The Shinji Mikami / Hideki Kamiya / Hideaki Itsuno Review Megathread - by froghawk
froghawk on 3/4/2019 at 18:02
BAYONETTA (2009)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Bayonetta_box_artwork.pngDeveloper: PlatinumGames / Team Little Angels
Producer: Yusuke Hashimoto
Writer/Director: Hideki Kamiya
Hideki Kamiya returned to the hack-n-slash genre with his Platinum Games debut, Bayonetta. He played DMC4 as research to see how far his series had come. He wanted to create a spiritual successor to DMC that pushed the genre's boundaries, and that's exactly what he did with his new Team Little Angels - though he chose to push them in some questionable ways. In order to take things more over the top, he decided to make a 'sexy' game starring an unnaturally long-legged witch with a British accent named Bayonetta. Bayonetta is the last surviving shapeshifting Umbra witch and the child of an illicit union between witch and sage. She spends her life fighting angels in order to prevent them from dragging her to the underworld while she searches a European city called Vigrid for the other half of her pendant. If all of this sounds almost exactly like the setup for Devil May Cry reframed with a female cast, it's because that's exactly what it is, only with more ridiculous outfits. Bayonetta ’wears' full tight leather garb (which is just her hair magically formed into an outfit, so she’s technically naked all the time) and platform shoes with guns strapped to them, while contorting her hair into a weird birthday hat looking thing with streamers. The game is as ridiculous as you'd expect based on that description - even the music contributes to the absurdity of it all, as it often has a low quality muzak feel that's quite sarcastic and funny.
The game is once again based on Dante's Divine Comedy, with the different realms now explicitly named Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In keeping with the theme, the levels are now called ‘Chapters’ and are subdivided into parts called ‘Verses' - but don’t let the verses fool you, as each Chapter still needs to be completed in a single sitting. Bayonetta's home base (the store) is a bar called The Gates of Hell, with its name displayed in the same sort of pink neon sign as that of Dante’s shop, Devil May Cry. The game is much more cutscene heavy than the PS2 DMC trilogy, though many of this cutscenes are rendered cheaply as stylized mostly still frames with film reel bars and voiceovers. I'm not sure if this was done for budget reasons, stylization, or both, but it does make the game feel a little bit underfunded and unfinished. It also gives it a somewhat slower feel than the DMC games at times, and that slower feel is at odds with the game’s increased ridiculousness. Unlike in DMC, the game also uses readable books to tell its story, and a lot of major plot points are revealed solely in the readables.
The basic gameplay mechanics are the same as those DMC, with a couple small improvements and changes which make a big difference. Gunplay and melee combat are far better integrated that they ever were in DMC - since Bayonetta has guns strapped to her feet, holding either of the melee buttons unleashes a torrent of bullets in combination with a melee attack. There are also WAY more combos in this game than there ever were in DMC. All of the starting combos use the same two buttons, which means you're arguably better off button mashing and dodging than trying to memorize them all. Once you start unlocking more combos later on, a bit of memorization becomes necessary, but I found myself forgetting combos all the time - there were just too many. The loading screens allow you to try different combos, but they went by so fast that I didn't have time to try anything, even on the highest settings.
The biggest change in gameplay is that the game places a huge emphasis on dodging, which I also didn’t manage to master - the game is so visually busy that I frequently missed when attacks were coming. Because of the tricky dodging and combo overload, I was still really bad at this game after completing it, which took nearly 15hrs. I got the lowest possible rating on all but 3 missions. Nonetheless, I enjoyed some aspects of these new mechanics. Dodging at the last second enables 'witch time' (bullet time), much like the quicksilver style from DMC. Witch time also allows Bayonetta to run on walls and ceilings when the moon is out, and having a fight on all available surfaces in this kind of action game is an absolute blast.
There are also new finishing moves here, which involve Bayonetta summoning demons using her hair (including a spider demon which looks suspiciously like the first boss in DMC) - and this is where things get really controversial. Her outfits have a strange tendency to magically vanish from her body while she summons demons, with her flowing hair conveniently covering only her nipples and crotch.
This gets especially weird when she’s using it against her dad. The male gaze in this game is the most extreme I’ve encountered in any game I’ve played, to the extent that playing it actually made me uncomfortable. She is framed in the most objectifying ways possible by the camera (read: lots of shots of ass-in-leather). The developers wanted to show off her body as much as possible - she even does a pole dance over the ending credits, followed by a silly dance sequence which ends with her mostly nude. Nintendo even hired a playboy bunny to cosplay Bayonetta as promotion for the sequel. The producers like to try and justify all this by pointing to the fact that the protagonist was designed by a woman, but this is a ridiculous defense. If there's any doubt as to the intentions of this character, Kamiya has made it clear by saying things like 'to one woman, all other women are enemies... ...women are scary' and that the character represents 'what everybody in the team wants in a girl’. Gross.
The game is also plagued by quicktime events during cutscenes which come out of nowhere, as in RE4. Granted, if you die, it will respawn you right before the event you missed, but dying hurts your rating. To get a good rating, you need to die less than 5x per level, but good luck with that on your first runthrough. As always, you’re also penalized for using items. The items work a lot like those in DMC, only instead of stars, they're lollipops - awkward! Enemies drop gold rings instead of red orbs, and you can get extra gold rings to buy more items and upgrades by playing an arcade shooter minigame at the end of each chapter. To gain new weapons, you have to find vinyl records in the environment and bring them to Rodin, the bartender at The Gates of Hell. It's not explained how he makes weapons by obtaining records then going into the inferno, but he comes out awfully bloody. He also offers some really major upgrades from the start that are so expensive that you probably won’t be able to purchase them until you beat the game and enter hard mode. On that note, beating hard mode unlocks a ‘Dante Must Die’ style mode called ‘∞Climax’, in which witch time is disabled and enemies are much stronger, and that’s it for extra content.
