LTTP Devil May Cry Series |LTTP| Let's Rock! (Open Spoilers)

[MissingNo.]

Never have I ever played the DMC series. I have started playing DMC1 at one point, but never finished it. I have never played any of its sequels, either. Why? I don't really know. I like character action games a lot, even though I am not necessarily good at them. I played a ton of classic God of War. I played Bayonetta 1 and 2. Nier: Automata. Astral Chain. But somehow, I never played DMC. Until I recently decided to change that.

So far, I have played through 1-4, and will start with 5 fairly soon. I may or may not play the reboot in the future, depending on when it next goes on sale. For now, I give you my thoughts on DMC1-4. I am interested in reading your memories of and/or opinions on any of those games as well. On a last remark, I only played through the games on normal so far, and am not sure when/if I want to attempt to up the difficulty.

Without further ado…


DMC1 HD - The Prototype

Feels very different from the others, which is understandable given its development history. Pretty short, but definitely enjoyable. There are some difficulty spikes, but ultimately nothing too serious. I really liked the atmosphere, and especially some of the enemy designs — shout-out to Death Scissors. When I first played this many years ago, I tapped out at the second Nelo Angelo fight.

While it certainly is still enjoyable, the age of this game can definitely be felt. Platforming feels awkward, thanks to fixed camera and the resulting somewhat wonky depth perception. Roll/evade being only possible sideways took a lot of adapting on my end. The underwater section was difficult to control for me, and inverted camera controls only made matters worse. Otherwise it was a fun, cheesy game, with a couple of meme-worthy moments.


DMC2 HD - The Defect

Where do I start. Heihachi's reject brother is attempting to release the crazy sax demon and achieve ultimate power. Along the way, you get to fight presumably underpaid demonic underlings that refuse to attack you, and bosses that for some reason are incompetent to the point of not being able to do anything even remotely threatening if you keep your distance and just shoot at them with your trusty Handguns™. Those are, without exaggeration, some of the most poorly designed encounters I have ever witnessed across a myriad of video games.

What starts out as a somewhat shitty B-movie, where I thought I could find enjoyment in the silliness of it all, quickly devolves into an utterly soul-draining experience. You should know that I was dumb enough to play Lucia's campaign as well, but at the very least I now will never have to touch this game ever again. The nicest thing I can say is that the underwater section was better to deal with than the one in the original, and some of the underlying mechanics are improved and returning in DMC3 and onward.


DMC3 HD - The Real Shit

The prequel, and also the first game where I feel they really nailed the movement. Where DMC1 felt more stiff and somewhat limited with its overall mobility options, this one feels smoother. If DMC1 was cheesy in places, this one is extra cheesy all over.

Boss fights are very enjoyable. Where DMC2 had bosses that were ridiculously non-threatening, I feel like they tried to overcorrect here in some places. Cerberus for instance gave me a lot of trouble on my first encounter. Conversely though, the centipede boss was one of the weaker links, and felt like it would not have been out of place in DMC2. Vergil was a standout. At least in my case, I had to substantially rethink the way I approach combat for the second and third encounters. The second one felt impossible before I learned not to evade roll his attacks, but sidestep them instead. I hit a similar wall with the third one before I figured out Beowulf is the bane of his existence. The platforming sections still felt awkward, and I sucked at them. Trial of Skill gave me more trouble than I care to admit. And some of the puzzles were just balls. I hated those balls.


DMC4 SE - Exceeding Expectations

After how much I enjoyed DMC3, I wondered what the sequel would do to keep things from getting stale. The answer was Nero. Devil Breaker is a fun new tool, but the real star of the show is Red Queen. The exceed mechanic is extremely satisfying to pull off, even though I can not do it consistently for the life of me. The camera has been improved a lot, which makes the platforming sections less of a pain. Fuck that one section with the disappearing floor tiles you have to manage while Mephistos are trying to poke you to death in particular, though.

Somehow, DMC4 manages to feel like an evolution of DMC3, while offering a unique enough take on the formula to keep it from feeling too samey. I appreciate it trying new things. The forest area is something I did not expect to see in this game at all, for instance. But really, I can not stress how much I enjoyed Nero from a gameplay perspective. So much so, that during the mandatory switch to Dante for a chunk of the game, all I could think about was how I wanted to grab and faceplant this enemy in the floor with Devil Breaker, and how much I missed revving Red Queen. Admittedly, though, the one thing I missed the most mechanically when playing as Nero is Dante's dash when in Trickster style. Overall, I did end up liking this one even more than DMC3. Which has me especially excited for DMC5.


