"The game is not challenging"? "Broken Weapons"?

[Macabre]

A difference that makes no difference, is no difference. Result is the same, bosses gone in seconds, whether by accident or design.

No, it makes a massive difference. You can't buy Distorted Real Impact in the skill screen of DMC4, you either muck about with the game until you discover it or (More likely) you read an online guide on how to do it and put in the requisite time to master it. Demon Dodge is available fairly early and is explicitly explained by the game, so the sense that you had to put in real effort to discover/master an obscure method of beating the game is gone completely.

A more fair comparison than Distorted Real Impact would be a technique like Nero's Showdown, but that move can be incredibly hard to time, leaves you vulnerable while setting it up, and was really expensive to unlock, so players had to work hard to get it unlocked in the first place. By introducing the White Soul system where every skill you unlock is of equal value (Though not in terms of gameplay, thereby causing economic dissonance) DmC even kills that sense of accomplishment you get by unlocking expensive in game items.

The simplification of so much of what makes Devil May Cry great cheapens it and robs the game of the triumphant satisfaction a player got when defeating the earlier titles.

That's the point though right? We're all too stupid to persevere and enjoy a difficult gaming experience. Everyone back to the trough. Stop thinking.

it seems to me that NT have captured the spirit of DMC perfectly.

No they didn't; Itsuno and what remains of the DMC4 team made DmC's combat engine because Capcom wisely realised that NT couldn't program a competent combat system to stop their genitals from being eaten by angry llamas. That's why these massive oversights are so troubling.

 

[Mister Z]

I have played DMC 3 and 4 for over 100 hours and not once did I engage in high level play. I have never beaten bloody palace without using super dante. My skills as a DMC player is about average. Despite all that, I still enjoyed the hell out of those games. I like the combat but I don't dig deep into it. Some people may find personal satisfaction from performing overly long and intricate combos but I find satisfaction by simply playing a game I enjoy and have fun with.

Glad someone finally brings this up. No offense to any high-level player, but I think everyone needs to understand not every long-time fan of older DMC games is, has been or will ever be an expert, nor they ever have to be to truly enjoy the games. This also coming from someone who has been accomulated hours and hours of gameplay in DMC 1, 3 and 4 and has yet to even learn how to jump-cancel properly.

Saying that true enjoyment from a game like DMC comes exclusively from high level play is a huge fallacy, in my opinion. As much of a fallacy as saying that what all gamers really want from a game is challenge, which is truly not the case. Not all gamers find it rewarding to dedicate whole hours of their time at mastering their skills on a game; they may even find it a waste of time. If they can have a good time with the game as it is, why aim to try harder on something that doesn't really contribute in their lives other than just being a hobby when they have much more important important things to dedicate their time so ferbously to?

But the whole "enjoy the game my own way" arguement is often misused by both sides. You don't have to be high-level to enjoy a game, yes, but there are those who enjoy the game for its high-level play value, for its challenge. A Dark Souls player is obviously not going to be very fond of a Mario Party and vice-versa. It's not his cup of tea and based on his preference is allowed to dislike it and explain on why.

Mario Party is not a good game for those who want a game that presents them a challenge and incites them to dedicate their time into attempting to go through it and become more and more skilled at it; Dark Souls is not a good game for those who want silly, simple fun that is friendly to all kinds of players and doesn't requiere any skill whatosever (I know it may seem like a extreme example, but I'm just trying to set up an analogy here). In that same respect, I think DmC is a good game for those who want a hack-n-slash that is solid, stylish and exciting, without discouraging them with a high difficulty that might tamper with their experience. Yet, likewise, it isn't a good game for those who want said high difficulty and be given a complex, very fast-paced combat that rewards their skills with more and more ways to perform bigger, longer and more stylish fighting.

Bottom line, as a fan of DmC myself, there's nothing wrong with enjoying the game for what it is, despite its faults, and defend it for what it did well and you enjoyed it for, but it doesn't help the case arguing that the game is something that it isn't. DmC is not as difficult and challenging as previous DMC games and I think the fact alone that high-level DMC players find it easy is good enough for me to take that point as valid. If you're very good at DmC, you might not be so good at DMC3, but if you're good at DMC3, chances are you'll find DmC a breeze, and if you enjoyed DMC3 for its high challenge, you just won't find DmC any rewarding.

TL;DR: I loved DmC and I think there are many reasons to enjoy it, but challenge isn't one of them, and if someone wants challenge in their games, then it's obvious they won't think of it as a good game and it's fair for them not to.

 

[Macabre]

/\ Much more sensible post than mine, as always.