The level design is more of a linear traversal, a la DMC2. I don't enjoy this approach as much as DMC/DMC3's more hub-oriented system, and while it's far better executed than in DMC2, I must admit that it ended up being rather tedious for me at times, as the environments were VERY linear and the atmosphere lacked DMC’s gothic appeal. Each mission also tended to go on for too long, with too many consecutive difficult battles, which made the need to complete them in a single sitting irritating much of the time. As such, the game itself is also too long. The gameplay diversifies a bit in the second half with some vehicle segments (two motorcycle bits and a rocket ride), but these also overstay their welcome. There's some creative reuse of levels in Paradiso, but it doesn't hide the fact that there's a bit too much recycling here - both the level content and the story are stretched thin across the first 2/3 of the game. The final act is better on both fronts, but still tries to cram in too many reprised battles to fill time.
The story pacing could have used a lot of work, with the main villain only being revealed at the very end. The mysteries were dragged out for quite a while, but their reveals came as no surprise by the time they finally happened. The story doesn't end up making a whole lot sense at all, but I can’t deny that many aspects of it are creative and weird on a level far beyond most of what I’ve reviewed in this thread. There's an implication here that the witches who serve demons are all women, while the sages who serve angels are men. This may initially seem like more sexism, but the way the game treats it is unusual. In this world, demons don't seem to be bad and angels don't seem to be good - the traditional view is presented as a human misconception, with the true importance lying in the balance between the two. Angels look like monsters here, and their designs are rather interesting, often combining babyfaced statues and gems with sharp teeth and claws. Ultimately, the villain in this game is a man who works for angels, while the heroes are two women who summon demons. In that sense, the story is a nice change of pace. It also deals with motherhood in an interesting and bizarre way, and I enjoyed the level where you have to carry a small child and defend her against attacks.
The 4k visuals of the PC port were nice, but the port itself is a bit funny - it took a bit of doing to get it running properly. I had to change it to borderless mode to avoid white screens of death, and then it muted itself. It also started the game with the UI turned off, which didn't go so well. Once I got it working, the port ran quite well for a while, but then lagged quite a bit in the second half, which is bad news for such a fast paced game. I also encountered a repeated major crash in one area. All of these issues appear to be very common for this port.
Rating: 6.8/10 quadruped shark angel things - The combination of the game’s sexism, linear level design, poor story pacing, quicktime events, combat that wasn’t my speed, and wonky port made it a less enjoyable experience than DMC for me, despite some creative and novel touches.
Inline Image:
https://pre00.deviantart.net/2ec5/th/pre/f/2014/342/4/8/sapientia__controller_of_seas_by_yare_yare_dong-d896zc0.png
froghawk on 3/4/2019 at 19:16
DRAGON'S DOGMA: DARK ARISEN (2012)
Inline Image:
https://www.instant-gaming.com/images/products/1182/271x377/1182.jpgProducer: Hiroyuki Kobayashi, Minae Matsukawa
Director: Hideaki Itsuno, Kento Kinoshita
Writer: Bingo Morihashi, Haruo Murata, Makoto Ikehara
The three most prominent names from the then-current DMC series (producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, director Hideaki Itsuno, and writer Bingo Moriashi) decided to try their hand at something a little different - a D&D inspired western fantasy RPG, inspired by games like The Elder Scrolls and based around player-created parties. Itsuno had pitched the game prior to getting involved with DMC2, but it took more than a decade for it to finally be realized. The central conceit of this game is the pawn system - you create a sidekick and level them up alongside yourself, then allow other players to use the sidekick while you use their sidekicks to complete your party of four. It's an interesting and unique conceit, especially considering that the game doesn't have a real multiplayer mode - I wonder how much it was inspired by Dark Souls, as it does feel a little bit like a party-based version of that game's 'multiplayer' system. I had the pleasure of filling out my party with 2 excellent pawns by fellow TTLGers, Lemmy and Yoko (coincidental music theme? +10pts). The other main gimmick is that you get to climb on giant monsters and attack them while hanging on, so the world is populated with many giant mini-bosses. These monsters are initially VERY spongey, but battling them becomes quite fun once you've sufficiently leveled up. The only problem is that you'll probably have to spend more than 20hrs with the game before you reach that point.
The game is set in a semi-open world called Gransys. Compared to most open world RPGs this size, the map is rather small and mostly consists of linear paths filled with respawning monsters. While you CAN explore in this game, there's little reason to stray from the main quest path. The side quests are most 'kill or collect x number of whatever', and every location is encountered in a quest. The only thing you'll get out of exploring is XP from grinding and items from chests, and there's no reason not to do that along the way as you encounter each area along the main quest path. This game kind of feels like it's wearing the clothes of an open world game while being structured nothing like one for most of its duration. With that said, following the main quest path can be confusing early on. I often ended up having no idea what I was supposed to do because I'd missed talking to a seemingly random NPC. Also, there's no fast travel at the start (except to the two big cities), or even horses, so while the world may be small, navigating it is very time consuming. All of this changes in the late game once you've obtained port crystals, which you can place then use consumable ferrystones to travel to. You eventually get an eternal ferrystone and can fast travel extensively in the late game, though you can only lay down a limited number of portcrystals. The game becomes much more open at this point and there's plenty of sidequest backtracking at that point, so I guess you could say the game gradually transforms into a more standard open world game.
This is a game that slowly opens up in every way. The beginning of this game is, frankly, abysmal. The writing simply isn't the game's strong suit - it even manages to make Bethesda's writing look good. The intro cinematics give you no context or sense of the world before plopping you in it, which only serves to highlight how clunky everything feels. The story throughout the game feels equally lacking in context - some exposition is given in load screens which go by too fast to read them (developers never think about how fast things will load in the future when they do this!), so maybe that was part of the issue. The story is incredibly thin throughout, with the anticipated final battle coming pretty much out of nowhere even after 30hrs. However, it takes a very strange turn after that battle, and the overall plot of the game becomes quite unusual and strange for a fantasy title. I'm still not sure what to make of it, especially given the constant lack of context, but I was pleasantly surprised by the end. Let's just say the plot ultimately centers around replaying this game in an infinite loop (eternal New Game +, basically). I've never played a game that tries to incorporate replays into the plot, so I thought that was kind of cool, despite how bizarre it was.
