It's not because of its nature as a reboot that it was received negatively by the fans. Some (not many, but still some) people actually wanted a reboot, and I was one of them. I wanted them to go back to a DMC1 kind of style, with gameplay on the level of DMC3, and maybe have them make the dialogues and story a bit deeper. But I was also very interested in just getting a completely new take on Devil May Cry. But what we got... I just disliked because it was so edgy, stupid, and shallow as well. It was mainly received so negatively because it was, in many respects, worse than previous DMC games and didn't keep enough of the original games' atmosphere, style, character types, etc. It's not
because it was a reboot that it failed -- it was because it
discarded almost everything that was part of the identity of Devil May Cry.
Reboots don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
When it comes to the gameplay, I'd say it wasn't even as good as DMC4 (except for the backtracking DMC4 had of course). Many people had issues with the jump canceling IIRC, the platforming pretty much sucked, even Bayonetta did it better, and it served mostly as padding for the empty levels.
It had only about half the amount of combos DMC4 had, and also quite a bit less than DMC3 had, and many of the attacks had awkward pauses between them that kind of disrupted the flow of combat IMO. Many of the weapons served essentially the same function as other weapons, and some of them were overpowered while others were underpowered. Adding to the shallowness of the gameplay was the removal of the styles and the lock-on function. You being forced to use certain weapons (and therefore combos) on certain enemies... color-coded nonsense too.
The game's story was childish, mirroring the Illuminati conspiracy theory. It was half-baked, the characters never really explained why they did anything or what they got out of it, or did or said anything remotely interesting. It possibly had more plotholes than the entire DMC game series combined (not talking about the novels). It even rehashed elements from DMC1 and DMC3 and presented it as being ''new''. The characters were annoying and pretty cliché, just cliché in a different way from the classic cliché DMC characters. Some of the writing was awkward; some of the things they said nobody would ever have any reason of saying: ''the world is at last your b**** -- as am I''. Uuh, okay? Mundus already knew you were, Lilith. And he also knew the world was now his... stating the obvious is not great writing.
Some links that explain how the gameplay isn't great and even the story could've been a lot better:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1ugqte/end_of_2013_discussions_dmc_devil_may_cry/#s (search for reddit user ''v4lor'').
(I recommend watching all parts.)
(a two-parter)
Even most people who didn't really care for Devil May Cry in the past, thought DmC looked particularly boring. And that was reflected in the sales. There is no way the DMC fanbase alone (which was also not unanimously negative towards DmC) could make it sell 1.1 million copies. That 1.1 million was the initial figure, and I think they got 1.3 within the deadline, when they were hoping for 5 million at first. They kept reducing the target figure, eventually to 2 million (
the figure of 2001's non-multiplatform DMC1 !), and it didn't even reach that. I don't believe for one second that that was due to 'haters' alone. Some media outlets did make it seem like the only reason why you wouldn't like DmC is if you were a hater... really quite insulting.
A decent summary on YouTube:
It's not about the hair, and it's not that people dislike change, it's that people dislike a terrible kind of change. The story of DMC was done all over again; it's like a badly edited combination of DMC1 and DMC3. Nobody asked for a rehash of the old story.
LIKABILITY
And then there's the simple fact that it's so hackneyed and juvenile. Capcom asked NT to westernize it and what do we get? Dante is now an obnoxious yob with a slur, who thinks he's all that and a bag of chips: ''You can call me Dante the demon killer -- has a nice ring to it, don't you think?!'' etc etc.
IDENTITY
It's not even really a Devil May Cry game. It has very different types of characters - characters that appear to have been made to be more realistic, and less enjoyable to watch. That's a fail right out of the gate: DMC never tried to be realistic, it's like a comic with Dante as its superhero.
QUALITY
Its quality is subpar, with mediocre acting, a terrible script (awful dialog), a tad counterintuitive controls, restrictive gameplay of 'hit that blue guy with the blue weapon'. It wasn't very varied. Its gameplay is like a shallow DMC4 only without backtracking.
IT FAILED ON ITS OWN POWER
And this game was meant for a general western hack-and-slash crowd. It was developed to pander to a huge pool of gamers. It's a reboot with a simple plot that was supposed to be easily likable, for the mainstream. These are only three reasons why the notion that 'DMC fans are to blame for its failure' is ignorant. There's several reasons this game didn't sell as well as the DMCs. Can you believe even DMC1 -- a new IP that hadn't garnered popularity yet, wasn't multiplatform, and was made out of scraps of RE4 -- sold better than DmC? You'd expect more from a collaboration between Capcom and Ninja Theory.
