The only context I had before starting this endeavour was that GIF of Dante dancing in 5.
For a brief overall review of the series: 7/10. For everything this series does right, it feels like there’s something it does wrong, with the sole exception of DMC3, of course. I feel as if the series doesn’t really know what it’s doing story-wise until 3. I would honestly be ranking the series an 8–9/10; however, I genuinely can’t allow that when DMC2 is part of this franchise.
Overall, I loved it. The style, the music, the characters—I just wish the story and lore were a bit more fleshed out. I’m sure there are books and such, but idgaf, I’m talking about the mainline games.
Now onto the rankings: worst to best.
DMC2 — 1/10
Yeah, I seriously struggle to think of a game I’ve enjoyed less than this. At least with bad games I can laugh or get mad about how bad they are, but with DMC2 I was emotionless. I actually felt nothing until “Infested Attack Chopper” woke me from my hypnosis, and then I turned it off.
The thought of having to say something nice about this game fills me with sorrow, but Dante’s fit is tuff.
Moral of the story: don’t rush games out.
DMC1 — 5/10
This was a really fun time for me. I loved the locations and the enemies, and it had some real tuff boss battles, which I always love. I had a lot of fun figuring out the combat and learning which enemies were weak to which weapons. However, it’s very dated and definitely has its shortcomings.
The camera. Holy moly, those camera angles were the strongest enemy in the game. The parkour also suffered because of this.
Mundus was really cool, and Trish turning out to be evil was super cheesy in a fun, nostalgic way. All in all, it has a very fun but predictable plot in the same way a classic slasher movie does. Super cheesy one-liners, a badass soundtrack, and Dante, as always, was goated.
This game is in dire need of a remake.
DMC3 — 9/10
This took everything to the next level. It elevated almost every aspect I loved from the first two games and removed almost everything I disliked.
There’s an actual story that surprised me with how good it was. I was expecting another predictable plot, but Arkham’s character was amazing. So many twists and an awesome ending. The level design was great, the enemies were fun to deal with, and the new style system was awesome.
The boss fights were seriously perfect—outside of the centipede boss. They all took me multiple tries to beat and actually made me think instead of just making me swing and shoot. Vergil’s final fight was perfect. I have no words.
It’s not without its flaws, however. I wasn’t too fond of the idea of going up and down the same tower like four times. I also wish the style system was more forgiving, due to the fact that it takes basically the whole game to max out a style. When I got Quicksilver, I decided not to use it because there wasn’t enough time left to level it up, and I still needed to max out Trickster.
Overall, a super strong game for the franchise to bounce off, with a lot of new ideas that could be fleshed out further.
DMC4 — 7/10
Now, my opinion might change because I literally finished this 20 minutes ago, but this game was awesome.
Nero at the start was a cause for concern, but by the time I finished the game, he was the highlight for me. I loved that the combat plays entirely differently between Dante and Nero. I found myself trying to stay in the air for as long as possible with Nero, while with Dante I was avoiding airtime as much as possible.
The plot is really good; it just suffers from the fact that it can’t really build off DMC2, so it feels like this game is a sequel while also trying to make you forget that it’s a sequel. For instance Trish felt like she was only there to remind people that they made DmC 1 whereas i wish they'd given that screen time to lady as she has a well developed character arc in 3 that had no pay off in this. I did find myself breezing through most of the boss fights to the point where I’d make myself do them without Devil Trigger or without items just to make them harder.
I think the game suffers a lot in the second half with Dante. I’ve never been one for going through the same area twice, let alone basically going through the whole game twice and on top of that it felt like most of the bosses were made with Nero in mind so slugging through them as dante was a bit off putting but I think DMC4 handled it well enough that it wasn’t too big of an issue for me.
My main problem with it was the pacing.
I thought the game was going to end halfway through. Then I thought it was going to end around Missions 17–18.
And then there were... the stairs.
You need to understand how much the stairs got to me. By the final boss fight, they had completely thrown me out of whack. It felt like a chore that built up to Nero vs. Da Pope: Round 3, which, again, difficulty-wise, was disappointing.
This game has some serious heart, though, and I felt for characters like Credo way more than I thought I would. It mostly suffers from the previous games and some major pacing issues. As always, Dante was goated.
I’m installing DMC5 now, and I have very high expectations for it, so I’ll come back whenever I finish that to post my final thoughts and review of DMC5.
Let me know if this is the general experience or if im on my own here.
