It truly is incredible how one can so easily take away the one thing that the first Devil May Cry was going for. As much as I didn't like it, the first DMC had its merits. I can completely see why people enjoy it, I just didn't. It was a decently fleshed out combat game that was a bit too hard and way too punishing if you died even once. I wasn't particularly great at it, but I can see someone else having a blast with it if they are good. DMC2 is quite the opposite, it made everything piss easy.
My favorite quality of life change is how when you die without a yellow orb against a boss, it puts you right back in front of the boss and you have to restart the fight. It still sends you to the start of the level if you die against normal enemies, but honestly, they're so easy to beat you should shame yourself if that ever happens. This change allowed me to experiment more with the tools I had, something I wish I was more comfortable doing in DMC. So then why did they have to introduce this much needed improvement and then ruin the combat?
No longer can you unlock special moves with red orbs to enhance your combos. You have a standard base moveset consisting of a few grounded strings, stinger, a launcher, and an air string. Your combos are almost non-existent. Instead, the guns are the main attraction. You've got quite a few to select from: handguns, submachine gun, shotgun, and the rocket launcher (I didn't pick up the rocket launcher during my play so I will not be talking about it).
These guns are broken and I'm pretty sure the devs were completely aware of it. Basic enemies will get stun locked after you shoot them a few times with the handguns, making them not the least bit dangerous. The submachine gun fires quickly and somehow has better range than the handguns, so it's decent for long ranged burst damage. And then the shotgun. What a monstrosity. After one or two shots, the enemy you're shooting will fall on the ground. As long as you keep shooting them, they have no hope of getting up at all.
There is a decent bit of strategy employed with how you can cycle between the guns freely with the left trigger. However, these guns don't blend with your natural combat at all. In fact, they're so broken, they become your combat entirely. Normal enemies, like I said, get stunlocked after a few hits from any gun and cannot approach you at all. This goes for some of the stronger enemies as well, like abyss goats. I often found the time to just stand motionless, while holding down the X button to shoot, and check my phone for a minute or two. It doesn't help that your main weapons don't change your moveset at all; despite my unwillingness to experiment in DMC, I would at least change to Ifrit if my swords weren't working and vice versa.
The game knows that these guns are the main attraction. Several boss fights are designed around ONLY using your guns.
- A helicopter chases you up a building where it's almost always out of range to hit with your blade.
- A wolf summoning knight with a sword that hits you from half a room away, encouraging you to stay out of range.
- Three floatings heads where your only arena is a small platform and they are always out of range for melee attacks, and when they get close, your shotgun will get more work done anyway.
- A giant wasp that constantly flies above you, going higher than you can with devil trigger, leaving no way to hit it with your sword.
This is made even worse with the terrible lock on feature. You have no freedom with this lock on mechanic, whatever enemy is closest to you is getting targeted. This is useful for when you're standing in place shooting your handguns while checking your phone, but terrible for boss fights. Most notably, Arius, an otherwise easy boss fight, turns into a giant pain in the ass. He spawns in small enemies that try to swarm you and will get in your way if you're just trying to hit Arius. Your lock on will change and only push you further away from him. Now, you can hold down the right trigger to remove the lock on entirely, but your grounded strings move you so far forward that without you, you'll often get one or two hits in before flying right past him.
It seems that Capcom only saw problems with the combat and difficulty, so there are still plenty of problems here unfixed from the first game. The camera is still awful, if a very tiny bit better. It's still placed at horrible angles where you can't tell what's happening and changes on a whim. For some boss arenas, the camera only covers a small portion of it at a time, meaning for a boss like Arius, you can't even see how he's attacking you when he teleports away. I can't imagine how you can justify the decision to keep this kind of camera.
Each level is aimless with little to no direction. I had to look up a walkthrough multiple times because of this. You just have to go off on a whim and guess what to do in most cases. This is made even worse when you have to find something specific. The worst case of this exists in the FIRST level of Lucia's campaign. You're put into a room with a door on the end. The door has this wavy effect, where if you get close, a hand will grab you and deal damage. I knew this from my knowledge of both the last game and this game, so I figured there must've been enemies to kill or another exit. After wandering aimlessly for a bit, I looked up the answer. What you had to do to progress was collect red orbs from breaking objects and then walk DIRECTLY up to the door that the game has taught you you should stay away from. Upon doing this, you will cash in those orbs to get rid of the hand and unlock the door. No hint was given, this is never used in the game prior or after, and it fundamentally goes against what the game has taught you.
Oh yeah, Lucia is here, huh? As a secondary playable character, she is supposed to feel distinct, but with the same primary combos, her only variation is in her gun loadout. She gets throwing knives, scatter daggers, and a grenade (she also has a crossbow which can only be used underwater because of course there had to be an underwater level). The throwing knives are just like Dante's handguns in how you use them. They're a bit slower, but deal more damage, so they're overall better. The scatter daggers throw out three smaller knives in a spread in front of you and are completely awful, never use them. The grenades, however, are really fun. You can either throw them or drop them in place and they deal huge damage on impact. I had a good time getting swarmed by enemies just to drop a few grenades and incinerate them immediately.
