Devil May Cry 5

[mfnick]

Played this for a fair few hours last night. I’m not that hot on it unfortunately. Just for reference my favourites are DMC 3 and DmC.

 

I actively don’t like playing as V. My brain just can’t cope with controlling him and 2 demons basically at the same time. I end up doing attacks I don’t want to do while moving V around or when I try to do the specific attacks with the demons they usually teleport near me then they’re no longer in range of the enemies. Thing is I’ve not actually died as him so it’s not that hard it’s just I don’t feel in control at all. 
 

Nero I also don’t like. His grapple thing is great but after that he feels very limited. Probably just because I don’t know how to effectively use the Devil Breakers but whatever the issue I just feel I’m resorting to the same basic moves with him. Boring but try as I might I just can’t figure out anything more interesting with him.
 

Dante - by far and away the best character. Unlike Nero his options are almost too much. But he’s the only character I’m actually enjoying so far. Swapping between his 2 fighting weapons and swords on the fly is great fun and creates some amazing combos even a idiot like me can pull off. Just got the bike weapon and that’s brilliant too. Im basically keeping to the Sword stance as that part I can’t swap between while fighting or my brain goes mushy. Just change to Royale at odd times to parry certain enemies. I’ve been enjoying it a hell of a lot more since getting Dante. Shame I have to go back to V again now… 
 

My other complaint is the environments. They’re so boring, kind of ugly and it’s just reusing the exact same couple of designs throughout so far. Makes playing it a bit of a chore as it’s just so uninteresting to look at. A far cry from DmC which had some brilliantly varied and interesting areas. 
 

The bosses have easily been the highlight. The designs have been fantastic and they’ve all been fun to fight. Funnily enough the first was the hardest though. Had to retry him 4 times at least whereas all the others I beat first go. The first was probably the most exciting in a way too just because of how it destroyed the environment around you. Although others have been more interesting. A recent one I just did with a bit Knight was particularly fun where I was constantly parrying his sword with mine, felt awesome. 

So yea, very up and down but I’m mostly down on it truth me told. Let me use Dante more FFS. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Honestly V sort of sucks and feels like a test bed for some ideas they have going for Dragons Dogma.

 

As for Nero, well I think unfortunately the only way you'll get on with him is if you learn the exceed system. He's my favourite character to play in the genre, once you work out how to build up momentum and fling him around with his motor sword. I prefer him to Dante even. There's a breaker you get for him that turns some fights into feeling like a cutscene (punchline)

 

One thing I will say for Dante is he is more fun if you don't equip every weapon all the time, I never got past the point that I could handle more than 3 melee and 2 gun weapons at once. I did try and learn the bike but it never clicked for me, or I would switch to it by accident. With more practice I could get that muscle memory down, but I find he has most bases covered with gloves, sword and the other weapon which is a spoiler for now.

 

Anyway for as much as I loved this game I never really returned to it for the Vergil DLC for some reason. I played him a bit but man I just don't care about playing as Vergil, they never change his combat.

[mfnick]

Ah yea exceed - I don’t actually know what it does? I charge it up, he does one slightly more powerful attack then it need charging again? Doesn’t seem worth it? What am I missing?

 

Talking of cut scenes, I did mean to mention they’ve all been fantastic too. I love Nico, and her entrances are something else. The story is surprisingly interesting too for what it is. 

[one-armed dwarf]

It's a timing system, so if you press the rev button at the end of an attack animation it can give you an instant pip without the need to manual rev. So every attack can be super charged one after another. Naturally I've loads of videos which shows this lol but unfortunately they show a story/gameplay mechanic.

 

You ever do the 'Renzokuken' limit break with Squall in Final Fantasy VIII? It's that in an action game essentially.

 

This is my favourite clip I took of myself using it, but end game spoilers and stuff. This also has a bunch of PC cheats on it like breaker switching, cause the default way they work sucks lol

Spoiler

 

 

You also get a skill for exceed called 'max act' which if your timing is good enough you will get all three pips. To explain why all this is useful, basically you can just chain a bunch of high damage attacks together that also go faster and make Nero go further distance. You can get to a point where you don't even need to use the jump move, or the devil breaker that bounces Nero around, cause exceed gives you even more mobility than that.

 

Basically the mechanic is as core to Nero's loadout as style switching is to Dante.

