Don't let the term "Special Edition" fool you, this is barely half a game let alone a particularly great Devil May Cry one. Where do I even start? Ok so I jumped into this before playing 1 and 3 initially, but I stopped myself after finishing most of Nero's half. To be honest what I played was great, however after having experienced games that felt complete it made me realize how empty and lifeless 4 really is. I was ready to give it a 4/5, but after finishing the other entries and beating the "better" games I am struggling to even give this a 3/5. Capcom you were given MORE time to improve the issues plaguing the base game and all you did was add some characters and called it a day.
Devil May Cry 4 is just bullet point list of good ideas that were never expanded upon or forgotten, and it shows. Kyrie is just barely much of a character, and we don't get to see her or anyone Nero interacts with developed at all. In fact the only well-developed one was the antagonist Credo. We had someone like Gloria who probably was supposed to be her own person before they just made her Trish in disguise. Like what? How do you 180 so hard on introducing a new character only for them to be "reintroduced" as a mainstay. I don't even remember what Trish or Lady did in this game either, and I'm not really a fan of Lady's lazy design (I'm pretty sure it was Kyrie's model modified only slightly). Kyrie seriously needed development especially with regards to Nero and she was kind of robbed of that. Kyrie exists nothing more than an objective/girlfriend which kinda sucks when you have a game like Devil May Cry 3 that's centered around Lady and how it naturally incorporates the stories of her and Dante's family. Lady had her time to shine, why didn't Kyrie get the least bit of leeway? Even Nero probably needed more time to actually develop his motivations or just see what he was all about. Capcom has shown us in the past they can do it well, and DMC 4 unfortunately doesn't do it well (if at all). I'd say Dante's introduction was necessary from a gameplay and story perspective, except that I'm just here wishing they would've done it better because it all falls apart when the spotlight is stolen from Nero. Plain and simple Dante is an OP protagonist, and there's nothing wrong with that. My issue comes from taking away any kind of urgency when you rip the rug underneath this newly introduced character without giving him a chance to fully shine. Dante's role doesn't add much either because you basically re-experience the same things from his perspective. Then in the finale you go back to using Nero and I'm wondering if Dante was even a necessity at all in the story considering we barely see what he actually did to get to that point. Most of the game is pointless padding.
The levels are really not great, and I'm finding it hard to say anything good about them. Nero is fun to play to a point, however most of the enemies range from okay to downright bad because of how annoying they can be to fight. I can't tell you how much I strained my arm just trying to spam them over and over again instead of doing the right combos. If I get carpal tunnel later down the line I'm blaming THIS game. In most cases I just loathed encounters and wanted them to be over with as soon as possible. The Mephisto and Faust have to be the worst in existence and I do NOT want to see them return ever. The story was very misleading too because half of it is built up and dropped when you switch to Dantes campaign. This game was all wasted potential because Nero's story just starts to get interesting only to get cut off abruptly. Right after Nero's story effectively wraps up, you swap over to Dante for a bit. Yes the gameplay improves significantly because Dante actually has proper dodging mechanics and is better equipped to fight the more difficult foes but man does the story fall apart. I wasn't particularly fond of the levels to begin with, and then it makes you play them again in the reverse order. It's literally copied and pasted for the latter half. What's even worse is you fight the EXACT SAME bosses too just with Dante, and it kills any desire within me to replay this game. You want to know what else? The game would randomly crash on me with an error and in some instances I would have to replay the same damn level a second time all the way through.
The only half decent characters is Nero until Dante shows up, and Credo because you only fight him once and he seemed interesting if a little underdeveloped. Most if not all the bosses in the game are unmemorable or unfun (Mission 18), and it's even made more apparent when you have to fight a majority of them for a SECOND time. When you think you're done with them you do it all again for a THIRD time and it kills the pacing near and makes me want to scream. The entire thing not only feels rushed, but it has me wanting to rush through it too. That "completionist" approach only works until the second to last mission. You want to know why? Mission 19 is boss fights AGAIN only now with that stupid random roll-dice mini game that might take 5 minutes or 20 depending on where what numbers you get. On normal that level took me 50 minutes and again this is something I NEVER EVER WANT TO SEE IN A DEVIL MAY CRY GAME EVER. I'd sooner take on quick time events before I go through the random-chance combat mini game. It's really bad, and if you thought some of the older games had some bad mechanics you're in for a treat with this one. The fact that I'd rather rush through combat to get it over with is telling on how badly this game's encounters are. Yes the combat is built on such a solid foundation from 3, but when you have such bland levels and enemies you do not want to fight it's kind of meaningless.
To be honest I don't even know how I'm still so lukewarm about this game because there's a lot I'm not particularly fond of. All I can say is the Nero's story for the first half and the solid gameplay just barely hold the package together and it's amazing it turned out as well as it did at all. The Special Edition tag only pads the game with extra characters. If the actual levels were memorable or the enemies were fun I would've considered replaying it with Vergil or Lady and Trish. The game felts like half of what it should be, and I'm fully aware of it's botched development behind the scenes. It pains me that Capcom never actually did anything new with the Special Edition to improve the core game at all because it sorely needed it. It's a filler game padded with filler content, and this is exactly what it is. It's not awful but it's a shallow repetitive mess that has little to no replay value for me.
