My thoughts on everything DMC (that I played)

I've played about every mainline DMC game except for DMC 2 and Reboot so I guess I want to yap about it. I'll also just conveniently ignore DLC for now.

DMC1

This was basically the first thing I played and I have to say it still holds up till today as a game. When I heard that there was "stylish action" before I started, I kinda thought this was it. It goes to show that I knew absolutely nothing about DMC before I played through all the games. I played a game called Ultrakill which took inspiration from DMC and I 100% thought the environments from DMC would look Ultrakill-y but it really is anything but that. The environment from this first game was insane. It's both creepy and nostalgia inducing, especially when talking about that ambiance from the mansion setting. When you get to the action, pro gameplay turns into a methodical fight where the player uses the weapons and enemy knowledge they have at their disposal to defeat demons. I love Alastor and Ifrit. Going devil trigger mode and they become extremely satisfying weapons to use as they take big chunks off enemies and bosses. Although there are some dumb bosses like Mundus. DMC 1 is a good game though I should probably play more.

Another additional thought: I have watched this Tokusatsu show called Garo. That show reminds me so much of Devil May Cry 1 that I had to mention it. It may be the closest thing to a Devil May Cry 1 live adaptation. We got monsters from the Makai, (demon world) dark themes, (Garo turns it up to a hundred but yeag) and a cool and concise protagonist who wields a longsword. Even the protag's power up, a golden armor, reminds me a bit of devil trigger because it gives him a boost in overall fighting ability and very much durability wnile also having limited usage. (precisely 99.9 seconds in the show) I can't even forget about the choreography that's extra stylish in comparison to the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai I have watched. The similarities add up such that I think Garo has gotta be inspired by DMC1.

DMC3

This is the game where people actually care about Dante's brother. This tower climbing game is where we start deviating from DMC1's methodical and strategic nature to start adding more combo stuff in. It's not a full deviation though so we can still find some of that strategic gameplay. You now get a ton more weapons, five in total to be exact. Also six playing styles for Dante. Bosses drop weapons and some like Doppleganger or Geryon boss drop the doppleganger and time-stop styles respectively instead. Deemed to be the best entry in the franchise and I wholeheartedly agree. They managed to keep methodical gameplay and new playstyle options in one game. It's also just really easy to pick up and play while having varied gameplay through the loadouts you select. I have gotta mention the DMC 3 Crimson mod is good if you want to invite modern DMC into the DMC that you already enjoy.

DMC4

I managed to play this one the most. It's a dumb game so I usually just play bloody palace to mess with whatever Dante has in his kit. :P I like the graphics and stuff but the campaign is the most lacking of all the DMC campaigns I've played. At least it has my favorite Nero gameplay tho. Now Dante can use four playstyles at once though they barred the time-stop and doppleganger styles for some reason. It turns him into a confusing mess but it is learnable. I have to say though that if you haven't learned through the mess, it's going to be a miserable time. I mainly just play DMC4 Vanilla with the 4hook mod (recommend) so I don't really experience any of the Special Edition stuff not I'm really missing it. Nero has a really small kit that is omnipotent. He lacks options but the fifth game adds options for him. What I really like about Nero has got to be his charge shot, the double shots from Blue Rose is really smart design. It's an okay game, new character good.

DMC5

It's the last game in the franchise. It's also the most modern coded of the franchise. We get some "realism" graphics, lower difficulty, some weird story telling where they piece the story outside of chronological order and added POVs from each main character, and we get some dumbing down of some areas. Character Nero gets new tools to use, some more actions for his sword. Character Dante gets new weapons like always to replace the old ones but he also gets a new summoned swords ability and a new devil trigger that turns him into a small kaiju. We still don't get those missing styles back which is kind of sad but we at least got some new stuff to enhance the combos we can make. New character V is meh. They made him extremely overpowered where he can start roleplaying as a Terraria summoner. I'll get all my complaints out first. They slowed the gameplay down and that's not just the absence of turbo mode on the pc version which is in there for absolutely no reason. The animations of everyone are just slowed in general. This really hurts the game feel a lot and you can tell that it hurts Nero a ton. Speaking of Nero, they gave a new weapon system called devil breakers where you equip a weapon with a few uses and you have to break the weapon to switch to another one. You really can't switch freely between the weapons, you have to burn a weapon to use another weapon with a limited inventory. A mod actually lets people switch devil breakers but it still hurts the console experience to not have this convenience. Devil breakers outside of Overture, Gerbera, Ragtime, and Punchline kind of suck as well even though the breakers I just mentioned were supposed to be for beginners, they turned out to be the most usable. I already talked about the V character being a summoner so I'll just say there's a mod by Irezumi that gives V more moves and does some more rebalancing. We can actually do meleeing with V in this mod. Also PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE give this man quicksilver Irezumi, I will sacrifice my soul for this. Back to my complaining, the weapon Caveliere for Dante feeds into the slow gameplay problem I talked about because it's whole essence is to be a chainsaw. Honestly unfixable for this problem. It also doesn't find a space between Dante's other weapons. I would rather have Caveliere to give Dante more mobile options and play to a mobility weapon instead of the weird motorcycle thing that doesn't have it's own space. The space that weapons have in Dante's arsenal proves to be a reoccuring issue as Dante just gets four weapons and three of them have mode switches. Balrog, a gauntlet weapon, gets two modes for punches and kicks. King Cerberus, a nunchuck weapon, gets three modes for ice, fire, and electricity. Finally, Cavaliere, a motorcycle chainsaw, gets a motorcycle moveset and a chainsaw moveset. It becomes extremely cluttered which arguably worsens the messy problem that Dante has in DMC4. The silver lining is that since moves are now overlapping, you won't have to confine to a single weapon for an action you really needed since it's been copied in some other weapon. Though that silver lining isn't warranted if we just condensed Dante's moveset and not have this problem in the first place. The game also is a walking sim outside of combat. I probably have some more baggage but I'll end it off with loading screens: they're just extremely long and makes me not want to open the game.

Outside of complaining, there are some cool stuff that DMC5 adds which I want to acknowledge. Dante gets summoned swords and that opens the game a lot in terms of what you can do in the combo game. Dante also gets his Devil Kaiju form which not only looks cool but can cancel any move through a SSSS ability. Quite overpowered since it's extremely easy to gain the requirements to activate SSSS. I like how Dante gets capoeira as his melee fighting style and also his three element nunchucks Cerberus even if the gauntlets and nunchucks both make up the clutter for Dante. Modding lets us join other players in online multiplayer and multiplayer is suprisingly fun. The void area where you can practice moves and do combos is a good addition. It's an okay game I guess.