i mean i wouldnt say DMC3 is a limited game at all when put in a vacuum, i just think it's a testament to how insane itsuno & co.'s work ethic is when it comes to the DMC series' gameplay throughout the years. there are so many ways player expression can be handled in DMC5 that simply just hadn't been thought of yet by the dev team - the amount of dante's style and weapon options, nero's buster arm effects, V's entirely different playstyle that revolves around essentially the char-action equivalent of zoning (that in all honesty i probably enjoy more than most fans of DMCV). i'm not the /best/ DMC player and i realize these are all pretty surface value observations but it's pretty clear the dev intent with DMC5's combat was to create more avenues for player expression, and their success in doing so kind of inherently puts it over 3 mechanically

also, despite what itsuno said, i personally disagree with you with regards to both 5's longevity (i could play 5 for an entire day if i wanted to) and boss fights (i think theyre overall the best theyve been in the series), but those are both extremely subjective opinions to have. they're both great games either way! i absolutely don't mean to be coming for DMC3 here at all when comparing it to 5, they're both extremely impressive - in context, 3 is arguably even more so considering it was coming off of the debacle that was DMC2. 3 also definitely wins points for being one of the most influential within its subgenre. any action game that has aged as well as DMC3 has should be revered in my book

4 blew 3 out of the water mechanically, and 5 is just a safer more completed version of 4. Also alot of the 5 bosses are just alright at best outside of the boring Gilgamesh fight, but it's not Gigapede, Doppelganger, Arkham,Fucking Hell Arkham, 3 had some good bosses but it had so many that it was pretty easy to make more stinkers really. I suppose the short story with all these games is that they are sick in ways that are unique to them, and all of them also fuck up enemy design in ways that are unique to them.

Fair enough, but I do still have to respectfully disagree on one part. It stings how you say "the dev intent with DMC5's combat was to create more avenues for player expression", when in all intents and purposes they've only backed off and went backwards from 4 there, removing inertia and intentionally taking out certain combos that they thought were "too difficult for newcomers to understand." Like, on a surface level, it's certainly easier to find your own player expression, but it's more like salt on a wound personally.