There really isn't any reason for there to be two campaigns because the plot is hardly present. All it is is Dante going to take out an evil big demon man Arius because an old woman asked him to. You go through levels for seemingly no reason and finally end up on his factory island where you meet him for the first time. You blow up the island and then do more busy work until Lucia gets captured. You go to his business tower and fight him then stop the evil demons in the demon world once and for all. That's the whole plot.
Lucia's existence isn't even necessary to make this story work. Going through her story, they add a few exclusive cutscenes. It's revealed that Arius created her and she will become a demon some day and attack humans. The plot does nothing with this because she is not conflicted about this revelation at all between when it's revealed and during her final encounter with Arius. She gets the same shit said to her but she retorts with "Dante told me devils never cry" and fights him. Yeah, that'll show him, you may be a demon destined to kill humanity, but at least you won't cry when doing it.
I literally cannot get a read on what kind of character Dante is supposed to be. When Lucia gets captured and the old woman asks Dante to save her, he pulls out a coin and tells her he'll save her if it lands on heads. So, he's an asshole by leaving her fate up to chance, got it. Then when he reunites with Lucia and the demon world opens, Lucia wants to go fight them instead of Dante because she's a demon anyway. He pulls out the coin again and tells her that if it lands on heads, he'll go, but if it's tails, she'll go. It lands on heads and he goes to fight the final boss.
Lucia takes a look at the coin after Dante leaves and realizes both sides are heads. So, he's a kind hearted soul who didn't want to put Lucia in any more danger than she needed to be, got it. How does that work? If we take what we know now about the coin being heads on both sides and apply it to the scene with the old woman, it makes absolutely no sense. Why did he flip the coin if he knew both sides were heads? Was he showing off how cool his coin is? Did he want the old woman to think she was lucky? This makes no sense however you look at it. Arius is a villain who exists, he does nothing and is boring. I don't know where else to say this. At least Mundus had a personal connection with Dante in the first game so you felt more compelled to take him out.
This is exactly what I expected and I still hoped it wouldn't be like this. This game fixed my main issue with the first game and then shit the bed. It made everything easier, allowing you to more easily experiment with combos and weapons. However, at the same time, they removed all the interesting combos and weapons. At least in DMC, I could have fun when I wasn't dying at the end of a ten minute level and going through all of it again because the gameplay was relatively deep and creative for what it was. There is no fun to be had here unless you like shooting guns a lot. Dante is an inconsistent asshole and I don't give a single shit about any other character. I hope to God the next game is actually as good as people say it is and I don't end up ditching the series.
My favorite quality of life change is how when you die without a yellow orb against a boss, it puts you right back in front of the boss and you have to restart the fight. It still sends you to the start of the level if you die against normal enemies, but honestly, they're so easy to beat you should shame yourself if that ever happens. This change allowed me to experiment more with the tools I had, something I wish I was more comfortable doing in DMC. So then why did they have to introduce this much needed improvement and then ruin the combat?
No longer can you unlock special moves with red orbs to enhance your combos. You have a standard base moveset consisting of a few grounded strings, stinger, a launcher, and an air string. Your combos are almost non-existent. Instead, the guns are the main attraction. You've got quite a few to select from: handguns, submachine gun, shotgun, and the rocket launcher (I didn't pick up the rocket launcher during my play so I will not be talking about it).
These guns are broken and I'm pretty sure the devs were completely aware of it. Basic enemies will get stun locked after you shoot them a few times with the handguns, making them not the least bit dangerous. The submachine gun fires quickly and somehow has better range than the handguns, so it's decent for long ranged burst damage. And then the shotgun. What a monstrosity. After one or two shots, the enemy you're shooting will fall on the ground. As long as you keep shooting them, they have no hope of getting up at all.
There is a decent bit of strategy employed with how you can cycle between the guns freely with the left trigger. However, these guns don't blend with your natural combat at all. In fact, they're so broken, they become your combat entirely. Normal enemies, like I said, get stunlocked after a few hits from any gun and cannot approach you at all. This goes for some of the stronger enemies as well, like abyss goats. I often found the time to just stand motionless, while holding down the X button to shoot, and check my phone for a minute or two. It doesn't help that your main weapons don't change your moveset at all; despite my unwillingness to experiment in DMC, I would at least change to Ifrit if my swords weren't working and vice versa.
The game knows that these guns are the main attraction. Several boss fights are designed around ONLY using your guns.
- A helicopter chases you up a building where it's almost always out of range to hit with your blade.
- A wolf summoning knight with a sword that hits you from half a room away, encouraging you to stay out of range.
- Three floatings heads where your only arena is a small platform and they are always out of range for melee attacks, and when they get close, your shotgun will get more work done anyway.
- A giant wasp that constantly flies above you, going higher than you can with devil trigger, leaving no way to hit it with your sword.
