Dante Must Die Difficulty

Another game, another Dante Must Die. Have to say I'm a bit on the flipside when it comes to this difficulty, especially in this title. It makes numerous changes to the game but they all do feel a bit rushed or half-assed, though that's just my opinion.

What it changes:
- enemies can now devil-trigger, this is both related to time passed and damage taken, but some can DT straight away. In a weird change, you can now wait DT out for some foes as they will lose it eventually;
- no more health and meter pickups lying around, only from enemies can you get these gems;
- less breakers to be found when playing as Nero;
- enemies use the setup of Sons of Sparda mode, no unique enemy setups or changes;
- agression and damage stats tweaked further, though hardly noticable;

What I do like is that for Nero, DT's force you to play smarter with your Breakers and plan out a good route. As V it requires you to be smarter with your meter, knowing when to save it and when to spam it. But with Dante not much changes I feel except that some fights last a bit longer.

I really wish Itsuno and crew would dare make a mode where enemies were more agressive and also chased you in the air. Right now if you stay on the ground you might get hit sometimes, but attack frequency is still once every damned hour it feels like. Anyone else try the mode yet?

What other properties do DTed enemies have? Super armor? Harder to stun/launch?

What do you think of an enemy analysis topic?
I'm only on mission 2 but became immediately interested in the demon with two cleavers. After taking some amount of damage, it turns purple, gains super armor and aggressively attacks. Over the years I never saw much in-depth analysis of enemies other than how to launch and juggle them forever. Maybe I never found the right community but every place I've ever visited was combo focused, which I'm not against, but I like to apply assiduous attention to even basic attacks. It's actually one of the main reasons I have a backlog, because I get hung up on this shit.

I guess I'll try to rush to DMD so I have something to contribute to this topic.

I didn't want to flood the board just yet, but I was thinking on something just like that, or an advanced tech discussion or something similar. Like Nero's Buster grabs using his gun deal damage based on your gun-charge, lots of neat little details.

> DTed enemies
They are harder to stagger and launch, but for Nero that doesn't matter since you can just Snatch them up into the air.

> dual cleaver foe
Knew you'd like them, love them too. Very interesting idea, a foe that punishes you for dropping a juggle combo. They are pretty predictable though. If you drop them they'll get their super-armor rush which is always the same move. As Dante you can just Royal Guard this. As Nero you can 'parry' it (attack just before they hit you).

Lots of enemies have fun setups or weaknesses. Honestly the game is chalk full of great bosses and foes, just a darn shame they are so passive and half the community is stuck in the void.

See that's the kind of stuff I want to see.

I think I'll leave it until I've beaten the game and unlocked everything unless you want to start it. 

It's odd that Snatch bypasses DT so easily.

It's worse when you get Rawhide, a Breaker that when you activate a certain end-game ability in conjunction with also lets you Snatch large enemies. Absolutely nuts.

Wait, you aren't talking about Wire Snatch are you? That one doesn't work on them when they're berserk.

If you knock them down and immediately shoot them with a charged shot you can regrapple them with Wire Snatch!

My (overall very positive) opinion of this game is currently taking a severe hit after spending several hours on Chapter 4 on DMD difficulty and being confronted with every kind of frustration imaginable. From the bats constantly spamming off-screen fireballs, the giant twin-tongued monsters activating DT and taking away half my health bar by simply running me over, the familiars being nowhere near as responsive as to accommodate the split-second decision making necessary to deal with the enemies' aggression, the teleporting shamans being virtually untouchable sometimes, and most of all, Nightmare regularly obscuring the screen and getting me killed in the process. I've gotten to the boss half a dozen times and died each time as he was under 25% health and all heads were attacking me simultaneously.

The older games have some notorious difficulty spikes, but nothing on this level of bullshit.

I fully acknowledge that this is partly on me not being as comfortable with V's controls as with the others', but this is the opposite of enjoyable.


EDIT: Finally did it, but man... what an ordeal. Either I'm just trash or V simply doesn't play to the game's / genre's strengths at all.

