My thoughts after beating the game. Long and primarily negative - feel free to skip if you only want positive impressions.
Graphics: To start, I am not a fan of UE3 graphics in general. I feel that it renders some surfaces and materials (especially metal) very poorly and the lighting is absolute garbage. For DmC, the abundance of effects used to represent Limbo were generally very tacky and if they are a large reason why this game couldn't run at 60fps on consoles then shame on NT. On PC the image is clean enough at 1080p, but I still don't feel that this game compares favourably to many recent games, nor to DMC4. For a company that has been operating internationally for well over 20 years, Capcom is deserving of scorn for not making their proprietary engine available in English. The MT Framework is a very good engine and would have done DmC wonders.
The UI is ugly - a simple white health bar with Dante's face next to it (with colour matching eyes - oooh) - and the menus are likewise very bland and uninteresting.
Setting/Presentation: I felt that DmC did a very poor job at creating compelling atmosphere. None of the architecture is interesting and none of the settings are memorable. Nothing in this game made me stop and look around at the world I was playing through. The excessive use of plain white words plastered on surfaces is a poor substitute for interesting design. For the most part, Limbo is just a few fuzzy effects that wash across the screen used to spruce up poor platforming sections and long drawn out hallways. I have never played a NT game before but have repeatedly read that they excel at creating beautiful settings. Either this game does not fit into that category or I have no soul or eye for their excellence.
Characters: It is important to understand that I do enjoy the cocky swagger and attitude of characters like Dante and Bayonetta. I also really liked the brooding conviction (and juvenile rivalry) of Virgil. However, I don't feel that I am so committed to those character tropes that I would be unable to appreciate it if a new direction was taken.
DmC Dante is not an interesting character. Throughout the story his attitude towards the world flip flops for no real reason, he has absolutely no swagger and his cockiness comes of as just being a douche rather than a sly antagonist. All of this is due to the horrid voice acting and dialog. If NT was attempting to distance themselves from the juvenile humor of previous Dante while maintaining the cocky swagger and a more compelling character then I feel they failed miserably and made a character that unfortunately I don't despise - instead it is a character that I just don't care about.
As for Virgil - why did NT feel it was necessary to turn him into such a pussy? Virgil was a great foil for Dante, but this character is just lame, limp and unimpressive in every way. I have to assume that these characters were designed by people who do not have siblings, who have no style or swagger, and whose grand understanding of human interaction has been gleaned from crappy CW tv programming.
Dialog: People laugh at an mock DMC and Bayonetta for their trite dialog and they are justified. However those games (maybe not DMC4) tend not to take themselves seriously at all. DmC dialog is atrocious. The shitty attempts at social commentary, horrid one-liners, empty banter and emotionally devoid interactions make this game hard to stomach. On a subsequent play-through you can probably avoid most of this - but there are still so many instances where Dante is saying something during gameplay that are just annoying or cringe worthy - completely devoid of humour, or style.
Story: The story works in so far as it justifies why you are in the setting you are in. However, I don't think that it did a good job at conveying why any of the characters were motivated as they were. I know that this is explained, but it is not done in any compelling way that engages the player in those motives. Some of the final dialog in the game underlines how shallow the story of the game is. Obviously this is a genre that is not known for creating incredible stories, but I thought that NT was a company that was regarded favourably in this field if nothing else. On any subsequent play-through I would definitely skip every cut-scene possible.
Cut-scenes: As a game designer, why would you have a cut-scene then a section where you are in control but can only walk forward, and then another cut-scene? I don't think it is for loading purposes. Why at the end of some enemy encounters is there a small cut-scene of Dante's fact sneering? There are a lot of cut-scenes in this game and most of them are superfluous. The ones that are story related are generally poorly directed and voice acted. I am playing as a demi-god who can go toe-to-toe with most anything hell can spit out and yet the action cut-scenes are in no way exhilarating. Style is a major component of the combat and yet it is completely lacking in any cut-scene. Having an option to turn off in game dialog and cut-scenes would do wonders for this game.
