Best way to play Devil May Cry 1-3 on PC ?

[Sjukob]

So what did you think of Nero?
He's clearly mix between Dante and Vergil, but IMO they were very smart with the Devil Bringer because it pretty much functions both as the Trickster and Royal Guard Style

Also what did you think of the bosses so far, specially Credo and the 2nd Dante figth (thet are the best bosses in the game)?
While most people will say Credo to the one I enjoyed the most was the 2nd Dante fight, but mainly in SoS or DMD because there he uses more moves, switches between styles much more often and even taunts you regularly

I think Nero is pretty alright and I liked his moves overall. He's pretty newbie friendly and still offers advanced stuff for pros. I realized that his arm has built in royal guard, but for some reason I never thought about it as an alternative to trickster, although I agree with your point. However, I think that he has some serious issues with his gameplay:

1. Hold lock on button to focus on enemy, hold shoot button to charge blue rose, each time you swing a sword you also have to press rev button to get your exceeds or max-acts. That's just too much for simple actions;
2. Back+forward inputs. In every DMC game I occasionally miss directional inputs (forward+attack and similar), because of the camera, but with Nero it's taken even further;
3. Big reliance on max-acts. If you're good at it and land them consistently you wreck everything without problems, but if not, then you suck and lose your damage, combos and other cool stuff. These are 2 extremes with nothing in between.

As for his character, eh, feels like generic "too cool for you shit" anime shota, also:
-Kyyyrriiee !
-Neeeerrooo !
-Kkkyyyyyyrrrriiiiieeeee !
-Nnneeeeeeerrrrooooooo !
-Kkkkkyyyyyyyyyrrrrriiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee !
-Nnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrroooooooooo !

I can't really say anything about bosses, they don't do anything on devil hunter difficulty, I didn't understand a thing about them. Well, they don't have any sort of shields (except Sanctus) and that dumb "damage window" mechanic as bosses in DMC3 do, which is very good. When I was fighting Credo and Dante I was thinking "What am I even doing ?" for the entire duration of the battles, it seems like you can disable Credo's shield somehow and then freely juggle him for some time, but I never figgured out how is that supposed to work, I knew that you can catch and deflect his spears even before I started playing the game, but I would've figured it out myself thanks to Phantom and Beowulf in previous games. Dante is even more confusing, what I could confidently tell 20 seconds into the fight is that fucker reads your inputs, that's outrageously cheap, still beat him 1st try without understanding anything.

All of his Styles have been nerfed. I think maybe the devs thought that because they give you Style Switching, they had to nerf it for reasons...

Honestly, nerfing him was an all around idiotic decision:

1. So you're supposed to use his entire kit for good synergy, becase nothing is self sufficient, right ? Excellent ! Guess who just got fucked ? New players. Nobody can just jump into DMC4 and be good with Dante, you're required to use 4 styles with 6 weapons and it will take plenty of time before it alligns in your head and hands.
2. So what happened ? You created a giant problem where not a single style or weapon pair is strong enough to support itself individually and players can't take their time by learning them 1 by 1 and then combining them together, oh no, they have to go all in right from the start.
3. What does it lead to ? None of the styles and weapons feel satisfying to use, their identities and "Feels great to do that" moments are almost gone.
4. And what's your excuse ? Balancing ? Now let's get real, most of the players wouldn't really invest time and effort in style switching, even if each style was really cool and unique, they would either switch them occasionally or just alternate between their 2 favourites. It wouldn't really be a problem if Dante became overpowered once you mastered his arsenal and styles, in fact it would've been a nice reward for your dedication.
5. And what did we end up with ? Only nerds can play Dante in a proper way and everybody else is stuck with a cock in their mouth and a character that feels clunky and underpowered to them. Once again, 2 extremes with nothing in between.

I have no idea what kind of people lead projects in Japan if they can't figure this out. Although may be it has to do with the game being massively unfinished.

 

[sullynathan]

• So you're supposed to use his entire kit for good synergy, becase nothing is self sufficient, right ? Excellent ! Guess who just got fucked ? New players. Nobody can just jump into DMC4 and be good with Dante, you're required to use 4 styles with 6 weapons and it will take plenty of time before it alligns in your head and hands.

• So what happened ? You created a giant problem where not a single style or weapon pair is strong enough to support itself individually and players can't take their time by learning them 1 by 1 and then combining them together, oh no, they have to go all in right from the start.

• What does it lead to ? None of the styles and weapons feel satisfying to use, their identities and "Feels great to do that" moments are almost gone.

• And what's your excuse ? Balancing ? Now let's get real, most of the players wouldn't really invest time and effort in style switching, even if each style was really cool and unique, they would either switch them occasionally or just alternate between their 2 favourites. It wouldn't really be a problem if Dante became overpowered once you mastered his arsenal and styles, in fact it would've been a nice reward for your dedication.

• And what did we end up with ? Only nerds can play Dante in a proper way and everybody else is stuck with a cock in their mouth and a character that feels clunky and underpowered to them. Once again, 2 extremes with nothing in between.

Shit, the story of DMC4. Dante is annoying the first time around when you directly go from Nero to him. It's odd. I'm also not playing that shit many times over, it's not as good as the other DMC games

 

[sullynathan]

Also, DMC5 definitely has better enemies than DMC3

 

[Sjukob]

Also, DMC5 definitely has better enemies than DMC3

DMC3 worst enemies are kind of alright if you can switch styles, too bad it's not present in the unmodded game.

I found some cool fan arranged soundtrack of DMC1-4 music, here's the playlist

Spoiler

Meanwhile DMC5 Cerberus theme

 

[Sjukob]

Messy, but previously I couldn't even do it like this. I mostly play DMC3 on very hard now and I might actually write that wall of text about my experience, but it's going to be highly contagious and autistic and I don't think I'm ready for it yet.