 

[Jerry Wirerammer]

No, it makes a massive difference. You can't buy Distorted Real Impact in the skill screen of DMC4, you either muck about with the game until you discover it or (More likely) you read an online guide on how to do it and put in the requisite time to master it. Demon Dodge is available fairly early and is explicitly explained by the game, so the sense that you had to put in real effort to discover/master an obscure method of beating the game is gone completely.

A more fair comparison than Distorted Real Impact would be a technique like Nero's Showdown, but that move can be incredibly hard to time, leaves you vulnerable while setting it up, and was really expensive to unlock, so players had to work hard to get it unlocked in the first place. By introducing the White Soul system where every skill you unlock is of equal value (Though not in terms of gameplay, thereby causing economic economic dissonance) DmC even kills that sense of accomplishment you get by unlocking expensive in game items.

The simplification of so much of what makes Devil May Cry great cheapens it and robs the game of the triumphant satisfaction a player got when defeating the earlier titles.

That's the point though right? We're all too stupid to persevere and enjoy a difficult gaming experience. Everyone back to the trough and stop thinking.



No they didn't; Itsuno and what remains of the DMC4 team made DmC's combat engine because Capcom wisely realised that NT couldn't program a competent combat system to stop their genitals from being eaten by angry llamas. That's why these massive oversights are so troubling.

Sorry I have to disagree, that satisfaction came with how you defeated the games, not just with their defeat. There have always been cheap ways to win through. If using DD/DT spoils your own personal sense of satisfaction, dont use it. I dont use items for the same reason (except for the originals DMD mode).

The fact that you are not rewarded for using a cheap tactic is what I meant by the spirit of DMC. It might get you through the level, but it huinders your score.

 

[DragonMaster2010]

The difference is that Distorted Real Impact took years to discover and is difficult to master, as well as being a bug that can't be used on every enemy type. DT Demon Dodge is not only childishly easy to use but also an intentional design feature.

what are you talking about? I found out about that move a few days after I got the punching wepons.:/

 

[Soupie]

The white souls work in almost the same way as the proud souls. The more you upgrade, the more white souls you would require for the next upgrade.

 

[Dante Redgrave]

The white souls work in almost the same way as the proud souls. The more you upgrade, the more white souls you would require for the next upgrade.

Yeah, just because it was one upgrade point per abilities doesn't mean it was all the same amount of work. There was points i was agonizing over how long it was taking to get even ONE upgrade point the further into the game I got.

 

[Macabre]

Yeah, just because it was one upgrade point per abilities doesn't mean it was all the same amount of work. There was points i was agonizing over how long it was taking to get even ONE upgrade point the further into the game I got.

I'd like to see a screen cap of that. I'm fairly low-tier and I still swam in upgrade points around the mid point of the game on Nephilim. The only way I can conceive of you having a deficit would be if you spammed the same combos over and over. Be honest, were you Ophion Juggle Spamming with Rebellion through the whole game DR? You can admit it, this is a place of healing.

The white souls work in almost the same way as the proud souls. The more you upgrade, the more white souls you would require for the next upgrade.

Untrue, you pay one white soul per upgrade on every upgrade. If an upgrade has multiple tiers you spend one point per tier. It takes two souls to unlock Demon Dodge I believe, although I could stand corrected.

what are you talking about? I found out about that move a few days after I got the punching wepons.:/

...you were tapping DT just so as you performed every single punching weapon attack until you found the unique one with the glitch, all within a few days of unlocking those attacks? I'll go so far as to say that's statistically unlikely for most players. What's more, it's still a coding flaw rather than an intentional feature, and an intentional feature which breaks the game is inherently worse game design as well as cheapening to the experience as a whole.

Sorry I have to disagree, that satisfaction came with how you defeated the games, not just with their defeat. There have always been cheap ways to win through. If using DD/DT spoils your own personal sense of satisfaction, dont use it. I dont use items for the same reason (except for the originals DMD mode).

Say you're playing Doom and you find the BFG9000 in the first room with enough ammo to take you through every level. You might say: "Huh, that's really bad game design." Then I chime in and say, "Well, you don't have to use it, do you! Look, it doesn't effect the amount of secrets you find in each level at all! And anyway, you can find a BFG in the secret room in the tenth level! And anyway, if you want one you can just cheat!"

You'd think I was completely missing the point, wouldn't you?

Consider another videogame series: Castlevania. Classic Castlevania is a legacy regarded to have started in 1986 and spans 14 games. They are regarded as cult classics thanks in no small part to their uncompromising difficulty. In '97 Symphony of the Night was released, a game which many old hands claimed was far too easy and failed to deliver an experience on par with it's predecessors because of it. In hindsight SotN is seen as a necessary evolution of the series.

