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Roy, I saw your tier list. I now have a window into your soul. First, I was playing ZOE1 with the expectation that it carried off into 2. I didn’t realise it was crap.
I surmised the following:
Regular enemies > bosses
Enemy variety > move variety
High difficulty/pressure/challenge > the alternative
Story, level design, music, costumes & collectables DO matter
I agree with your first 2 points. My favorite DMC5 enemies are the ones whose movesets change when you break part of them, like Chaos, Scudo Angelo and Behemoth. It’s a shame that enemies in 4 get staggered, then regen whatever part of them you broke. However, we didn’t have DMC “playground talk” in my day. Some guys in class talked about Skyrim (in general), and that’s it for IRL game talk. No mechanics. Elden Ring and Skyrim are perfect for those types of conversations, because there’s so much to explore. You can talk about hidden caves and stuff that others missed. But kids these days have no reason to do so. You can google all secrets (and probably should for Elden Ring).
Forums are the real place to discuss it, and online interactions are just more clinical. Looking back, I regret not getting Elden Ring at launch, being part of the conversation and exploring. But that’s a once-a-decade game. There’s no guarantee that a game will even work at launch, let alone be worth full price. Starfield, the next hyped one, might be a buggy mess given Fallout 4. Reviewers will still give it no less than an 8.
Coming to these games past their prime, it feels like the magic is gone. RE4 was groundbreaking at the time, but I don’t like the controls. I’d much rather walk and shoot. Then you have enemies running towards you, and slowing down as to not overwhelm the controls. I’d rather have faster controls and faster enemies, which leads onto my later point.
So I latch onto other stuff like the campiness and hit reaction. I’m not saying people have rose-tinted glasses for bad games, but if a game didn’t form a developmental part of your youth, you take a more clinical look at it. I played GoW3 and Bayonetta closer to launch, but didn’t appreciate them at the time (Bayo’s PS3 port didn’t help). Only DMC4SE and 5 got the proper timing. There’s so much stuff to play coming out, it feels like a tsunami of content you just can’t get a lid on. I wish we could go back to the olden days, like TV before streaming, where there was a chance in hell I might actually see most of it. But I know restricting content just because I can’t see it all is objectively bad.
Regarding point 3, I too like a pressure fighter. I compare it to combat sports. Boxing is a fine art, but you can’t soccer kick a guy in the face when he’s down (I know it’s banned in MMA now.) Boxers do terribly in MMA, worse than wrestlers and kickboxers. I compare boxers not being able to use their legs to the movement in RE4, or more relevantly the passivity of enemies in DMC. I would rather know that my enemies’ legs are a threat, than have the comfort of not worrying about them.
When I said NGII played like Bayo, I meant the light and heavy attacks, dodge and parry that make up the bulk of action games. I thought they had transferrable skills in movement and reaction speed, but as any boxer who goes in the octagon will show you, training for one does not make you good at the other. Muay Thai has transferrable skills. Even WWE stars have done well. But you have to specialise in one or the other. I want to be the complete fighter, the Ultimate Fighter if you will, which is why I’s rather grind a boss for 15 minutes that takes 3 (but skill checks you) than one that takes 15, is mechanically easy, but one-shots you if you fall asleep to what’s basically a rhythm game.
Speaking of, that Lucifer bossfight on Infernal Difficulty looked awful. 7 minutes of musical chairs for phase 1, then hack, hack, parry for phase 2. Reminds me of Nier’s Coliseum at Lvl 50. Stocked up on auto heal, damage heal, deadly heal and hacking combust chips. So long as I was careful, I could chip down Lvl 85 enemies with hacking and ranged weapons, allowing for 1 or 2 hits. If I really wanted, I could’ve used healing items. But was it fun, or a test of skill? No. I got bored on the CEO bossfights, and let them kill me, because I was getting tired and didn’t want to spend 30 minutes dodging each one. Especially if they pull an Agni and Rudra when one dies.