Sometimes I launch DMC4 to play it for a bit and it's not that bad actually, although devil hunter difficulty seems to be too easy, enemies mostly stand still and wait for you to kill them and they barely have any health either, it seems like no matter what you do Dante just mercilessly shits out damage and if you really want something dead prop->real impact functions like "I win" button. When I was fighting ice frog boss as Dante I suddently remembered about distortion as I was about to hit it with real impact, so I pressed DT button without paying attention because I didn't know the timing and boss got pwned for 80% of it's max health, I might actually reconsider my previous posts. As for blitzes, do people really have problem with them ? When I first encountered one I didn't even get hit, I understand that whacking his shield might not be fun, but his attacks are clearly telegraphed and once you destroy the shield he just stands still and waits for you to kill him. And I'm telling you this as somebody who constantly presses wrong buttons and has trouble with coming up with strategies on the fly.

EDIT:
I almost forgot. DJOGamer PT I tried using techniques you told me to against enigmas:

• Dirve doesn't work, it can't reach them even if I fully charge it, may be it has to do with elevation since enigmas usually stand on top of certain things and wave probably breaks against those objects before it reaches them. But even then it's a really slow attack and you are really asking to get hit by something while using it;
• Sword pierce is alright, it might even deflect their arrows on the way back, but damage and speed are lacking compared to spiral shots, you have to throw it 2 times before it knocks them down;
• Smashing them with beowulf up close is pretty scary to be honest, it does stagger and kill them pretty fast, but you take so much damage if you fuck up, I would prefer something that gives you protection like cerberus;
• Artemis is kind of eh, while charging it Dante is forced to walk, which greatly hinders your mobility, I would rather use E&I since charging their shots doesn't slow you down and you achieve about the same damage by just spamming, especially if you cancel normal shot into twosome time;
• Spiral is great as always, I still prefer to just snipe them off screen, because fuck them, seriously.

I wonder what am I going to do against DT enigmas.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

When I was fighting ice frog boss as Dante I suddently remembered about distortion as I was about to hit it with real impact, so I pressed DT button without paying attention because I didn't know the timing and boss got pwned for 80% of it's max health, I might actually reconsider my previous posts.

Distortion is pretty much easy mode... as well as busters.

Sword pierce is alright, it might even deflect their arrows on the way back, but damage and speed are lacking compared to spiral shots, you have to throw it 2 times before it knocks them down;

Use the that window of opportunity to quickly get close to them and then use beowulf (again the drop kick).

I would prefer something that gives you protection like cerberus;

Nevan's bats.
Also you have air raid with it.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Sjukob I don't know if you have seen this, but you should watch it. Atleast the last 10min. Maybe 15.

 

[Sjukob]

I've been wandering why haven't they brought Drew Coombs to voice Dante in DMC 4 and 5, so I looked for some interviews and while they do not answer the question, they are still pretty interesting to listen to.

• Talks about meditation and various exercises;
• Mentions some of the fuck ups and details of the DMC5 development;
• Talks about aliens, secrecy and how it can change the world;
• Casually mentions CIA and world politics with all it's bullshit;
• Unity through diversity;
• Also shares his experience about almost getting shot point blank.

• Explains some of the stuff about acting in general;
• Almost non-stop bants;
• Talks about chicks "I got to audtion all the girls and one of them was a great actress, but the other one had much better tits";
• A lot of the stuff about some movies and some actors;
• Threatened to pour gas on and light on fire some random crack whore that accidentally stumbled upon stage.

Looks like Drew would've been a better post DMC3 Dante not just as a voice actor, but considering how they've basically turned him into WAAAAHHOOOO pizzaman, he would also fit Dante's personality much more.

 

[J_C]

I've been wandering why haven't they brought Drew Coombs to voice Dante in DMC 4 and 5, so I looked for some interviews and while they do not answer the question, they are still pretty interesting to listen to.

• Talks about meditation and various exercises;
• Mentions some of the fuck ups and details of the DMC5 development;
• Talks about aliens, secrecy and how it can change the world;
• Casually mentions CIA and world politics with all it's bullshit;
• Unity through diversity;
• Also shares his experience about almost getting shot point blank.

• Explains some of the stuff about acting in general;
• Almost non-stop bants;
• Talks about chicks "I got to audtion all the girls and one of the was a great actress, but the other one had much better tits";
• A lot of the stuff about some movies and some actors;
• Threatened to pour gas on and light on fire some random crack whore that accidentally stumbled upon stage.

Looks like Drew would've been a better post DMC3 Dante not just as a voice actor, but considering how they've basically turned him into WAAAAHHOOOO pizzaman, he would also fit Dante's personality much more.

No. Dante = Rauben Langdon. Dante's voice in DMC1 was pretty lackluster, I never wanted him back.

 

[Sjukob]

No. Dante = Rauben Langdon. Dante's voice in DMC1 was pretty lackluster, I never wanted him back.

Hah, I can say the same about Reuben performance in DMC4 and 5. He did fine as young Dante, but when it comes to voicing older people he's just not the type to do it, especially in DMC4 where sometimes it's just obvious that he's trying way too hard. With Reuben's acting Dante just isn't as impactful (can't think of a better word) or memorable, even his combat grunts are way weaker. I understand that it also has to do with writing and overall change of what the series are about, but it feels like Reuben is just bad at making Dante sound serious, compare how Dante in DMC1 tells Trish to get lost to DMC3 Dante telling Vergil about his screaming soul, for example.




