Long before I started playing any of the games in the series, I assumed that the general consensus surrounding the Devil May Cry franchise was positive due to its sheer popularity, so when I found out that a majority of people actually hated Devil May Cry 2, I was both surprised and intrigued. Granted, a lot of my excitement towards playing this game was more out of morbid curiosity than anything, but I was still willing to give the game a chance to see if it wasn't as horrible as people kept saying it was, and I went into it with a half-joking "How bad can it be?" attitude. As someone who wasn't even that big of a fan of the first Devil May Cry game, I was baffled by just how much its sequel got wrong and just how incompetent it is, because while it wasn't outright unplayable (although it does border on that at times), Devil May Cry 2 was still an absolute disaster of a game that prides itself in being as dull of an experience as possible.

When I beat Devil May Cry on the last day of July, my thoughts on it were very complicated, but even with all of its flaws and odd design choices, I could at least say that the game wasn't boring. In Devil May Cry 2, though, boredom takes center stage, as it strips any ounce of challenge and depth from the first game's combat in favor of turning its core gameplay into a mindless shell of what came before it. In almost every situation you're thrown in, the absolute best and most effective strategy is to stand completely still and spam your gun button until all the enemies die, and since the melee combat is sluggish and unsatisfying and the enemies barely try to attack or even move towards you, this mind-numbing strategy ends up being your one answer to everything. Instead of trying to pull off flashy combos and alternating between melee and ranged attacks like in the first game, I was instead going from area to area and essentially mashing the square button until the battle music stopped playing while occasionally dodging an enemy's ranged attack, and the monotony of having to fight the same enemies using the same foolproof strategy while getting punished for trying literally anything else over and over again made playing this game feel more like Hell than the levels that took place in the actual Underworld. Speaking of which, Devil May Cry 2 replaces the Resident Evil-style exploration and puzzles of its first game in favor of making every single area in every stage take forever to get through, as Dante's slow running speed had me dodge rolling around these needlessly empty and bland locales just to get to the next section. Devil May Cry 2 also replaces the manual targeting of the original game with automatic targeting, and it not only made the boss fights (which were already a joke to begin with) take way longer to beat than they needed to due to your attacks constantly going in the other direction, but it also made activating the required switches nearly impossible with how the game would rather make you face the infinitely spawning enemies than the switch that you're deliberately trying to hit.

While the original Devil May Cry had some design choices that held the experience back for me, Devil May Cry 2 went beyond that and instead decided to add a bunch of features that were all completely superfluous, and I honestly found that to be more insulting. For some reason, Dante can run up walls now, and not only does he only go up a pitiful distance, but the only times where I ever actually used this move were all by mistake. The whole amulet mechanic is also useless, as the unlockable moves just ended up being incredibly situational during combat while also trying to sell the illusion of customization and player choice, and the required uses of each move for traversal both occurred exactly once immediately after they were unlocked. Despite all of these nonsensical additions, Devil May Cry 2 somehow managed to fail to fix one of the main issues of the first game, as the fixed camera is still disorienting to the point where it constantly obscures its objects of focus. On top of being absolutely miserable to play, Devil May Cry 2 also fell flat from a story perspective, as the nonsensical plot was made even worse thanks to Dante's personality being changed from a cocky goofball to a coin-flipping idiot that barely speaks. Having the second disc essentially be repeated content with a swapped protagonist was just an additional slap to the face, and this choice just screams lazy rather than giving the game any replay value. My hate for this game makes it so that even acknowledging its improvements on the original feels wrong, as the additions of an actual dodge button and the ability to swap weapons on the fly pale in comparison to just how bad everything else is in this game. Devil May Cry 2 was a chore of a game that felt atrocious to play, and since I've disliked both of the games from this franchise that I've played so far, I really hope that Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening makes up for it.

Bro thinks he's TOTK Link lol

Really fun but it isn't as consistent and as incredible as DMC3 was especially since the best bosses in that game overshadow the ones in this with the exception of the Dante fight that was awesome. Missions 18 and 19 did kind of suck especially with that boss fight taking 20 morbillion years to defeat. Nero was a great character and was fun to play as but I perfer Dante since there's more variety to his moveset. Overall, a genuinely good successor to DMC3 but it doesn't quite live up to its greatness.

"I'm going to fucking kill myself" were the words I found myself uttering over and over while I played this game.

Coming off of the third game you'd expect Devil May Cry 4 to be much better than it is. Enter NERO. Moody and arrogant, in essence he is HIM. You know I had a really funny joke regarding Nero but it's too funny and I'm absurdly proud of it so I'm going to save it for later and don't you fucking dare say that it probably wasn't gonna be funny it absolutely fucking is everyone I've told it to has laughed at it fuck you. Anyways this kind of thing is exactly what DMC4, it set ups tons of things which make you feel like this will be "peak peak goatly goat raw fire", you kill demons in the first level that banger of a soundtrack comes in and you are getting into the grove of playing as Nero and just when you've had enough of the foreplay the game rips your nuts apart by having dogshit level design and enemies which range from mediocre to annoying

Devil Bringer is really something I felt was missing in DMC3, a way to bridge the gap between you and the enemies outside of mashing Stinger. The game is smart with it as almost every enemy in the game feels like they're designed with Devil Bringer in mind, right down to the bosses. Speaking of which, how are they bosses? Well they start off all right and it all goes downhill when I got to Mission 6 and went "oh my god this is so dogshit". Agnus can SHOVE those fucking swords UP HIS ASSHOLE and fiddle them around like a fucking DILDO and I hope that he doesn't have a G-spot cause my god that fucking FUCK does not deserve any form of pleasure. Then in the last 8 missions they start fucking reusing bosses like crazy to the point where the second final/final boss (depending on who you ask) is just a fucking beefier version of a boss you've fought before and they made said boss even MORE dog shit fuck your fucking BUBBLES fuck YOU.