Devil May Cry 4 is just bullet point list of good ideas that were never expanded upon or forgotten, and it shows. Kyrie is just barely much of a character, and we don't get to see her or anyone Nero interacts with developed at all. In fact the only well-developed one was the antagonist Credo. We had someone like Gloria who probably was supposed to be her own person before they just made her Trish in disguise. Like what? How do you 180 so hard on introducing a new character only for them to be "reintroduced" as a mainstay. I don't even remember what Trish or Lady did in this game either, and I'm not really a fan of Lady's lazy design (I'm pretty sure it was Kyrie's model modified only slightly). Kyrie seriously needed development especially with regards to Nero and she was kind of robbed of that. Kyrie exists nothing more than an objective/girlfriend which kinda sucks when you have a game like Devil May Cry 3 that's centered around Lady and how it naturally incorporates the stories of her and Dante's family. Lady had her time to shine, why didn't Kyrie get the least bit of leeway? Even Nero probably needed more time to actually develop his motivations or just see what he was all about. Capcom has shown us in the past they can do it well, and DMC 4 unfortunately doesn't do it well (if at all). I'd say Dante's introduction was necessary from a gameplay and story perspective, except that I'm just here wishing they would've done it better because it all falls apart when the spotlight is stolen from Nero. Plain and simple Dante is an OP protagonist, and there's nothing wrong with that. My issue comes from taking away any kind of urgency when you rip the rug underneath this newly introduced character without giving him a chance to fully shine. Dante's role doesn't add much either because you basically re-experience the same things from his perspective. Then in the finale you go back to using Nero and I'm wondering if Dante was even a necessity at all in the story considering we barely see what he actually did to get to that point. Most of the game is pointless padding.
The levels are really not great, and I'm finding it hard to say anything good about them. Nero is fun to play to a point, however most of the enemies range from okay to downright bad because of how annoying they can be to fight. I can't tell you how much I strained my arm just trying to spam them over and over again instead of doing the right combos. If I get carpal tunnel later down the line I'm blaming THIS game. In most cases I just loathed encounters and wanted them to be over with as soon as possible. The Mephisto and Faust have to be the worst in existence and I do NOT want to see them return ever. The story was very misleading too because half of it is built up and dropped when you switch to Dantes campaign. This game was all wasted potential because Nero's story just starts to get interesting only to get cut off abruptly. Right after Nero's story effectively wraps up, you swap over to Dante for a bit. Yes the gameplay improves significantly because Dante actually has proper dodging mechanics and is better equipped to fight the more difficult foes but man does the story fall apart. I wasn't particularly fond of the levels to begin with, and then it makes you play them again in the reverse order. It's literally copied and pasted for the latter half. What's even worse is you fight the EXACT SAME bosses too just with Dante, and it kills any desire within me to replay this game. You want to know what else? The game would randomly crash on me with an error and in some instances I would have to replay the same damn level a second time all the way through.
The only half decent characters is Nero until Dante shows up, and Credo because you only fight him once and he seemed interesting if a little underdeveloped. Most if not all the bosses in the game are unmemorable or unfun (Mission 18), and it's even made more apparent when you have to fight a majority of them for a SECOND time. When you think you're done with them you do it all again for a THIRD time and it kills the pacing near and makes me want to scream. The entire thing not only feels rushed, but it has me wanting to rush through it too. That "completionist" approach only works until the second to last mission. You want to know why? Mission 19 is boss fights AGAIN only now with that stupid random roll-dice mini game that might take 5 minutes or 20 depending on where what numbers you get. On normal that level took me 50 minutes and again this is something I NEVER EVER WANT TO SEE IN A DEVIL MAY CRY GAME EVER. I'd sooner take on quick time events before I go through the random-chance combat mini game. It's really bad, and if you thought some of the older games had some bad mechanics you're in for a treat with this one. The fact that I'd rather rush through combat to get it over with is telling on how badly this game's encounters are. Yes the combat is built on such a solid foundation from 3, but when you have such bland levels and enemies you do not want to fight it's kind of meaningless.
To be honest I don't even know how I'm still so lukewarm about this game because there's a lot I'm not particularly fond of. All I can say is the Nero's story for the first half and the solid gameplay just barely hold the package together and it's amazing it turned out as well as it did at all. The Special Edition tag only pads the game with extra characters. If the actual levels were memorable or the enemies were fun I would've considered replaying it with Vergil or Lady and Trish. The game felts like half of what it should be, and I'm fully aware of it's botched development behind the scenes. It pains me that Capcom never actually did anything new with the Special Edition to improve the core game at all because it sorely needed it. It's a filler game padded with filler content, and this is exactly what it is. It's not awful but it's a shallow repetitive mess that has little to no replay value for me.