I would even say that Drew delivered funny and silly lines way better than Reuben "Devil May Cry's a rockin..." and "Flock off, featherface" are more memorable than anything Reuben's Dante has ever said.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Hah, I can say the same about Reuben performance in DMC4 and 5. He did fine as young Dante, but when it comes to voicing older people he's just not the type to do it, especially in DMC4 where sometimes it's just obvious that he's trying way too hard. With Reuben's acting Dante just isn't as impactful (can't think of a better word) or memorable, even his combat grunts are way weaker. I understand that it also has to do with writing and overall change of what the series are about, but it feels like Reuben is just bad at making Dante sound serious, compare how Dante in DMC1 tells Trish to get lost to DMC3 Dante telling Vergil about his screaming soul, for example.

Have you played 5 yet?
DMC5 Dante is the most serious he has ever been since 1, and Reuben does a bang up job. In fact 5 Dante is the best iteration of the character.
Dante's 1 actor was not bad, but he's just not as charismatic and memorable as Reuben who gives an energy to the character that Drew doesn't have.

 

[Sjukob]

Have you played 5 yet?
DMC5 Dante is the most serious he has ever been since 1, and Reuben does a bang up job. In fact 5 Dante is the best iteration of the character.
Dante's 1 actor was not bad, but he's just not as charismatic and memorable as Reuben who gives an energy to the character that Drew doesn't have.

No, I can't play DMC5, my pc is too old. But I've been watching cutscenes and gameplay footage, hence why I've decided to play DMC series. Of course, I haven't seen everything, but I'm not really impressed by Reuben's performance, it's alright but not outstanding, although it's an improvement over DMC4, I think that his DMC3 voice is way better. As for Drew, I favor him exactly because his Dante is more charismatic, I can remember almost every dialogue from DMC1 (inb4 "DMC1 has like 2 lines of dialogue, lol"), while DMC3 Dante mostly sticks in memory for his crazy action in cutscenes. With Reuben taking the main role Dante's voice became, how they say it, more clean and professional, but lost it's actual character in the process. It's not my final stance, my opinion might change if I ever get a chance to play DMC5, but for now I'm inclined to think that they've prefered to stick with Reuben for convenience, since he does both motion capture and voice acting. I also heard that Itsuno didn't feel comfortable with DMC1 Dante, he said something along the lines of him not being his character or something. I guess it might also be the reason for Dante's repeating visual redesign (and yet they haven't made anything that looks better than his DMC1 outfit) and them not implementing DMC1 stuff, like Alastor and Ifrit, in later games.

EDIT:
I've just checked out japanese voices, they are lovely

 

[Sjukob]

You know, looking at how I root for DMC1, I'm surprised that you guys aren't standing in line to tell me that I should check out Onimusha series. Where's your motivation ?

 

[sullynathan]

You know, looking at how I root for DMC1, I'm surprised that you guys aren't standing in line to tell me that I should check out Onimusha series. Where's your motivation ?

Onimusha isn't as good as Devil May Cry. They share similarities with the camera angle, but that's generally it. Their combat isn't that similar and neither is the level design. High level combat in Onimusha is a lot about spamming your magic spells with invincibility frames since each weapon has a separate mana pool and timing enemy counters for high damage or insta kills.

There's no jumping, devil trigger, combos or long range combat. Enemies respawn every room for farming because the amount of souls/orbs you collect is important to progression. Movement is very simple in it and features RE "tank" controls with a sword. It's an interesting game for sure and is very different from DMC.

Onimusha level design is more Resident Evil than the original Devil May Cry was. Finding keys to progress and even open secret doors and backtracking is far more common in it than DMC.

 

[Sjukob]

Welp

I'm not sure if I want this though. Certain stages are annoying even on very hard (bad enough for me to post something on codex instead of playing the game) and now I will have to deal with enemy DT and everything that comes with it. Some of the gimmicky levels, like 12, 18 and 19, are going to be "extra fun" to play. I'm not even going to attempt to S rank it, by the way, because requirements for ranks are pretty obtuse here and damage ranking is just outright retarded - you are not allowed to take any damage at all, if you want to get the highest rank on DMD. Lol Dullahans, lol Cerberus' icicles, lol Leviathan's acid, lol Arkham etc etc etc. Speaking about Arkham, the second part of that fight is so fucking terrible that I skip it by using holy water.

Also I tried playing Vergil and I didn't like him. Compared to Dante his attacks have a tremendous amount of delay and recovery, his options are more limited, he doesn't have air hike, small dick small moveset. Although some of his stuff is pretty cool, like yamato's aerial attack has massive range and is very easy to jump cancel, spiral swords is a pretty busted move in general and he can build DT gauge very quickly with his taunt, but still I prefer to play as Dante instead. Seeing his intro cutscene made me think that they either ran of money or just decided to give up on making a unique campaign for him entirely.

 

[J_C]

I have to give props to you man, being so determined about maxing out this game. I'm a huge DMC3 fan but I couldn't ass myself to finish it even on Very hard.

 

[Sjukob]

I have to give props to you man, being so determined about maxing out this game. I'm a huge DMC3 fan but I couldn't ass myself to finish it even on Very hard.

Hoho man, the higher you climb in DMC3 the more apparent it's flaws become. And although you can already spot them while playing through normal, they wouldn't really affect you until you get to very hard difficulty. DMD is a straight up anti-fun bullshit that will make you hate the game, it's so bad that I returned to DMC1 to try and beat DMD difficulty there, you can see my results above. I don't know if I will continue playing it, but as soon as I feel like I'm done you can except me to post my autistic wall of text about why DMC3 is a very VERY overrated game. But thanks for kind words I guess, I'm usually inclined to try out highest difficulties in games, there are rare exceptions of course, when I know that I wouldn't be able to handle them or I just don't want to bother.

