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Ever wanted to get chronic arthritis while playing video games? Just try doing some Competitive Melee tech, the results are super effective.

Not even gonna lie, playing this genuinely made me feel happy for a number of reasons. It made me happy I got into this franchise in the first place. It made me happy to experiment with the combat in more ways than I could even imagine. It made me happy realizing there's so much I've yet to master, not just in this game, but also in the other games. I just had a great experience with this overall. While I probably prefer DMC3 overall, DMC5 is still an excellent game in its own right. The combat is extremely fun to play around with, enemies are mostly fun to fight against, the bosses are pretty damn good, and there's so much more I'm probably forgetting. Dante and Nero are a ton of fun to play as with improvements made from DMC4, even if V's pretty meh and underwhelming, thankfully he doesn't have many missions and he's optional for two of them. Play this if you haven't already, it's a superb game.

Going into DMC4, I genuinely didn't know what to expect or what my opinion on it would be. I had just finished DMC3 and went for all S Ranks (even got a couple SS ones) because I thought that game was a ton of fun and I genuinely wanted to get better and improve my skills. Even now I still go back to that game and try to get better and better because it’s just really damn fun. I was aware beforehand that DMC4 was a bit of a divisive game with all the different opinions on it I’ve seen. As I booted up DMC4, I was a bit excited to see how this game would improve upon 3 with a few of the problems I had with that game. After I finished it on Devil Hunter and got all the S Ranks, I replayed it on Son of Sparda mode and got all the S Ranks again to replay it and make sure I felt confident about my rating. I’ve put more time into this game than the first 2 DMC games and I think DMC3? So yeah, I made sure to play this game more than once to see what I truly felt about it. Now the question being, what do I think of DMC4 as a whole? That's what this review is for.

Before I get into the gameplay I wanna talk about some outside stuff. The soundtrack is pretty nice, while I prefer DMC3’s, 4’s is still enjoyable and there’s a good amount of bangers here like The Time Has Come and Blackened Angel, as well as the mix of it in Dante’s battle theme, which is also a remix of Lock & Load from DMC1. Also some cutscene music is pretty nice. The theme of when you get Lucifer, as well as the cutscene before you fight Agnus as Dante are some of my favorite cutscene pieces. This game also looks great in general, I really dig the artstyle this game has with all the different kinds of environments here. From the forests, to the castles, to the snowy mountains, this game looks great, both for its time in 2008 and even today, more thanks to this special edition.

Next up, the gameplay.

I guess I should start off with the level design. This game has a pretty high emphasis on platforming with a lot of gimmicks thrown in to mix things up. I don't hate this idea conceptually. This can serve as a nice way to change things up from your usual Devil May Cry combat and in some instances I found it fine enough and a nice break from the combat. However, in other instances, not so much as I found some of it to be quite irritating and drag the levels on for longer than I'd like. There's also a problem of having so many garbage gimmicks thrown into the mix. Like the dice game, the gyro spinners, the stupid plants in Mission 14 that'll take you to an enemy room and you'll have to restart the battle you were in when you got caught, etc. Although, there are some work-arounds to these, at least for the first 2. For the dice, the number you hit it on is how many steps you’ll go on the board. Hitting the gyro spinner a couple of times with your sword will make them go way further than just hitting them once with Buster. While you can also kill the plants in Mission 14, they’ll respawn no matter what, so basically, good luck. Also, I guess I should address the elephant in the room, that being… yeah this game is clearly rushed lol. Dante’s level design is practically Nero’s but in reverse, meaning we basically got half of a complete game here. Now, I’m not sure how much of an unpopular take this is, but in concept, I don’t mind repeated content. However, this is under one condition, if the content is enjoyable in the first place. If I enjoy the content the game already has and it repeats itself, I won’t mind, now obviously I would prefer the game having fully original content instead of repeating it, but I digress. So how does DMC4 rack up to this? Well, the answer’s a bit complicated. I’ll explain more later on, but for now, let's head into combat.

The big part of a Devil May Cry game is the combat. I'll start off with Nero, then head onto Dante.

Nero, at a surface level, doesn't have anywhere near the amount of depth as DMC3 Dante. Nero doesn’t have any alternate styles, has one gun, which is not very useful for the most part except for level 3 charge shots, and doesn’t have that many different attacks with his sword than Rebellion in DMC3. I won’t lie, when I initially played with Nero, I felt a bit underwhelmed that he didn't have much to play around with like with DMC3 Dante. However, the more I played with him and got to experiment, my enjoyment of his gameplay increased quite a bit. While it’s true, he doesn’t have the same amount of versatility and options as DMC3 Dante, he’s also a lot more simple, which can be fun in its own way. Nero in my opinion does this well, since what he has is fun to play around with. Also Nero has his right arm, called Devil Bringer, which can allow for a lot of different options and work-arounds to enemies. You can grab an enemy from a distance, buster them quickly, and do all kinds of shenanigans with it, plus it’s very useful in the boss fights, especially if you have DT active. Not to mention the short little cutscenes that show Nero beating the shit out of the bosses with Buster, especially with DT, feels so satisfying. The move being as powerful and strong as it is, is part of what makes it so much fun to use. However, don’t start spamming it because then you won’t be able to have a good style rank. Furthermore, Nero has an ability unique to his sword Red Queen, that being Exceed. This is where you can rev up your sword like a motorcycle, which is the coolest shit you could come up with, never change Devil May Cry. This allows your sword to be more powerful and a lot stronger, you can activate it by pressing L2/LT after a melee attack, it takes some practice to time it right, but once you can pull it off and especially if you can pull of the Max Act, which can charge your sword all the way up to level 3, it feels so damn good. You can do some serious damage that'll be useful on combos and in bosses. So, while I'd get why somebody wouldn't enjoy Nero's gameplay as much as Dante, he's still an enjoyable character in his own right, plus his simplicity makes it easier to pick up and play, which is what the devs were going for. Now then, it’s time to see how Pizza Man over here is compared to Nero and his DMC3 counterpart.

