The rest is all stuff I have said before. I think the color-coded enemies and "enraged" enemies do fundamental damage to the battle system. I find the fact that much of the game is just a floating platform/hookshot template with different skins applied to be seriously limiting. I think the enemy design is poor. I think the keys and doors for bonus rooms were just padding. I feel like the game just falls off a cliff in terms of variety and design after the second major boss.
The enemy and encounter design is perhaps the most obvious fundamental change to the Devil May Cry formula, and what people have come to expect from games like Bayonetta. DmC has a combat system designed around puzzling first, fighting secondary. The fighting system is grounded and deep enough to be fun, but not enough to compare to Bayonetta. So they've gone the same rout as The Legend of Zelda: strong enemies have a certain puzzle and rhythm to them that must be overcome. Colour coding, weak spots, emphasis on grapples, and so on.
It changes the entire dynamic of the encounter design because it prioritises juggling your tools for puzzle solving versus purely fighting. It's weird, but I also think that maybe Ninja Theory had the right idea here, because I'm not confident they have the skill to hold up to something like Bayonetta. And this is true for a reboot, too. They're really done the whole reboot thing in the purest sense: reimagined the concept of Devil May Cry as they see it, even if that includes rebooting the combat system. And maybe that's for the best. Had they tried to match or best Bayonetta, or copy the old combat style, and then failed, I doubt people would be as positive as they are, and I think the press would be far more negative.
That being said, it also means DmC can't hold a candle to pure fighting and combat that games like Bayonetta have. Ninja Theory basically haven't bothered to. On one hand, it's lead to me enjoying the game more than I expected, because the last thing I wanted was a poor man's Devil May Cry / Bayonetta. But on the other hand it has made me realise how much I value a fast, tightly woven pure fighting system over anything else in these kinds of games, and sitting 2/3rds through the game no battle in DmC has remained memorable for
gameplay reasons, even if they were memorable for
presentation.