As for DMC1, well DMD here is mostly very similar to hard, regular enemies get nuked very quickly because Dante is so obscenely powerful in this game, only bosses are your real challenge. The camera is as terrible as I remember it and it's definitely game's biggest issue. Missions I feared the most were 17 - Nelo Angelo 3 boss fight and 22 - Mundus battle, although I had to restart every boss at least a couple of times, my playthrough has been mostly smooth.

The first real obstacle was Griffon 2 (no suprise here) this battle is some kind of anomaly of shit, similar to Arkham in DMC3 but not that awful, it took me about 2 fucking hours to figure out the way to make Griffon land consistently, but once you know what to do the fight is over in a minute.

Nightmare is still my favourite boss in this game, I really don't know why people hate it, my guess is that they can't figure out that it has a very strict attack pattern and that you can parry his triple stab/bumerang attack, I understand that camera is ass but it's a general thing with this game.

Nelo Angelo 3 is still the most sadistic shit in this game and probably the hardest boss I've ever fought in my life, it's a cool battle but he's so ridiculously fucking cheap, I can rant about this forever but look here for a general discription of shit you will have to bear in that fight, mind that it's a very humble discription that doesn't do the justice to that boss, to really feel it you have to experience it by yourself. When I got to that mission I was mentally prepared to spend the entire evening or two just to get over it, but surprisingly I beat him on my third or fourth attempt, I just got lucky for him to be dumb enough to spam fireball, so I could freely deal a lot of damage to him with DT grenade gun.

Mundus was hard, very hard. Took me about 3 hours to beat him, it was the only mission, which I had to restart several times entirely to get S rank, because it was taking me too long to kill Mundus. It's also the only fight in the game, which I don't really understand how to work with, there's just way too much RNG, even with Nelo Angelo 3 there's some general stuff that you can keep in check and some patterns that you can figure out, but Mundus is 100% improvisation. Although I understand some stuff well, like: deflect big fireballs with your sword, get the shotgun, destroy orbs to gain DT and avoid projectiles, deflect dragon's fireball to get a green orb, spam DT meteors etc etc, but since Mundus attacks are random your plan is likely to just fall apart once he starts throwing some unexpected shit at you. Also the first battle, where you fight him in the air is much harder on DMD, not just because he has a lot of health, but he also throws out much more attacks at you, at times you will be dodging 4 attacks that happen at the same time, like: lightning + meteors + white projectiles + red projectiles.

DMC1 is a very lovely game, I would strongly recommend it to anybody who wants to try out DMC series or just looking for an action game to play, do not listen to people who tell you to skip it because it's old or something. It seems like it's one of a kind and there won't be another game like it, there are and will be games like DMC3 or 4, but not something like DMC1, at least I don't know of any other similar game.

How would I recommend to play it ? Stick with PS2 emulator, the original game has some cool effects that are missing in HD version, the most obvious example is vacuum sun in mirror dimension.

Mirror dimension in original PS2 version

Mirror dimension in HD version

Additionaly you will have access to save states and trust me you really want them, most of the bosses (and some advanced enemies) have quite a lot of non-obvious stuff for you to figure out and it takes time do it, you will be really glad to have an option to save before something that gives you trouble, so that you don't have to restart the level just to get to the part that you struggle with. Another thing is that it won't take you long to understand how to absolutely destroy non-boss enemies, but bosses are mostly hard in DMC1, there's no shame in saving before boss battles, especially when you know that they can kill you very quickly on higher difficulties, you will understand me once you try to fight anything besides Phantom on hard or DMD (especially Mundus who's battle consists of 2 long phases) and get killed in 10-30 seconds (looking at you Nelo Angelo), just don't torture yourself with too much of a needless repetition. And if you still disagree with me or feel comfortable without save states, you can always ignore them, but it's better to have them as an option.

In the end, there's one thing that is left unsaid, you know what it is, right ?

 

[Sjukob]

Well guys, I finaly gave up on DMC3 DMD difficulty, I didn't get stuck anywhere, but looking at chess pieces activating their DT made me wonder: "Why am I even doing this to myself ?". The health bloat, stagger and launch resistance, the condition for enemies to enter DT, it's all retarded, in that case with chess pieces fighting them was like hitting a concrete wall with your bare hands IRL, about just as fun and satisfying. I've been wanting to write something about DMC3 being overrated and said it multiple times in this topic, but finaly I feel like I'm more or less done with this game and have a good understanding of what I've come through. And so...

Firstly I want to emphasize the biggest issues I have with this game:

1. Good portion of campaign levels are badly designed, tire you out when you replay them and in general make you think twice about touching campaign at all;
2. Game can't decide wether it wants you to play it like a usual beat'em'up where you look for best and optimal ways to kill enemies quickly or just go a free style combo fest with "everything goes" attitude. Neither of playstyles is really supported;
3. Plenty of annoying and badly designed enemies that suck all the fun out of the combat;
4. Plenty of bosses that are just badly designed, have retarded "vulnerability window" gimmick and some other specific problems;
5. Dante's devil trigger sucks to the point where it's not even a proper tool in your arsenal.

As you can see I repeat "badly designed" 3 times, because certain things in DMC3 are just fucked up. And I'm not even bringing up some smaller or more subjective stuff, that doesn't stand out as much, but adds up nicely to these major problems. Let's go over them.

Number one. The amount of good missions in this game is limited to the first 3 and may be the 7th one (it's ok I guess), which is frightening, when you consider the total amount of 20 levels, with average completion time of 15-20 minutes on higher difficulties. So what are the problems with levels ?

