

@golguin: The fat doods can be damaged by all weapon types but red weapons are the best since they deal heavy damage. The axe smasher is what you should be doing most of the time, I forgot how it is but I think you would do two quick slashes with regular sword, pause, then switch to axe and you get that large AoE type slam that destroys light enemies.

You will eventually unlock a red weapon that has a charge move which cancels just about every enemy attack in the game - chainsaws and fatty chargers alike.

I never had any issues with the dodging and I didn't even use angel dodge much. I think you just have to get used to it. Once again, if you're coming into this expecting Bayonetta 2 then you will certainly come away disappointed. DmC has it's own systems and cancels that work very differently than Bayonetta and you should approach it from an open minded point of view rather than constantly comparing and contrasting it to arguable the best character action game of this entire generation.

The one thing I can agree on is that color coded enemies are a pain to deal with, and you haven't even seen the worst of them which are almost always paired together.

That aside, while I love Bayonetta I do feel that some of the moves you can combo together in DmC can look a lot more varied and stylish. When you unlock all the weapons, and the game does a nice job of pacing this throughout the entire story, you can really begin to experiment with the different moves you can pull off.

I can't remember exactly, but I think you're about 1/4 through the game.

Edit: also for airborn enemies simply jump in the air and use the red hook that reels you in. When I played the game did a pretty good job of hooking me to flying enemies off screen.

will be in my personal top 10. So just play play play!

Well, I'm not. So there.

Story is way better than any other Devil May Cry. Combat is certainly better than anything else Ninja Theory has done. Was pleasantly surprised with it. First Ninja Theory game I've enjoyed.

Turn off your brain and enjoy some really good action. It was one of the more enjoyable gaming experiences for me this year. The story is a little heavy-handed at times, but overall I was either laughing at the absurdity of it all, or marveling at the spectacular facial animation.

Pretty sure there are 20 stages. As for the enemy handling you can handle large groups of enemies just fine once you get the feel for things. Every so often yeah Dante is going to target something you don't want but personally I found the color coded enemies to be one of the cooler things in the game. Its a combat puzzle that forces you to be creative with how you manage enemies if you want SSS ranks and the best score possible

@golguin " I've played every DMC game and Bayonetta so I'm fairly familiar with this kind of game."

Oh boy are you in for a surprise.

And not a good one.

You probably shouldn't think of it exactly as Bayonetta or DMC combat wise, it's more of a DMC/GoW hybrid and feels distinctly different. I'd argue that if you went deep into the combo systems and true deoths of Bayonetta combat, you will find DmC deeply disappointing. But as a means to and end to see the story its more than competent enough to pull through. And even if it's a bit more forgiving and unbalanced it's still entertaining to play with juggles and switching weapons midcombo.

Fuck the elemental specific enemies though. They were a terrible idea for so many reasons and made the game actively worse.

I agree.

The realization that the old DMC's had some extremely dated and very Japanese centric mechanics, and apart from a decent combat system that wasn't without it's faults everything else about those games was pretty awful is a hard pill to swallow.

Yep. DMC is dated as hell with a TERRIBLE camera, DMC2 has always been complete garbage, DMC3 is the only game of the first three that holds up at all. DMC4 still has the good mechanics (though it's a step back from 3) but Nero is a shitty protagonist, the enemies are lame and playing through the same levels as Dante is a gross way to pad the game.

Weird. That's almost exactly how I feel about DmC and not about the other games (ignoring DMC2, of course). I still think DmC is a worthwhile game though. That's how good I think the combat feels. Though given an older DMC game I'll take it first (ignoring DMC2, of course).

*shrug*

I just got through the Succubus and I think that so far the boss fights aren't that good. I died the first time against her because I didn't know I was causing crap damage unless you use Rebellion and I took a lot of damage from the acid. She goes down very fast once I pulled that out. I was also able to lock her into some kind of loop thanks to the angel dodge and its invincibility frames. It was like attack, attack, attack, angel dodge, attack, attack, attack, angel dodge and etc. Even her air blow attack didn't affect me.

I'm starting to get into a groove with the fighting system, but I think I'm pretty much trying to stay in the air as much as I can. Rebellion and Osiris both have that combo that gives you more lift so I'm just pulling enemies toward me as I fight safely away from the reach of the chainsaw dudes. I finally fought the blue and red guys at the same time and it was kinda annoying.

The big fat guys are still the worst because it completely stops combat. I have to wait for them to reveal their backs so I can pull them and knock them to the ground. It's pointless to attack unless you drop them since I can only hit twice before I need to dodge their swipes.

I think that main problem with the game is that the name has all these expectations about how it should play and it doesn't deliver on that. Had it been called something different it could have implemented whatever system it wants without people trying to make it play like a DMC or Bayonetta game. I don't even use Stinger because the forward twice is too awkward and it just makes more sense to use a pull to close the distance. It makes me really curious to see how Revengeance plays since that looks pretty different.

@golguin: Revengeance is VERY different. Like, it's even hard to think of a really good comparison to make. The parry system and pace of battle definitely took some wrapping my head around it, but after a few hours of bumbling around I think it is really fucking satisfying. I prefer it over DmC in basically every single way when it comes to this years biggest games in the genre.

I do hope you get some enjoyment of DmC though, I think the combat can be really entertaining in it's own way, and it has a few cool moments. It's just so sadly easy to point out what they did wrong. T.T

Also yes, expectation and connotation to the name is the single biggest reason people got mad at the game, it's totally fine on its own. It's just not very good at being Devil May Cry.

