To be perfectly frank and honest i'm going to try my best to not come across as condescending dick when describing the reality of the new Devil May Cry game compared to the old ones, but when you say that in basically every single way it's a better game it's difficult.

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. Across all the games i have some of the best scores in the entire world and currently i am 35th overall in the new DmC game on the xbox360. In short i am one of the top couple of hundred best 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 apperance 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 3 or 4.

Now whilst i'm sure you'll 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 has 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 be 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 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 a bit hit and miss thing but on multiple play throughs it 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, 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.

I have yet to play the game, and TBH I am excited for it Glad that I hear all these positive feedback

Its these types of reviews, which seem to be quite common among long-time fans of the series, that make me hesitant to pick it up. Truth is, I could get past the style system although it is a huge head-scratcher.....and I'm glad you mentioned the auto lock-on system....anybody whose played Ninja Gaiden knows how frustrating this can be, especially on higher difficulties. Honestly, there was one thing that stopped me from picking up this game.....the boss fights. They have always been the staple of the series for me, and the videos I've watched, as well as the response from DMC fans has been underwhelming. I'd also say that, as you mentioned, forcing the player to use certain weapons to fight enemies is a big problem because it breaks up the flow of combat. Part of the beauty of the DMC series is that you can essentially use whatever weapon you want, and it always created an endless amount of variety in potential combat strategies.

One question though.....how is the devil trigger system overpowered? I haven't paid much attention, but I was under the impression that its underpowered compared to past games.

In old devil may cry games when you hit devil trigger enemies still attacked and behaved like normal it's just Dante's attacks dealt more damage and when he got hit he took less damage as well (And a few other moves became available to Dante). Now in this new DmC game when you hit devil trigger not only do you deal more damage whilst taking less damage, all enemies now float helplessly in mid air unable to attack or move and you can just go up to them and kill them all clearing entire rooms in less than 20 seconds with no risk to yourself.

As you're drunk and tired i'll let you off but most certainly no, i don't play the game on 'easy mode' Like i said i'm one of the top couple of hundred Devil May Cry players in the the world. As for the style system, when DmC was launched both for consoles and pc, once you had obtained a style letter it never went down unless you got hit. However since a few days ago the pc version got a patch which has changed how it works, now if you do nothing your style meter does go down but it won't go below an A rank unless you get hit (slightly better, but still not perfect). The console versions have had no patch and remain the same. Regardless of that the damage has already been done as the leaderboards are filled with people who've abused the style/damage system.

Some of what you say is opinion (which fair enough everybody is entitled to) and other things you've said are just wrong.

I think you'll find most hardcore Devil May Cry fans wouldn't have bought this game regardless of what part of the generation it was released in, there's just too much wrong with it for their tastes. Likewise most DMC fans will tell you that this new Dante is more annoying/unfunny/is a douchebag personalitywise compared to previous games. Throughout most of the game Dantes name gets pronounced "Donte" (Lol, why? I don't know). And whilst yes Ninja Theory fixed a lot of the problems that Devil May Cry 4 had, they didn't fix the bosses, they made them worse, they then took parts of the game that were perfect or almost perfect and made them worse such as, the style meter, lack of weapons, slower combat, worse voice acting, auto lock on, unbalanced devil/angel weapons, overpowered devil trigger, no taunting, taking out game content and then selling it as dlc, 30fps on consoles etc.

Yeah, it's called a reboot. Unless they officially went from prequel to reboot status in like literally a month from release (I'm not sure how announcement were made, this game was not under my radar) I can't see how people couldn't have seen this coming. Besides like zero mentioned, it's still a furious hack and slash, but more polished. You wanna know my honest opinion? People are still bothered about his new image and hair.

OT: I plan to give this game a chance, since i have never played a DMC game, and from the gameplay i have seen, it looks amazingly stylish. I also plan on starting on the highest difficulty possible just like I did in GoWIII. I'm hoping it will be a good challenge for a beginner to the series :D

zero129 said: Mummelmann said: zero129 said: Mummelmann said: So you don't think that people who DMC have played the full game? Well, that just makes perfect sense doesn't it? So if they have not played the game why should they be hating?, when lots of people are telling them the game is great you would think they would listen but nooo. I for one am happy they get trolled within the first few minutes of the game lulz xD I'm not talking about never having played the game, rather people who play a little bit and then don't like it. I know I would have hated it, I watched my friend play a demo, the boss fight was pretty cool but overall I've never been a fan of 3rd person action games do despite the obvious production values this game has and the improved story and acting, it would simply be unbearable to me because of the gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is; some "hate" is legitimate and well founded. Bashing a game you've never tried or seen is silly though. For the record, I've tried most of the DMC games but never enjoyed them. Dante is a cool character and the setting is sometimes really cool as well but I simply cannot get past the gameplay. Well in your case the hate is legit as you just dont like the type of games, but i just really dont understand how people can call themselfs fans of the series and not like this game when imo its the best in the series so far.

Well, that's the thing, long time fans of the series might not enjoy the changes at all. Its kind of the same as Resident Evil, I have always loved and enjoyed that series but it started going downhill fast with number 5 and number 6 is simply a bad action game riddled with QTE's so I longer like the series since it no longer resembles itself at all. I'm not saying that everyone who hates on DMC think exactly like that, or that the changes to that franchise are anywhere near as big as in Resident Evil but I do think that a lot of people are having the same kind of problem with it.

There are plenty of series that took directions I don't like and directly led to me simply stoping playing them; Burnout, Need for Speed, Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill etc. And many, many more. Things change and when you get to a certain point, the elements that appealed to some people and made them love them (games) in the first place are too diluted or simply gone, some have a lower limit of tolerance and abandon ship faster while some stay and some even get fresh love for the series due to new features and elements that are implemented, you seem to belong to the latter category and that's fine! But, remember all those people who have been playing games for ages and don't like these changes, or simply those who dislike the direction a series is taking, there is a lot of legitimate critique and groweling over this. Not all change is good change.

To flat out trolls who never cared for the games to begin with; ***k them.

Some fans just don't like the game I guess. My brother is a HUGE Devil May Cry fan. It took him about 6-7 hours to beat the game, which was one of the main things he didn't like. For him it was too short, the voice acting was a step back from 3 and 4, it was easier than the old ones, and Virgil was kind of a dork.

How come people defend DMC more than they defended Ninja Gaiden?

I started playing on nephilim difficulty and so far it´s been too easy, I´m on chapter 12 and only died once.

Is the son of sparda difficulty something that´s challenging for someone who finds nephilim easy?

I finally got DMC and yes, it is fantastic. This, coming from a guy who played every game since 2001 (and I actually liked DMC 2 despite magazines of the day telling me to hate it. Guess that destroys my credibility.). Anyway, this feels like Adam West Batman fans getting pissed because Michael Keaton was playing the role or James bond fans getting pissed because Daniel Craig was the new guy (and yes, people really were pissed). I was skeptical but now, I'm a believer.