Japan Man

This game’s story sucks. Sorry, I just had to start there. Wait, no I’m not finished. In the next one they better explain Nero’s purpose in the series other than being an excuse to putting a Kratos like character in Devil May Cry. Who is he, Sparda reborn? If he is, that’s lame. Anyway, lets get into this.

          As my compatriot stated in his review of DMC4 , I played Nero to his Dante . This youtube clip breaks down Nero’s game play very clearly. He’s a real easy character to get a handle on. But the clip doesn’t get one thing across to you, and that’s how great it is to play with upstart Nero. Yeah, you get to manhandle the bosses left and right in this game with your ultra cheesy devil arm, but you better believe doing so is not only visually amazing, but damned fun. Even though he’s more one dimensional with his fighting moves than Dante, you can really beat the crap outta everything around you in hilarious style. Unlike Japan Man, I like the fact that you were forced to deal with enemies and bosses differently when it came to both characters, although in that same breath I felt that same fact was used just to short change the players on more content. And since that last sentence hinted on issues I had with this game, we might as well continue in that direction.

          I hate all of the side missions, even the easy ones. Why? Many reasons my dear readers of this post. You see, the side missions have a way of bringing mechanical flaws in the game to light, like how the devil arm will force you to overshoot your mark. Nothing like using it to pull you up to a boss for an aerial combo that misses because even though it put you closer, your still out of range to attack. Ah, how I love swinging at air so a boss or hyped up minion can knock the shit outta me. Also in mission # 2 where you gotta do 5 aerial busters in a row without touching the ground, hit detection problems arise while you’re trying to grab those bastards. Magically when you pull them up again they’ll be out of range for the slam. Oh yeah secret mission # 5, sky scrapper. That one ’s horrible. Bad enough I hate platform jumping, but how am I supposed to avoid the platform jump thing and a gate, and land on it if I can’t even see it yet? I swear I did that one like 30 times before I got it.

          In the end Playing Devil May Cry 4 was as satisfying as you would expect it to be, even if its flawed. As in the previous Installments in this series (yes, even part 2) Devil May Cry 4 is full of fast pace action, stunning visuals, and entertaining characters. If you want the game to be challenging, just play it on hard. It was definetely worth the 54$ (we bought the limited edition used, minus the extra disk) we spent on it.

I have purchased and played all the Devil May Cry games in the series. I couldn’t even imagine playing another character besides Dante. In fact, Devil May Cry is the only action game that allows me to destroy monsters the way I like. Unlike Ninja Gaiden’s stiff and restricted protagonist Ryu Hayabusa, I have free reign over Dante. I was disappointed when I realized I would have to play with lame clone Nero for Devil May Cry 4. Luckily, Darkmane and I have a history of tackling games together. He agreed to play Nero and write his review based on playing him. I want to thank Darkmane for taking the pressure off of me and allowing me to do what I do best: slaughter demons with my favorite trash talking bastard demon hunter Dante.

Dante’s combat tactics remain pretty much unchanged from the rest of the Devil May Cry series. He can still  bust off his duel pistols Ebony and Ivory and blast foes with his shotgun.  Dante’s default sword, Rebellion, is also there with pretty much the same moves like Stinger (my favorite!).

The style system introduced in Devil May Cry 3 is also one of my favorite additions to the Devil May Cry series. Dante has four styles to choose from; gunslinger, sword master, royal guard, and trickster can all be used on the fly from the moment you start playing him in DMC 4. DMC 3 only allowed you to equip one style at a time, which makes this game ten times more bad ass.

Playing as Dante in Devil May Cry 4 is like using Mario after pulling off the extra life trick on world 3-1….you just can’t lose. After I maxed out the trickster style which allows me to both teleport (similar to Dragonball Z) and dodge faster, I basically ran around beating on demons like they stole something. Just when I thought using Dante couldn’t get any easier, they give you over powered weapons like Pandora’s Box, a briefcase that can turn into like 5 different weapons (there are probably more, but I didn’t unlock them yet…) Using Dante was such a breeze that I kind of lost interest in the game while fighting the last master. Luckily, I had my fun with Dante and was able to let Darkmane finish everything with Nero.

There were problems with using Dante though…pretty significant problems. First, the bosses were made for Nero. The devil trigger Nero uses can take down most of the bosses with no problem, while I had to haul ass, dodge, and wear them down with Dante. I think Capcom should have given Dante a devil trigger like ability that influences the actual game play instead of just some more hyped up weapons.

Second, Dante’s episodes were all backtracking reruns of Nero’s exploits. He doesn’t go anywhere new or explore any new leads, which I thought was both ridiculous and a missed opportunity. Why couldn’t Dante be fighting a larger threat while just helping Nero along the way?  How could Capcom regulate their top action hero to back up duty? Can anyone say “Raiden”?

The third and final problem is that my play time with Dante was waaaay too short. I must have only been gaming for 4 hours and then it was over. Nero gets way more face time even though his storyline was pretty garbage in my opinon. At least Nero isn’t Sasuke emo because that would have really made me angry.

Devil May Cry 4 is a great game though. The graphics and visuals are amazing and the gameply is tight like vice grips. I wish I could have had some more time with Dante, but c’est la vie. Maybe Capcom will hype Nero and Dante up some more for Devil May Cry 5 making it a win win for everyone.