This is made even worse with the terrible lock on feature. You have no freedom with this lock on mechanic, whatever enemy is closest to you is getting targeted. This is useful for when you're standing in place shooting your handguns while checking your phone, but terrible for boss fights. Most notably, Arius, an otherwise easy boss fight, turns into a giant pain in the ass. He spawns in small enemies that try to swarm you and will get in your way if you're just trying to hit Arius. Your lock on will change and only push you further away from him. Now, you can hold down the right trigger to remove the lock on entirely, but your grounded strings move you so far forward that without you, you'll often get one or two hits in before flying right past him.
It seems that Capcom only saw problems with the combat and difficulty, so there are still plenty of problems here unfixed from the first game. The camera is still awful, if a very tiny bit better. It's still placed at horrible angles where you can't tell what's happening and changes on a whim. For some boss arenas, the camera only covers a small portion of it at a time, meaning for a boss like Arius, you can't even see how he's attacking you when he teleports away. I can't imagine how you can justify the decision to keep this kind of camera.
Each level is aimless with little to no direction. I had to look up a walkthrough multiple times because of this. You just have to go off on a whim and guess what to do in most cases. This is made even worse when you have to find something specific. The worst case of this exists in the FIRST level of Lucia's campaign. You're put into a room with a door on the end. The door has this wavy effect, where if you get close, a hand will grab you and deal damage. I knew this from my knowledge of both the last game and this game, so I figured there must've been enemies to kill or another exit. After wandering aimlessly for a bit, I looked up the answer. What you had to do to progress was collect red orbs from breaking objects and then walk DIRECTLY up to the door that the game has taught you you should stay away from. Upon doing this, you will cash in those orbs to get rid of the hand and unlock the door. No hint was given, this is never used in the game prior or after, and it fundamentally goes against what the game has taught you.
Oh yeah, Lucia is here, huh? As a secondary playable character, she is supposed to feel distinct, but with the same primary combos, her only variation is in her gun loadout. She gets throwing knives, scatter daggers, and a grenade (she also has a crossbow which can only be used underwater because of course there had to be an underwater level). The throwing knives are just like Dante's handguns in how you use them. They're a bit slower, but deal more damage, so they're overall better. The scatter daggers throw out three smaller knives in a spread in front of you and are completely awful, never use them. The grenades, however, are really fun. You can either throw them or drop them in place and they deal huge damage on impact. I had a good time getting swarmed by enemies just to drop a few grenades and incinerate them immediately.
There really isn't any reason for there to be two campaigns because the plot is hardly present. All it is is Dante going to take out an evil big demon man Arius because an old woman asked him to. You go through levels for seemingly no reason and finally end up on his factory island where you meet him for the first time. You blow up the island and then do more busy work until Lucia gets captured. You go to his business tower and fight him then stop the evil demons in the demon world once and for all. That's the whole plot.
Lucia's existence isn't even necessary to make this story work. Going through her story, they add a few exclusive cutscenes. It's revealed that Arius created her and she will become a demon some day and attack humans. The plot does nothing with this because she is not conflicted about this revelation at all between when it's revealed and during her final encounter with Arius. She gets the same shit said to her but she retorts with "Dante told me devils never cry" and fights him. Yeah, that'll show him, you may be a demon destined to kill humanity, but at least you won't cry when doing it.
I literally cannot get a read on what kind of character Dante is supposed to be. When Lucia gets captured and the old woman asks Dante to save her, he pulls out a coin and tells her he'll save her if it lands on heads. So, he's an asshole by leaving her fate up to chance, got it. Then when he reunites with Lucia and the demon world opens, Lucia wants to go fight them instead of Dante because she's a demon anyway. He pulls out the coin again and tells her that if it lands on heads, he'll go, but if it's tails, she'll go. It lands on heads and he goes to fight the final boss.
Lucia takes a look at the coin after Dante leaves and realizes both sides are heads. So, he's a kind hearted soul who didn't want to put Lucia in any more danger than she needed to be, got it. How does that work? If we take what we know now about the coin being heads on both sides and apply it to the scene with the old woman, it makes absolutely no sense. Why did he flip the coin if he knew both sides were heads? Was he showing off how cool his coin is? Did he want the old woman to think she was lucky? This makes no sense however you look at it. Arius is a villain who exists, he does nothing and is boring. I don't know where else to say this. At least Mundus had a personal connection with Dante in the first game so you felt more compelled to take him out.
This is exactly what I expected and I still hoped it wouldn't be like this. This game fixed my main issue with the first game and then shit the bed. It made everything easier, allowing you to more easily experiment with combos and weapons. However, at the same time, they removed all the interesting combos and weapons. At least in DMC, I could have fun when I wasn't dying at the end of a ten minute level and going through all of it again because the gameplay was relatively deep and creative for what it was. There is no fun to be had here unless you like shooting guns a lot. Dante is an inconsistent asshole and I don't give a single shit about any other character. I hope to God the next game is actually as good as people say it is and I don't end up ditching the series.