While the combat is great for the most part, playing as V gave me brain damage because of having to mash 2 buttons to get consistent dps. His combat just felt very foreign and I cant really say I enjoyed it much.

The campaign is also kinda underwhelming as well. While it's definitely better than some of the other games in the franchise, it doesn't come close to DMC3 which felt really unique and had some really cool twists in it that kept me engaged.

Finally, 5 does have some cool callbacks to previous DMC games, which make me feel happy about having played the rest of them. But at the end of the day it's just a little fan service and not necessary to have played the previous games.

Regardless the 2nd half of the game felt a lot like a step up in combat (cuz we got dante) and in story since it started to pick up a little. Playing as Dante is incredibly fun. so 3.5 stars ig