Ryu Yamato
Absolution
Yes, I am only reviewing the last gen version because I'm cheap and can't afford a new console, but let's get started.
DMC4 is probably one of the best action games ever made. Again, I'll probably be biased in this review like in my DMC3 one, but feel free to disagree in the comments. The story takes place some time after DMC3, with Dante all old-manly and all, where we take control of Nero, a conservative and young protagonist of this installment of the series. We see him taking his place in a church, praying to Sparda, Dante and Vergil's father, when speak of the devil (ha, get it?), Dante comes crashing down and kills the pope. He then proceeds to flee after having a brief skirmish with Nero, where the real story begins. Honestly, the story here is pretty conventional and is nothing special, but the characters held up the story enough for me to stay engaged.
Gameplay was, believe it or not, improved from DMC3. At least, on Dante's side. Nero is no slouch either, though he is much easier to get into, since he only has one melee and ranged weapon, with a 'Buster Arm' grab maneuver. Nero also has a character specific feature called the Exceed system. This allows Nero to increase damage output with his sword strikes by infusing it with fire, and can have up to 3 slots at a time. It can be triggered by one of two ways. The first is by pulling LT repeatedly, which is a very bad idea to do in the middle of combat, as it will decrease the Style meter and will leave Nero open to attacks. The second is a much better solution, it being to pull LT after performing an attack, which can charge a single slot, and the player can also nab an upgrade which allows you to charge all 3 at once if done at the perfect timing. The devil bringer is also something worth talking about, as it allows the player to perform what other games would call an 'excecution' without it interrupting the gameplay. This is accomplished by not having any sort of obvious prompt and also the animations themselves being brief enough.
Dante. Needs an entire new paragraph to talk about because boy, has he improved. The developers addressed the issue I had with DMC3, by being able to switch between all 5 styles on the fly, and allowing us to keep every weapon with us on our journey. Being able to access all 4 styles means that the game now has depth that absolutely tramples on DMC3, with new techniques such as intertia and guard flying, which was impossible to do in the predecessor (unless you had the mod on PC for it).
Now, this is where I have to address it's only and HUUGE issue, and, when you get down to it, DMC4 isn't that good of a game. While yes, the game is very impressive technically and to quote 'the gaming brit', "with [DMC4's] 100% ingame graphics, solid performance and fast loading times, to say it's disappointing that a console game looks worse than DMC4 and only runs at half the framerate is me holding back *coughcoughcoughCOUGH*", the game itself feels more like a beta of a game rather than the finished product, because of it constant reuseage of stages and bosses. Especially the Dante portion, as it is just Nero's story backwards and with gimmicks that bring it down even lower. Because of this one flaw, I find it somewhat difficult to recommend the game to other people.
DMC4 is probably one of the best action games ever made. Again, I'll probably be biased in this review like in my DMC3 one, but feel free to disagree in the comments. The story takes place some time after DMC3, with Dante all old-manly and all, where we take control of Nero, a conservative and young protagonist of this installment of the series. We see him taking his place in a church, praying to Sparda, Dante and Vergil's father, when speak of the devil (ha, get it?), Dante comes crashing down and kills the pope. He then proceeds to flee after having a brief skirmish with Nero, where the real story begins. Honestly, the story here is pretty conventional and is nothing special, but the characters held up the story enough for me to stay engaged.
Gameplay was, believe it or not, improved from DMC3. At least, on Dante's side. Nero is no slouch either, though he is much easier to get into, since he only has one melee and ranged weapon, with a 'Buster Arm' grab maneuver. Nero also has a character specific feature called the Exceed system. This allows Nero to increase damage output with his sword strikes by infusing it with fire, and can have up to 3 slots at a time. It can be triggered by one of two ways. The first is by pulling LT repeatedly, which is a very bad idea to do in the middle of combat, as it will decrease the Style meter and will leave Nero open to attacks. The second is a much better solution, it being to pull LT after performing an attack, which can charge a single slot, and the player can also nab an upgrade which allows you to charge all 3 at once if done at the perfect timing. The devil bringer is also something worth talking about, as it allows the player to perform what other games would call an 'excecution' without it interrupting the gameplay. This is accomplished by not having any sort of obvious prompt and also the animations themselves being brief enough.
Dante. Needs an entire new paragraph to talk about because boy, has he improved. The developers addressed the issue I had with DMC3, by being able to switch between all 5 styles on the fly, and allowing us to keep every weapon with us on our journey. Being able to access all 4 styles means that the game now has depth that absolutely tramples on DMC3, with new techniques such as intertia and guard flying, which was impossible to do in the predecessor (unless you had the mod on PC for it).
Now, this is where I have to address it's only and HUUGE issue, and, when you get down to it, DMC4 isn't that good of a game. While yes, the game is very impressive technically and to quote 'the gaming brit', "with [DMC4's] 100% ingame graphics, solid performance and fast loading times, to say it's disappointing that a console game looks worse than DMC4 and only runs at half the framerate is me holding back *coughcoughcoughCOUGH*", the game itself feels more like a beta of a game rather than the finished product, because of it constant reuseage of stages and bosses. Especially the Dante portion, as it is just Nero's story backwards and with gimmicks that bring it down even lower. Because of this one flaw, I find it somewhat difficult to recommend the game to other people.