First off, I apologize for any grammar/spelling mistakes on this post.
Ok, been playing the demo for two days already. Beat both missions on SoS and found all the secrets. So far, I'm liking this game. I was really going to base my whole judgment on the gameplay, but I can feel less worried now that I found it pretty enjoyable.
Things I enjoyed the most:
-The special moves button: I was surprised the way they massively compensated for the lack of lock-on move input with this. I know a lot of people still have trouble with the lock on, but I actually always found myself attacking the one enemy I was going for. Don't know if I figured out something or if I'm just plain lucky. Either way, the fact I can pull off hight time, helm-splitter, stinger (which is now a lot less spamable) just as intuitively is a nice touch.
-The camera: we've gone a lone road, but we finally have a good, non-fixed camera in the game. I can't recall a time I found myself struggling with it.
-The stage design: it's exactly what DMC2 aimed to be but failed to. A large (but not too large) area to look around and find hidden stuff when you're not fighting enemies. The secrets, while not overly cryptic, still requiered me to take a good look around me and figure them out by myself. The lost souls and collectibles add plenty of replayability for each mission. I'm against the "Item Finder" pre-purchase perk. It's definitely going to spoil the joy of finding secrets for a lot of players.
That said, I find it far from perfect. Far better than DMC2, on par with DMC1, but not good enough as DMC3 and 4, IMO.
My main complaints so far are:
-Combo ranking system: a lot of anti-DmC people make a valid point on this. Reaching the highest ranks, such as SSS, is just too easy. The fact your rank remains as long as you don't take damage, it goes up too fast and that also it goes up even if you are using the same oves over and over makes it broken. More than once I've tried to spam Arbiter's normal combo and I saw my combo meter rising up, not very quickly, but the fact it still goes up shouldn't be good. And speaking of which...
-Arbiter: I like the concept of the weapon, but so far, it's a pretty broken weapon. The slow speed is not a good enough trade-off for its damage and hit count. The fact it even has ranged attacks makes it even all the more broken.
-Difficulty: another point brought up by anti-DmCs that I can kinda agree on. Fun as I'm finding the game so far, it's not really hard. Don't get me wrong, I did have some trouble with SoS (and still do), but no more trouble than the one I had on my first Hard playthrough of DMC3. I'll assume, though, that Under Watch is one of the early missions so even in a hard difficulty it still doesn't pose too much of a challenge, but I could be easily wrong.
-Mid-game cinematics: Early mission, post-mission and pre-boss cutscenes like in DMC3 are cool and all, but in the demo, the gameplay is being constantly interrupted by unecessary cinematics. They may look cool and all, but after playing it once, you'd just want to skip them to continue the mission. Most of these scenes could have easily been made scripted sequences (ripping off the demon cameras, your path disappearing, etc.). But again, because this could be an early mission in the game, it may not be like this for most of the other missions.
-Poison: while I enjoyed the regular mission, I met the boss fight with divisive thoughts. I admit I did find it harder than I thought, but I blame that mostly on my inexperience and not on the boss itself. One only needs to look at the many videos on YT of people doing parry + Arbiter abuse to defeat her easily, even on harder difficulties. The fact not one, but many people are able to do this just tells me there's something wrong with the boss. The boss fight itself felt a little artificial too. In DMCs 3 and 4, the boss fights gave me, for the most part, the illusion of being fighting an actual being with actual inteligence. Here, Poison feels more like a bunch of environmental hazards happening on time intervals. The cinematics interrupting the fight feel kinda forced too. Right now, I wanna think that Posion is just a poor boss and that the rest may be better, but since demos are about first impressions, I'm growing my doubts. I'm not very confident that DmC will be able to pull off boss fights like DMC3's Vergil and DMC4's Credo.
Despite the mentioned flaws, though, I do like the game. I'd give the demo alone a 7/10, a "worth a purchase" in my book. Whether it's a day 1 purchase or not though will depend on two things:
First, length and replay value: DMC games are obviously not noted for their overall length, but that doesn't mean this game should be short on playtime at all. A length around the same as DMC3 or 4 would be perfect enough. But if what I've heard is true, that we've already seen 70% of the game, then my doubts are growing much. Also, by replay value I'm talking about all the content you can access post-game on the get-go, no DLC content whatsoever.
And second is, of course, that many of the issues right now are adressed on, if possibly, and that we don't find any other problems we haven't seen yet that just ruin the whole game experience.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the demo. Good game so far. Just hope that the whole game delivers more and doesn't screw up what it already gave us. Also hoping they manage to fix what needs to be fixed, but with so little time before release day, it doesn't seem too likely.
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It's like a more immediately rewarding Royal Guard, or a spicy miniature Devil Trigger.
