I have things to say about DMC 5. Most of it is kinda bad.

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Blocking is kinda antithetical to DMC style games cause it'd slow the tempo down too much. This game is more about frantic action and twitch reactions than methodical combat. Blocking would prolly just get you swarmed as well and if it didn't cover you from all angles it'd not even be that useful. Hell, they gave Nero a burst to escape damage with in exchange for an arm like in fighting games lol. That's good enough.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Finished my first run through of DMC5 last night. Wanted to finish it before Sekiro came out today. I'll come back to it to do the higher difficulties, and also once bloody palace comes out (possibly along with some new characters...) in April.

Having finished it, here are my final thoughts on the game:

Nero is fun as hell to play and gets some of the best boss fights, and I wish he got a bit more overall playtime. I didn't feel like I'd mastered all of the Devil Breakers by the time the game ended.

Dante is fun to play and all of his weapons and styles flow together well and feel great, but I wish that you were able to un-equip ebony and ivory as well as rebellion/sparda. Having 4 weapons of each type is too many weapons to sort through, and for the most part I found the other weapons way more fun than the defaults. The reason you're not able to un-equip those weapons seems to be to make sure that the cut-scenes make sense, but I'd rather they just magically appear in the cutscenes rather than limiting me in my ability to form my play style.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed playing V, but overall he's still the least fun to play of the 3, and after the game was over I felt like I wished there was more Nero gameplay and less V. In the sections where you get to pick which character to take I never voluntarily picked V (but I will on subsequent runs probably).

As far as level design goes MAN some of the Dante levels are really not good. Divergence: Dante in particular is just a bunch of fight rooms with holes leading down into the next room. This level design is only slightly better than the awful board-game sections from DMC4. I really wish that there had been some more interesting and creative environments in the game overall. There are definitely some cool sections of the environments but there aren't enough of them, and nothing that really wowed me. I feel like a lot of the environmental design could have been better and more interesting.

On the plus side, I don't think there was a single enemy type I hated by the end of the game. Most of the DMC games have "that one" annoying enemy that isn't fun to fight, and this game did a good job of making all of the encounters pretty fun.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

If you're only five hours in, then you're almost certainly still playing on DH. Yeah, DH mode is anemic compared to DMC3 and 4, but on the other hand this is intended to be a point of entry for new players into the series as the last game was released eleven years ago, and that means some concessions have to be made on the difficulty slider since DMC plays fundamentally different to other spectacle fighters that hit the market since. You definitely have to course correct for SoS and DMD mode, though.

Nero's an all around improvement since DMC4, in my opinion. His character is much-improved, and his game play is a lot more fun. The biggest surprise with it, is taunting has a lot of function now compared to Dante's, or Nero's own in DMC4. Nero's taunts actually have a purpose beyond cool factor and style points -- his aerial taunt is an additional jump that grants an exceed window, his Red Queen ground taunt does the same, and his reload taunt gives you a free and instant color-up. You really have to learn to taunt as Nero for those additional effects to do well.

Devil Breaker mechanics make for really varied play that's not always predictable, that force you to change tactics on the fly and make tactical choices when to break and to not. The results are not always what you expect, and not always for the worse. Hell, due to dumbass mistakes during their respective levels, I ended up beating Goliath with Sweet Surrender, and Gilgamesh with...Pasta Breaker. Hilarious, and awesome. My first Nero SSS-rank was thanks to a random pick-up Buster Arm and a rage-fueled psychotic break against a horde of Riots.

During Nero mission 13, that last big fight I accomplished without actually hitting the ground once and in SSS-rank the whole time, thanks to Gerbera and nailing the timing on aerial taunts and jump cancels. Felt great.

Honestly, I like DMC5 Nero more than I like DMC5 Dante, and that's a statement I never thought I'd be making.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Wow I didn't expect this game to canonize the DMC anime. They even included a cameo from it! (though not one from dmc2 haha XD)

I'm now roughly 10~ hours in, taking my time with a lot of stuff and trying out moves in training mode is too much fun. Dante just did something super hype and I'm in love with this game even more now, those who finished the game can prolly guess at what I have in mind. Also I just remembered this game apparently had orb microtransactions and people were mad about them...but the game actually gives you so many orbs you never need to buy them. I literally can't imagine why anyone would. The game even showers you with gold orbs (I haven't needed to use one yet so I'm sitting at like 15 of em or something silly) so I can definitely see it being quite a bit easier as opposed to artificially harder to trick people into buying red orbs with real money like people were saying.

Maybe the orb microtransactions are for people whose first game in their entire life will be DMC5? Who can tell lol.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Wow I didn't expect this game to canonize the DMC anime. They even included a cameo from it! (though not one from dmc2 haha XD)

I'm now roughly 10~ hours in, taking my time with a lot of stuff and trying out moves in training mode is too much fun. Dante just did something super hype and I'm in love with this game even more now, those who finished the game can prolly guess at what I have in mind. Also I just remembered this game apparently had orb microtransactions and people were mad about them...but the game actually gives you so many orbs you never need to buy them. I literally can't imagine why anyone would. The game even showers you with gold orbs (I haven't needed to use one yet so I'm sitting at like 15 of em or something silly) so I can definitely see it being quite a bit easier as opposed to artificially harder to trick people into buying red orbs with real money like people were saying.

Maybe the orb microtransactions are for people whose first game in their entire life will be DMC5? Who can tell lol.

Yeah, by the end of my first run through the game on devil hunter I was getting like 30,000 to 45,000 red orbs a level, so I can't imagine anyone really needing to spend money on orbs, unless they just really want that super taunt for each character (yes, you have to buy it individually for all 3).

 

[BrawlMan]

Wow I didn't expect this game to canonize the DMC anime. They even included a cameo from it! (though not one from dmc2 haha XD)

I'm now roughly 10~ hours in, taking my time with a lot of stuff and trying out moves in training mode is too much fun. Dante just did something super hype and I'm in love with this game even more now, those who finished the game can prolly guess at what I have in mind. Also I just remembered this game apparently had orb microtransactions and people were mad about them...but the game actually gives you so many orbs you never need to buy them. I literally can't imagine why anyone would. The game even showers you with gold orbs (I haven't needed to use one yet so I'm sitting at like 15 of em or something silly) so I can definitely see it being quite a bit easier as opposed to artificially harder to trick people into buying red orbs with real money like people were saying.

Maybe the orb microtransactions are for people whose first game in their entire life will be DMC5? Who can tell lol.

Yeah, by the end of my first run through the game on devil hunter I was getting like 30,000 to 45,000 red orbs a level, so I can't imagine anyone really needing to spend money on orbs, unless they just really want that super taunt for each character (yes, you have to buy it individually for all 3).

And even then, there's an exploit people found, so the micro-transactions are even more unnecessary.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I won't click that cause potential spoilers but I just got the hat so now farming orbs is a joke. Not even the taunts should be an issue.