To be continued…

 

[Twilight]

Got into the series a handful of years ago (thanks to Gaming Brit). 1 held up surprisingly well for me, besides the repeated boss fights and some annoying platforming, and that underwater segment, is still feels well to play, and has a unique atmosphere that the rest of the series doesn't have, and honestly, it gets game feel better than a lot of modern games regardless of genre.

I never finished 2, managed to fall asleep playing that "game", don't have much else to say about it, and there isn't much to say about it either way. Also never finished DmC, is a competent game, but I can't stand what they did to the universe and characters of the series.

3 is peak gaming for me, top 3 character action games, great pacing, fantastic line up of bosses, a really good story, and the beginning of one of the craziest move sets ever devised for a character, which can already be experienced now on Switch thanks to the free style and weapon wheel feature, 3 was already my favorite of the series, but the Switch version elevates it to pretty much being unmatched.

4 is a mixed bag, game with really good combat in the middle of a bunch of not very good levels that turn more obnoxious to traverse through as Dante, the repeated boss fights on top of that terrible dice mechanic also bring it down a lot for me, plus a much worse story, I didn't enjoy the game as much as 1 and 3. Thankfully I don't have to play it again to get some Nero combat thanks to 5.

5 is a great game, better than 1 but not as good as 3. Got Nero, Dante and now V goodness but in a much more complete game than 4, with also a more compelling story. Things I didn't like were some of the bosses, the lack of light puzzle elements, and what ended up being a pretty repetitive set of locales visually, but man the gameplay is sooo good.

 

[undefined]

Only played 3 SE & 4, both are great with 3 being more memorable

I'm trying to reduce my backlog so I tend to not replay much stuff lately but seeing this thread now I want to buy & play DMC 3 on Switch

I already bought DMC1 though so I'll take a look at that one first

 

[MissingNo.]

Did not really get into the complexity of Dante's moveset when you factor in weapon- and style-switching, because I never really made much use of those mechanics. I have kind of a hard time memorising combos, let alone executing them in the thick of it, so I never sought out the added complexity of mid-combo switching. Thinking of it, this is probably the main reason I enjoy Nero more. He has a more straight forward toolkit in that regard, but makes up for it with his own mechanics.

 

[MissingNo.]

Started playing DMC5 (up until the end of Chapter 6), and apart from it looking absolutely stunning and playing super smoothly on Series S, it is seemingly taking some design inspiration from DMC1 and, to a lesser extent (so far?), 3.

First of all, the scissor sisters made their comeback, but now take somewhat more effort to deal with due to the absence of the shotgun. Curious to see if their scythe-weilding counterpart will also make a return.

Then, there is V's summon, Shadow. More on V later, but Shadow's moveset is oddly reminiscent of this repeated miniboss encounter in DMC1 with the ghostly, shapeshifting cat beast. So I booted up DMC1 again, took a closer look at the in-game enemy compendium, and as it turns out the name of that beast was… Shadow. How curious.

That got me thinking. Griffon, the bird summon, is named after another DMC1 boss, and some of its abilities are somewhat reminiscent of the encounters with said boss as well. While those two resemble their DMC1 counterparts in terms of appearance and moveset fairly well, V's DT summon, Nightmare, only takes its name from yet another DMC1 boss. Those Nightmares look nothing alike, and from what I can tell don't have any obvious shared abilities, either.

But then there is also DMC3 stuff. Geryon is back, without its chariot, but with a rider instead. The time bending mechanic returned alongside the steed.

There might be more callbacks that flew over my head, but I like the way they implemented them so far. As much as I typically like to see such callbacks, I do hope they do not become too prevalent.

Oh yeah, about V. The concept for this character's gameplay is absolutely bonkers. A summoner is not something I would have expected to work well in a character action game, and yet here we are. I am also glad that I never really followed anything DMC5 when the game released, and went into this basically blind. I have seen V before, but I did not know he was playable, let alone what his moveset looked like. So when the game let me take command, I was pretty much floored at what they were attempting to do, and the fact that they managed to pull it off.

 

[big lantern ghost]

This is a fun series! Cool to see your progress. That’s nice to hear about DMC V playing well on Series S too; haven’t got around to that one yet and that’s what I’d be playing on too.

DMC3 is definitely the game in the series for sure. Such a unique, accomplished, nutty action odyssey. This thread is making me want to pick up that Switch version and see how far I can get now that I’m an old dad

Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the reboot. Seems like a lot of big fans don’t like it at all, but I remember having a great time with the action.