The quests writing is especially poor, as the game is fetch quest central. Every quest outside of the main quest pretty much consists of 'collect x amount of y', 'kill a amount of b', 'slay this big monster', 'escort this NPC here' - all standard fare. There is only one save game slot, and autosaves overwrite it, so be careful what you do - if you fail a quest, that's it. Quests can cancel without warning by accepting other quests, and then the game will autosave immediately. It's a bit frustrating, and I hate to think what would happen if the save became corrupted. The plus side is that you can hit any quest you missed on a replay, but the quests are mostly so insubstantial that you'll likely miss nothing by skipping them. For the most part, the quests are easily ignored optional grinding. The grind is purely for XP. as this isn't a loot game - although you'll end up picking up tons of random crap, few great items are found in the environment. You'll quickly end up with way more money than you can possibly use, so there's no point in grinding for cash either.
The grind is mainly to level up vocations, as the game's 9 vocations need to be leveled up and upgraded individually. There are 3 basic vocations - fighter, strider, and mage - and each of those has a more advanced form (warrior, ranger, sorcerer). There are also 3 hybrid vocations (assassin, mystic knight, magick archer) which use some of the skills from the basic vocations, so they'll already be partially upgraded by the time you purchase them. You can switch between vocations as much as you want throughout the game, so your starting choice doesn't matter. The game is meant to be played over and over again with the aim of fulling leveling up all the vocations and purchasing all the skills.
Much of the appeal of playing a big RPG like this comes from the pleasure of being in the world. I already mentioned that there's not much exploring to do, but the game isn't particularly nice to look at, either. The colors feel a bit washed out, and the design of everything is quite generic - the usual trees and castles, populated by an assortment of the usual wolves, goblins, bandits, skeletons, zombies, ogres, cyclops, and dragons. The pawns often give the game an air of self-awareness regarding this when they do things like pick up a rock and say 'this looks interesting' or walk through a depressingly empty city saying 'it's usually more lively'. Nothing here feels particularly creative or alive until the endgame, when the game suddenly develops more atmosphere and creative monster designs following an unexpected twist.
In the endgame, the world becomes shrouded in darkness and populated with more dangerous enemies. The bulk of the gameplay at this point turns into a dungeon crawl, and thus the game becomes single-mindedly focused on the one thing it's actually good at - combat, particularly with big monsters. The story and open world are mostly thrown out the window. This was the most loved section of the game by its fans, so Capcom made an EXTREMELY difficult expansion following the same model called Dark Arisen. Unfortunately, both the endgame and Dark Arisen are marred by a highly repetitive reuse of the same map layouts with only tiny variations, which isn't something I can get behind in a game that's designed to be played repeatedly. It also kind of ruins the feeling of descending deeper and deeper into ruins when you've already seen all of the areas.
Dark Arisen is so difficult that you may not even reach a high enough level on your first playthrough of the game to tackle it. The minimum recommended level is 50, but go in at level 50 and you'll be completely destroyed. I've actually only made it about 2/3 of the way through that content thanks to the difficulty and relentless sponginess of the enemies. I do plan to complete it at some point and may update this review at that point, but I'm feeling quite burnt on the game after 77hrs and 2 playthroughs of the main campaign. Good combat mechanics are nowhere near enough to carry a game for that long for me, especially when it's so generic and lacking in pretty much every other department. Dark Arisen does introduce a few new mechanics - for instance, cursed items make the experience a hair more loot-oriented than the main game - but these small changes don't alter the formula radically enough to make me want to stick around, especially when I have so many better games I've barely touched.
Rating: 6/10 evil eyes - Battling giant monsters with player created parties is a fun premise, but everything else about the game needed more fleshing out.
Inline Image:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dragonsdogma/images/e/ef/EVILEYE.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20171125031857
froghawk on 5/4/2019 at 05:46
DmC: DEVIL MAY CRY (2013)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/DmC_box_art.pngDeveloper: Ninja Theory
Producers: Motohide Eshiro, Yohei Uchida, Alex Jones
Writer / Director: Tameem Antoniades
Supervising Director: Hideaki Itsuno
Devil May Cry is currently Capcom's 5th best selling franchise (Resident Evil is #1, of course), but in the early 2010s, they felt it could do better. They decided to reboot the series in an alternate universe with a Western developer. They wanted to create a game that was recognizably part of the series while being distinct (from Bayonetta as well as the older games) and easily accessible to new players. They chose English developers Ninja Theory (Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice) for their work on Heavenly Blade. Capcom closely monitored the development of the game to be sure that the combat fit the series, with Hideaki Itsuno serving as the supervising director. The fanbase was initially outraged to see a radically redesigned Dante without his signature white hair and red jacket (Capcom demanded this change to appeal to a younger demographic, and really he looks more like Nero from DMC4), with Hideki Kamiya leading the charge against it. Honestly, I think this complaint is a bit ridiculous, as Dante had a different look and voice actor in almost every game (or show) in the series so far. His now-signature weapons (the Rebellion sword and Ebony & Ivory pistols) were retained, at least.
The plot borrows a lot of elements from all the past games. Dante teams up with his twin brother Vergil (DMC3), the leader of The Order (DMC4), to hunt Mundus, the demon responsible for killing his mother and imprisoning his father (DMC). Mundus is living on earth in human form in a giant crazy looking skyscraper (DMC2), where he exerts his influence over our world. All of these familiar elements come with a number of twists. Dante and Vergil are nephilim: half demon, half angel (they were half human instead of angel in previous titles), which makes them the only living creatures able to destroy a demon lord. The plot has also been modernized - for the first time in the game series, it really acknowledges the human world and the way demons interact with it and control it (this was, however, covered a bit in the anime). Dante is unaware of his heritage until he meets Vergil. He is, of course, eager to help Vergil take down Mundus once he learns the truth, and thus sets off on a quest to lure out Mundus by destroying the demons who run his two primary methods of control - a popular soda and a media company.