Dante in DMC4 is insanity in pretty much every single way. Firstly, he has all of his moves for Rebellion that he could do in DMC3 with some minor tweaks, as well as new Devil Arms, one of which is similar to that of DMC3’s Beowulf (Gilgamesh), the other 2 are Lucifer and Pandora’s Box. Lucifer I never really got into, but I’m willing to practice it more, but Pandora’s Box is really fucking cool. A whole load of firearms that can do all kinds of crazy stuff that looks stylish and is fun to use. Additionally, Dante can also style-switch. This was the one thing I really wanted to see for Dante in DMC3, so I’m glad DMC4 added this. This allows the combat to have a LOAD of variety and creativity with your combos. To quote Dante himself, “It’s like an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.” There were more than a couple times I saw what Dante was able to do and the freedom I had with him that made me go, “Holy shit!” I have no complaints for Dante’s playstyle because he can do pretty much anything you want in this game and for the most part I generally don’t mind his levels, with a few exceptions… fuck Mission 13, this mission is a cluster-fuck that is confusing as hell on where to go mostly thanks to these stupid portals that teleport you somewhere else within the level. Also Mission 14 would be a good mission had it not been for the infuriating plant enemies that teleport you to an enemy room and have you restart the battle you were fighting after you’re done. Now, this is where things start to get shaky for DMC4.

One of the biggest problems with DMC4's combat that can especially be applied to Dante is the enemies. A good amount of enemies in this game are just not fun to fight at all. Any flying enemy is a no-no in my book as it does nothing but kill the pace of the game. The Mephisto are a prime example of this. Nero's Devil Bringer can solve the issue and does it a lot more efficiently, but with Dante your only option is to spam your guns or go Swordmaster until they're out of their cloak and you can attack them until you either kill them or they return to their cloak. There's also ground enemies that are just not fun to fight at all. The Cutlass can be easily dealt with when playing as Nero as you just wait until they come out of the ground, use your Devil Bringer, and beat them, Dante's best bet is to use his guns until he can slow the enemies down and then whale on them over and over again, but the problem is that it feels like pure luck if you can pull this off or not because its so easy for them to get away before you have the chance to attack. The Chimera enemies also can go fuck themselves, their blade attacks are unpredictable as to when they’re going to happen, which makes it really frustrating when you get hit by something and it's not clear when they're about to attack and your style rank drops like a rock as a result. Your safest option against these guys is to space out and try your damn best to not get hit. Nero, again, can use Devil Bringer to work-around this, but Dante doesn't really have an option around it. However, even they aren't the worst enemies. No, that honor goes to Blitz. Blitz is god awful to fight. He just teleports everywhere extremely quickly and you can't attack him with Melee weapons until he's no longer in his electric form, Nero can take out the electric form with a level 3 charge shot or 2, but it takes so long to activate, moreover the problem with this as Dante is that you have basically no option but to spam your gun over and over again until he's available to attack and even at that point, he has a shit load of health so it'll just drag things out for way longer than it should. Your best bet with Dante is to use Real Impact with Gilgamesh and while that move is very powerful, it takes awhile for the move to come out and it's very well possible you could get hit while Dante is charging up his attack, so tough luck. DMC3 also had an issue with annoying enemies, but that was mostly towards the end of the game plus it was a lot less frequent than here in DMC4, also DMC3 doesn't have nearly as many annoying as shit enemies like in DMC4. Furthermore, this being the follow-up game should've improved upon and got rid of this issue, but only doubled down on it.

The bosses are also pretty hit or miss. Credo's a really good fight obviously and I don't mind playing against Sanctus or the Bael frog for example, but there's others like the Echidna, Berial, both of the fights with Agnus, especially the one in a glass room with Nero where you just throw back Gladius enemies over and over again, which I don't really enjoy. The problem with these is that you just kinda beat them over and over again until they're either dead or you have to dodge attacks. The Savior boss is the worst one, this boss sucks absolute balls. It's just trying to destroy the jewels on the body of the boss until it's dead, meanwhile you have to constantly switch where you're going so you don't get destroyed by a bunch of annoying attacks.

When I finished this game, I had no idea what rating to give it. Mostly because this game is kinda all over the place. It can either be peak DMC or it can get to incredibly frustrating levels of bad. DMC4 has some amazing highs, but then it has some extremely STUPID design choices that are utterly baffling the fact they made it into the final game. However, the good in DMC4 was fun enough for me to give this 4 stars out of 5, but that’s an extremely light 4 stars. Overall, I would be lying if I said I didn't feel let down by this game, especially after coming off of DMC3. DMC4 is clearly a rushed and unfinished game, which is a shame because there's so much potential that I see in the game that if it were given more time in the oven, no doubt in my mind this would be a worthy follow-up to DMC3. Most of my problems with DMC4 isn’t even the repeated level design, the issue for me is some of the level gimmicks and some of the enemies being a pain in the ass to fight, which is made clear as day when playing as Dante since while he has a lot of options, none of them are as efficient as Nero’s, which shows that the repeated content and enemies don't go well with Dante's core gameplay and combat options in some instances. As it stands, while Devil May Cry 4 can be extremely fun, it's also extremely flawed. If you’re somebody getting into DMC like I am, then approach this one with an open mind and see if there’s anything you might like about this game that I don’t, who knows. Looking forward to how DMC5 will be for me… and I’m probably not gonna touch the Reboot for a while as of now.