 

[TreIII]

Would be interested to hear your thoughts on the reboot. Seems like a lot of big fans don’t like it at all, but I remember having a great time with the action.

Rule of thumb is that if you can snag either a) DmC: Definitive Edition, or b) DmC on PC with all the right mods, you get something that is much closer in line to the rest of the series.

Now that the series is firmly "back on track", the DE just stands as a nice curiosity more than anything else. It was said that Itsuno was on hand to help Ninja Theory with more than a couple of things regarding DmC's combat design and interface, and well...DMCV had Vergil with his own Doppelganger right after his counterpart from DmC got it, among other things!

 

[FluffyPower]

Glad you are loving the series! My personal ranking would be

DMC 3 = 5 > 1 > 4 > DmC > 2

I've probably spent 100+ hours with each besides 2.

 

[MissingNo.]

Managed to sneak some more time in, and I have now played up to and including Chapter 13. Still enjoying it a lot. In terms of combat it might just be the best, with V's inclusion especially.

Also holy shit at SSGSS SDT Dante.

 

[Suiseiseki]

If there is one thing that annoys me on DMC 3/3 SE, as much as it's my favorite/second favorite game of the series, it's the damage sponge mode of DMD difficulty enemies. It's a let down compared to the insanity of DMC 1 DMD changes.

 

[MissingNo.]

My initial impressions are still valid after completing the game. It is the best in the series in terms of gameplay. They brought a lot of new stuff to the table here with Devil Breaker, Devil Sword, SDT, V, and I honestly have a difficult time imagining how they want to top that.

It is not without fault, though. Yeah, I made fun of the ball puzzles in DMC3 and was not overly fond of them. But 5 cutting puzzle elements altogether, aside from the occasional secret blue orb fragment you get when meeting certain conditions on the map, feels kind of odd. On top of that, I feel like environments could have been more varied.

Other than that, I welcomed all the callbacks to 1 and 3, and feel like the game ties the series nicely together in the most batshit crazy way imaginable. Combined with the amazing gameplay, this makes 5 my favourite. 1, 3, and 4 are each great in their own way, and looking back at it, it is difficult for me to say which of them I prefer over the others.

Playing the entire series back to back on a whim was fun, but at the same time I definitely had my fill for now. I will probably replay the series with Vergil where possible once the itch hits.

 

[Josh5890]

So is this where we make confessions? Because I have one.

I played the DMC trilogy on PS4 a couple of years ago, and DMC 2 was my favorite. I just had more fun moving around and playing in that game. All three of them are good games but I rank them 2>3>1,

Sorry, not sorry.

 

[Lant_War]

Making my way around DMCV, on chapter 13 at the moment. Outside of some relatively minor gripes, like dreading every second they make you play as V and the terrible photo mode they decided to include, I'm loving the game. Before this I really to get into the series with 1, 3 and 4 and ended up inevitably bouncing out of those games whenever they decided they wanted to be more puzzle games than actual action games, so 5 cutting out all of that bullshit is really welcome.

 

[correojon]

Cool thread OP!

My first DMC was 4 and I got instantly hooked thanks to Nero. For a newcomer to the genre, Dante's endless moveset with many weapons and styles combinations was just too much, while Nero allowed you to do cool stuff almost effortlessly, while giving you ample space to grow by mastering the Exceed mechanic, Table Hopper, Devil Bringer counters...
Some years later I tried DMC3 on a PS2 and I liked it but I didn't love it as much as 4, I was at a weird place where Dante's moveset in 4 was too much, but his limited self in 3 was too little.
Then I got into Bayonetta and starting really getting into the genre, to the point that when I tried GoW (the first one, not the remake) I didn't like it because it was too simple. At this time I went back to DMC4 and finally started enjoying playing as Dante Then I played many other games in the genre (DmC, MGR, TW101, Astral Chain, Transformers, Ninja Gaiden...) and when DMC3 Switch Edition where it finally clicked and I was able to appreciate it as the absolute gem of a game that it is. DMCV was great, but I was incredibly disappointed by the lackluster level design. Also, I wished that they had given Dante more crazy weapons like the motorcycle, I would've loved more stuff like the electric guitar of 3 or the exploding blades of 4.

BTW, I think I may be the only one who likes more DmC than MGR. MGR is amazing, but I feel like the combos are useless. I mean, they give variety but you don't need to switch them depending on if you want to launch the enemy, throw them away, knock them to the ground, they just offer visual flavour but no mechanical function...I like more DmC's combo system, specially being able to change weapons mid-combo and keep the string going is a very cool idea I wish more games would copy and the weapons are all very distinct with very different and useful special effects.