Just got the Platinum after around 47 hours and 5 playthroughs, I guess it's time to drop my thoughts. I was originally interested in this because I'm a massive simp for Stefanie Joosten and wanted to see what she was doing after MGS, and it delivered in many ways and not so much in others.
First some negatives: I'm aware these are common criticisms and I don't want to sound like I'm just repeating what others say, but I agree with a lot of them. The pacing of levels, ESPECIALLY on a first time through, is very inconsistent. A few missions definitely could have been trimmed down, particularly during the second third of the game. While the game does take place in one castle/city within one night, there still could have been more of a variety in the visuals (hopefully this gets improved in a future sequel). The lock-on felt VERY inconsistent, much of the time it locks onto the nearest enemy, but other times it targeted random mook #2109 instead of elite enemy that I actually wanted to lock onto, and flicking between targets sometimes felt inconsistent as well. On higher difficulties, the remixed enemy setups don't feel like the DMC standard it aims for, many of the layouts lack synergy (extremely ironic since synergy attacks are a central part of combat, lol). I don't feel this is a huge downside, but enemy encounter variety could have used a few more unique types as well. The camera being an homage to DMC1's fixed camera wasn't too bad during traversal segments, outside of a handful of moments, but the camera can be rough if you're cornered by a bunch of big enemies.
As for what I liked? The combat, once you unlock everything, is EXTREMELY fun and satisfying and scratches the DMC itch. It's been compared to the DmC reboot and I feel it does things better than the reboot did, namely the color-coded enemies don't forced you into using specific weapons. The weapons flow pretty seemlessly into each other during combo branching points, there's even cool stuff you can do that isn't explicitly explained, like cancelling a full pause combo into rapture state. While enemy weaknesses to certain weapons didn't play as big a part as I expected outside of a few specific enemy types, but I didn't mind since I was having fun styling on them.
The aesthetic and art style of the game is pretty neat, it feel edgy in a throwback-to-00s-action-games way so it appealed to me. The story wasn't particularly unique, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching. Stefanie Joosten voicing both Briar and Lute deserves a special mention, since it shows her doing distinct voices for the two of them. The score was another great part of the game, it combines the standard orchestral sounds you'd hear in action games with dubstep-oriented synthesizers and drums.
The bosses are more good than bad. A few end up coming back as stronger enemies, but none of them are particularly bad. The major transcended bosses are great though. Donovan makes for a cool Vergil-esque mirror match, Jared and Jadon taking the form of a giant head is pretty creative, transcended Donovan is my favorite fight in the game (he reminds me tons of Urizen in DMC5). The final boss was kind of a bummer my first time through, then I learned a way to melt her lifebar and enjoyed it thoroughly.
I might be rating the game too much here, but I can't help that I had so much fun here. One of my personal favorite games of the last few years, and knowing that Reply Games aspires to make action games like Platinum is really endearing. Whether they follow up with Soulstice 2 or a new game altogether, I hope they take the lessons from here and work on the fixing the downsides to make something super cool. I'm aware this game won't be for everyone and the flaws might bother others a lot more than it did me, but I had a blast with this.
8/10
First some negatives: I'm aware these are common criticisms and I don't want to sound like I'm just repeating what others say, but I agree with a lot of them. The pacing of levels, ESPECIALLY on a first time through, is very inconsistent. A few missions definitely could have been trimmed down, particularly during the second third of the game. While the game does take place in one castle/city within one night, there still could have been more of a variety in the visuals (hopefully this gets improved in a future sequel). The lock-on felt VERY inconsistent, much of the time it locks onto the nearest enemy, but other times it targeted random mook #2109 instead of elite enemy that I actually wanted to lock onto, and flicking between targets sometimes felt inconsistent as well. On higher difficulties, the remixed enemy setups don't feel like the DMC standard it aims for, many of the layouts lack synergy (extremely ironic since synergy attacks are a central part of combat, lol). I don't feel this is a huge downside, but enemy encounter variety could have used a few more unique types as well. The camera being an homage to DMC1's fixed camera wasn't too bad during traversal segments, outside of a handful of moments, but the camera can be rough if you're cornered by a bunch of big enemies.
As for what I liked? The combat, once you unlock everything, is EXTREMELY fun and satisfying and scratches the DMC itch. It's been compared to the DmC reboot and I feel it does things better than the reboot did, namely the color-coded enemies don't forced you into using specific weapons. The weapons flow pretty seemlessly into each other during combo branching points, there's even cool stuff you can do that isn't explicitly explained, like cancelling a full pause combo into rapture state. While enemy weaknesses to certain weapons didn't play as big a part as I expected outside of a few specific enemy types, but I didn't mind since I was having fun styling on them.
The aesthetic and art style of the game is pretty neat, it feel edgy in a throwback-to-00s-action-games way so it appealed to me. The story wasn't particularly unique, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching. Stefanie Joosten voicing both Briar and Lute deserves a special mention, since it shows her doing distinct voices for the two of them. The score was another great part of the game, it combines the standard orchestral sounds you'd hear in action games with dubstep-oriented synthesizers and drums.
The bosses are more good than bad. A few end up coming back as stronger enemies, but none of them are particularly bad. The major transcended bosses are great though. Donovan makes for a cool Vergil-esque mirror match, Jared and Jadon taking the form of a giant head is pretty creative, transcended Donovan is my favorite fight in the game (he reminds me tons of Urizen in DMC5). The final boss was kind of a bummer my first time through, then I learned a way to melt her lifebar and enjoyed it thoroughly.
I might be rating the game too much here, but I can't help that I had so much fun here. One of my personal favorite games of the last few years, and knowing that Reply Games aspires to make action games like Platinum is really endearing. Whether they follow up with Soulstice 2 or a new game altogether, I hope they take the lessons from here and work on the fixing the downsides to make something super cool. I'm aware this game won't be for everyone and the flaws might bother others a lot more than it did me, but I had a blast with this.
8/10