Level Design: Interesting architecture or settings made DMC 1,3 and 4 engaging even if the level design was generally linear. 1 wrapped around on itself a lot given you a sense that the castle existed as a singular structure and in 3 you did feel that you were climbing a large tower. The areas in 4 (pre-backtrack) were also interconnected in a way that made the world seem large and the levels less linear. DmC does not benefit from these systems at all. I didn't feel like I was in a big city, or building - I felt like I was in a series of narrow hallways. Sometimes I could branch left or right to choose which hallway I wanted to be in, but I never felt like I was in anything less than a hallway. There are a lot of situations where this should not be the case, where you are in a cavern or some such and you should feel like the world is grand and open. Unfortunately the bland and uninspired back grounds and generally uninteresting floor/surfaces or arena settings never allowed me to feel drawn in.
Enemy Design: At first blush it would seem like there are a fair number of different enemy types in the game however, for the most part they share too many similarities with other enemy types within DmC and many of them exist as poor shades of enemies from the DMC franchise. Having a few enemies that are colour coded seems more like a stubborn refusal to abandon a mechanic from Heavenly Sword (I did play the demo) than an honest attempt at creating interesting enemy encounters. The big bad enemies are horribly lame and are completely lacking in interesting artistic design - a big cat thing that can't hold a candle to a Blitz, a fat bruiser that Alto Angelo could easily spank or a walking buzz-saw with a face (perhaps the only interesting one if not for the poor character design). With so many memorable enemies from DMC 1, 3 and 4 it is sad to see this area fall so far. Maybe things are different at higher difficulty levels where enemies get additional moves.
Enemy encounters: Late in the game there are a few arenas that are basically just wave after wave of most enemy types, but throughout most of the game you are only fighting a few enemies at a time between long sections of generally uninteresting level traversal. A poor camera and the inability to select targets makes some encounters with more difficult enemies a chore, but for the most part you only seem to face off against enemies who are easily crown controlled. I don't think that there is any areas or encounter in this game that really captured my imagination of excited me (imagine Gracious and Glorious x3 with environmental hazards.) and in general the combat seemed very stale and easy.
Boss encounters: Lol. Every boss in this game is crap (o.k. - except one). The set ups to the bosses suck and the actual engagements are just boring - dodge/evade and then mash some combos to do damage, repeat. Fucking pathetic and shameful. If this is the best that NT can do then they should just turn around and go away.
Weapons: In a world where Cestus, Beowulf and Durga exist, why the hell would a company think that a weapon like Eryx is somehow inspired? Not only are the graphics and modelling of these weapons complete garbage, but they are also a massive step back when compared to their betters. In fact, all of the weapons seem to either attempt to copy from DMC or from some other H&S game and come up very short. It is sad that every weapon plays virtually the same as all the other weapons and that all of them have the exact same (and very limited) move sets.
Combat: I love Bayonetta, which this is not. My ideal combat scenario is Bayonetta on Hard with Gaze of Despair and Mahaa-Kalaa equipped. DmC is not at all like that. I do like that you can switch between a heavy, light and regular weapon on the fly and that some combos work with linking different weapons. I hate the dodge and parry mechanic in this game though. I admit that I am used to being able to dodge cancel from any move back into a combo so the rigid evade in DmC seems needlessly cumbersome. However, Demon dodge just seems incredibly over powered. The grapple moves are good but I don't really think that they are a step up from DMC4. The real issue is the lack of lock on and the horrible camera control which makes it tedious to engage some enemies properly and downright frustrating when you have two or more heavy enemies to engage.
I was bored of this game by level 6 and nothing that followed really took me out of that funk. The story, dialog, level design, music, bosses and enemy design were all well below what a game should expect for their money. Combat has some good elements but is held back by poor enemy encounters, a bad camera, no lock on and inconsistent grapple mechanic. DmC Dante and Virgil have enough character to exist in their own franchise, it is just that that franchise doesn't have to be associated with DMC.
If I have to give this a grade - I need to look at it as a game all on its own and not as part of the DMC franchise. If this didn't have the DMC name attached to it, I think people would probably like it and it would score around 7.5 or so (which is a 6 in my books) and it would have a following that would hope for a much better sequel. However, within the DMC universe, I don't think that anyone should hold this up as a bold and successful new direction for the franchise.
If you need to play something new in this genre, then rent this game. But if you want to play something good in this genre, then look elsewhere.