Right when you get the hang of Nero the game throws you a curve ball and gives you control of Dante and baby? This was the best Dante yet, gameplay wise. "YEEESSSS BRO YESS 😍🥰🥵" was my reaction once I remembered how to play Dante. I should add that I didn't buy this game myself to play it but got it from a friend, and I noticed that she had bought souls with real world money, so I had an abundance of souls at the beginning which I spent into upgrading myself. In hindsight I'm kind of grateful for it as it gave me the chance to get my bearings in the game without being overwhelmed but when I got to Dante's section I was running low on souls. Fuck you Angela could you have seriously not bought MORE??? WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO FOR THE LAST FUCKING HALF OF THE GAME?? PLAY IT NORMALLY? Fuck you it costs like 2 fucking pounds, are you really THAT broke???? And don't you dare act like you don't have 2 pounds, I am the poor broke boy from a third world country, NOT you. So please sell that fucking Nando's gift card already and give ME the fucking money you are fucking RUINING my gaming experience.

Remember how I said how each enemy was designed with Nero in mind? Well that comes back to bite this game in the ass when you play as Dante cause it's something that becomes really apparent especially when you start to fight old bosses again. Don't worry my DEAR reader, I didn't do a gamer rage moment and throw my controller. No, I'm a civilised man. I just beat the shit out of cardboard boxes like a REAL man cause this game is for REAL men like me and nobody should dare challenge me on that fucking front.

Level design and atmosphere is something that's also worse in this game. As bad as DMC2 is I will at least admit that due to the fact it reused a lot of shit from DMC1, it remained just as atmospheric. DMC3 was also really atmospheric! And I know DMC4 came out during the height of ugly brown Unreal Engine 3 games but goddamn does this game not hold up as well graphically as 1 and 3. I could really go on about how shit some of the puzzles in these levels are like holy fuck DICE WOO DICE it's fucking YAHTZEE ALL OVER AGAIN but I feel like I'd add nothing to the discussion except dry humping a limp corpse while I go "what's up my fellow Devil May Cry-ers I am also on the team".

Now we come to the story and there's really nothing much to be said. I don't CARE about old dude, I DON'T care about evil scientist, I don't CARE about the fact the girl who has 3 minutes of screentime. Nero aside, all new characters are a bust and even old characters take a hit. Still, I fucking laughed out loud when Dante used Royal Guard in his boss fight. Although, there is one new character I'd like to talk about...Gloria.

Let me start off by saying that, as you may have surmised, me and "sex" don't have the best of relations. I never had sex-ed in school, I didn't know what a "clit" was until I was 16, when a girl said that she'd make me her bitch I just replied with "woah cool", when a girl confessed to ME, I FUCKING RAN AWAY. So to have Gloria pop up and have my mind for the first time in a while go "Hmm while I usually don't find characters attractive this Gloria person is very pretty I hope she's good" is no easy feat. "Is this it?" I wondered. Like Nero, did I finally awaken a demon inside me, but instead of being a cool fucking arm that can grab things, the demon inside me is called "sex drive". Maybe I could finally give this sex thing a shot, maybe I don't have to be scared of anything sexual, even while alone, anymore. In that moment, I got Nero, I became him. I looked at my hand like it was Devil Bringer as I wondered if I should give this "jacking off thing" a go. Is this a new chapter for me, Quade Pad? Did Devil May Cry 4...change my life? As I slowly came to terms with this new side of me, it all came crashing down via the fucking costume select screen where I got spoiled on Gloria's true identity and oh my god jokes aside I laughed so fucking hard. Which made me realise a new truth.

"White women are mid"
Thank you Devil May Cry 4, for opening my eyes and changing my life.

The final mission pretty much cemented my view of the game. Truth be told I'm going through a rough patch in my life at the moment, and during these trying times where I've distanced myself as much as possible from everyone who loves me, I'm playing one of the worst boss fights I've ever seen in a video game. FUCK that boss FUCK you FUCK Dante FUCK old men FUCK statues FUCK everything FUCK me and Dante WILL WE FUCK AGAIN?

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to kill myself and this review is my last mark on this world. Also it's my birthday! Please say "Happy Birthday Quade!" in the replies. It'd really make me feel better! Cheers and god bless Devil May Cry. I will see you next time.

I finally played Lucia's campaign.

It starts out as a watered down version of Dante's campaign until we get to the two underwater missions which are actually infuriating and the fish boss might actually be the worst boss in the entire game and the series as a whole thanks to the swimming controls, at least the underwater sections in DMC1 only lasted for a couple seconds. And then it goes back to the watered down Dante campaign after that. I haven't played Dino Crisis 3 yet (the third game of the epic Capcom 2003 trilogy) but this is somehow worse then Mega Man X7 and only a tad worse then X6. I'm just thankful I never have experience this piece of shit ever again.

At least its playable unlike Sonic Free Riders.