Haven't gotten there yet, ironically I made it to chapter 4 with my underskilled V (pumped nearly all my orbs into Dante and Nero) and decided to finish SoS first.

V seems to be very much built around Nightmare and using him smartly and his meter. Think if possible you should do Domination Beam as its last attack since it nearly drains him fully anyway.

Downside with the lack of control of the minions, as Birdman noted in his topic, is that you sometimes get a useless summon.

Also have to note that the ranking system is extremely confusing to me.

Don't want to hijack the DMD topic with V stuff, but I will say I've noticed some, let's say, 'issues' even on DH. Really feels like the game pushes you to use the big crowd control moves like Hedgehog and as Roy said, summoning Nightmare smartly. I'll post some stuff tomorrow about this in the V topic where spoilers are allowed.

Another evening wasted on this nonsense, this time Chapter 5. The great games of the genre (DMC1, DMC3, NGB, Bayonetta, for example) all force you to appreciate their inner workings and learn the intricacies of their combat system in order to master their higher difficulty settings. When you lose, you usually don't get upset but more focused and determined. Whereas here I'm just pulling my hair out at this unresponsive broken garbage and wondering how on Earth it managed to pass through play-testing.

I've beaten the boss a few times, but I always had to revive during the fight so no S rank. My general opinion of V went from "I don't quite have the hang of him yet, but he has some very interesting potential" during my initial playthrough, to "this is one of the most infuriating and poorly designed joke of a character and I can't wait to be done with him forever after this" right now.

I'd be interested to know if any of you manage to grab the DMD S ranks on the V chapters, because this is just pulling teeth on my end. I couldn't even find a single video of anyone beating the chapter on DMD without taking damage, which certainly seems like a red flag to me.

That's the chapter with the Horse boss right? I still have no clue on how to fight him, you basically need nightmare to even hit him I feel. He's far too mobile for the style of character he's facing.

>ksub
I agree with everything you said. That boss in chapter 5 took an eternity, the only way I could hit him consistently was with griffon’s charge attack, even Nightmare was whiffing more often than not. V has a lot of interesting things about him but he needed different enemy types to fight, or the summons needed to be severely overhauled. His missions aren’t enjoyable on DMD.

That's the chapter with the Horse boss right? I still have no clue on how to fight him, you basically need nightmare to even hit him I feel. He's far too mobile for the style of character he's facing.
I'm going to replay him and try the wide range moves like Hedgehog and Double Check, and see how Nightmare does with Promotion.

As I said in the V topic, some situations seem to promote Nightmare use. The fact that you can charge DT continuously with reading, like gathering Ki in the DBZ games, pretty much cements this as fact.

I'm only on DH but I had the same issues with this boss. If I beat him with no issues using the above strategy, we can safely assume that's how V is supposed to be played, at least in these situations.

My journey towards DMD all S ranks continues. Somehow managed to get one on that meat grinder known as Mission 5 after what felt like an eternity. Used a very safe strategy on the boss (only attack with Griffon and primarily focus on dodging and DT build-up) and barely got over the required point threshold. 6, 7N & 7V have all been complete cakewalks in comparison. Currently stuck on 8, but it's nowhere near as frustrating thanks to Nero being a much better and more responsive character overall. The main issue are the obscene health pools of certain enemies, but it's still manageable.

...Not looking forward to the later V missions at all. But hey, more Dante, more fun!

Which attacks did you use with Griffon?

Birdman wrote:Which attacks did you use with Griffon?

The two moves I like to use the most are Flank Attack (fast, good reach, and a surprisingly decent damage output, especially with DT infusion), and Double Check (can be charged when enemies are faraway and has a great area of effectiveness, which almost guarantees damage). Nightmare when I need some quick i-frames or when I feel like I could catch the boss in a corner. Only spam Shadow when it's super safe to do so because dodging takes priority over aggression.

Not super clean or creative, but it worked for me!

Did some testing against Geryon with V as it is, and I think if you can nail down the timing to when he goes stand in the middle to charge, you can absolutely melt him down with Nightmare's deathray. I've managed to hit it a few times and it eats his soul alive.

