DMC 2 is so strange that it deserves more than its reputation simply being "game sucks." It doesn't deserve better, but it does deserve more. Let me start by just aggregating all my major issues with the game:

1. The enemy AI is almost unilaterally broken. A lot of bosses are ostensibly pacifists. They don't to hurt Dante. In many instances they simply can't.
2. Pretty much 95% of bosses can be killed by spamming Ebony & Ivory. If you have a turbo button on your controller you can bring your playtime down from 3.5 hours to probably two-hours-forty-five.
3. The plot here is more an elaborate collection of mostly unrelated cutscenes than a coherent storyline.
4. The game employs an auto lock-on and a manual lock-off (what), neither of which really work properly.
5. The upgrade system has pretty much been stripped out for... something that I never really understood. You can reach S-rank sometimes by just mashing Rebellion.
6. Infested Chopper.

As you'll notice, that means basically every pillar of the game is ostensibly busted. And that is true. But DMC2 also has some cool elements. I'll list those next:

1. The art direction is mostly really good. Lots of super cool locations and enemy designs.
2. Dante animates quite well. He also feels a lot more nimble than DMC1.
3. Gaining new traversal powers to use in Devil Trigger is a great idea.
5. There's a great amount of environmental variety here, something I think DMC suffers with as a series overall.
4. It's still Devil May Cry, so it's intrinsically cool.

Often, playing this game is like playing an NES game that's sort of objectively disastrously programmed but is still fun both in spite of, and because of, all these issues. It's almost comedic how all the tentpole elements of the game are just in shambles, it's sort of fun chuckling while standing in the corner of a boss arena burning their health bar with Ebony & Ivory while the boss just vibes alone in the opposite corner.

Because DMC 2 is so short and so extremely easy, you can kinda just sit back and enjoy the mess unfold. This game is almost entirely painless to play through: if all the big problems coalesced in a game that was angeringly hard then it'd be a half star. But it's not. Above all, DMC 2 is just sort of a source of bemusement. I think it's worth playing if only just to appreciate how a game of this status turns out this bizarrely. It's rare to play something which fails so completely, and I'd be lying if I said that's not worth the afternoon it'll take to see through.

I almost put DmC down after Kat talked about how her portals to Limbo were made using squirrel semen. I'm really not sure why all the most cringe aesthetics and dialogue exchanges are frontloaded here, it's as though Ninja Theory didn't want anyone to take its spin on Devil May Cry seriously. Moments like the white hair gag in mission 1 seem like philosophical skill checks: are you okay with this legendary series being humiliated by awkward PS3/360 era art direction and writing?

If you can resist the urge to eject the game in those first few missions, there really is a super solid action game waiting for you. It's not as deep or as challenging as Capcom's core games, and it never quite rises to the same heights. But I feel like even DMC3, for as amazing as it is, gets bogged down between combat encounters: Temen-ni-gru is kind of boring to explore, the diet exploration and puzzle solving isn't especially fun.

Ninja Theory really stripped a lot of the downtime out of 3+4, replacing it with a revolving set of interesting location and actually fun platforming. There's one boring puzzle, but every game gets one boring puzzle pass. DmC is breezy and stylish, it's the archetypally modern streamlining of a niche gameplay style and series. I don't think that's necessarily bad. Especially since the combat flows really well here too.

This game is nowhere near the top of my DMC ranking but as a cohesive experience I like it more than DMC 4. It's the 'better' Devil May Cry game of that generation, I think.