This review contains spoilers
Before getting into DMC, I was wondering how bad Devil May Cry 2 could possibly be since I've heard mixed, but usually good opinions of 1. Making me question how could its sequel get that bad or if it's as bad as everyone says it is. Fast forward to me getting into the series now and holy hell this is the most lobotomized I've felt playing a game since Megaman X7.
Now I do see some things that are appealing or that they tried doing, and there's some minor things I do like about this game more than 1. While the atmosphere of the first game is incredible and does more with it, I kind of didn't like how it felt like most of the game was inside the castle. I can appreciate 2 for having some interesting settings with cities and other places. While the levels are much linear, I like the setting this game has. Another thing I can appreciate is how the guns actually keep your stylish combo while using them which should make for better gameplay to keep your combo up without having to approach an enemy and possibly have it drop like in the first game, which is something I wished that game did. So hey, props to the poor dev team that had to make this game for that
But with guns being mentioned, my god did they make them so ridiculously overpowered with them being debatably one of if not the most overpowered guns in the entire franchise. Just by using Ebony & Ivory they can carry you throughout the entire game since they make most, if not ALL enemies in the game stunlocked by spamming/holding the shoot button. and playing the game feels so mindless and boring by making the entire game just pressing the shoot button and trust me playing like this the entire game actually feels like your entire brain just turns into mush.
Now It might seem the players fault for playing the entire game just using the guns which is fair, but using the melee combat not only feels so sluggish and barely feels like you can do different combos, but enemies feel like they get launched 50 Million miles ahead of you when you finish a basic attack combo which for me just made it slow and just not fun to use the sword. Now to give it a bit of credit, I do like the idea of keeping up your combo with you being able to use melee and then use the gun to keep up your momentum of having a high stylish combo, however it is a very flawed execution since playing melee already feels sluggish and feels so repetitive to keep your combo going since it’s the same thing on every encounter of using melee and then when they get launched you just spam the gun or roll your way over there. Even though i like how guns keep your stylish combo in this game, at least in the first game you had to be in your best attention to keep your Stylish rank while in this game it feels so repetitive and frustrating since you can’t cancel a sword swing by rolling which makes melee combat just not fun to use and is what i expected from the first game but 10 times worse.
I feel like the combat is the biggest offender of this game for me, for a hack and slash the combat just feels very sluggish and not as stylish as its predecessor. The bosses aren’t even a saving point in here, i know this is only the 2nd Devil May Cry i play but i actually can’t believe they can fumble as bad as this game when it comes to bosses they are just so horrible and can also be dealt with easily with the gun and using Devil Trigger and holding the shoot button pretty much shreds every boss in this game, the only redemption of the combat that this game gets is when you play as Trish since that’s pretty much just DMC1 Dante, and in DMD where the enemies take a bit longer to kill and can activate DT which makes them not be able to be stunlocked by the gun. But i feel like that if the game just becomes slightly better after doing a few playthroughs is just so offending to me.
Another thing that i’m very upset about this game is how there’s little to no problems fixed from its predecessor, at first i thought the camera was better due to not there being a lot of camera angles like in the first game but it’s debatably worse since there is a lot of moments where i can recall that there’s some enemy attack offscreen that i could not see. The biggest offender of this is definitely in mission 13 of Dante since the camera is so zoomed in that you can barely see anything around you and is overall a pain in the ass. Besides combat, another thing that I disliked was the platforming sections, this was a huge problem with the first game, and wouldn’t you know it this game is just as bad when it comes to the platforming. I feel bad for the developer team that had to make this game because there were some good ideas here.
For example, this game introduces a target locking which is a good idea since the first one didn’t have one making it easier to check which enemy you’re going to deal with when being in a group of enemies. However the BIG problem with this is that this lock-on is automatic meaning that you pretty much have to do every optional enemy encounter which is very frustrating if you’re doing DMD or literally the 14th mission (god that mission is frustrating). And I know you can disable this by holding the right trigger, but even so when I want to attack switches it is very difficult which just makes me want to do the encounter and then the switches which is also frustrating.
Before ending off I wanna briefly talk about the story as well, while DMC1 didn’t have the best story out there, at least it tried and hey at least I was entertained. DMC2 on the other hand feels like i left that without feeling nothing, it is the most nothing burger of a story.
Dante just does not feel like the same corny and cool character that he was from the previous game, instead he’s just some two-face wannabe. And to my knowledge there really doesn’t seem to be an explanation on why he is like this, my only guess could be how he realized that Nelo Angelo was Vergil all along but even so in the first game he seemed just fine after truly defeating him.
I also wanna talk about the new character made for this game; Lucia. It really felt like this game was meant to be played on Lucia’s campaign first because if you play as Dante some of the story would make no sense, like how Lucia is a demon and that’s just casually dropped on Dante’s campaign. Even by playing both campaigns, some of it just doesn’t make sense or it just doesn't explain things right.
For the whole story the arcana are really important relics that aren’t elaborate further upon until the end of the game, and they don’t even mention Argosax who was pretty much a rival of Mundus and none of that is mentioned, even some text would have worked like how the first game pretty much had a prologue of Sparda and what not. The whole story of this game is just a mess, none of the characters are important, none of it is elaborated, and the ending doesn’t make any sense like from my understanding this might as well be a filler game for the Devil May Cry series.
All in all, Devil May Cry 2 is possibly one of the worst games I’ve ever played. It’s just not fun, thinking about it in-depth makes the story horrible, and worst of all, how do you make such a downgrade from the first game. I’m exhausted just thinking about this game and I’m glad I’m at least glad that I could get it over with. So I just want to leave this game to rest and play Devil May Cry 3 now, since that is a game that a lot of people think is one of, if not, the best game in the series. and playing something fantastic sounds about right because of playing this shit game.