 

So this guy I know does a bunch of dmc content and these videos are from the old demo with unupgraded Nero, so they don't have the spoiler I mention. Tho as he doesn't have the character upgraded here it's much more limited

 

[mfnick]

7 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

timing system, so if you press the rev button at the end of an attack animation it can give you an instant pip without the need to manual rev.

I literally had no idea this was a thing. Sounds much more interesting than doing a manually rev. Does the game explain that at any point? Probably a bit late to be practicing that now but at least Nero will potentially be better to play as now. Thanks. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think it explains it in a throwaway tooltip for the first boss.

 

In general, I think the campaign is too brief and throwaway to explain much of either Dante or Nero. It's very diluted between the main 2 characters and V compounds that problem, it's mostly expected people will want to go back through on hard mode with all the stuff unlocked. IMO the 2nd playthrough is always the most fun one in games like this.

[mfnick]

Yea they feel as though they’ve got enough systems (especially Dante) to  play through the entire game as just that one character nevermind all the swapping about. 
 

Don’t think I could do a second playthrough of this just because I hate using V that much. 

[mfnick]

Completed. When I returned I basically had a boss rush with V - fun* 

Then a couple of missions with Nero & that timing exceed thing definitely made him more interesting but it was confusing the fuck out of me trying to time that this late in the game against stronger enemies. 
Dante’s last couple of levels were basically just challenge rooms so the last stretch was a bit shit really. The end bosses were good though. Dante vs

Spoiler

Vergil

was a motherfucker though!!! Thankfully the

Spoiler

Nero Vs Vergil fight straight after gave you a bit of a break and let you feel overpowered which was fun. 

 

Overall I just really didn’t enjoy this for reasons I stated earlier. I can tell it’s a very well made game and the combat system is very deep but I only enjoyed using Dante and he was only there for about a quarter of the experience. I started the next difficulty hoping to get a bit more from it and try and understand Nero a bit more but I just can’t look at these environments anymore either. Glad I’ve played it just for the cut scenes more than anything and I enjoyed the story for what it was but just didn’t click with me. 
 

6/10 

Gutted. 
 

*sarcasm

[one-armed dwarf]

When it comes down to it DMC5 is ultimately a middle of the road game for me in the series. Not as good as DMC1 or 3, a little bit better than 4. DmC is a weird one cause I acknowledge that it is a bit better than 4 and 5 in a complete package sense, but that game didn't give me what I wanted/needed as a combat driven game and I'm glad that didn't become the main direction. 2 doesn't exist for some reason, it's weird that they skipped that number.

 

Anyway I don't play it much anymore cause I kinda ran out of reasons to do so, I'm pretty much just in the Dragon's Dogma waiting room when it comes to the next game these dudes do. Understandably you're probably not gonna load it up and check this out, but there's some pretty cool things you can do with Nero

Spoiler

in that Vergil fight.

 

If you hold down the grab button when in DT you get this (1:40) and the lyrics kick in. This was weirdly well time for me where the ghost just popped up in the air before it

 

Also you can DDT him lol

 

 

The fight Dante has with him is really slow and stiff, I didn't like that one tbh

 

 

[mfnick]

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Understandably you're probably not gonna load it up and check this out, but there's some pretty cool things you can do with Nero

Actually I think the videos of experienced players is the best thing to come from this game. I may not be a huge fan but I definitely appreciate and enjoy watching high level

play of it. Will check it out. 
 

For me it goes 3, DmC, 1 then I’m not sure if it this or 4. Probably this. I remember not liking 4 much either but I’ve not played it since the original launch so can’t really trust my memory of it. Pretty sure this is better though. Pretty weird how they never did a 2 I agree.

[one-armed dwarf]

This guy took the lyrics of the song as literal as possible

 

(ugly ass mod tho)

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

The anime has sort of put dmc back on youtube a bit, this popped up in my recommendations. I have a sub to this guy and he's the cleanest player of this game I've ever seen

 

 

Thing that's interesting from reading one of the comments, he doesn't actually take any steps with Dante, all his movement is movement properties of attacks. all his vids are like this and worth checking out. Only watching this did I realise that the shotgun moves have i-frames and can dodge stuff, or that the nunchucks electric attacks have so many active frames that they can parry like that

 

This boss is a goober tho, belongs in Dark Souls, he can't really fight any decent player of this game. DMC5 lost a lot of enemy aggression compared with 4, 4 might be a bit better tbh

 

edit this is great too