a very fun and at times baffling game that i'm glad exists and glad isn't the direction the series as a whole is continuing in.

love the mobility options. super satisfying to fly and bounce around enemies and do all the fun juggling/grappling/ground slamming stuff. some of the enemies are frustrating as hell and slow the pace down by a ton, though. And again, as is tradition with the devil may cry series, flying enemies are a pain in the ass. We gotta stop doing them. There has never been an enemy in a dmc game that can fly and is fun to fight. The closest we got was the sin scissor in dmc1 and they're only "fun" because they easily explode to one shotgun blast. Please me and dante don't wanna deal with these bozos.

the story is very stupid. can totally understand someone hating it. but after the first couple missions it developed a certain charm to me. the dynamics between dante, kat, and vergil are genuinely pretty good! the writing is loud and obnoxious with some sleazy undertones at times, but the social commentary is so blatant and straightforward and unique among dmc titles that it becomes quite entertaining. heard lots of people say the writing is cringey because it "tries too hard to be cool," but I choose to believe it's at least mostly tongue-in-cheek. this is the most punk rock (in a very early 2010s way) game in the series, and it's made by a western dev -- I should hope it's also the most loud and annoying devil may cry!

This is a really incredible half of a game. The gameplay itself is fantastic, it feels like the series finally hit its full stride here. It takes everything that was established for dante in 3 and tweaks it to further prioritize fluidity and experimentation; letting the player change dante's style on the fly in combat rather than at a divinity statue might be one of, if not the best, design decision the devil may cry series has ever made. That focus on making player options more open applies to the ability to refund and rearrange skills (which, even if I never used because it's pretty easy to get enough souls to buy just about everything, is pretty cool). Nero doesn't feel too different to play but it's just enough to make him interesting, especially how the devil bringer offers a totally new toolset to create combos with a unique rhythm.

It's too bad that halfway through the game you realize you've actually seen basically the whole game and now you're just going to be doing it all again in reverse. The bosses, on the whole, are pretty good: maybe a little too easy at times, but still fun to fight. I didn't think they were quite as good after learning that there's only, like, six of them, and you fight almost all of them twice. Not to mention, they're all pretty much pushovers when you get dante's bigger moveset. A really odd choice that must have been because of time constraints, because otherwise I just don't get it.

It's just not the complete package that dmc 3 is. It feels amazing, it looks amazing, it's really good, it just seems a little... underbaked in the mission count and boss designs. I'm not sure how well it'll lend itself to replays, since one playthrough already felt like two. Still a good entry, solid follow-up to 3, makes me even more excited to start 5.