• Enemy placement, like enigma room in missions 4 and 5 (you basically do it two times in a row, what were they thinking ?); room with faces that cry blood in mission 11, where camera, soul eaters and hell vanguards (both with off screen attacks) team up to gang rape the player; another enigma room in mission 9; enigmas + bloody-goyles room in mission 16. I'm telling you about some of the worst of them just to give a better example, there are also a lot of those that aren't necissarily outrageous, but are still not fun to go through. So people usually run past enemies that they aren't forced to fight, very bad call for an action game, where players choose to avoid enemies unless they are speedrunning or metagaming. This of course is heavily related to enemy design, but we will get to that later;
• Gimmicks, traps and puzzles. DJOGamer PT told me that DMC3 went away from traps, platforming and other gimmicks, but it's not true, there are quite a lot of those and it's a chore to do them. There are still plenty of traps scattered along your way (missions 6, 8, 9, 10, 15, 17); various puzzles like: guide the light beam into mirror, knock columns into holes, figure out where to go (mission 15), hit the ball enough times before it disappears, knock two balls into each other etc; outright gimmicky shit like chess board, mission 12 with it's health drain, mission 19 in general; at least when it comes to platforming you only have to do it once when you reach god cube chamber;
• Backtracking.

  you backtrack in DMC3 100% of time

  I said it as a joke, but in reality you will revisit almost every location in the game 2-3 or even more times and thanks to same looking surroundings bad level and encounter design, this issue really sticks in your eye.

Does it look bad already ? Well, we are just getting started. A lot of people say that the game tanks after second Vergil fight because every game's flaw reaches it's ecstasy after mission 13, but I would say that when it comes to level and encounter design game takes a nose dive right after mission 3.

Number two. This point serves as an introduction to the following ones. The thing is that DMC3 is stuck in between two styles of gameplay I mentioned above, but this blend is bad and just doesn't work. Why ? The supposed idea of DMC3 is to allow you to play how you want, but in reality you're in for an outright painful ride if you don't bring certain loadouts to some levels. This issue is brought further down, when you can effectively fight/damage certain enemies and bosses with a limited amount of things (Cerberus, Lady, Geryon, Nevan, Enigmas, Dullahans, Fallen, Arkham), only the first two missions really allow you to bring anything you want without you feeling handicapped, hence my point about bad encounter design.

Spamming the most effective attack against enemies and bosses, like in beat'em'ups, isn't something you want to do here, firstly the game has style gauge that affects your mission ranking and crazy combos, you won't be raising it if your offense isn't varied enough, secondly the lethality and enemy aggressiveness in this game is way too low for that. In DMC3 enemies have a lot of health, which is supposed to give you way to style on them and use stuff that you find cool, beating them with single most effective attack just makes the fights tedious, because even if you do this they still don't die fast enough. Additionaly demons aren't that agressive, once again it works like this to give you time to style on your foes, in beat'em'ups repeating the same attack is not an issue, because opponents there are very agressive and avoiding their hits and finding ways to land your own is a big part of a gameplay, this element is very watered down in DMC3, which only reinforces the tedium of "spam most effective attack" style of play. Some people tried to tell me about all the cool techniques, that you can discover in DMC3 by experimenting with styles and weapons, but the thing is that a lot of them aren't as rewarding to exploit, I guess it was also made on purpose so that players didn't feel as restricted in their approach. And finaly, like I've said, a good portion of enemies don't allow you to play how you want and force you to bring certain stuff and use certain attacks and with DMC3 it really affects your enjoyment of game in a negative way.

Now let's see what exactly is wrong with enemies and bosses in DMC3.

Number three. I've already posted this picture and I'm posting it again

I'll repeat myself - shit like this does not belong in any action game. These bastards are all around retarded and almost shift the combat into some platformer like shit. J_C told me that he has never finished Very Hard difficulty and it made me wonder about how many people didn't climb that high in this game and haven't seen how much worse it gets the farther you go. Initially I was satisfied with this picture and thought that it was good enough at reminding people about badly designed enemies, but actually it doesn't do the justice. Let me tell you again, the major issue is that in a game, that is supposed to give you a lot of options, many enemies massively limit them, that's why I've said that they suck the fun out of gameplay, but it's not the only reason for me to call them unfun. I'll have to go into details:

• Seven hells, abysses (remove those fucking i-frames from them, serously) hell vanguards and blood-goyles (decent flying enemies, but they should be way more fragile) are the only worthwhile enemies in the game. Everyone (except greeds) can be juggled or at least reacts to your hits in some way, none of them limits your creativity with the way you attack or has any annoying gimmicks that you have to do before attacking. Greeds are an alright type of "spawner" enemy that is vulnerable 100% of time, they don't fight back and don't spam too many enemies, hell vanguards are a nice version of "tough thug" that deals high damage and has a lot of health, but still fun to fight. Everything else however is frontloaded with various crap;
• Chess pieces. You are absolutely forced to play their game, you can't interrupt their attacks and can't juggle them, they do whatever the fuck they want and your only option is to suck it in. Yes they are pretty slow and their attacks are well telegraphed, but for fucks sake why in the game where protagonist: can break gravity and stay in the air for minutes, has many different attacks with various properties that allow you to create stylish combos, can unleash forces that scatter demons around like toys; you choose to throw it all away ?! "Lol, all of these are too much fun, we are going to add enemies that do not react to your attacks in any way at all, fuck you player";
• Enigmas. I've already explained what's wrong with them - they backdash infinitely if you try to get close, they attack on the move, they attack while you beat them up, deal incredible damage and their attacks cover big area. If you can't see the issue here I'll help you, this enemy has incredible offense + incredible defense. You would imagine that this type of enemy would be used to annoy you from range and compliment melee enemies, while relying on them for defense and dying quickly once you turn your attention and go after them. Hohoho, well fuck you then ! They are very self sufficient, their arrows will completely wreck your shit, they are hard to catch, have a significant amount of health and if you manage to get close they can pwn you even harder. So what do you do ? Most of the players just spam ranged weapons, because getting into melee range is hard and not rewarding, you can try using nevan if you can stand it or some ranged attacks of melee weapons (sword pierce, zodiac), but it's too slow and doesn't solve the issue of them not dying quickly. Have fun if you haven't brought anything with strong long range attack;
• Arachne. A massive health blob, the most vivid example of health bloat in this game. Even without them entering DT they are hard to stagger and incredibly hard to launch (they fall very quickly even if you manage to do it) and if you're fighting a green version you can just forget about it, same problem as with chess pieces, but not as extreme. They also tend to move around a lot causing you to miss your attacks and take even more time to kill them. So you better use your most damaging single hit attacks, like killer bee, charged shotgun and aerial cross. Also I can't think of a single reason for them to spawn little spiders on death, except developers wanting to give a finger to the player;
• Dullahans. No hitting me anywhere except my back, please. No jumping over me, please. Run around me in circles, please. No using guns against me, please. As with chess pieces, why put an enemy like this in a game where protagonist can do all sorts of cool shit ? Just to completely discard it ?
• Soul eaters. Hey Dante wanna play peekaboo ? Just what the fuck were they thinking while making this shit ?! Besides completely retarded design that should never exist in any action game, fuckers can appear and attack you off screen in the game, where you fight groups of enemies with a camera that you can't even control most of the time, just like their fucking gimmick !
• Fallen. Harbingers of despondency. Will poke you with long range powerful attacks while going through walls and making funny faces at you. Have a lot of health + shield that they can rebuild, almost unreachable if you stand on the ground, so you have to take the fight into the air. Low damage per hit attacks are not going to help you to tear through their health, they constantly circle around you, if you try comboing them, they will just fly away, so have fun beating them with anything that doesn't have a strong single hit air attack, like A&R, Beowulf or RG, even charged shotgun shots are underwhelming here. Again most of your options are taken away and you are forced into some specific type of play, not to mention that enemies like this should die quickly, otherwise their tendency to stay out of reach (or even out of the map) becomes unfun and just annoying to deal with.

So, as you can see developers failed on a lot of core and basic concepts while designing enemies. I do not understand how something like this could've happened. The issues I discribed are obvious to anybody who posses at least a minimal amount of common sense, maybe at the time it wasn't present in the studio. But we're not done yet, it's time to take a look at the bosses.

Number four. Oh the bosses, something where action games are supposed to shine their brightest fire, but is it true for DMC3 ? Well, kind of. I have some sort of problem with almost every boss, but let me say in advance: Vergil 1 and 2, Beowulf, Cerberus, Agni & Rudra are all good bosses even if I say something bad about them, ok ? Now I will talk about every boss in the game and about their issues:

