That’s healthy expectations, sadly unless recent games expand their horizons we’ll just get more of the same as always. Keep in mind a lot people didn’t like DmC not just because of how Capcom/Ninja Theory handled the PR, but also because of how the game played overall. It changed just enough of the main formula that made long time fans hate it. I don’t think they’ll risk that again.
I absolutely agree with this, I really liked how different Nero technically was compared to Dante and Vergil. But after the DmC debacle they may try to stick with what they know for the sake of not angering the fanbase. At this point, I’m afraid expecting change from Capcom is like expecting me to put hide random video game names in my sentence structures (which is surprisingly hard BTW).
The original series alwats had a dedicated lock-on button. In face, DmC: Devil May Cry didn’t have one at launch, which was a really big problem, as Dante just kinda attacked whoever was closes. Didn’t give you that much freedom. However, it was fixed in the remastered version, which is just overall better.
You know what really sucks though… we’re not even getting a new IP from Capcom where it would be okay to try new things. LoL… and still no DE on PC for DmC Reboot.
I played alil bit of DMC1… got bored after getting murdered by the Lava Scorpion a few times… I found this to be interesting because I know for a fact I only stopped playing it because it was an HD Remake… had I played it during its hey day I would have stuck with it simply because I had no choice… I mean… what else was I gonna play in 1996 ?
Played alil DMC2 Aswel gave up on it too… that being said from what little I played I genuinely don’t get all the hate… it must have dissapointed somewhere in the middle.
My very first DMC was DMC3 SE… Dante’s Awakening on PC (published by Ubisoft, yeah it was a weird time back then)… I loved it even though I really didn’t know what I was doing.
And then came DMC4… I loved DMC4… at first… however after beating Bayonetta on Infinite Climax Difficulty… I tried doing the same thing with DMC4. This where my issue with the game’s controls come from… the lock on mechanic has basically never really worked for any of the DMC games. I just never noticed it because it never got me killed on Devil Hunter Difficulty… but on every difficulty above it I noticed more and more things wrong with it as the game gets harder. Its so unnecessary and it pains me to see DMC5 Revert back to it despite two other games proving they did better without it… but hey… as long as the fans are happy… right ?
LoL… what did you think happened when you pressed R1 in DMC4 ? the exact same thing.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not saying DmC reboot was perfect… in the Secret Ingredient Boss Fight… Dante would swing in the direction of the Succubus… preventing me from parrying her limbs which attacked from the sides (yes… you can Parry all kinds of attacks in this game). But atleast my ability to dodge was left unaffected by whatever way Dante and The Enemy are Orientated. The previous games had the exact same problem but on top of that both your offensive and defensive options are also tethered to lock orientation and this would cause me to jump when trying to dodge and make me do High Time/Stinger when trying to do opposite or when trying to do Nero’s backward shuffle thingy… usually in mob fights.
The problem more or less goes away when facing off against lone enemies/Bosses… but that can easily be exacerbated by the enemy moving faster (Those lightning Demons) or the Awkward Camera Angles (first encounter with Sanctus). the Bael (Giant Toad) Boss Fight exemplifies everything thats wrong with the lock-on mechanic when he does that thing when he jumps up and falls right on top of you… since he’s directly on top of you its difficult to tell Nero/Dante’s Orientation in order to Dodge/Tablehop out of the way instead of jumping right into his belly flop.
Honestly the wonky Lock-On Mechanic ■■■■■■ me off even more than the color coded Enemies in the reboot…
Also having my finger occupied by the lock-on button meant I could never make use of level 2 & 3 Charged Shot with Nero… I could only charge level 1 during Buster Animations when my fingers were free long enough to do it.
Like… the lock-on feature doesn’t even solve very problem it was designed for… so yeah… it literally exists purely as fan service… I’m not even kidding… I think thats why they added it back in the DmC DE… just get people to stop whining… even though it stuck out like a sore thumb. All it did was allow you to do the Stinger Faster… which could be usefull I guess… I’ve actually parried a few attacks by accident with Stinger.
