For some reason I’ve spent hundreds of hours of my life grinding the most boring parts of videogames in order to get all the achievements. On the other hand, I couldn’t stomach playing Devil May Cry 4 for more than half an hour at a time despite loving the core combat. Maybe I was just burnt out from playing the first 3 games back to back, but try as I might I couldn't find any motivation to finish this one other than “well, it’s only 8 hours long”. Even Devil May Cry 2 was able to hold me for the agonising 4.5 hours it took to beat, but I guess that was mostly fueled by morbid curiosity. I think the problem is that Devil May Cry 4 is complete mediocrity. Everything good about the game (the new additions to combat for the franchise, particularly Nero’s whole moveset) is present in Devil May Cry 5, undoubtedly my favourite game in the series. So there isn’t much this game has left to offer that you can’t find anywhere else (apart from “The Idol of Time And Space”, the best song ever).
I found the beginning very promising, but once I left the town and started going into the drab, grey mountains, my interest started to wane. Level design, artstyle, enemy encounters, puzzles, they all became very boring very quickly. Basically from level 3 onwards I was indifferent to the game in front of me. The special edition having all the unlocks at the beginning was something I thought I would want to avoid to not ruin the flow of the game, but frankly, being able to unlock every combo immediately is the only thing that stopped me from falling asleep.
Of course, as many are already aware, the game kinda collapses once you get to the Dante missions. First of all, every enemy is designed around the use of Nero’s Devil Bringer to bridge the gap between you and them and keep combos going. Dante doesn’t have this, so it’s back to the same issue as DMC2 where you’re spamming Stinger or Trickster after every move to get back to the enemy that was just launched across the room. Dante doesn't even have any air combos so any enemy/boss with a hurtbox not on the ground is a pain in the ass to deal with. Dante is theoretically fun as always, but you can tell they didn’t have much time to accommodate the enemies around him, making combat quite frustrating. Second of all, his levels are just Nero’s but in reverse. You also have to fight most of the bosses in the game three times each. The other DMC games do this a bit too but it feels worse here when even the final boss is a refight and it feels like nothing past mission 11 is new. Now, every DMC except 5 has a healthy dose of backtracking. But in this game it feels extremely rushed and not designed well. Nero will spend 2 levels in a row going back and forth in a single location, and then Dante will do the exact same thing later in the game. So you're basically seeing 4 missions worth of areas stretched across 16.
Fun fact: Less than 9% of players have beaten the Xbox version of this game on any difficulty. More people have beaten the SECOND Devil May Cry game than this one. Maybe it’s because the numbers are divided between all difficulties so it looks smaller than the collective number of completions, but still, I think that speaks a little to the retention value of this game.
The story is pretty funny because it’s just Nero screaming “Kyrie!!!!” for 5 hours while failing to kill anybody. Then Dante does a better job at defeating the old bosses while giving 0 shits. Other than that it’s probably one of the more uninteresting stories in the series. I don’t get the Nero hate much like I didn’t get the Raiden hate in Metal Gear. I think people are just annoyed when they wait years for a sequel only to play as a different character than their favourite. But yeah, Nero and Dante are pretty good in this game. It’s nice to see a more adult Dante with the same personality as DMC3.
Special Edition has plenty of bonus content as well, with a whopping 5 characters to play as, several difficulties and Blood Palace. Although, I’m not really itching to replay this one any time soon. It’s a fine videogame, and lands about in the middle of the franchise quality-wise, so I’d only recommend this one if you've played a couple of the others first.
I found the beginning very promising, but once I left the town and started going into the drab, grey mountains, my interest started to wane. Level design, artstyle, enemy encounters, puzzles, they all became very boring very quickly. Basically from level 3 onwards I was indifferent to the game in front of me. The special edition having all the unlocks at the beginning was something I thought I would want to avoid to not ruin the flow of the game, but frankly, being able to unlock every combo immediately is the only thing that stopped me from falling asleep.
Of course, as many are already aware, the game kinda collapses once you get to the Dante missions. First of all, every enemy is designed around the use of Nero’s Devil Bringer to bridge the gap between you and them and keep combos going. Dante doesn’t have this, so it’s back to the same issue as DMC2 where you’re spamming Stinger or Trickster after every move to get back to the enemy that was just launched across the room. Dante doesn't even have any air combos so any enemy/boss with a hurtbox not on the ground is a pain in the ass to deal with. Dante is theoretically fun as always, but you can tell they didn’t have much time to accommodate the enemies around him, making combat quite frustrating. Second of all, his levels are just Nero’s but in reverse. You also have to fight most of the bosses in the game three times each. The other DMC games do this a bit too but it feels worse here when even the final boss is a refight and it feels like nothing past mission 11 is new. Now, every DMC except 5 has a healthy dose of backtracking. But in this game it feels extremely rushed and not designed well. Nero will spend 2 levels in a row going back and forth in a single location, and then Dante will do the exact same thing later in the game. So you're basically seeing 4 missions worth of areas stretched across 16.
Fun fact: Less than 9% of players have beaten the Xbox version of this game on any difficulty. More people have beaten the SECOND Devil May Cry game than this one. Maybe it’s because the numbers are divided between all difficulties so it looks smaller than the collective number of completions, but still, I think that speaks a little to the retention value of this game.
The story is pretty funny because it’s just Nero screaming “Kyrie!!!!” for 5 hours while failing to kill anybody. Then Dante does a better job at defeating the old bosses while giving 0 shits. Other than that it’s probably one of the more uninteresting stories in the series. I don’t get the Nero hate much like I didn’t get the Raiden hate in Metal Gear. I think people are just annoyed when they wait years for a sequel only to play as a different character than their favourite. But yeah, Nero and Dante are pretty good in this game. It’s nice to see a more adult Dante with the same personality as DMC3.
Special Edition has plenty of bonus content as well, with a whopping 5 characters to play as, several difficulties and Blood Palace. Although, I’m not really itching to replay this one any time soon. It’s a fine videogame, and lands about in the middle of the franchise quality-wise, so I’d only recommend this one if you've played a couple of the others first.