(also dante doesn't say Jackpot when he kills Argosax so this makes the game even shittier somehow)
Now I do see some things that are appealing or that they tried doing, and there's some minor things I do like about this game more than 1. While the atmosphere of the first game is incredible and does more with it, I kind of didn't like how it felt like most of the game was inside the castle. I can appreciate 2 for having some interesting settings with cities and other places. While the levels are much linear, I like the setting this game has. Another thing I can appreciate is how the guns actually keep your stylish combo while using them which should make for better gameplay to keep your combo up without having to approach an enemy and possibly have it drop like in the first game, which is something I wished that game did. So hey, props to the poor dev team that had to make this game for that
But with guns being mentioned, my god did they make them so ridiculously overpowered with them being debatably one of if not the most overpowered guns in the entire franchise. Just by using Ebony & Ivory they can carry you throughout the entire game since they make most, if not ALL enemies in the game stunlocked by spamming/holding the shoot button. and playing the game feels so mindless and boring by making the entire game just pressing the shoot button and trust me playing like this the entire game actually feels like your entire brain just turns into mush.
Now It might seem the players fault for playing the entire game just using the guns which is fair, but using the melee combat not only feels so sluggish and barely feels like you can do different combos, but enemies feel like they get launched 50 Million miles ahead of you when you finish a basic attack combo which for me just made it slow and just not fun to use the sword. Now to give it a bit of credit, I do like the idea of keeping up your combo with you being able to use melee and then use the gun to keep up your momentum of having a high stylish combo, however it is a very flawed execution since playing melee already feels sluggish and feels so repetitive to keep your combo going since it’s the same thing on every encounter of using melee and then when they get launched you just spam the gun or roll your way over there. Even though i like how guns keep your stylish combo in this game, at least in the first game you had to be in your best attention to keep your Stylish rank while in this game it feels so repetitive and frustrating since you can’t cancel a sword swing by rolling which makes melee combat just not fun to use and is what i expected from the first game but 10 times worse.
I feel like the combat is the biggest offender of this game for me, for a hack and slash the combat just feels very sluggish and not as stylish as its predecessor. The bosses aren’t even a saving point in here, i know this is only the 2nd Devil May Cry i play but i actually can’t believe they can fumble as bad as this game when it comes to bosses they are just so horrible and can also be dealt with easily with the gun and using Devil Trigger and holding the shoot button pretty much shreds every boss in this game, the only redemption of the combat that this game gets is when you play as Trish since that’s pretty much just DMC1 Dante, and in DMD where the enemies take a bit longer to kill and can activate DT which makes them not be able to be stunlocked by the gun. But i feel like that if the game just becomes slightly better after doing a few playthroughs is just so offending to me.
Another thing that i’m very upset about this game is how there’s little to no problems fixed from its predecessor, at first i thought the camera was better due to not there being a lot of camera angles like in the first game but it’s debatably worse since there is a lot of moments where i can recall that there’s some enemy attack offscreen that i could not see. The biggest offender of this is definitely in mission 13 of Dante since the camera is so zoomed in that you can barely see anything around you and is overall a pain in the ass. Besides combat, another thing that I disliked was the platforming sections, this was a huge problem with the first game, and wouldn’t you know it this game is just as bad when it comes to the platforming. I feel bad for the developer team that had to make this game because there were some good ideas here.
For example, this game introduces a target locking which is a good idea since the first one didn’t have one making it easier to check which enemy you’re going to deal with when being in a group of enemies. However the BIG problem with this is that this lock-on is automatic meaning that you pretty much have to do every optional enemy encounter which is very frustrating if you’re doing DMD or literally the 14th mission (god that mission is frustrating). And I know you can disable this by holding the right trigger, but even so when I want to attack switches it is very difficult which just makes me want to do the encounter and then the switches which is also frustrating.
Before ending off I wanna briefly talk about the story as well, while DMC1 didn’t have the best story out there, at least it tried and hey at least I was entertained. DMC2 on the other hand feels like i left that without feeling nothing, it is the most nothing burger of a story.
Dante just does not feel like the same corny and cool character that he was from the previous game, instead he’s just some two-face wannabe. And to my knowledge there really doesn’t seem to be an explanation on why he is like this, my only guess could be how he realized that Nelo Angelo was Vergil all along but even so in the first game he seemed just fine after truly defeating him.
I also wanna talk about the new character made for this game; Lucia. It really felt like this game was meant to be played on Lucia’s campaign first because if you play as Dante some of the story would make no sense, like how Lucia is a demon and that’s just casually dropped on Dante’s campaign. Even by playing both campaigns, some of it just doesn’t make sense or it just doesn't explain things right.
For the whole story the arcana are really important relics that aren’t elaborate further upon until the end of the game, and they don’t even mention Argosax who was pretty much a rival of Mundus and none of that is mentioned, even some text would have worked like how the first game pretty much had a prologue of Sparda and what not. The whole story of this game is just a mess, none of the characters are important, none of it is elaborated, and the ending doesn’t make any sense like from my understanding this might as well be a filler game for the Devil May Cry series.
All in all, Devil May Cry 2 is possibly one of the worst games I’ve ever played. It’s just not fun, thinking about it in-depth makes the story horrible, and worst of all, how do you make such a downgrade from the first game. I’m exhausted just thinking about this game and I’m glad I’m at least glad that I could get it over with. So I just want to leave this game to rest and play Devil May Cry 3 now, since that is a game that a lot of people think is one of, if not, the best game in the series. and playing something fantastic sounds about right because of playing this shit game.
(also dante doesn't say Jackpot when he kills Argosax so this makes the game even shittier somehow)