This game has the most creative visual design of any title in this series. It takes place in Limbo (much like Bayonetta's Purgatorio, but much cooler looking), and as such everything looks hyperstylized and crazy - as if the Silent Hill otherworld were crossed with Inception and splashed with a whole lot of color. Limbo is a living dimension that wants Dante dead. The magical door seals of previous games are replaced here with Limbo sealing off areas to trap Dante - roads explode into the air and buildings move to try to trap or crush him. The level design itself is a bit simpler than that of the first or third games (partially due to the absence of puzzles), but the creative visuals and great ways to traverse them keep them engaging. There's more platforming than ever in this game, but it's a bit more fun that it used to be thanks to the angel and devil modifiers, which reflect Dante's two halves and come with their own weapons and abilities. The angel modifier can act as a grappling hook, pulling you towards enemies and locations, while the devil modifier pulls things and enemies towards you. They're both contextual actions, so they can't be used as freely or widely as, say, the grappling hook in the Batman Arkham games, but they do have a similar feel. The platforming is also much easier than in the past since falling respawns you where you left off, removing just a single bar of health. This makes it less frustrating than it used to be, as the older games made you work your way back up from the bottom every time you fell.
The camera is modernized, as well, as it can be moved much more freely. The only issue I had with it was in the final boss fight, where it kept obscuring the boss. The character movement is the most fluid of any game in the series so far, which also makes combat feel fantastic. The combat actually reminds me a bit of DOOM 2016, even though it hadn't come out yet - the demon designs often look similar, and the explosion of orbs upon killing a demon is quite reminiscent of DOOM. The combat strangely feels a bit more accessible than previous titles, despite having way more combos than the early games and more contexts where only one modifier works. I think the amount of tools available make the gameplay feel more fluid, since you don't just need to alternate the same 4 combos - you can whip out a whole host of moves at any point. Devil Trigger is maybe a bit too overpowered this time - it freezes the enemies and throws them up in the air in addition to making you faster and more powerful and recharging your health, so the challenge lies in getting to as many enemies as you can before the timer runs out. It also turns your coat red, making Dante look a bit more old school, though this means we don't get to see what the nonhuman form of the nephilim actually looks like - a missed art design opportunity.
The game's stylization can feel a little too Hitman: Absolution meets Hot Topic at times. It all just feels a bit more gratuitous than previous titles - for instance, the opening cinematic features a bunch of scantily clad women with angel wings followed by Dante sleeping with them in his trailer - I'd hardly consider this Game of Thrones-level sexposition. Dante's dialogue leaves a lot to be be desired - his catchphrase is 'fuck you', he really loves repeating things that people just said in a slightly reworded way (do they think the audience can't keep up?), and he makes lots of bad puns. Big, all-caps words pop up in the environment displaying its intentions in a weird combination of Alan Wake and They Live, which bash you over the head with whatever the game wants to convey. It's still the best writing in the series - I mean, come on, good writing isn't what these games are known for. The industrial nu metal soundtrack by Noisia and Combichrist doesn't help, either - it isn't necessarily any worse than the music from DMC3, but it still feels a bit too generic, which is a shame, as the ambient music is great. Thankfully, the movement and combat feel so good and the visuals look so pretty that it's easy to overlook these flaws.
The game length is just about right at around 11hrs - more substantial than the early titles, but not quite as drawn out as 3&4. The game is certainly easier than its predecessors (DMC2 aside, of course), and a big part of the reason for that is that it has a real checkpoint system in the missions now. You can pick up mid-mission whenever you want now - you no longer have to play whole missions in a single sitting. There are some difficult enemies in the late stages, but what made the older DMC games so hard was the bosses, which are both less frequent and less difficult here. The final two bosses are reimagined final bosses from earlier games, and while they did present a small challenge, they were basically a joke compared to the ragingly difficult originals. The strategies needed to beat them just don't feel as involved, for some reason, maybe because they're easier to execute. There's still some creativity in the boss designs, though - I especially enjoyed fighting what was basically a demonic fox news talking head.
The store works the same as it did in DMC2 onwards - the more of an item you purchase, the more expensive it becomes. Permanent health and devil trigger upgrades are no longer orbs - they've been replaced by crosses, which make things a bit clearer from the start for newcomers. As in DMC4, upgrades are no longer purchased using red orbs. White orbs serve that purpose instead of refilling your devil trigger - collect a certain number, and you'll get an upgrade point. There are way too many upgrades available to get them all in one playthrough between the 5 melee weapons and 3 guns, and I usually ended up with just 1-2 upgrade points per level. Beating the game unlocks several difficulty tiers, as always - there are 7 tiers of difficulty, with only 3 available at the start. There are even two tiers of difficulty beyond Dante Must Die this time - in the highest one, 'Hell or Hell', Dante dies with just a single hit. As usual now, beating the game also unlocks Bloody Palace mode if you're feeling a bit of grinding. I found this to be surprisingly fun this time around. There are also a number of locked doors which lead to secret levels. While the levels I played were a bit easier than in the earlier games (and also available from the main menu, so there's no pressure to complete them in the moment as with those titles), finding the keys to unlock the doors is pretty damn hard. I came across very few during my time with the game, and thus only managed to complete a few of these levels.
