Since our lucky european buddies will be able to enjoy the amazing game that Deep Crimson is this week, here are the things you guys must know before playing it:
- Putting aside the story missions, you have all the Hanzo girls available since the start of the game, so you're free to repeat any cleared mission with them as soon you get at the hub level.
- The story mode is a continuous affair with no real break until the end of the first chapter, so if you wanna return to the hub and change stuff around, save or grind some levels for your characters, just abandon your current mission via the pause menu.
- Is strongly recommended that you turn off the clothe-breaking cutscenes on the configuration menu. It does wonders to improve the game experience.
- The homing kunai (A button) is your best friend. A light tap will prompt your character to throw a Kunai at the nearest enemy and then she will teleport towards them (similar to Vergil's sword trick on DMC4:SE), with the proper rythm you can go between every enemy on screen without stopping. This will make short work of airborne enemies and even works with offscreen enemies.
- Unlike Burst or Versus, Deep Crimson lacks a proper "limit break". Its combo breaking tool is simply press the X button (hard attack) on the air. This will make your character to do a ground pund that will send any enemies in its range, flying. Leaving them at your mercy. It can be spammed so you can cheese the game difficulty with it. Not recommended though.
- Frantic mode has been reworked into a special mode similar to DMC's DT. To access it you just need to be in shinobi mode with your scroll bar filled and press down on the D-pad. This will buff your character stats and give you infinite scrolls. In this mode your health will decrease over time but it can be filled by landing hits on the enemy.
-Deep Crimson also does away with the Yin/Yang/Flash mechanic present on previous games. The perks found on those modes have been relocated on the new stance system and are character specific.
-All the girls have been overhauled from their previous iterations, stats have been rebalanced and now you have at your disposal a mechanic very similar to BB's drives or Injustice's special attacks. X has gone from strong attack to have different functions depending of the character. There are three variants: Some characters like Asuka or Homura just get the breach art introduced on Versus, other characters like Daidouji or Hikage activate a stance -By pressing X and spending one scroll they will let go a burst of damaging energy and will get a tweaked moveset and character specific perks. The last variant adds a new gameplay mechanic and is exclusive to Mirai and Haruka. Haruka has a robot at her disposal now and by using it to attack it will get red over time, you have to press x regularly to cool it otherwise it will explode and leave Haruka vulnerable for a few seconds (The steam released by the robot is damaging to the enemies). Pressing X while playing with Mirai will make her shuffle betwen three different weapons: gumbrella, grenade launcher, gatling gun. Each weapon has its own moveset and propierties.
- The game counts with a pretty handy tutorial and training mode accesible via the "Mission" menu. Take advantage of it!
-Oh right, I forgot. You can also set on the options menu if you want the in-game cutscenes to carry over clothing damage and the customization you've done to the characters.