izigame.me

DMC5 is a fun game, chock full of the sylish hack-and-slash combat we've all come to love and expect from the franchise. However, I can't help but feel like the gameplay is kind of a step back from DMC4 in pretty much every way. Let's take a look character-by-character:
Nero's Devil Breaker is a huge downgrade from his Devil Bringer in DMC4. The array of equippable Breakers is clearly a response to complaints about his comparatively limited movepool in DMC4, but, rather than feel like a cool new arsenal, they just feels like his Devil Bringer was split up into smaller pieces and drip-fed back to you. They also break --permanently-- constantly, either from taking a single hit while using them or from using their charge attack, which essentially teaches the player to just... not use them. It's kind of a badly-designed system, and I really don't like it at all.
Dante is pretty amazing, but that's mostly because his fantastic Styles are transplanted verbatim from DMC4 to DMC5. However, while he does get some cool new toys (the Cavaliere weapon is a blast), none of his new weapons wowed me like Pandora did in DMC4. Pandora truly made you full like a veritable god of destruction, a true spectacle of power, and I never quite had that feeling with any of Dante's weapons in DMC5. Also, while The Dance (you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it) is truly an incredible all-time moment across any form of visual media, I actually really dislike the Dr. Faust weapon - similar to the Devil Breakers, the literally high cost (it takes money) of using Dr. Faust just teaches the player to not use it all that much. I know these complaints are somewhat subjective, but it feels like the good parts of Dante 5 are really just Dante 4, and the new parts just aren't as good.
And, of course, there's V. I actually like the concept of a summoner-fighter, but the execution is really, really bad. His ranged pet is okay, but it does pitiful damage. His melee pet does decent damage, but, every time you try to hit an enemy, the pet will wander off to Narnia and attack the air. It's damn-near impossible to get the melee pet to HIT anything. And, since that renders a big portion of your damage very unreliable, you're mostly left to use your Devil Trigger summon and hope it uses enough AoE attacks to clear the encounter before your DT gauge runs out. Again, I don't hate V's core design, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. It made playing his missions a slog of attrition, and I became quite sick of him quite quickly. This style of character might be implemented well in a future DMC6, but it's definitely not implemented well in DMC5.
Another big complaint of mine is the revive system. At any point, if you die, you can pay Red Orbs (standard currency) or a Gold Orb (you get one per day, among other means of acquisition) to revive where you stand and continue whacking away at whatever you were fighting. And... I hate this. Boss fights and challenging encounters mean absolutely nothing if you can just spend your currency to brute-force your way through them. The game is generous enough with both red and gold orbs such that you don't even really need to farm; you can kind of just revive as many times as you need to defeat an encounter without material penalty. I personally think this is a really lame system and completely takes away the satisfaction of learning and mastering an encounter. The game doesn't even call not-reviving "Retry", it calls it "Give Up", which implies the game just wants you to buy another life. I'm sure some people like the added accessibility, but I wish it was handled differently.
I have some other small nitpicks, but my last main complaint is the loading screens, because there are SO many. Want to start a mission? First, sit through the loading screen for the opening cutscene. Then, after the opening cutscene, you'll have to sit through ANOTHER loading screen to get to the Mission Start menu. Oh, did you want to customize your loadout at all? That's a loading screen. And, when you're done customizing, it's another loading back to the Mission Start menu. Then, once you're finally ready to begin, you have one more loading screen before you can actually play. I know I might sound like some ADHD-addled iPad kid who can't wait for more than 3 seconds at a time, but having to sit through so many loading screens for EVERY mission (and mission replays) gets old quickly. Trust me, it will wear on you.
I know I've been quite negative, and that's because I am honestly a bit disappointed in DMC5. Is it a bad game? No, not at all. But, like I said, it feels like a step backwards from DMC4. I played a TON of DMC4, clearing the campaign on the harder difficulties, chasing S-ranks on missions, and climbing the Bloody Palace. I adored the game and found a ton of replay value in it. Conversely, I'm a mission or two away from clearing the campaign for the first time in DMC5, and, after that, I think I'll more or less be done with the game. The moment-to-moment combat IS fun, but there are too many inconsistencies to give it the staying power DMC4 had. Maybe I have nostalgia glasses on, but DMC5 just doesn't hit as hard as DMC4 did. (Is this what growing up is?)
I paid $10 for DMC5 and have definitely gotten enough enjoyment and entertainment from it already to feel satisfied with my purchase. I can definitely recommend it on sale, but I probably wouldn't recommend it at full price - snag it for a tenner when you can.