Many gamers harbor a lot of vitriol towards this game and seem to believe it's not only not worthy of the series, but bad in its own right. I simply can't agree with that at all. It isn't a flawless title, but its merits are too great to dismiss. As the first western entry in the series, it's FAR more successful than, say, Silent Hill: Homecoming or Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Itsuno liked it so much that he wanted to direct the sequel himself, though he realized that Ninja Theory should be the ones to do it, so he developed DMC5 instead. Yes, it's a more casual game than the others in the series on the highest difficulty available at the start - but fear not, because some wickedly difficult modes are unlockable. Unfortunately, the souped-up Definitive Edition (featuring all DLC, balance alterations, and many new modes) is not available for PC. That version features some especially hard modes, like 'Must' mode where enemies can only be damaged once at an S-rank combat rating. It's a lot easier to reach that rating than in previous titles, but that would still be wickedly difficult! I guess I can't complain, though, since the PC port was great and ran very smoothly. It may even have workable PC controls this time, though I got so used to playing with a controller in the early games that I stuck with it here - it just works better for combos.
On the other hand, the story DLC, Vergil's Downfall, is deserving of ire. It's a brief, 6-mission episode which can be easily completed in an hour or two. It's got a couple new enemies and delivers more of the excellent gameplay, and it's certainly harder than the main game, but that feels more due to ability imbalance than increased difficulty. Vergil's new dash ability feels redundant with angel and devil modes, so the new abilities aren't much to speak of (and are pretty similar to his abilities in the last two games, anyway). The level design isn't very interesting, as the devs were content to recycle bits of the game in a single area of limbo, and there isn't even a real new boss. The main problem with this DLC is the writing. It's delivered in lazily animated cutscenes, which feel jarring interspersed with the in-game cutscenes, as if it was done to save money. The story tries to explain why Vergil became so power-hungry by following him through a limbo sequence where he fights images of Dante and himself after the main game, but it doesn't make a lick of sense. It tries to humanize him in a way that's inconsistent with his previous characterization and has the unfortunate side effect of making him less interesting. Give this episode a pass.
Rating: 7.5/10 butchers
Inline Image:
http://i.imgur.com/kM2o6Kp.png
froghawk on 5/4/2019 at 05:46
BAYONETTA: BLOODY FATE (2013)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Bayonetta_Bloody_Fate_poster.pngStudio: Gonzo
Director: Fuminori Kizaki
Writer: Mitsutaka Hirota
'Bloody Fate' is a full length anime film adaptation of the plot of 'Bayonetta' by the prolific anime studio Gonzo. It was a Japanese language film, but the English dub reprises most of the voice actors from the game. It mostly retells the game's story verbatim, often with dialogue lifted straight out of the game's script, though some ordering and plot details are changed. In particular, the final battle plays out quite differently, but the plot is still essentially unchanged. The film makes some plot details which were inferred by the game more explicit, and actually made me realize I'd missed a couple things in the game. It's certainly a bit more on the nose than the game version, but I'm not sure why the game felt the need to be coy, anyway. It's also better paced in a lot of ways, and clearly demonstrates how most of the game's plot was crammed in at the end - the endgame starts around halfway through the film. It introduces important characters and plot points that the game withheld until the end right at the start, which provides a better setup and creates more impetus for the plot.
With that said, this translation doesn't always work. Despite the improved pacing, it can feel a bit rushed and cursory, with an awkward and unnatural flow between scenes. It never really manages to establish a sense of forward momentum. While I wondered if the lack of anticipation I felt was the result of already knowing the plot, I think it was something more than that. There's a feeling of missing context here which makes me think I may have been confused by the film if I didn't come into it with plot knowledge. Even the tone feels a bit wonky - the opening scene lacks the ridiculous goofiness of the game's opening scene, by tries to compensate in other ways, like making Bayonetta frequently lick her lips in anticipation (the execution of which kind of squicked me out).
The dialogue is still jokey, even including a couple cute winks towards Devil May Cry, but the voice acting in the English dub feels more stilted despite using mostly the same voice actors. With the exception of Bayonetta herself, the voice acting sounds unrehearsed, as if the lines were being read off the page for the first time. The animation isn't anything special, but it gets the job done. It often imitates the game's partial still frame cutscenes, which again leads this action-heavy affair to feel a bit more static than it should, but there's still plenty of visual busyness. The camera is, of course, still obsessed with her body. In short, all of the elements are there, but the film nonetheless feels a bit dialed down from the game's ridiculous insanity - and that's a shame, because this story could have been truly mad without the game's filler. While it improves on the game's storytelling in many ways, the execution still leaves a bit to be desired.
Rating: 6/10 deadly poses
Inline Image:
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froghawk on 5/4/2019 at 05:59
RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS 2 (2015)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/ResidentEvilRevelations2.jpgProducer: Michiteru Okabe
Director: Yasuhiro Anpo
Writer: Dai Satō
Revelations 2 goes a long way toward remedying the problems of its predecessor. While the original Revelations was a handheld game initially released on the 3DS (and later ported to several other platforms as an HD version in 2013), its sequel was a more robust title that went straight to all the major consoles. Revelations felt like it was designed to be a cooperative title released episodically only for those plans to be scrapped at the last second, but Revelations 2 is both episodic and cooperative. It was released in 4 2-3hr chunks named after Kafka stories, with the episodes releasing on a weekly schedule at a bargain price. Having much longer episodes means there's actually time for the atmosphere sink in and the story to develop without constant cinematic interjections, which makes the game feel more consistently like a horror game than its predecessors.
As with its predecessor, this game was written by anime writer Dai Sato (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Lupin the Third, etc.) and takes place before the previous numbered game in the series (this time taking place between RE5 and RE6). The main characters this time are Claire Redfield and Barry Burton, with Claire making her first appearance in the series in 15 years and Barry making his first ever appearance as a playable character. As usual at this point, neither character is really recognizable thanks to the vastly improved character models and different voice actors. Some new characters are introduced as sidekicks - Claire is accompanied by Barry's teenage daughter Moira, while Barry is joined by a little girl named Natalia who has supernatural powers. Each episode follows the Resident Evil 2 / Code: Veronica / Operation: Raccoon City game-stretching template of going through the same area with two characters (or, in this case, 2 sets of characters) to get different perspectives on the events.