• Cerberus. As I've said I don't think about him as a failure, but he has a number of serious issues that people overlook for some reason. Firstly, some of his melee attacks are untelegraphed and come out with no warning (bite, left paw sweep, headbutt). Secondly, knocking him down is very unreliable and seem to happen only if you use some obscenely powerful attacks, like DTE. Thirdly, he can use his icicle rain 3-4 times in a row resulting in a prolonged period of time when you can't do anything except trying to avoid it. Fourthly, his hitboxes suck and he also moves around a lot. Fifthly, his attacks are harder to dodge if you stay close to him. And lastly he just isn't balanced for Rebellion + E&I + shotgun loadout. Now let's combine all of this and see what happens. Very poor boss for a player that has only just started, although it's the first real boss encountered in the game. There is a reason for him having "stand back and shoot him" type of reputation, because most of starters would attempt to melee him and just get hit back by untelegraphed attacks, and even if they can avoid them, his bad hitboxes would neglect a lot of their effort at beating him. People using aerial rave against him are mostly just asking to get hit by his headbutt or bite attack, it takes too long to do and damage is lacking, but beginners don't really have any other options, helm breaker is pointless there, so their melee air options are stripped down and they don't have access to DTE to knock him down. So for them trying to melee him is risky and not rewarding, what are they going to do now ? Correct, stand in the corner and shoot him with E&I until he dies. Oh and don't even try tell me that they are supposed to beat him with RG. Of course it gets much better once you level up your styles and unlock stuff that has massive hurtboxes or can deal a lot of damage very quickly, like A&R, Kalina Ann, Beowulf, Spiral, DTE. Suddenly Cerberus becomes much more manageable and fun to fight. The question is why the fuck did they put him in the beggining of the game ? What were they thinking ? The first levels teach you how to fight multiple enemies at the same time and also about parrying certain attacks (hell vanguard fight), A&R would've been much better candidates for the first real boss, they would show the begginers how to improve on something they've already learned and beating them also gives you a weapon that is very good at killing Cerberus, so he could've been a good second boss. Again developers failed to realize something obvious;
• Gigapede. Oh, fuck. Hope you like getting clipped by the off screen attacks, while camera does whatever it fucking wants and boss moves around non stop. A complete clusterfuck for new players, but not that bad once you figure it out, still a boring boss that is more of "hazard run" than an actual fight. If you want to play ball with this boss, as in try and deflect purple orbs back at it, you basically have to bring something with multihit, otherwise it's too unreliable. I've seen that a good number of people who prefer to just stand on a column, spam spiral and block purple orbs with RG's ultimate and that should tell you something;
• Agni & Rudra. Finaly you get a good battle. But still, there is a pair of issues with this fight The first one is their parry mechanic. I can't count how many times I've got hit while also successfully parrying their attack. What the fuck is that ? It shouldn't work like that, you either parry an attack and don't get hit or not. Another thing is that it's too risky to go for parry on higher difficulties, failing results in you taking a lot of damage, so you have to bring multi hit stuff (Cerberus, Rebellion's prop) if you plan on doing it. If you parry while staying on the ground Dante's recovery animation is long enough for you to take a hit from another twin and it takes too many hits to knock their weapons away, it should take like 3 hits max but actually it takes about twice as many, and why doesn't perfect RG count as successful parry ? With that in mind I usually just ignore their parry mechanic completely. And secondly, camera is ass, how fucking hard is it to constantly keep 3 characters on the screen ?
• Vergil 1. This fight is nigh perfect. Do you understand why almost everybody strokes their pee-pee on Vergil (besides the story) and those who don't, at the very least acknowledge that it's a good fight ? Because it's so engaing and you can do anything that you want here and it will still work out fantastically, the only exception is weapons and attacks with a lot of multi-hit, due to how his stagger works. He could be improved by tying his stagger to damage taken instead of the amount of hits and enabling juggles on him, so players can be even more creative with their approach;
• Leviathan's hearts. Another hazard run, now with "vulnerability window" gimmick added on top just to waste your time. Yes, you can use anything here, but everybody brings stuff that lets them stay in the air for a long time or just does a ton of damage with aerial attacks. Developers tried to add some sort of resource management mechanic, but everybody just ignores it. A literal punching bag of a boss;
• Nevan. Suck on my shields, the boss. I outright dislike her. Her vulnerability window is too short, her shield doesn't go down fast enough and she constantly runs away. If you try to be really agressive you might get screwed by her lightning walls, if you stay close enough to her while she summons them, you might get hit even before they start moving. The fight actually gets more fun when she starts going for grabs, because you can deal damage to her more often. What they got wrong here is her health pool, it should be way, way lower, she has too much health even on normal difficulty. And what for ? It's not like you can style on her, once she's down she just lies down there while you beat her, no juggles allowed as usual. So bring your hardest hitting stuff, like beowulf (which also happens to be the best weapon at destroying her shields) to not make this fight tedious. Speaking about juggles, it would've been cool to allow players to prolong her vulnerability time by keeping her in the air, but apparently developers were too busy jerking off to think about that;
• Beowulf. Can't find anything to complain about here, except him using his feather attack while you keep your distance to deflect/dodge cages;
• Geryon. Cool idea, but almost completely fucked up execution. Yet another boss with his bullshit vulnerability window, but this time they actually gave you an opportunity to trigger it as much as you want, but it still sucks because his downtime is way too short (bring weapons that deal the biggest amount of damage in the shortest time span) and chasing him around while being bombarded with projectiles and orbs that slow you down gets old very quickly. Just like Nevan he doesn't die fast enough for all the trouble that you have to go through, that's why people came up with real impact loop tactic, just to skip all of his bullshit;
• Vergil 2. Still great, although arena is not as good as before thanks to elevation, walls which fuck up camera and that sin statue. I think that his health regen in DT is pretty busted, but in this fight it's not really a problem, it however made me worried about it's implementation in his final fight and it turned out that I wasn't wrong about it;
• Lady. "You can't hit me untill I say so" type of boss. I understand that this fight was done to show that humans can't match the demons in strength, but they really half assed it. Fightning her without either trickster, beowulf or quicksilver is just terrible, you are going to have troubles with your approach due to her dodges. In general you just keep playing hide and seek with her until she decides to shoot rockets, at which point you attack her. What happens when she finaly gets hit ? Eh, nothing impressive, she just stands there and tries to block with Kalina Ann... It's so fucking lazy and dumb, if anything, this fight is the biggest "Fuck you" to Dante in regards to him being a powerful half demon. Why ? Because I'm sure as heck not feeling his power, when his hits don't knock a 16-18 year old girl all around the room and can't even lift her up in the air, and thanks to her dodges and "vulnerability windows" she gets to completely dictate the pace of the fight, so much for Dante's inhuman speed. Not only this battle isn't fun to go through, but it also fails it's spectacle purpose;
• Arkham, AKA the worst boss in action games history. Hello Argosax, what are you doing in this game ? I think everybody who played DMC3 knows why this fight is so fucking awful. He constantly disappears and throws some sort of demonic dolphins at you, there is no real way to fight off them, except for hoping for the best and just keep running around and shooting them. Bullshit homing tentacles attack with massive damage, they are impossible (or almost) to dodge, you have to use i-frames to go through them. In the second phase you're stripped off your style moves and DT, in exchange you get useless Vergil. Additionaly he starts spamming his attacks so much and his grab move is so bullshit, that people either stand back and shoot or just use holy water to kill him. And to further complement every issue they also made him look like a pile of shit. Way to go Capcom;
• Vergil 3. It's hard to believe but they actually found a way to make Vergil fight worse. I don't think he is a bad boss, but it's a significant step down from previous battles. The issue, of course, is his devil trigger, you won't notice it on lower diffulties, but once you climb high enough, you really have to consider his health regen in devil form. What it means is that you have to hit him hard enough or he will just outheal your damage completely, was it so difficult to think about altering his regen to raw numbers instead of % ? It's bad because it limits the amount of viable options being available, you know, one of the things that was very good in previous encounters, that's why killer bee spam (and beowulf in general) is so popular in this fight. I said that it wasn't a real problem in the second fight with him, because he doesn't enter his devil trigger there that often, but here he likes to spam it. I also don't like how you can't interrupt his healm breaker and judgement cut spam, could've made the fight more dynamic.

Just like regular enemies bosses in DMC3 have a lot of issues, outright bad design and even unrealized potential. There are good ones, of course, but the rest of them seriolusly spoil the experience.