A boss fight shouldn’t be a war of attrition. It shouldn’t go on more than 5 minutes in an action game. The final challenge you can do (without unlocking the secret challenge from beating all the other coliseums) has a 1 hour timer and lvl 130 enemies. My damage output is too low for something like that. If I’m getting DPS checked in an action game, it isn’t an action game. And that’s not even counting the chip system I hate so much. The useless OS chip, having you trade out basic HUD elements to make room for better chips or basic things like auto-pickup, and the carry limit mean I spend more time in menus than fighting.
Unlike an RPG, you don’t know what you’re picking up till you do. So you sell (or most likely destroy) a junk chip that takes up 9 slots for a 2% damage boost, to pick up an identical chip that hopefully is diamond or 8 or less slots, only to find out that it also takes up 9 slots. And it only tells you what item it is when you pick it up, or fail to because your inventory’s full. You can’t ignore them because they might be diamond chips or 1 level below. Imagine if Borderlands did this? You have a tiny inventory, no storage, and can’t compare weapons on the ground. All these looter shooters should have auto-pickup and auto-sell for items that are identical to equipment in your inventory, but worse.
As for your last point, it seems I came in with the wrong mindset, again: first underestimating action mechanics, now overestimating them. I’m sure you’ve seen the Wo Long reviews: great action, not enough story, enemy variety, exploration or graphics. Easy to dismiss, but maybe I shouldn’t. It still got 8/10s though.
Raycevick did a good video on driving games, and how sim fans will eat up the same shit for 20 years. Even if you make a proper action game, the action audience hates staleness, and loves experimentation, when it works. A playable Trish from the start of DMC2 might have changed how the game is viewed today, but we can’t have the same weapons. Stuff can’t stay the same, and experiments often fail. Plus something like Wanted Dead costs $20m, and doesn’t even look as good as a AA like Hellblade. If I’m a developer or investor, I can see why a Dad of Boi makes sense.
What your tier list taught me is that the next great action game is only going to come from Capcom, Platinum, Santa Monica or Team Ninja, because they’re the ones confident enough to innovate without having to “prove” themselves, like Atomic Heart “proving” they can copy Bioshock. I used to think that these single player experiences would influence the next game developers. Mobile game devs are paid well, but no-one does it for the passion.
The guy who made Forgotten City was a lawyer before. He quit his job to mod Skyrim. Do you think anyone would sacrifice their jobs because they were so enamored by live-service bullshit, the Fortnite daycare, microtransactions, loot boxes, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, 10 different currencies and a million map markers you reveal through towers? No. They only do it for the money. When you get off the live service treadmill, you look back, and all you can think of is shame. Time wasted that could’ve gone into a new skill or hobby. Realising how manipulative it was that you were fed dopamine like a rat in a skinner box, and nothing to show for it.
But the indie sphere’s not gonna save us. I’ve played a lot of DMClones. Many, especially Chinese ones, surprisingly take more from DmC than DMC. Assault Spy is basically DmC. Punishing Gray Raven, Spirit of Fire, Wonders Abound, what they all have in common are DMC moves and the style meter, but no innovation. I have some faith in Stellar Blade, but if Black Myth Wukong and Lost Soul Aside ever get released, and they’re not 3 hour rush jobs like Bright Memory Infinite, I’ll eat my shoe.
That’s what they are, clones. Pale imitations. Even I fell into the trap. “What if Bayo, but enemies are more aggressive at night?” It’s the same with Souls clones that don’t touch the original. Imitation is flattery, but the guy modelling a Vergil clone in UE5 or Unity in his bedroom isn’t going to inspire a new generation of devs the way DMC inspired him.
I did have one original idea: what if Tekken or Street Fighter, but in 3D? You input complex fighting moves, but against AI in a single player campaign with normal levels. There’s a lot to unpack there: isn’t it basically a brawler? What’s the point of pulling off a quarter circle when a single button would do? Why fight offline AI when online opponents are more challenging? I thought DMC would be the best control method, but God Hand is actually a much better fit. However, none of that matters since Sifu, apparently the only S-tier action game to come out this/last gen, basically does all that.