BTW I never played DmC DE… so I don’t know if it works better than the one in 4…
Bayonetta also has Lock-On… literally never even bothered with it… it had its uses… but meh…
TL ; DR Version
The Long Version:
So that just leaves Dante… Its safe to assume they are going back to his Style System… which fine… The Problem with DMC4 wasn’t that Dante had a modal System for his Styles… it was the Type of Modal System they used for them that made it difficult to use for its various intended purposes. More often than not… I would want to remain in Swordmaster Style… since thats the most damaging and crowd controlliest (is that a word ?) Out of all the styles… I would only switch to Trickester/Gunslinger just to use one single move once in a blue moon and then switch back to Swordmaster. The modal system places unnecessary execution just for a simple task…infact the whole thing feels very contrived because some of the style specific moves are clearly just suped versions of prexisting mechanics that dante has or should have by default… like the Standard B from Trickster or Aerial Rave from Swordmaster… the former along side Just Guard from Royal Guard really is problematic because it literally never gets used unless you just so happened to already be in those Styles so you can realistically apply them in reaction to an Enemy’s Attack… the parrying mechanic in DmC was wonky as ■■■■ but even that is leaps and bounds better than spotting an enemy’s attack then switching styles to Trick/Just Guard then holding that style switch in your memory just in case your punish requires you to be in Sword Master or Gunslinger to optimize it. And speaking of Memory…whatever shred of validity This system has left completely falls apart under the inclusion of Style Number 5… Dark Slayer…
So whats wrong with Dark Slayer ?
Well… this Style is activated by reselecting the style that’s already active… taking whatever mental burden the 4 point style system already imposes on the player’s memory and essentially doubling it since Activating Dark Slayer changes based on whatever style you currently have active… and whats your reward for having the skills to actually pull off this level style switching ? Well its Swordmaster 2.0… thats pretty much the best way to Describe Dark Slayer Style… Most of it is entirely way to similar to Swordmaster and the game forces you to accept this style if you want to beat the game, so even if you want nothing to do with it you still need to be aware of its existence just to make sure you don’t get the wrong move by accident
I like Ninja Theory… while its pretty obvious that the Heaven/Hell Weapon System is literally just a recycled mechanic that they reused, whole sale, from Heavenly Sword… it still works… infact…its near perfect in its implementation.
Just like DMC4, you’l usually only want to use one move out the Heaven/Hell weapons… but since you have to actively hold down a button modifier to activate those modes… this removes the mental burden of having to hold which mode you are currently using in your active memory just to make use of a single technique from one of those modes. They also had the sense to make all the essential features a part of Dante’s Default mode…specifically the dodge mechanic, it can be done quickly and intuitively at the press of a button rather than first holding down the button then checking which way Dante is facing then rolling perpendicularly to that direction…seriously, how did this even make it past the first QA Phase… let alone 4 whole games…
Theres no reason DMC5 Dante can’t steal this system, Whole Sale, and just rename Heaven/Hell stuff to Gunslinger/Swordmaster… its what I was hoping for… but seeing the lack of a dedicated dodge button for Nero tells me I expected entirely way too much from Capcom.
Oh well… looks like I gotta save up for a Nintendo so I can play Bayonetta… BTW Thanks Sega… you really screwed us over on that one.
I’m sure they will surprise us with a new mechanic or two, I do remember a lot of complaints about DMC4 being too similar to DMC3 back in the day. The question now is how much they will change or add; at the worst it can easily just be small mechanics that change the core fundamentals, but I feel they need to do far more than that nowadays.
Ugh don’t get me started, Sega seriously killed off the Bayonetta IP because it was deemed “unimportant” compared to Sonic and other old franchises (and we all know how well that turned out for them). I still remember the salt when Bayo became a Nintendo exclusive IP too (“I’d rather have nothing” was the nicest thing I heard from people regarding it). I can see why people acted like they did though, the WiiU was garbage and even Nintendo knew it (they publicly admitted defeat in the past).
Whatever, I bought a PS3 just for Demon’s Souls, if I ever care for character action games again and want to try the Bayonetta series (never played them) I’ll just save up the money like always.