Claire Redfield and Moira Burton work for a new biohazard prevention NGO called Terrasave. A Terrasave work social is assaulted by masked troops, and both of them are captured. They wake up in a prison on a BOW-infested island with electronic bracelets on their arms and must figure out how they got there, why they were brought there, who is behind it, and how to escape. Barry then covers the same ground, searching for his daughter and protecting Natalia, a young child that he found on the island and knows nothing about. The game's main villain feels like a forced attempt to more strongly relate this title to the rest of the series. The voice acting and dialogue are still pretty terrible (shocker, I know), with Moira's dialogue taking the cake - it's filled with as many angrily delivered swear words as possible to drive home her status as an edgy teenager.
The co-op is unique for the series, as the two characters are never on equal footing. It feels like a co-op game designed to play with your younger sibling, despite the M rating, as only Claire and Barry can use guns. Moira can only use a flashlight and crowbar, and she's tasked with illuminating enemies and finding items by shining the flashlight on them in addition to opening doors. Natalia uses her supernatural powers to point out weak points on enemies and items in the environment to Barry, and she can also hit enemies with bricks. She can fit through tight, tiny spaces, and is also able to unlock certain boxes that no one else can touch. This system is clunky in single player since the roles of each character are so different that you'll need to switch characters quite often. RE0 managed the character switching a bit more fluidly.
There's an experience system that allows you to get upgrades at the end of each half-episode. The bulk of these upgrades aren't great - some are only useful for single player and AI improvements, while others are so situational you won't have many chances to use them. Extra XP can be gained from collecting gems in the environment. There's also a weapon upgrade system which works through finding parts boxes in the environment. Neither of these systems really feel essential to the game, but they give this mostly shallow title just a little bit more depth.
I wish there were more puzzles, but there are at least some decent SAW-esque trap puzzles in certain parts of the game. The level design is pretty linear on the whole, and the environments are somewhat drab (though the monster design is nice and gruesome, albeit highly derivative of Silent Hill). Maybe it's because I'm used to Resident Evil games being filled with items or pickups, but the levels in this game feel oddly empty. It could be worse, though. While I think the previous Revelations title had some moodier and more unique environments, this game at least succeeds in keeping its own atmosphere more consistent and not constantly interrupting the proceedings with pure shooter bits and cinematic nonsense. The game's final episode is the strongest in a number of ways - it introduces the series classic secret lab and mansion environments with a bit of that classic key-fetching gameplay, and thus ends up feeling the closest to the 90s titles. It's also the only episode in the series to feature distinct levels for each set of characters rather than just relying on backtracking. Whether you get the good or the bad ending depends on which character defeated a boss in one of the middle episodes, but the player is given no indication of this at the time. I got the bad ending on my first go-round, and was pretty sure that was just the ending until I looked it up online.
There are two bonus episodes in addition to the four main episodes. 'The Struggle' fills in a gap in Moira's story in episode 4. It's a survivalist episode which has you hunt rabbits to accumulate 5 lives to last you the rest of the ~50min episode, which focuses on combat with hordes of enemies - it's tough and grindy. 'Little Miss' is a stealth-only episode that tells Natalia's story before she enters the picture. Natalia can't see monsters or point in this episode, but she has a dark copy of herself who can and is invisible to enemies. If enemies see the normal Natalia, she faints (the child characters in this game faint instead of dying - a cute touch). Both of these episodes rehash levels from the other episodes, but 'Little Miss' makes them look a lot cooler with some weird filters and particle effects that provide a dreamlike effect. It's an odd episode due to an idiosyncratic mixture of tense gameplay with relaxing music and visuals. I didn't particularly enjoy either bonus episode, mainly because I wasn't a huge fan of either the combat or underdeveloped stealth mechanics in this game, but I have to give them credit for trying something a little different.
If you decide to play this game, make sure you do it with a friend - but be aware that the PC port only has local co-op, and even that was added in a patch and is hidden without any mention in the game's menus. You simply have to know to plug in a second controller and press A to start. In addition to that, keyboard & controller co-op is not supported like it is in RE6 - you have to use 2 controllers. I'm not sure why it is that, for all their attempts to turn Resident Evil into a co-op multiplayer franchise, they could never get the multiplayer aspect quite right. The Outbreak games lacked voice chat; the PC version of RE5 lacked local co-op and was later ruined by GFWL; the Revelations campaign lacked co-op entirely even though it felt designed for it; Operation: Raccoon City had a broken matchmaking system; RE6 had a 4-player intersection point system which relied too heavily on chance and a large playerbase, and now this!
As in the original Revelations, there is also a Raid Mode (expanded Mercenaries) which can be played in either online or local co-op, or played single player if you prefer. Raid Mode in the first title simply reused levels from the main game in an arcade setting, but it's a much more fleshed out beast here, with upwards of 200 stages (which take ~5min each), special events, daily missions, various items and upgrades. All of this is somehow still active 4 years later, despite the game having little to no remaining playerbase. It's so big that it almost feels like it's the main reason for the game's existence (which would explain why it has online co-op and the campaign mysteriously doesn't), and I actually found it to be a bit more fun than the campaign even though it's a fairly standard third person zombie shooter. The nice music may have been a big part of that. I can definitely see myself revisiting this mode more with friends.
Raid mode is so different from the main game that it makes me wonder if it was developed by a different team. There are 15 characters to pick from which need to be leveled up individually. Each has special abilities that are gained with XP. You gain money in addition to XP when completing a stage, and money is required to try a stage and buy gear. Weapons can be upgraded and all characters can use them - but unlike the main campaign, upgrades can't be removed without destroying them. Enemies are also leveled, and there are special types of eltie enemies not found in the main game that have burning or freezing abilities or shields. There is even a plot to this mode - I haven't made it too far in, but I think it's all meant to be Alex Wesker's test chamber.