You were right that it’s best to explore old action games than beg for new ones. Team Ninja’s copying Souls, Capcom’s copying their old homework, Platinum’s hit or miss, and Santa Monica’s dropped out entirely. Games are basically movies now, with the big tentpoles keeping everything afloat, and the PS2 budgets of old not able to provide the production values expected of 9th gen consoles.
Speaking of, I appreciate playing games on original consoles for the original experience, but I just can’t. It’s not (just) because I’m a cheapskate. If I buy a PS4/5, I know it’ll be gathering dust for 90% of the year. That could’ve bought a bigger SSD. The cost opportunity just isn’t worth it. I personally also don’t like redundance, or owning multiple versions of the same game. It’s the same with new games. My thoughts are “will I finish this before it goes on sale”, with “sale” now being replaced with “Humble Bundle” or “free”. Still can’t believe EGS just handed out Nioh for free. Sands of Time from Ubisoft makes sense, as it’s an old game from a dead franchise. But for a struggling company, they sure do love giving out freebies.
For Persona 5, Catherine and TLoU, there was the added complexity of whether I could finish them before they got ported to PC, and the answer was no. I bought the digitals versions years ago on PS3. Big mistake, but PC ports didn’t seem likely at the time. If the PS5 made the PS3 redundant like the Xbox did, I could see myself moving on. I hadn’t actually seen a PS5 in person till I bought Bad Company and Haze this year. I didn’t realise how big it is in person, so that’s a spacing issue as well, and another reason to wait for a Slim.
Meanwhile, MS is (rightfully) happy to put their library on PC. If the Windows Store wasn’t a broken mess that barred me from transferring games on hard drives between PCs, even when I’m logged into my MS account, freaked out when I plugged the same hard drives on the same PC into different sata ports, had overly intrusive DRM that didn’t even let me open or delete folders it put on every hard drive, regardless of whether I had a game library there or not, had no way of verifying and repairing games, requiring a redownload (especially painful when a 100GB+ game just randomly stopped working), sold different PC builds of games to the Steam version, sometimes compromising cross-saves which were hidden in obscure places, and deleting those saves off your PC when you stopped paying for Game Pass or they left your library, I might have actually seen Game Pass as a viable alternative. But due to my experience with it, it’s a dealbreaker for me.
Back on topic, I could see your pain reviewing DMC5. I love it, but can agree it was played too safe, and barely talk about it. The nail in the coffin was the Dante boss fight in the Special Edition. Two excellent fights, the best in the series. But no Nero fight, because they don’t have a blueprint for it, and didn’t want to end on a potential low. I get fanservice was necessary after DMC4/DmC, but 5 was received well, so they had some goodwill to experiment with a Nero boss. I bet there’s a prototype build on a hard drive somewhere at Capcom HQ. DMC isn’t their only franchise retreading old ground.
It’s the same for V. He has the shortest number of missions, and is “absorbed” back into Vergil, so they can wheel him out whenever. The way they handled him narratively showed little confidence, like he couldn’t stand without Vergil. It’s like how they treated Spider Man in the MCU. Why is one of his taunts him coughing, and saying he has to keep going? That’s not very intimidating.
I like the story, but I don’t like that it’s told from multiple viewpoints and out of order, and not in a good way like Pulp Fiction. Take the 3 missions where you split up. They kill the pacing because you’re basically resetting from the same chronological point over and over. There’s nothing to indicate that Dante’s travelled further and faster than the rest of them. 3’s story is unmatched, but we already knew this. Then you have the half-hearted coop, they changed button inputs for no reason, removed moves from Rebellion to hype the DSD, and finally, the costumes.
