When I first put together this list of games I wanted to replay at some point, I thought of tossing in Portal 2 as well, I mean, it had been over 10 years (god I'm fucking old...) since I had last played through it. At this point, I must have forgotten how to solve at least a big part of it... right...? RIGHT...?

Well, in the first 2 hours or so I realized that, when it comes to hyperfixations I had in the past, my brain is better at preserving information about them better than I actually thought, because I found myself going from puzzle to puzzle with relative swiftness, with only a couple of them in the late game giving me trouble. So, why did I stay?

Because if there's something I didn't quite remember as well, was the humor being so phenomenal, it's great to see that after all these years, the comedy of this game still stands up to this day. Specially since this time around I caught on some jokes that as a kid pretty much flew over my head, like think about it for a moment, working for someone like Cave Johnson is like talking to a friend that always replies to you with the nerd emoji when you tell them something, the guy was a walking PR nightmare.

To anyone going for their first playthrough, you are in for a delightful experience, and I hope you enjoy solving these amazing puzzles while breathing in the amazing atmosphere of the game... unless you are breathing the asbestos of underground Aperture, in that case... I'm sorry about your lungs lol

I think this is the only time DMC wanted me to drop a game because of how it genuinely disinteresting it is. It has the worst puzzles and mission design in the series, with convoluted segments cycling over and over.

The early game is fun but as soon as you enter Fortuna castle it's the worst. It has really boring visuals with color drained and plain looking textures, though the corridors in Fortuna look great.

In its core it has really good gameplay, I can say it has a really hammy combat system more than 5's even, though 5's is more refined. Nero is really satisfying to use, accesible learning curve with a combination of aggressive and precise play styles. Dante is fun as hell, when you master this character you'll look like fly buzzing in and out of the screen but he's still so cool in this game. Most of his reintroduced weapons are boring and the only unique one gets introduced late game with only one upgrade. Out of the reintroduced weapons I just prefer Pandora over Mary's rocket launcher because of how many options it has. The enemies here are much more bearable than 3's because you just have to counter them instead of just shattering their defense or revealing them. Vergil was really great to learn despite everything which made me replay bloody palace a bit more, and his perfect judgement cuts are so infinitely raw. Nonetheless I'm not interested in going through the game again with Trish and Lady since that just means I have to go through recycled stages again consecutively.

The story is mediocre. It has so little stakes that the only ones you see struggling is Nero not being able to save Kyrie and seeing Credo die, or demons raiding the town and killing people. Dante is pretty lighthearted in this game which can come across as an issue because he literally just waits for Nero outside the statue to finish his fight with the priest, and gets an unceremonious ending later. It parallels 1 in some ways through Nero which I appreciate. I would've loved to see what was the full planned storyline for this game.

Overall an underwhelming decent game, which is what I've heard most people say about it. This game was rushed in (and even took from us the greatest Vergil theme in DMC) and it just left a shell of 3's character action game formula. It didn't have that much potential for me personally because a lot of its fundamental aspects are not good enough to improve.