Oddly enough, many of the levels here are remakes of levels from RE6, complete with music and enemies from said game. The whole affair ends up feeling like an odd sort of refinement of RE6, as if they were attempting to present the game as it should have been. The color palette is brighter, the combat is more visceral and satisfying, and everything feels less clunky. There are also stages drawn from both Revelations games, but most of the levels I played seemed at least loosely modeled on RE6. Granted, every stage isn't great - for instance, I took part in a special event where the community bands together to kill a giant zombie, but the zombie was incapable of harming anyone. This meant that, in practice, the level entailed emptying all your clips into a distant sponge then leaving without having made a perceptible impact.
Compared to all the other absolute bollocks that came between RE5 and RE7, this game seems pretty darn appealing. Taken on its own terms, however, it's pretty mediocre and forgettable. They were just beginning to get the series back on track with this title, but they still had a ways to go. Revelations 2 still doesn't offer much in the way of scares, and it's still mostly a linear and generic third person shooter - it's just got a little bit more horror atmosphere than the other RE titles of the era. I'm sure it seemed quite promising in 2015, but since Capcom has returned to releasing legitimately great Resident Evil games, this one has become rather obsolete.
Rating: 6.25/10 pyramid headed bodybuilders - It may be the best RE game of its era, but it's still hampered by pedestrian gameplay and a budget feel.
Inline Image:
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N'Al on 5/4/2019 at 06:52
Ah, I was waiting for you to get to this. Revelations 2 is actually my favourite RE game so far, but then I've only played three of them: Zero, Revelations 1 & Revelations 2.
Interesting to read your take on it (as on all the other games in this thread), thank you!
froghawk on 24/11/2019 at 16:10
RESIDENT EVIL 2 (2019)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Resident_Evil_2_Remake.jpgProducers: Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, Tsuyoshi Kanda
Director: Kazunori Kadoi
As with REmake, Capcom have once again managed to create a definitive RE experience which surpasses the original and really nails the essence of the franchise. I wasn't convinced that was going to be the case, since none of the original team returns here. One of the things that made the remake of the original game so successful is that Shinji Mikami returned to direct it a second time, allowing him to clarify his vision with better technology. Nonetheless, Hideki Kamiya expressed his trust in Kadoi's direction, even going as far as stating that he didn't need to be consulted for the project. There's a big difference between releasing a remake 6 years after the fact and releasing one 21 years later, and that difference prompted some major changes in the approach to remaking this. For starters, AAA developers could still get away with releasing fixed camera games with prerendered backgrounds in 2002, but this likely isn't the case in 2019. As a result, the game underwent a major change, with an over-the-shoulder camera in the style of Resident Evil 4, running on the same engine as RE7. I'm sure this made many fans panic, and it certainly left me a bit skeptical, but its hard for me imagine a much better remake of this game in this format.
One of the most impressive parts of this remake is how much they fleshed out the level design. The police station is very recognizable - all of the clear landmarks and puzzles are there - but the upper floors in particular are greatly expanded, and the routing is just different enough that it will challenge your muscle memory and provide some surprises. My first run clear time for Scenario A was nearly 10hrs (though I got it down to under 4 on my second try), compared to 2.5hrs in the original game, and yet somehow the pacing felt identical. There were some obvious things that they added - for instance, a puzzle that used to require one medallion now requires 3 - but I noticed very few drastic changes to the pace and trajectory of the game. The additions and expansions felt totally natural, to the extent that I'm honestly a bit puzzled as to where the massively expanded length even came from, but the end result is that the game feels much less skimpy and more satisfying.
There's a lot here that will immediately remind you of RE7, camera perspective aside, but this is no rehash of that title. It's missing the viscerally disgusting discomfort of RE7, but it also plays very differently, with a much stronger emphasis on stunning enemies while running as fast as you can. This introduces a whole new dynamic to the game when compared to the original, providing an extra level of depth and challenge. Rather than changing the game into something entirely new and different, the stun-and-run mechanic ramps up the tension and gives the game the feeling it always aspired towards.
Hardcore difficulty is also available from the start, allowing the game to present a solid challenge from the get-go, unlike the original. Hardcore difficulty is the only one to feature the classic ink ribbon saving system, and the game is delightfully stingy in handing them out. The 4-scenario setup is still intact here, and the increased challenge gives you far more reason to replay it that many times than the original did. That doesn't mean it doesn't wear out its welcome after 4 runs - repeating the boss fights get especially tedious - but it kept me playing for that entire duration. The clear star of the show here is Mr. Big X. Despite his goofy appearance, he is turned into an utterly terrifying Nemesis/Alien: Isolation inspired stalker who ramps the tension way up and makes running through the station a whole lot harder. The game's best moments are spent hiding from him.
Despite all of its improvements, this remake still maintains a couple of the original's core flaws. It seems like Leon's scenario is meant to come first, as Claire's story has a bit more to it - the Claire A / Leon B scenario doesn't really add anything to the story and feels a bit redundant. Despite a radical redesign, the sewers are still the least interesting part of the game, though they've been vastly improved. Some of the more archaic elements of the original sewers were removed, like the giant spiders. They're replaced by something that's far more menacing and suitable for the game. The alligator encounter is preserved, but it's very brief and doesn't break immersion.
There's also a believability problem with the character switching. When the second character takes over, the puzzles all magically reset, often with different solutions and even different dials. New weapons magically appear, and items are magically replenished. While this issue has always been true to some small degree in all of the games that follow this format, it tended to be executed a bit more convincingly in later titles. This is one of the things that made the original game feel like they were trying to stretch out a small amount of content, but since everything is so much more fleshed out here, it just feels like an odd relic of the past. Granted, they would have had to more drastically redesign Scenario B to avoid this issue. While I wouldn't have minded that, I can see why they didn't (nostalgia!).