I’m a big fan of doing more with less, and I know they actually made and 3D scanned the clothes everyone wears. But you have the classy Sparda costumes in other games. Here, they all look like hobos. Nero’s got holes in his shirts, and not in that “distressed clothing” kind of way. Dante’s got that weird half-tucked shirt (do you want to cover the belt buckle or not?) Even Vergil’s coat is fraying at the edges. I don’t like V’s outfit, but it makes sense narratively and fulfils what they were going for. Everyone else is “look how scruffy and uncaring we are about our appearances, because we’re so cool”. The DMC2 Diesel outfits were cool AND modern. DMC5 Dante is literally a hobo with a shotgun. Even DmC’s aesthetic, which they aped so much, looks better.
There will almost certainly be a Nero bossfight in 6. If they turn him into Dante Jr, which they tried to avoid by not letting you switch breakers, not only will it be hard to justify his existence, but the chances of custom enemies for custom characters will be over. Both Dante and Vergil will need to kill those enemies in the Special Edition.
That’s all she wrote, folks. I’d put chapter titles or something, but I just want to be done at this point. It’s long, but the good news is when I write something, I usually never bring it up again. I have new-found respect for Mikami and Kamiya for trying new ideas and not milking what came before. I’ll wrap up by asking where you’d place Batman Arkham 1-4 (and Gotham Knights, if you’ve played it), Hifi Rush and Sonic Frontiers. Arkham Origins has been on a bit of a redemption arc lately.
Why do you think Team Ninja isn’t as influential as Capcom or Platinum? Where are the NGClones? 14 years ago, From Software was copying their homework with Ninja Blade, and now it’s the other way round. Did Ninja Gaiden just stonewall most players? Or is it because the Master Collection is expensive, doesn’t go on sale often or for very cheap, and doesn’t even contain the versions of Ninja Gaiden that people are advised to play? They should’ve done the Doom 3 thing where they give you the original and BFG versions.
Finally, I will not stand for this Heavenly Sword slander. Sure, the game may have sucked, and the motion controls may have left me playing Twing Twang longer than any sane man should, but it starred the gorgeous Anna Torv, a beauty who at her peak rivalled even ScarJo and Liz Olsen today. Then you have the GOAT, Andy Serkis. These two are straight bussin, no cap as the kids say.
I surmised the following:
Regular enemies > bosses
Enemy variety > move variety
High difficulty/pressure/challenge > the alternative
Story, level design, music, costumes & collectables DO matter
I agree with your first 2 points. My favorite DMC5 enemies are the ones whose movesets change when you break part of them, like Chaos, Scudo Angelo and Behemoth. It’s a shame that enemies in 4 get staggered, then regen whatever part of them you broke. However, we didn’t have DMC “playground talk” in my day. Some guys in class talked about Skyrim (in general), and that’s it for IRL game talk. No mechanics. Elden Ring and Skyrim are perfect for those types of conversations, because there’s so much to explore. You can talk about hidden caves and stuff that others missed. But kids these days have no reason to do so. You can google all secrets (and probably should for Elden Ring).
Forums are the real place to discuss it, and online interactions are just more clinical. Looking back, I regret not getting Elden Ring at launch, being part of the conversation and exploring. But that’s a once-a-decade game. There’s no guarantee that a game will even work at launch, let alone be worth full price. Starfield, the next hyped one, might be a buggy mess given Fallout 4. Reviewers will still give it no less than an 8.
Coming to these games past their prime, it feels like the magic is gone. RE4 was groundbreaking at the time, but I don’t like the controls. I’d much rather walk and shoot. Then you have enemies running towards you, and slowing down as to not overwhelm the controls. I’d rather have faster controls and faster enemies, which leads onto my later point.
So I latch onto other stuff like the campiness and hit reaction. I’m not saying people have rose-tinted glasses for bad games, but if a game didn’t form a developmental part of your youth, you take a more clinical look at it. I played GoW3 and Bayonetta closer to launch, but didn’t appreciate them at the time (Bayo’s PS3 port didn’t help). Only DMC4SE and 5 got the proper timing. There’s so much stuff to play coming out, it feels like a tsunami of content you just can’t get a lid on. I wish we could go back to the olden days, like TV before streaming, where there was a chance in hell I might actually see most of it. But I know restricting content just because I can’t see it all is objectively bad.
