I Haven't Played DmC: Devil May Cry, And Never Will Purely Because Of Aesthetic Choices, But These Are

I haven't played DmC: Devil May Cry, and never will purely because of aesthetic choices, but these are great articulations of why this game isn't really a Devil May Cry game, even if it shares the same title.

Okay, time to list out all my problems with DMC:Devil May Cry.

What sucks about it, is that it probably would've been very well loved by a specific audience if they just didn't make it a DMC game. Change all the names, and you'd have a probable cult classic, but we're looking at this as a DMC game so here's my problems with it.

-Very 2012-2013 start with the whole Dante is a Cool Guy who goes to Strip Clubs and Drinks and Has Sex

-Immediate insult to gamers/fans who like Dante's OG look by having a white wig land on him and him check his reflection to say "Not in a million years."

-Kat being the first woman character introduced with powers who isn't kicking ass and taking names. From everything we know about several minutes into the game, the fact she's aware of demons means she should be packing a glock at minimum. Not a good sign for what they will do with her.

-Vergil is introduced with 0 drip.

-Retconning of Dante and Vergil being half HUMAN half demon, by making them half ANGEL half demon. As if this doesn't just sort of spit in the face of every single devil may cry game before it. The entire point of DMC3 alone was Vergil doing all he can to abandon his humanity. The underlying point of every single game DMC1, 2, 3, and 4 is Dante clocking the humanity in others, resonating with it, and finding it worth the effort to save or protect. And they just toss all of this out for them to be...half angels which still doesn't even add anything to their abilities because their demonic abilities from being half demon alone with what's always been utilized. It's just a stupid and unnecessary plot change that does more harm than good.

-Too much cussing. Cussing isn't a bad thing, but there's so much there's absolutely no space for clever wordplay because "fuck, shit, piss, slut, etc" are in constant rotation.

-Kat's entire dialogue with Dante where she explains she's always had these special abilities, and they tried to make it go away and control her via giving her medication. I don't think I have to elaborate on how poorly the messaging around this aged.

-Dante's hair turning white being his devil trigger form is such a lazy character design move when we get cool monster form, again, in every other game before this one.They don't even utilize visual story telling for this one. They could've made it where when we meet Vergil, who has white hair, we then see the flashback of them as kids where their hair is both brown. But since Vergil has white hair as a child, it can't even be used as a "Vergil is always in devil trigger" sort of storytelling. Like, had kid Vergil been shown with brown hair like Dante, that would've been a nice little warning to the audience that something was up with him. Yet. Nothing.

-The voice actor for Dante should've had his lines redone for his fight sounds. It was very bland to listen to, especially when doing repetitive moves.

-Dante is not having fun at all during this game. Like, he's not. There's not a single boss fight, even after he's done, where he looks like or acts as though he's having a remotely good time. He's annoyed or pissed off 90% of the time which is just...that's not Dante.

-The way the two main women are framed and treated in this game is so misogynistic I think I'd need a separate paper to examine everything, but I'll summarize it as a dudebro's mantra of "There's only 2 types of women. Dedicated housewives and ugly sluts."

-More poorly aged jokes centering around people being fat or ugly.

-Vergil's literally a pussy who's ass you gotta cover for until you have to fight him in the last boss fight.

-Severe lack of stupid bullshit. Every DMC game needs stupid bullshit to be entertaining, and this game is taking itself way too seriously.

-Enemy design had the same issues I had in Bayonetta 3 where all of them look the same except for one small change because someone on the crew didn't want to get creative.

-Normally in DMC games you only get the "here's the plot and what's going to happen" dialogue from the bad guys, but in this game it's every single person every time they open their mouths.

-The environment moving around to stop your way forward was cool in concept, but since the game is so linear it doesn't really encourage creativity with finding alternative ways around. On top of that, the concept of purgatory seemed like an unnecessary barrier because it supposedly keeps Dante and the demons from accidentally or on purpose harming random human bystanders. Yet, their actions have an effect on the environment so shit around the humans are getting destroyed regardless??? People are getting hurt and killed from the collateral damage so why make purgatory a thing at all? The removal or purgatory would've made it more effective by showing how strong Mundus' control was that he could have demons running around chasing Dante, get his little newscaster guy to placate the people, and nothing be done about it.

So yeah. It's a game very much of it's time, especially with having Ninja being the dev team. Had this been any other franchise, almost all of my complaints wouldn't even exist. It being an attempt at being a DMC game, a reboot nonetheless, is what's holding this thing back.

I think the only good thing they managed was explaining why RedGrave looks Like That at the start of DMC3, but that's all.