This game is honestly terrible. The gameplay is passable but so dumbed down from the Capcom DMC entries that it ends up being more confusing to play. The lack of manual lock on (which was fixed in the PS4/Xbox One verison of the game, but that was never ported to PC) is attrocious. Apparently someone at Ninja Theory decided a dodge roll was more important? Hey genius, these games already have a dodging mechanic. It's called jumping. The choice to map this action to the bumpers gets even further in the way when it replaces the intuitive and easy to press Devil Trigger button with the annoying action of clicking both sticks, which in my experience didn't work a lot of the time. And removing directional inputs in favor of a two button combat system was absolutely not worth losing styles for. It turns simple actions like Stinger and High Time into things you actively have to think about. The new weapons are decent enough, the angelic ones anyway. The scythe is pretty cool and the shurikens are super nice at crowd control. The demonic ones just feel bad, the axe is slow and useless and the fists just feel like a worse version of Ifrit/Beowulf/Take your pick of a DMC fist weapon theyre all pretty similar. The enemies are annoying and uninspired, and oftentimes very frustrating to fight especially with the stupid color coding mechanic. The environments are extremely generic 2013 AAA video game ArtStation urban hellscape tripe and I don't get why they're put forward as one of the things this game "got right."

And the story is so weirdly pretentious. It tries to go for They Live but comes off as a 14 year old Twitter user's "wake up sheeple, we live in a society" posts. And the bosses are all super boring. They're literally all a matter of beating up the guy until you can do an action, or doing an action so you can beat up the guy. There isn't any variety. The ONLY decent boss here is Vergil, who pales in comparison to his DMC3 counterpart. He's far too easy. He should have more health and be far more aggressive. But I guess that would've been alienating to the casual dudebro gamer audience that they were trying to attract with this game huh. Speaking of which, fuck Dante and Vergil in this game. Dante is a tryhard edgelord who's occasionally funny, only due to the absurdity of what Ninja Theory thought was "cool." And Vergil goes from cool, cold, and principled to a weird creepy fascist manipulator who sits on the sidelines and pretends to be the good guy until the game suddenly remembers he's a villain. Not to mention all the weird misogyny in this game. I wouldn't call Devil May Cry a paragon of feminism, not at all. But at least the Capcom titles don't mistreat their female characters THIS badly. This game quite literally has you trading women as objects and beating up a pregnant woman as a boss. Not to mention the fucking sniper rifle abortion Vergil does shortly thereafter (but I think everyone knows about that).

DMC2 might be the worst game of all time, but I honestly respect it more than I respect this. At least that game was an attempt at fucking something. Anything. And for a game made in 4 months under severe constraints, It could have been unbelievably worse. This game had everything going for it and is still awful. You may notice I gave it a higher score than DMC2 and that's only because it works better on a technical level. That's the only reason. Just skip this one, unless you want to see for yourself what good parts of it were used in DMC5 (credit where credit is due, there is a fair bit.)

Those who know me are aware of my history with this title. Went from loving it to absolutely despising it to thinking its a bad game with good qualities. I can't really express how a lot of the game design elements of this game piss me off to no end. The UI is clunky and is somehow worse than when the game was demoed at E3 2017. The titans aren't as interesting to explore compared to the Bionis and Mechonis and now Aionios in 3. The gacha and field skills make me want to tear my hair out due to how much it breaks the flow of the game. The last part may seem small but it adds up so much overtime that I can't ignore what I despised.

I won't go into spoilers but while I think the story at best is just okay, I don't understand the hype and admiration of this story compared to other titles. I think most of the cast is forgettable and are only remembered for the wrong reasons whether it be due to their design or really cringe moments in the story. The English dub is also trash. Rex isn't the worst protagonist ever but he's definitely on the bottom of the barrel in terms of protagonists I never really liked/cared for. Also Chapter 4 SUCKS. The worst filler I've experienced in any video game ever.

And a quick sidenote: if you're one of those Xeno fans who trash on people who dislike this game for thinking that just because it's "more Xeno" doesn't make it a good game, you need to touch every tree in the rainforest because grass isn't enough. The people who defend the story by bringing up lesser moments from 1 are also pretty pathetic.

With that said there are some things I like. I think the soundtrack is pretty awesome and full of energy like the first game. And while I trashed on the story, I at least think there are still some good moments especially by the end. Nia and Zeke are also the only party member I really took a liking to.

But yeah, I really don't ever wanna revisit this game. I never even finished Torna because I was tired of this game so I won't rate that. Hoping I can put this game behind me forever.

Edit: Oh yeah and the combat can be fun. I think the core crystal gacha crap holds it back a bit since while I understand common blades ≠ bad, the fact you created a system for special one of a kind party members anyway is pretty evil design. When you know how to play battles though it's damn satisfying