I never really saw Dante trying to "act like he didn't care," there was a point when he didn't care, and then there was a point when he did care, and he just doesn't make a big deal out of it.
Cerberus is kinda menacing, see how he talk with him? He really seems that he doesn't care about how much power Cerberus have, he even makes fun of him in kinda a "natural" way. The same thing can be seem with Echidna or Berial in DMC4
However, this brings up the question of "why does the main character need to be like that?" When it comes down to gameplay, his attitude has no bearing on the skills you use or how you fight. Not to mention that when story is involved, you can only take so much of the B-movie personality shlock before it gets old. It's also much less effective when like...every friggin' character has that same personality. No real depth from the characters, and it ends up being the events that move the story forward while it just drags the characters through it while they spout the same inane, barely-caring chatter.
It's not like he "needs" to be that way, but he ever was that way, and NT clearly tried to approach more the new Dante to the old one; but they tried it in a different fashion and it came out kinda sloppy. Every character has the same personality? You're saying that Vergil, Nero, Dante, Trish and Lady had the same personalities or that Dante's personality can be compared to other characters from "B-movies"? I don't get that. No real depth? Dante and his family have a background story that's like the main aspect of it's general story and DMC3 really diged into his emotions besides not explaining all his family's story in details, they've showed that Dante acts in this carefree fashion but takes things serious too (that's were all the character development in DMC3 is focused), they made it clear that Dante do not like to show his emotions (denying that he was crying to Lady), but they focus on showing that he's human and have his feelings even towards his "evil" brother.
I can't understand why people whinge about DmC not being challenging enough, and then don't recognize the challenge of trying to figure out how to stylishly take out a specific type of enemy with only a few weapons. Restriction doesn't automatically mean "artificial difficulty," it's using legitimate mechanics of the game that you already use to your advantage on normal enemies - now here's your challenge of taking out these enemies while still trying to make use of the mechanics. The tables turn when you can no longer take advantage of what you usually did.
As a whole game it's not that challenging, but DMC4 kinda already screwed up on this subject too. Figuring out how stylishly take out a specific enemy had more diversity on earlier entries, it's not like DmC gives not even a little room to some creativity, but it puts up some severe restrictions for not much reason (trying to increase the difficulty, i think), but it fails in this subject. I agree with you, earlier DMC games already had restrictions on some enemies (like the Wraths) but they worked out more fluid with the other enemies than the color-coded ones, you can't melee Wraths directly in DMC3 but you can do a lot of things (Gunslinger style being the most diverse one to deal with them, or just ignoring them and letting them kill themselves) to dispose of them quickly without having your overall combat limited by them
How is that any different from any enemy that requires you to adjust your playstyle in order to deal with them? Tyrants take less damage from the front. Butchers aren't effected by most firearms. Dreamrunners block and parry most of your attacks if you don't hit them at the right time. The Knights and Rages have have shields, agility, and color-coding to help them, and while they may not give as many different opportunities to beat them as a Bloodgoyle or Dullahan would, they still challenge you.
"Artificial Difficulty" would be if they like...constantly exploited the lack of a lock-on
The difference is that changing your playstyle doesn't means a direct restriction, but more of a approachable strategy to deal with specific enemies overall. And the variety in the moves itself (not only offensive moves, but things like the Royalguard style overall and Trickster too) make different strategies viable in the first place. It's not like these monster with their own restrictions don't pose a challenge at all, but the "advanced" strategies for nearly nulify them are pretty much acessible and too linear (parrying Butchers disks or stucking Rages on Aquila's attacks and parrying their "rolls" for free combos) and that's what kinda dumb the challenge a little. Exploit of mechanical failures makes a game be horrible, it's not even "artificial difficulty", it think. In my opinion it's the main reason why DMC2 screwed up so hard, the moves are so clunky and the lock-on system so retarded that all the "challenge" of the game comes from trying to manipulate the gameplay more than tackle the monsters design and things like this.
It's still pretty much like the classic, but it's a little more forgiving because of it fits with all of the other mechanics in play. It still recedes to the base value of any given grade, and actually now with the patch the highest retention point is S, so no matter what you still have to dosomething to fill it back up to get a SSS. Plus, without Taunts, they had to put some other retention system in place.
