I started playing *mc2. It's such a strange gameplay, and I really don't understand people who "love" this game. As is the case with this reboot or mc1, 2, there's nothing in them that I truly love about DMC. It's Dante, Lady, and Vergil, first and foremost. And Nero. HD Collection should have included hints about Nero and Lady, and the fate of Vergil in these games, at least a few lines in the script, and the value of mc1,2 would have increased significantly. Seriously, what's so difficult about that? Although, in my opinion, you can't breathe in enough air before death, or a dying person doesn't need compresses anymore, the benefits are the same🤷🏻♀️
What I liked:
1. Dante jumps very high, for example, in DMC3, you have to earn a double jump.
2. The floating Devil Trigger is really convenient, it would have saved my nervous system during mission 17 (the room with the cubes)- if you've played it, you know what I mean. But that was the point... to hone your jumping and dodging skills.
3. Pistols and small arms are the only viable way to defend yourself and attack.
4. Strangely enough, the music in the scenes is up to personal taste, but I liked it. The menu has a beautiful melody, as if I were standing in a Catholic church during a service. It's not as impressive as in DMC3 and 4, but it's still enjoyable.
Whether the gloomy, oppressive atmosphere can be attributed to the advantages of the game, I do not know. That's probably where the good stuff ends. The sword is not the Rebellion that I love and which slices enemies into a salad. There is an attack like "Sting", but this cannot be compared to the magnificent combos of DMC3,4,5. For some reason, Dante knocks back his opponents with one attack, and then you need to approach them again to finish them off. It's very strange. The gameplay seems clunky, the boss fights are monotonous, and there are no funny jokes from Dante when he enters the battle.
By the way, from the dialogues, or rather, from their absence, I want to yawn widely. Dante feels like a guest in this story, he does not interact in any way with the world that "saves" - he just moves from one location to another and fights with infernal goats, wolves, sheep, gorillas. The design of small opponents personally seemed to me to be a set of cliches from horror stories about devils: horns, hooves and zero intelligence. By the way, we were pleased with the skeletons with cleavers- DMC5, hello)))
The secret missions are similar, but it's good that they reward you generously with white and green orbs, and there are also red orbs scattered throughout the locations, sometimes in chains that hang in the air like garlands. In the frenzied battle against the helicopter, the rooftop parkour involved the reinforcement of HP/DT, which reminded me of DMC5 and the Qlippoth tree.
Everyone is outraged by the coin toss, saying it's not Dante's style. I agree, it's cringe.
Outfits... I've already said it and I'll say it anywhere, Dante's mc1 and 2 outfits are extremely unappealing. In my opinion, a cool guy doesn't wear red pants. Again, it's a matter of taste. The overall boring design of *mc2 and Dante matches the game's aesthetic. The same goes for Lucia, Arius, and even Matier.
However, I've never seen anything worse than Diesel outfits in this franchise. Dante's scarf makes me laugh and feel embarrassed. Dante, jeans are quite uncomfortable in your profession, don't you think? Or that jacket, oh my, a true fashion victim. Lucia, a sweet girl from the nearby shopping mall. She just stopped by to fight demons after shopping🙄
I feel so sorry for this game, I don't feel disgusted with it like I do with mc1, quite the opposite: I really feel bad that the script is not polished, that the characters are unexpressive and boring, the dialogues are choppy and meaningless, the main antagonist is vague, his goals are a real cliché, Matier and Lucia have almost no involvement in the plot, in addition, Dante looks detached and even indifferent- it can be attributed to the graphics costs, but still, the script does not help to reveal the personal involvement of the main character in any way. It's as if he is here for nothing. That's probably true.
Bottom line: if this game didn't exist, the story of DMC wouldn't have changed at all. Dante has already lost his mother and brother, met Lady, and Nero is growing up somewhere on Fortune. Lucia and Matier are fulfilling their duties on the island of Vie-de-Marlie, and Lucia never leaves the island, never expands her personal horizons. She is still the same, even after many years, as Dante subtly informs her in the novel "Before the Nightmare" in DMC5. By the way, it seems that this novella was needed to justify the presence of Beowulf for Dante, i.e. the Balrog. I think Lucia deserved a final arc: maybe she would have come to live in the human world like Trish. Although... it would have been a completely different story, and we don't know how long she would have stayed in the human world.