I just beat the game, so now I can tackle the comments by the fans now.
I disagree with a lot of what was said in this post. Except stuff dealing with Kobayashi relating his over promising of the game or leading the fans in the wrong direction.
I think people are too fixated on "OMFG only 6 weapons for Dante" or "OMFG only 1/1 weapon for Nero!" I was of this opinion as well.... until I played the game. Dante is already too complex to be able to hold anymore weapons at once, he has like 4 devil arms, 3 firearms one of which can transform into 7 firearms (seriously Pandorra is just insane) and then you have 4 styles to switch OTF from.
Nero is meant to be the simplified form of DMC going back to its DMC1 roots and it works like a CHARM. More emphasis on enemy/player interaction, manuevering, timing, powerful DT and lots of powerful moves you can dish out at once. But more importantly Nero brings back the fundamental aspect of DMC and that is just good ol' skill-based bad ass action for all. Dante is DMC3 combat on steroid, in fact it was almost too much for me with the triple devil arm switch (I am getting used to it but I find it easier to incorporate Dark Slayer combos in). It's not how much you have, it's what you do with what you have that matters. What DMC4 has, it does to perfection.
In terms of game play, DMC4 is basically perfect and no other game in its genre comes close. You have two very different options but both ingenious in execution and even if something like Nero was standalone to DMC4 it would've still been superior to most other action games. This doesn't need anymore elaboration because as a fan of the series I don't think anyone can argue this any other way.
The rest of the stuff is arguable. Story admittedly is weak... but I didn't find it significantly worse than either DMC1 or DMC3's story, especially not DMC1's extremely bare bones story. What DMC4 lacked was a solid villain like Vergil or Mundus, someone that you really wanted to finish off at the end. Sanctus wasn't developed well enough and even if he had, beating up an old guy is just isn't that bad ass. I thought the interaction between Kyrie/Nero was decent at best, but it still gave Nero more character than Dante ever had. Quite frankly I am getting tired of Dante, with this "LOLZ this is like cake walk for me" but even then it was an entertaining ride for me. The cutscenes/story were fun, but I do agree they failed to reach on any other level aside from that.
DMC4 does more things right than it does wrong and not a lot of credit is being put on those things. Stuff like art design, enemy design and just general polish to it is far superior to previous games as well as balancing numerous aspects of the game like difficulty, devil trigger and move selection. It is really only marred by critical game design flaws related with poor balance of Dante/Nero play and using that as an excuse for recycled content. To me that should not have happened but it did and the game deserves to get slacked for it. Other than that, DMC4 does an excellent job of bringing in the experiences of both DMC1 and DMC3 together in one package both visually and game play wise.
DMC5 should expand upon mechanics brought in by Nero and should contemplate the return of Vergil. Actually they shouldn't contemplate, they NEED to bring back Vergil.