The crucial difference between SotN and DmC is...well, a lot of things actually, but most importantly while SotN presented a far less brutal challenge compared to it's predecessors, it also added a significant amount of content. While the series prior was a simple sidescroller where you fought a straight line into the castle of Dracula, SotN took Metroid's example and opened up the game as a full scale exploration of the fortress. There was exploration to be had on every floor, secrets to be sought, all new abilities to discover for the protagonist and a plethora of items to find and use.

DmC on the other hand dumbs-down to and condescends to player on every conceivable level of it's presentation without offering any new gameplay nuances. The exploration is significantly toned down; while old Devil May Cry often had the player explore a large consistent environment, DmC often locks away areas you have already explored from backtracking, forcing you to replay the entire level just to check on what might have been a tucked away secret. Secret Missions are no longer Secret Missions you activate by interacting with suspicious level design elements; they're signposted and indicated by huge glowing keys and massive doorways you couldn't possibly miss. Hey though, at least we got platforming so easy it plays itself, right?

We have lost so much and gained barely anything.

 

[Soupie]

I'm talking about white souls, you're talking about upgrade points. My point still stands. There is an increased marginal cost for each upgrade point.

Maybe you should pay more attention and remember that the white souls are basically exp you collect to fill the upgrade point's circular bar. When it's fully filled, you get an upgrade point.

It's insulting that you just nonchalantly called my statement "untrue" without being sure of it yourself.

 

[Macabre]

I'm talking about white souls, you're talking about upgrade points. My point still stands. There is an increased marginal cost for each upgrade point.

Maybe you should pay more attention and remember that the white souls are basically exp you collect to fill the upgrade point's circular bar. When it's fully filled, you get an upgrade point.

It's insulting that you just nonchalantly called my statement "untrue" without being sure of it yourself.

No, I'm just being inaccurate. You shouldn't be insulted so easily, but I humbly apologize if that is the case.

I legitimately didn't even notice the XP bar that fills with white souls; I came to the conclusion that when an enemy skeets on you you immediately get an upgrade point for your trouble. I certainly didn't notice them becoming any harder to acquire late in the game or any meaningful challenge being created by a lack of them.

Besides which, it still only costs a trifling sum of upgrade points to get Demon Dodge, it's still overpowered by design, you can still reshuffle your skills whenever you want at zero cost, the most useful powers are still just as cheap as the least useful ones, and it's still fundimentally oversimplistic, unrewarding and excessively mollycoddles the player without signficantly improving on the existing formula.

 

[GF9000000Returns]

...you were tapping DT just so as you performed every single punching weapon attack until you found the unique one with the glitch, all within a few days of unlocking those attacks? I'll go so far as to say that's statistically unlikely for most players. What's more, it's still a coding flaw rather than an intentional feature, and an intentional feature which breaks the game is inherently worse game design as well as cheapening to the experience as a whole.

Yeah and the Kablooney trick is a coding flaw too. We didn't know about that trick from the start. If anything, it's YOU and the old fans that makes it a intentional feature, since they are finding ways to hate the game some more.

 

[Macabre]

Yeah and the Kablooney trick is a coding flaw too. We didn't know about that trick from the start. If anything, it's YOU and the old fans that makes it a intentional feature, since they are finding ways to hate the game some more.

"Trick"? How is using Kablooey in conjunction with Demon Dodge a "trick"? It's something the design team intentionally designed into the game and didn't balance properly. It's not like Jump-Cancelling in DMC1 where you had to fiddle the animation frames or DRI where you had to master flickering the DT button at just the right moment. Is it a "trick" to throw a Hadoken in Street Fighter 2?

If you make a game with the name Devil May Cry, people are going to compare it to Devil May Cry. How is this beyond the ken of anyone's comprehension?

 

[Dante Redgrave]

I'd like to see a screen cap of that. I'm fairly low-tier and I still swam in upgrade points around the mid point of the game on Nephilim. The only way I can conceive of you having a deficit would be if you spammed the same combos over and over. Be honest, were you Ophion Juggle Spamming with Rebellion through the whole game DR? You can admit it, this is a place of healing.

This was on nephilim, and that was playing properly with mixing up moves, parries, dodges, and weapons sets. When you've gone through a majority of the abilities bought, the amount of white orbs you need for just one upgrade gets tedious.