Number five. Finaly we're here. I wasn't sure about including this point in the list of major issues, but attempting to play DMD made me realise that I should at least mention it. Devil trigger is very boring and disappointing in this game. Not only does it humper the feeling of being in control of half demon badass, but it also hurts the gameplay. Yes you get a bunch of demon forms that depend on the weapon you have equipped and while there are differences between them, they mostly look and feel the same. DT doesn't let you use any additional powerful attacks (except air raid) and only gives a marginal health regen and a small damage and speed boost. How does it hurt the gameplay ? Devil trigger explosion. I don't know who was responsible for this crap, but I hate it so much that I absolutely refuse to use it. I have no idea what came first during development of this game, either the massive health bloat that made developers create a band aid solution to this in form of DTE or somebody seriously thought that DTE was a good idea to implement and after seeing how powerful it was they decided to massively pump the health on everything. So yes, instead of getting cool looking and destructive abilities in demon form, you get this sorry "explosion" that is about the only good way to spend your DT gauge and is absolutely required to be used if you want to beat DMD and not become a psychopath.

Conclusion. I think that DMC3 was an alright attempt at creating something unique, with protagonist having a big and varied arsenal that allows him to do a lot of cool attacks and combos and create various strategies for different situations. But it didn't work out that well and for some reason people turn their blind eye to how many issues this game has. I guess it might've been their first action game or just something that they've played as a child and got mesmerized by it's storyline and cuhrazy cutscenes and action, or maybe they just got used to game's downsides. Well none of these is a good excuse, I'm sure there are people out there that wipe their asses with feet, but them being used to it for any reason doesn't make it ok.

If you compare DMC3 to it's successor - DMC4 and predecessor - DMC1 some of it's issues become even more obvious. Remember how I said that DMC3 is awkwardly stuck in between of usual beat'em'up gameplay and crazy freestyle combo mode ? Well, DMC1 was all about finding best ways to kill enemies fast and it worked great there, because the game was focused around that; DMC4 is mostly focused on allowing player to combo enemies in any way they fancy and it works fine there, because all enemies and even bosses can be juggled there and don't really force you into specific playstyle. DMC3 doesn't achieve any of that and just doesn't feel right. Like I've said previously:

The combat is good in a way that it's feels good to control Dante, not fighting stuff

It's not a 100% true statement, but I find it to be mostly correct. Hence why people started using "character action" or "spectacle fighter" phrases when trying to describe the game.

And finaly comparing DMC1 to DMC3 is like comparing quality to quantity. While being a much shorter game, having less bosses and smaller movelist, DMC1 is just outright more enjoyable to play because it's better designed. It aims for a specific gameplay type and does it well. DMC1 has:

• Better balance;
• Better enemy design;
• Better soundtrack;
• Better environment variety;
• Better level design;
• Better atmosphere;
• Better Dante design;
• Better DMD difficulty;
• Better ranking system;
• Better devil trigger.

What it doesn't have is:

• Abundance of badly designed enemies;
• Half of the bosses being crap;
• Absurd health bloat.

So I don't know why today's people praise DMC3 as a pinnacle of action game design, while in reality it's a very flawed game that fails to really support it's strengths, but choose to mostly forget DMC1 that is very tightly designed. It saddens me that DMC3 turned out like this, because when I play through fragments that are actually good I keep thinking that it could've been a truly great game.

EDIT:
I wasn't trying to play DMC3 for high ranks, but here are my results if anybody is interested

 

[DJOGamer PT]

So you're moving on to DMC4?

 

[Sjukob]

So you're moving on to DMC4?

Well, I've already completed it on devil hunter, not sure if I want to ever touch it's campaign again. My biggest problem with the game is that Dante just sucks, my initial impression turned to be correct. It's not rewarding to play him, he is very hard to use but gives little in return because his damage is pathetic, it's just not fun to use him when his weapons don't provide a proper output. It's not so bad with regular enemies, but becomes way worse once you get to the bosses.

Here's some stuff from 4chan that I agree with.

When I think about playing DMC I want to play Dante - the half demon cool guy in red coat. DMC4 can't really help me with that and it's a massive no no for me. Though I might try out other characters and bloody palace, maybe they will deliver. It's just that I've heard that Lady, Trish and Vergil are pretty half assed.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

So you're to 5 then?

It's just that I've heard that Lady, Trish and Vergil are pretty half assed.

Not half assed, just very OP.
To be fair, there was no way to make Lady a cool hack 'n' slash character while keepin faithful to her design, but they tried.
Trish is pretty good. She has the lighning punches, pistols, pandora and the devil sword Sparda (that has an unique moveset unlike in 5). But also OP.
Vergil is an improvement from 3. They gave him more attacks, Yamato now cool timed based technique that is the Perfect Judgment Cut and they implemented a cool mechanic that is the motivation concentration meter. However his summoned swords are broken, as is Dark Slayer trick (because now he can do it infinitely) and Judgment Nut End is piss easy to perform, has no weaknesses and does ridiculous amounts of damage.

 

[Sjukob]

So you're to 5 then?

No, I can't play DMC5, my pc is too old.

As for other characters, them being OP is kind of a big deal, since removing challenge from games is like removing meat from fried ribs. Though Nero is pretty alright to play with and I've played some other games, where protagonists were blatantly overpowered, and still found them fun, so I'm not discarding DMC4 just yet.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

No, I can't play DMC5, my pc is too old.

What are your specs?

 

[Sjukob]

What are your specs?

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 640 - 3GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 560 - 1GB
RAM: - 8GBs
OS: Windows 7

 

[J_C]

. J_C told me that he has never finished Very Hard difficulty and it made me wonder about how many people didn't climb that high in this game and haven't seen how much worse it gets the farther you go.

I respect you being so determined about DMC3. But even it the highest difficulty breaks the game and it will turn it awful, DMC3 still remains one of the greatest spectacle fighter game ever, because DMD diffiulty is just a tiny part of the game which most people don't even play. It won't destroy that how fun the remaining part of the game is.