This was probably a side effect of the game being to greedy with The Proud Souls… I remember wanting to buy the enemy step skill first and I literally could not buy it until the half way point…
Being stuck with just the bare bones moves and techniques definitely made the game feel sterile… it felt like it had nothing that set it apart or felt like an improvement over DMC3… unless you were good enough to get all S Ranks on your first playthrough.
I feel like Capcom always gets put into this dilemma… Fans are always crying for them to “Go back to their roots” but at the sane time they want something new… Hence all the Remakes and Remasters. So if people are going to complain either way then Capcom might aswel do whatever they want to do with their game…
LMAO !!! Yeah they were WAAAAAAAAAY Off… I bet they’re kicking themselves over it… atleast they still got Sonic Racing… although even then all that credit should go to Sumo Digital rather than Sega… but I feel like we should throw’em a bone just for that one.
I do that with Capcom sometimes… when they do a bunch of questionable stuff but one tiny insignificant good thing then sometimes I point it out… Baby Steps… you gotta hold them to a lower standard.
I had an average of five deaths per mission in Bayonetta… I figured it was because I kept losing concentration everytime I did a Wicked Weave Combo and her clothes would fly off.
In the case of DMC4 its because the thing I expcted to happen was different from what actually happens… I expected to lock on to the enemy in front of me to do a high time but the game locks on the enemy behind me and does Stinger instead… obviously this isn’t enough to kill me because this aint Nioh… but over the course of the mission, with no steady source of Green Orbs all these lil mishaps add up and I die eventually. I actually didn’t even die alot in DMC4… its the constant “woah… Nero/Dante did the wrong thing.” That kept bugging me. Now I could have just stayed ignorant and enjoyed my devil hunter playthrough and never looked up what jump cancelling was and my original oppionion of DMC4 Being the bestest action game ever would have stayed… but silly me I just had to push it… and my persistence and curiousity has brought us here.
Look… I do suck at video games… infact… alot of people do… I just believe that some developers fail to take that into consideration when making their games. Humans aren’t perfect… so designing systems that require such levels of perfection is just irresponsible.
Nero’s moveset had neither quantity or quality in DMC4. Red Queen’s combos were nothing to write home about even bothering with the annoying EX system, Blue Rose had nothing to it but a basic charge mechanic, and Devil Bringer only had two simple actions it could perform with one being contextual to enemy type.
If he’s going to be the primary playable character again, this is something that needs to be massively improved. It can’t be overstated how much that hurt DMC4.
LoL… you want me to play DMC without using High Time and Stinger ?
I suppose I could but that would change my perception of the game… and then if I were to say that the game is tediously repetitive and lacks game play variety then I’l be accused of not making full use of all the game’s mechanics… which is already true… I don’t switch Weapons/guns with Dante and I don’t use Charge Shot and Enemy Shield with Nero.
You can do whatever you want, really. Don’t really care.
Just saying you can also choose not to use the Targetting button if you don’t want to.
It’s your life, do with it whatever you want.
I’m referring to the overall concept of his moveset, it was clearly designed to have fewer and more viable moves instead of 100 different moves like Dante has (most of which were probably not even used by most players). I will admit his moveset ended up being nothing special at all; though I did like the EX system’s “just charge” mechanic since it gave a very different feeling to his combos, everything else was just a watered-down version of what Dante had.
Absolutely, Nero was an interesting concept in DMC4 but he was clearly the weakest link in that game. The EX system wasn’t enough to make him truly interesting, but until we get more info we don’t know how far they are willing to go to change him. And doubling his moveset won’t be enough, considering how many underused/useless mechanics Dante had in those games.
The more options the better, as long as everything has a place and purpose alongside each other. There was a good deal of useless stuff in Dante’s moveset in DMC4, but that was more about poor balancing on the designers’ part than anything.
Nero desperately needs more weapons & abilities to work with and I hope his (allegedly customizable) new arm will at least act as a decent equivalent to Dante’s styles in DMC3. They also need to make sure they don’t design enemies and bosses around big-damage grabs again. If Capcom does those things he should be fine.
I’m liking the quicker pace and the look of the new mobility options. Not sure how I feel about the Devil Breakers seemingly being a pick-up consumable, though.