 

[AlchemistFromEden]

I wonder if anyone who says the game is broken ever tried to do DMD or Hell and Hell mode with no damage upgrades, i'd like to see if they would call the weapons broken then, its like saying dead space 3 isn't challenging when you do a new game plus mode, since when are new game plus modes with most if not all upgrades challenging? it certainly wasn't in any other dmc games besides the first one and three, four wasn't that hard which was the point, it was supposed to be more accessible, just like this game, if the controls were
trinity smash: RI DOWN FORWARD Y Y
then people wouldn't be complaining about it being easy, the controls just aren't as tedious as street fighter anymore and the highest style ranking moves are much easier to do, which to me makes it more fun, if the most powerful moves in dmc3 were as easily accessed as they are here, it would've made most of the "challenge" go away

 

[Macabre]

This was on nephilim, and that was playing properly with mixing up moves, parries, dodges, and weapons sets. When you've gone through a majority of the abilities bought, the amount of white orbs you need for just one upgrade gets tedious.

Seriously, cap it. I don't mind if you have to snap your tv with a camera phone, I'd like to see an image that proves you or anyone didn't have enough orbs to get all the techniques you needed. I don't mean "All of the ones available", just enough to deal with any combat situation without too much difficulty (Or any).

Besides which, it doesn't change the fact that the system in DmC has every technique cost the same amount as every other one despite the fact that some are inherently more useful than others, and that it isn't as satisfying as scrimping and saving for that one technique you really want like in the old games.

Who else remembers saving up for three levels just to unlock Double Jump?

 

[DragonMaster2010]

...you were tapping DT just so as you performed every single punching weapon attack until you found the unique one with the glitch, all within a few days of unlocking those attacks?

Yep. Not too hard to master. I got it after spamming the same first mission and getting the proper orbs. For an attack that's suppose to be so hard to master, it's really not all that.:/

 

[DragonMaster2010]

I wonder if anyone who says the game is broken ever tried to do DMD or Hell and Hell mode with no damage upgrades, i'd like to see if they would call the weapons broken then, its like saying dead space 3 isn't challenging when you do a new game plus mode, since when are new game plus modes with most if not all upgrades challenging? it certainly wasn't in any other dmc games besides the first one and three, four wasn't that hard which was the point, it was supposed to be more accessible, just like this game, if the controls were
trinity smash: RI DOWN FORWARD Y Y
then people wouldn't be complaining about it being easy, the controls just aren't as tedious as street fighter anymore and the highest style ranking moves are much easier to do, which to me makes it more fun, if the most powerful moves in dmc3 were as easily accessed as they are here, it would've made most of the "challenge" go away

Yeah, DMC3 really was easy when it came to getting attacks. Sometimes I just spam the same mission and I already have level 3 with sword master within a few hours.:/

DMC1 was a bit more challenging though.

 

[AlchemistFromEden]

Yep. Not too hard to master. I got it after spamming the same first mission and getting the proper orbs. For an attack that's suppose to be so hard to master, it's really not all that.:/

but once again its another thing that the nostalgia fanboys rever as something that only a select few are able to do, its really not, the franchise's difficulty doesn't really hold up in this day and age, and is actually pretty easy once you get used to the convoluted controls

 

[DragonMaster2010]

but once again its another thing that the nostalgia fanboys rever as something that only a select few are able to do, its really not, the franchise's difficulty doesn't really hold up in this day and age, and is actually pretty easy once you get used to the convoluted controls

Yeah, I noticed that. After playing DMC3 again, it felt a lot easier this time around. hell, even DMD mode was child's play now.

 

[Dante Redgrave]

Seriously, cap it. I don't mind if you have to snap your tv with a camera phone, I'd like to see an image that proves you or anyone didn't have enough orbs to get all the techniques you needed. I don't mean "All of the ones available", just enough to deal with any combat situation without too much difficulty (Or any).

Besides which, it doesn't change the fact that the system in DmC has every technique cost the same amount as every other one despite the fact that some are inherently more useful than others, and that it isn't as satisfying as scrimping and saving for that one technique you really want like in the old games.

Who else remembers saving up for three levels just to unlock Double Jump?

Now you're just being nitpicky and totally ignoring what's being said while inserting your own twisting of it. It was never a matter "don't get enough", it's a matter that it DOES take more and more white orbs building up to get an upgrade point the more abilities you have bought, just like the price of items increases every time you buy one. Or did you forget that White Orbs din't get a numeral counter? They get a bar pool that fills up like a combo meter and then awars another point for each full bar. So yeah, eventually you DO have to start deciding which ability is more imnportant at the time than another, especially if you're going for the all abilities bought achievement.