Same with Cavalier with Dante, if you know the timing you can just whip out the super-laser and nuke him down from afar.

Got S-rank on my first attempt on Mission 4 and 5...sorry bro ! My tactic so far really is to use Nightmare more as a heal than a damage dealer. So when I get to around 4 bars of DT I cancel him out so that I always have a heal standing by.

Vids here for those who want to see my V playstyle.

Yay, congrats!

Would you say that V is actually more balanced and better designed than I give him credit for, then? What's your stance on him overall?

If you really controle your meter well he's probably the most powerful unit in the game in terms of damage output thanks to Nightmare. One thing I really dislike about him is that inputs aren't always clear. Like I'll do >>O with Nightmare for his deathray, but it can be unclear if it registers, hard to explain. Also directional inputs are really hard to get off thanks to it being unclear if the input is based on enemy location towards the summon, or your location.

The boss though in Chapter 5, a mystery. You can watch it in the video but I barely scrape by and never get an S. That fight is insanely hard, the guy is way too mobile. What I found out later was that when he stands in the middle is the time to summon nightmare, as Nightmare will always spawn in the middle of the stage, and thus damage him.

Imo he's very fun to play as and I'd love to see it expanded in a full game. Perhaps now is the time for me to pop in Chaos Legion.

< looks at gaming releases >

Nope.

Ha. Yeah, CL is on the top of my backlog. I know it needs a lot of time to learn, and DMC/Sekiro will keep me busy for months.

Your V gameplay looks similar to mine Roy, though I use Double Check quite a lot. Nice Air taunting. I keep forgetting it exists.

Also directional inputs are really hard to get off thanks to it being unclear if the input is based on enemy location towards the summon, or your location.
Seems they're based on wherever V's back is facing.

Yeah, CL is on the top of my backlog. I know it needs a lot of time to learn,
I don't think it takes too long, but I understand when you've got other stuff to play it can be difficult to pick up extra. My Curse of Darkness stuff is frozen due to DMC5, though I'm trying to put in an hour or so when I can. Cycling between MHW, DMC5 and CoD at the moment, and then the NnK2 DLC comes out tomorrow damn it.

Good thing about MHW is I'm at that point where all I need to do is farm for augment gems for my weapon types (light bowguns) so I'm just popping it in and farming a few elder dragons now and then until the DLC comes out.

Still chipping away at this whenever I have the time. Thankfully most V missions are now behind me!

Mission 10 (the very first Dante mission) is giving me a bit of trouble, though. The required point threshold for an S rank seems particularly difficult to reach on this one and I'd rather not Faust cheese my way through it. Anybody else?

Has everybody else given up on this already?

Update: Finished DMD all S ranks, and I only ever used Faust for Missions 17 and 18. Some of the missions were really frustrating (and some of the enemies' health pools are just grossly exaggerated), but it was fun overall.

Now on HaH Mission 7. Home stretch. I can smell the Platinum already.

Not given up, more that I lost track of it thanks to Sekiro haha! I'll get back to DMC5 soon enough I think! I quit just before Mission 18 I think on DMD when Sekiro hit. How you liking the game so far?

Royta/Raeng wrote:How you liking the game so far?

DMC5? I still love it. It's a flawed game, but the combat system is so enjoyable when playing as either Nero or Dante that I'm more than willing to look past its minor blemishes.

Trying to no-damage everything also boosted my appreciation for some of the boss design. Cavaliere Angelo, King Cerberus and the M19 boss in particular are absolutely impeccable.

Platinum!

I've recently started DMD for this game - my first DMD attempt for the series. I beat Nidhogg yesterday, really struggled with him for some reason. I've enjoyed Nero's missions for the most part, but Mission 4 as V felt like a bit of a slog with the inflated enemy health values.

I used a Gold Orb in Mission 4 because I was losing patience, so i'll have to re-do it at some point as I already feel guilty about it! Going to avoid using any revives for the rest of game.

Great job Ksub! I still don't have the Platinum, really lost sight of the game. What was your favorite part of the game so far?

I just wanted to note that I forgot just how insanely cool Dante looked originally. Like...damn.