Regarding point 3, I too like a pressure fighter. I compare it to combat sports. Boxing is a fine art, but you can’t soccer kick a guy in the face when he’s down (I know it’s banned in MMA now.) Boxers do terribly in MMA, worse than wrestlers and kickboxers. I compare boxers not being able to use their legs to the movement in RE4, or more relevantly the passivity of enemies in DMC. I would rather know that my enemies’ legs are a threat, than have the comfort of not worrying about them.
When I said NGII played like Bayo, I meant the light and heavy attacks, dodge and parry that make up the bulk of action games. I thought they had transferrable skills in movement and reaction speed, but as any boxer who goes in the octagon will show you, training for one does not make you good at the other. Muay Thai has transferrable skills. Even WWE stars have done well. But you have to specialise in one or the other. I want to be the complete fighter, the Ultimate Fighter if you will, which is why I’s rather grind a boss for 15 minutes that takes 3 (but skill checks you) than one that takes 15, is mechanically easy, but one-shots you if you fall asleep to what’s basically a rhythm game.
Speaking of, that Lucifer bossfight on Infernal Difficulty looked awful. 7 minutes of musical chairs for phase 1, then hack, hack, parry for phase 2. Reminds me of Nier’s Coliseum at Lvl 50. Stocked up on auto heal, damage heal, deadly heal and hacking combust chips. So long as I was careful, I could chip down Lvl 85 enemies with hacking and ranged weapons, allowing for 1 or 2 hits. If I really wanted, I could’ve used healing items. But was it fun, or a test of skill? No. I got bored on the CEO bossfights, and let them kill me, because I was getting tired and didn’t want to spend 30 minutes dodging each one. Especially if they pull an Agni and Rudra when one dies.
A boss fight shouldn’t be a war of attrition. It shouldn’t go on more than 5 minutes in an action game. The final challenge you can do (without unlocking the secret challenge from beating all the other coliseums) has a 1 hour timer and lvl 130 enemies. My damage output is too low for something like that. If I’m getting DPS checked in an action game, it isn’t an action game. And that’s not even counting the chip system I hate so much. The useless OS chip, having you trade out basic HUD elements to make room for better chips or basic things like auto-pickup, and the carry limit mean I spend more time in menus than fighting.
Unlike an RPG, you don’t know what you’re picking up till you do. So you sell (or most likely destroy) a junk chip that takes up 9 slots for a 2% damage boost, to pick up an identical chip that hopefully is diamond or 8 or less slots, only to find out that it also takes up 9 slots. And it only tells you what item it is when you pick it up, or fail to because your inventory’s full. You can’t ignore them because they might be diamond chips or 1 level below. Imagine if Borderlands did this? You have a tiny inventory, no storage, and can’t compare weapons on the ground. All these looter shooters should have auto-pickup and auto-sell for items that are identical to equipment in your inventory, but worse.
As for your last point, it seems I came in with the wrong mindset, again: first underestimating action mechanics, now overestimating them. I’m sure you’ve seen the Wo Long reviews: great action, not enough story, enemy variety, exploration or graphics. Easy to dismiss, but maybe I shouldn’t. It still got 8/10s though.
Raycevick did a good video on driving games, and how sim fans will eat up the same shit for 20 years. Even if you make a proper action game, the action audience hates staleness, and loves experimentation, when it works. A playable Trish from the start of DMC2 might have changed how the game is viewed today, but we can’t have the same weapons. Stuff can’t stay the same, and experiments often fail. Plus something like Wanted Dead costs $20m, and doesn’t even look as good as a AA like Hellblade. If I’m a developer or investor, I can see why a Dad of Boi makes sense.
What your tier list taught me is that the next great action game is only going to come from Capcom, Platinum, Santa Monica or Team Ninja, because they’re the ones confident enough to innovate without having to “prove” themselves, like Atomic Heart “proving” they can copy Bioshock. I used to think that these single player experiences would influence the next game developers. Mobile game devs are paid well, but no-one does it for the passion.