I agree with you, it resembles the classics and kinda pay some tribute to it if you like to see that way. It indeed take good things from the earlier entries and adapted to a new a game, with kinda a new focus, i think that there's no denial about it. And i don't find this combo ranking system too much of an issue, neither when it was really broken, i mean: the final scores are give with such strange criterias like completion being the most non-sense of them and playing a good part of your ranking in the end, items, deaths, time and stylish are OK to me, but the completion criteria really screws up any try to give an "accurate" ranking system in the end of a mission.
DmC's system isn't really "wrong on all accounts," since it's still very much like the classics. I think in terms of "what a DMC needs to have to be a DMC" then "having a Style grading system" is about as in detail as it gets. Going deep into "It needs to work exactly like this, and have this," because the basic principal of giving bonus Orbs based on playing savvy is what counts, not how hard or easy it is.
I agree here too. It have what some aspects of earlier DMC games, but i think they forget some parts of these "soul". I mean, the challenge itself (DMD! mode from DMC1 is recognized as one of the most difficult modes in the PS2, just like the DMD from DMC3) and some variety, but i can understand this changes as i can see NT's intentions behind it: they've made it clear to us that they wanted to give the casual player that feel of a "pro", they wanted to make things easier and more satisfying for those who don't like to really dive on mechanics and i don't think it's a bad idea at all, but it's like the oppose of what DMC was all about since DMC1.
Platforming just replaced some of the boring walking around that all DMCs had. It's not like it stifled or replaced the combat
Yeah, kinda, DMC1 and 4 have a lot of walking around until finding some monsters to beat. DMC3 was OK in that part, with the exception for the hell levels were you walk quite much for nothing. But the plataforming was excessive in DmC too, i don't think that a bad idea justifys another, but yet some people can like the plataforming even if i don't see much reason for this (mainly when the plataforming uses that grappling mechanic all the time).
When did Dante ever angst about living alone in a trailer...?
I think that he was refering to the so "dramatic" flashbacks happening all the time in the beginning, but he never really angst about living alone, at least i don't remember nothing like this too.
This also calls into question though, what if there were no cinematics? What if it was straight gameplay and nothing else, just all Bloody Palace? We would see none of that crazy stuff you mentioned, but wouldn't it still be a DMC game?
It would be somewhat lacking, to be honest. But the thing is that in this franchise gameplay was ever in the first place than cinematics or story itself. It would be cool to get a PSN or XBL game with only Bloody Palace and like all the characters, but obviously the main game cannot be like this and i agree with you that's the cinematics that make us know more and like the "CUHRAYZEENESS" of the game and Dante itself.
As an introductory and more accessible DMC, I'd say it did quite well :/
A lot of what you said sounds like you want every DMC to be a carbon copy of what you believe to be the best one. In reality, making carbon copies is what made DMC stale for people to begin with, it's the same reason why people rag on Call of Duty. If every DMC game followed your exact list, we'd just be paying for and playing DMC3 over and over and over again.
The only game that mostly is a copy of DMC3 is DMC4. There two more games in the franchise, one is a gigantic piece of **** that made the way and introduced concepts that worked much better in DMC3 and the other is the beginning of all, the game that was still gathering his own personality to start as a franchise. DMC3-4 mechanics are praised for a reason. And there's nothing wrong if people just want "carbon-copys", things doesn't need to change just because some people like change too, the same way things doesn't need to stay the same forever. I'll the same examples i've used before, great franchises that are nearly the same since they've been born: Street Fighter, Megaman, The King of Fighters, Mario and so on.
Variety is the spice of life, after all.
That's why i play different genres of videogames. I search for specific experiences in specific videogames, and that's why i don't want to lose the "real" (or old, if you prefer) DMC experience and want to at least see an ending to it's story too, as i like the characters and the world.
And this is all on topic, bee-tee-dubs, because I think the more strict we get about it, the less it becomes about the concepts that make up a whole franchise, and more about the content that makes up one particular game
I think that we have to analyse specific and major things to talk about that IP recgonition. These two "dimensional levels" is what makes one franchise and a game itself too; the games is what make the franchise, so it's important to analyse what they bring to us specificly too.
