The Devil May Cry format, set up as a rhythm game - and while its not uncommon for the game to fail you for QTEs, the real magic lies in how Hi Fi ties every aspect of the game to the beat. Encouraging (instead of strictly requiring) rhythm promotes a groove within players, a sense that with every action they take they are jamming along with the game - achieving a potent and unbelievably addictive sense of flow when synchronized.

Frankly, I think Hi Fi’s aesthetic would otherwise be a liability for me. Garish color palettes, generic and undiverse enemy design, even the music selection is not my favorite. The supreme, engrossing nature of the combat puts me on a wavelength that elevates every other aspect of the game, I can forgive significant holes in the character writing because I am actually, literally vibing. Any mission thats mostly a gauntlet of enemies is a great time - the opposite of how I usually feel about the genre.

We waited 3 years for this?
This is a very poorly done remaster. In term of the visuals, it does the bare minimum. The characters' textures are not that bad, but otherwise everything was just upscaled with an AI and 3d models were not redone. They didn't even fix the wobbles on the character models.

And worst of all are the ugly visual effects. Lamps have gigantic lens flare, which is clearly a bug. There's no way the developers thought it looked good. Neon signs have horrible blooms, characters have a large ambient occlusion outline around them, etc.
And it also runs very poorly. The framerate constantly dips below 30FPS in certain areas. A game from 1999!

There are also a lot of bugs. Suspiciously long loading times, braindead AI, broken physics, overlapping music, janky animations...

This was one of the retro FPS releases I was most looking forward to, what a disappointment..

PS: The rating is obviously for the quality of the remaster itself, not Kingpin LoC as a game.