The guy who made Forgotten City was a lawyer before. He quit his job to mod Skyrim. Do you think anyone would sacrifice their jobs because they were so enamored by live-service bullshit, the Fortnite daycare, microtransactions, loot boxes, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, 10 different currencies and a million map markers you reveal through towers? No. They only do it for the money. When you get off the live service treadmill, you look back, and all you can think of is shame. Time wasted that could’ve gone into a new skill or hobby. Realising how manipulative it was that you were fed dopamine like a rat in a skinner box, and nothing to show for it.
But the indie sphere’s not gonna save us. I’ve played a lot of DMClones. Many, especially Chinese ones, surprisingly take more from DmC than DMC. Assault Spy is basically DmC. Punishing Gray Raven, Spirit of Fire, Wonders Abound, what they all have in common are DMC moves and the style meter, but no innovation. I have some faith in Stellar Blade, but if Black Myth Wukong and Lost Soul Aside ever get released, and they’re not 3 hour rush jobs like Bright Memory Infinite, I’ll eat my shoe.
That’s what they are, clones. Pale imitations. Even I fell into the trap. “What if Bayo, but enemies are more aggressive at night?” It’s the same with Souls clones that don’t touch the original. Imitation is flattery, but the guy modelling a Vergil clone in UE5 or Unity in his bedroom isn’t going to inspire a new generation of devs the way DMC inspired him.
I did have one original idea: what if Tekken or Street Fighter, but in 3D? You input complex fighting moves, but against AI in a single player campaign with normal levels. There’s a lot to unpack there: isn’t it basically a brawler? What’s the point of pulling off a quarter circle when a single button would do? Why fight offline AI when online opponents are more challenging? I thought DMC would be the best control method, but God Hand is actually a much better fit. However, none of that matters since Sifu, apparently the only S-tier action game to come out this/last gen, basically does all that.
You were right that it’s best to explore old action games than beg for new ones. Team Ninja’s copying Souls, Capcom’s copying their old homework, Platinum’s hit or miss, and Santa Monica’s dropped out entirely. Games are basically movies now, with the big tentpoles keeping everything afloat, and the PS2 budgets of old not able to provide the production values expected of 9th gen consoles.
Speaking of, I appreciate playing games on original consoles for the original experience, but I just can’t. It’s not (just) because I’m a cheapskate. If I buy a PS4/5, I know it’ll be gathering dust for 90% of the year. That could’ve bought a bigger SSD. The cost opportunity just isn’t worth it. I personally also don’t like redundance, or owning multiple versions of the same game. It’s the same with new games. My thoughts are “will I finish this before it goes on sale”, with “sale” now being replaced with “Humble Bundle” or “free”. Still can’t believe EGS just handed out Nioh for free. Sands of Time from Ubisoft makes sense, as it’s an old game from a dead franchise. But for a struggling company, they sure do love giving out freebies.
For Persona 5, Catherine and TLoU, there was the added complexity of whether I could finish them before they got ported to PC, and the answer was no. I bought the digitals versions years ago on PS3. Big mistake, but PC ports didn’t seem likely at the time. If the PS5 made the PS3 redundant like the Xbox did, I could see myself moving on. I hadn’t actually seen a PS5 in person till I bought Bad Company and Haze this year. I didn’t realise how big it is in person, so that’s a spacing issue as well, and another reason to wait for a Slim.
Meanwhile, MS is (rightfully) happy to put their library on PC. If the Windows Store wasn’t a broken mess that barred me from transferring games on hard drives between PCs, even when I’m logged into my MS account, freaked out when I plugged the same hard drives on the same PC into different sata ports, had overly intrusive DRM that didn’t even let me open or delete folders it put on every hard drive, regardless of whether I had a game library there or not, had no way of verifying and repairing games, requiring a redownload (especially painful when a 100GB+ game just randomly stopped working), sold different PC builds of games to the Steam version, sometimes compromising cross-saves which were hidden in obscure places, and deleting those saves off your PC when you stopped paying for Game Pass or they left your library, I might have actually seen Game Pass as a viable alternative. But due to my experience with it, it’s a dealbreaker for me.