I don't really like DmC style games and I loved DmC. It's in my top three of this year with Bioshock and Blood Dragon. (I also finally played Persona 4 and that's incredible but I feel it can't be on my top 2013 games list.)

I just finished the Bob Barbas fight and it was pretty interesting from a visual point of view. I keep getting D ranks for time completion on missions. At this rate I don't think I can finish the game by 9PM tomorrow. I might have to drop the difficulty so I can just blow through the enemies.

It's vastly inferior in the previous DMC games (except, perhaps, DMC2) but it's still a pretty decent action game in its own right. Just don't expect any mind-blowing gameplay depth.

Hey man you're not wrong, to each his own and all that. I just don't have a great fondness for medieval castles.

I'm going to the club to meet Lilith. I'm enjoying the story. I fought what felt like a 5 minute fight for a single wave of enemies (one of the last ones right before Virgil gets the data and right before those rats show up) and it was probably the best fight in the game. No annoying red or blue enemies, shield, or fatties during that specific wave. The rest of the game should have been like that single wave. I had to keep dodging and switching attention all around thanks to the harpies, but nothing had annoying specific weapon fighting so it was fun. I got SS on that mission (nephilim setting).

I tried normal mode for the Bob Barbas fight and I breezed through it like nothing. I'm curious to know how waves act on normal setting, but maybe later since I have to turn it in today.

DMC I thought held up pretty well, even if it's a little dated. 3 and 4 are good, though 3 is better than 4 and I thought Nero wasn't that bad. In fact, I like Nero more than this new Dante, and that's saying something.

I really liked it. Good combat, good style.

@nettacki: It's a different strokes for different folks situation. I actually enjoyed Nero in DMC4 and as sacrilegious as it was to admit at the time, liked his moveset better than Dante's. That said, Nero was a very flat, one dimensional character that was prone to yelling "KIRYE!" a bit too often and not doing much else. In comparison with the rebooted Dante in DmC, Nero comes off as paper thin - but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy him as a character if he simply appealed to your sensibilities more.

@humanity: As if Dante in DmC isn't as thin? I mean, for such a rebel, it seemed like all he did most of the game was sheepishly follow Vergil's orders and not do a damn thing to think for himself until the very end.

@nettacki: I tried to phrase it as delicately as possible but c'mon man Nero was devoid of any sense of reason, direction, or motivation apart from blindly walking forward and yelling Kirye from time to time. He's an alright character - the naive youth out to save the girl, but thats it. DmC Dante had a backstory, he had a variable palette of emotions. I don't really want to argue the point, if you like Nero more then all the power to you man, but in no universe is Nero a more complex character than Dante from DmC, and saying they both equally shallow is basically stretching it.

@humanity: I never said Dante from DmC is as shallow as Nero. I implied that Dante is shallow in his own way. I'll also admit that he's a marginally more complex character than Nero, but that doesn't mean he's automatically better.

At some point in development the names Devil May Cry, Dante, Vergil and Mundus should've been removed. DmC is a good 3rd person action game but a poor DMC game.

Enjoy, one of my favorite games this year :)

Enjoy, one of my favorite games this year :)

I just beat the game on Nephilim difficulty. I'd like to gather my thoughts before I post my full impressions and I think I want to check out normal mode and son of sparda to see how much the enemy AI is changes up.


What I can say is that I think I know the reason why so many people had issues with the gameplay. They came in expecting to play a Devil May Cry game and instead they got a game that played fairly different with a similar coat of paint.

Interested to hear what you think, OP. I'm playing DmC currently and it's my GOTY so far. One of those rare games that makes me want to replay missions and get better at the combat. Probably will jump right into Son of Sparda mode next for the challenge and get all the keys/secret missions I missed.

I loved this game. In particular, the visuals, music, and combat work together in a way that leaves me fucking pumped every time I finish a group of enemies off. I'm not a huge fan of Combichrist out of the game, but for example, when the first level starts and that music is going I am READY TO PLAY. Same with the club level: the progression of the music and the wave signs pulsing in the background, the crazy colors... awesome game.

I hope it sold well enough for them to make a second one. General consensus seems to be Ninja Theory made a good game, but the initial reactions to it might have sunk it.

I played some normal mode and some Son of Sparda and I believe I can make my final verdict about the gameplay. The blue and red colored enemies are absolutely the worst part of the game. Their presence in enemy waves makes fighting them a real chore. My main fighting style involves taking some enemies into the air and staying in the air as I cycle through all 5 weapons. I'll eventually end it by doing the fire fist ground pound. If there are no enemies with yellow charged states I'll stay on the ground a bit for a few combos and go back into the air. I can't do that comfortably when I have red and blue enemies limiting my weapon selection. I can tolerate the shield users since two pulls takes care of them and I can ignore the fatties until they're the only ones left, but the blue and red enemies are too much.

I can look past the no lock in even though I lost track of the number of times it targeted the wrong enemy. I can even forgive the poor platforming despite dying a few times on that. The game is fine for a character action game and it has some decent systems, but its ultimately no DMC game. I feel that DMC games are all about giving the player the freedom to set up combos however they like. This DmC kept throwing in enemies that limit your weapon choices and that ultimately is what prevented me from really enjoying the game.