Back on topic, I could see your pain reviewing DMC5. I love it, but can agree it was played too safe, and barely talk about it. The nail in the coffin was the Dante boss fight in the Special Edition. Two excellent fights, the best in the series. But no Nero fight, because they don’t have a blueprint for it, and didn’t want to end on a potential low. I get fanservice was necessary after DMC4/DmC, but 5 was received well, so they had some goodwill to experiment with a Nero boss. I bet there’s a prototype build on a hard drive somewhere at Capcom HQ. DMC isn’t their only franchise retreading old ground.
It’s the same for V. He has the shortest number of missions, and is “absorbed” back into Vergil, so they can wheel him out whenever. The way they handled him narratively showed little confidence, like he couldn’t stand without Vergil. It’s like how they treated Spider Man in the MCU. Why is one of his taunts him coughing, and saying he has to keep going? That’s not very intimidating.
I like the story, but I don’t like that it’s told from multiple viewpoints and out of order, and not in a good way like Pulp Fiction. Take the 3 missions where you split up. They kill the pacing because you’re basically resetting from the same chronological point over and over. There’s nothing to indicate that Dante’s travelled further and faster than the rest of them. 3’s story is unmatched, but we already knew this. Then you have the half-hearted coop, they changed button inputs for no reason, removed moves from Rebellion to hype the DSD, and finally, the costumes.
I’m a big fan of doing more with less, and I know they actually made and 3D scanned the clothes everyone wears. But you have the classy Sparda costumes in other games. Here, they all look like hobos. Nero’s got holes in his shirts, and not in that “distressed clothing” kind of way. Dante’s got that weird half-tucked shirt (do you want to cover the belt buckle or not?) Even Vergil’s coat is fraying at the edges. I don’t like V’s outfit, but it makes sense narratively and fulfils what they were going for. Everyone else is “look how scruffy and uncaring we are about our appearances, because we’re so cool”. The DMC2 Diesel outfits were cool AND modern. DMC5 Dante is literally a hobo with a shotgun. Even DmC’s aesthetic, which they aped so much, looks better.
There will almost certainly be a Nero bossfight in 6. If they turn him into Dante Jr, which they tried to avoid by not letting you switch breakers, not only will it be hard to justify his existence, but the chances of custom enemies for custom characters will be over. Both Dante and Vergil will need to kill those enemies in the Special Edition.
That’s all she wrote, folks. I’d put chapter titles or something, but I just want to be done at this point. It’s long, but the good news is when I write something, I usually never bring it up again. I have new-found respect for Mikami and Kamiya for trying new ideas and not milking what came before. I’ll wrap up by asking where you’d place Batman Arkham 1-4 (and Gotham Knights, if you’ve played it), Hifi Rush and Sonic Frontiers. Arkham Origins has been on a bit of a redemption arc lately.
Why do you think Team Ninja isn’t as influential as Capcom or Platinum? Where are the NGClones? 14 years ago, From Software was copying their homework with Ninja Blade, and now it’s the other way round. Did Ninja Gaiden just stonewall most players? Or is it because the Master Collection is expensive, doesn’t go on sale often or for very cheap, and doesn’t even contain the versions of Ninja Gaiden that people are advised to play? They should’ve done the Doom 3 thing where they give you the original and BFG versions.
Finally, I will not stand for this Heavenly Sword slander. Sure, the game may have sucked, and the motion controls may have left me playing Twing Twang longer than any sane man should, but it starred the gorgeous Anna Torv, a beauty who at her peak rivalled even ScarJo and Liz Olsen today. Then you have the GOAT, Andy Serkis. These two are straight bussin, no cap as the kids say.