The atmosphere of the police station is still a bit less compelling than that of the original mansion or RE7's mansion grounds to me, mainly on account of being a bit more clean and less claustrophobic, but they did a good job of making it feel sufficiently scary and tense. The biggest disappointment in the remake may be the new soundtrack - it's often so ambient as to be virtually undetectable, and when it does make itself noticed, it's generally rather cliched. You also have the option to use the original soundtrack and sound effects if you want to pay an extra $3, but it does often sound quite dated when matched with the new visuals. There's a free DLC which allows you to use the 1998 character models for Leon & Claire if you want to amp up the bizarre aesthetic mix of different time periods.
All the bonus modes from the original game are still available here, including the ones where you get to play through the game as HUNK and then as a block of tofu, but there are also a few new DLC survivor modes which follow a similar model. All of these modes are short, frantic, linear runs through the game that have a very different pace and feel. In 4th/Tofu survivor, you have a set loadout that you have to make last the 10min it takes to get to the end - there are no item pickups. In The Ghost Survivors, item pickups are in backpacks carried by zombies and you have to kill the zombies to get them. All of these modes are wickedly hard and very dependent on the remake's new mechanics - speed, dodging, aiming, and stunning. I have yet to finish any of them on account of my lack of skill.
RATING: 8.75/10 G-Type Adults - Another excellent remake which improves upon the original and provides exactly what I'm looking for out of a Resident Evil experience
Inline Image:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/residentevil/images/a/a5/G-adult.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20080131162141
henke on 8/12/2019 at 14:59
Yeah RE2 was so good. So good it convinced me to finally play RE7, which I'm doing now, nearing the end of Lucas' chapter. I was afraid it'd be unpleasantly grim in a P.T. kinda way, but while it is more serious than most RE games, it's still got plenty of goofy shit to lighten the mood. I'm digging it!
henke on 10/12/2019 at 16:04
Finished RE7. It was good! :thumb:
Is the Chris Redfield DLC worth playing?
froghawk on 11/12/2019 at 20:07
I'd say you're not missing a ton if you don't play it, but if you do, be sure to play it twice. It's much better on the second go-round with a higher difficulty. I reviewed it on the previous page if you want a more in-depth assessment. I had a little more fun with Banned Footage.
DEVIL MAY CRY 5 (2019)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Devil_May_Cry_5.jpgProducer: Matthew Walker
Director: Hideaki Itsuno
Writer: Bingo Morihashi
More than a decade after the previous entry, Hideaki Itsuno decided to return to the mainline DMC series. Little has changed in that time - none of the innovations of Bayonetta or DmC were incorporated here, and that's not a bad thing - this is an old school style game with very few concessions to a modern audience aside from the new and shiny graphics. Any residual elements of Resident Evil have been completely stripped out by this point - there are next to no puzzles and no hub design, leaving an almost completely linear spectacle fighter which is solely about getting from one arena fight to the next. The level design is even more stripped down than that of DMC4, which at least had a few large areas with some puzzles and backtracking (the single puzzle in this game is accompanied by Dante saying 'Boy, I haven't used my brain that much in a while!'). The focus is on the combat, and boy did they nail it - it's easily fun enough to drive the game on its own.
The biggest design change over previous titles is that the game now juggles 3 main characters - Nero, Dante, and a mysterious new character named V. Instead of having a distinct campaign for each character where they move through the same areas as in DMC2/4, characters switch between levels. A couple levels allow you to pick a character, but even in that case each character follows significantly different paths through the level. This makes for a much less repetitive and better paced experience than DMC2/4, with a truly riveting second half. The first half felt a bit lackluster on my first run, but once you get a few upgrades in even the game's most uninspired parts becomes a serious blast - it's much more fun to play through the second time. The plot also picks up quite a bit of steam in the second half.
This game may have the most engaging plot of any DMC title thus far - it does a great job of elucidating the connections between the characters and bringing everything full circle. It starts rather unsuspectingly, with Dante and Nero facing a demon that's too powerful to defeat inside of a blood-sucking tree rooted at the center of a city, but it goes in a rather unexpected direction from there. It feels like a long overdue climax for the series, complete with a few excellent twists (in retrospect, it seems the entire purpose of DMC4 was to introduce Nero and set the stage for this story to happen). Unlike in DMC4, where Dante had little personal stake in the story, this game tells a highly personal story for all 3 main characters. My one complaint is that the female characters feel very underused and over-sexualized - Lady and Trish show up only for fanservice and don't play any real role in the plot, nor are they playable like they were in DMC4's Special Edition. There's one new character - Nero's mechanic, a woman named Nico with a chainsmoking habit and heavy southern accent. Nico is meant to be a comic relief character, but she is also awkwardly over-sexualized and underused, and I mainly found myself annoyed by listening to her corny southern drawl. I would have preferred if the game's lack of modernization didn't also extend to its treatment of women.
As for the characters themselves, Dante appears with all of his abilities from the previous two games and a bit more (in a classically over the top moment, a new ability which lets you gamble orbs is introduced in a Michael Jackson-esque dance sequence). He still feels like the primary character in the sense that he has far more abilities and upgrades available than any other character in the game, even though he doesn't really enter the picture until about halfway through. Nero has lost his demon arm, and instead collects robotic replacements for it which have a very short shelf life (and various different abilities). This creates a bit of a twist in how his character is played from DMC4, and he doesn't gain some important abilities until the very end of the game, making the second playthrough quite different. Most of the gameplay innovation is put towards the new character, V, who controls a demon bird and panther that fight remotely for him. While the bird basically acts as a gun and the panther as a sword, the fact that they aren't attached to you and you don't have full control over their movement makes playing V a novel experience. A lot more multitasking is involved - you'll often find yourself remotely directing the attacks of V's minions while having him read a book and periodically jump in to personally deliver the finishing blows on enemies. It's easy to get S ratings by button mashing while playing as V, but it's rather difficult to master him if you want full control over his every move.
The interface is stripped down - usable items (devil stars, vital stars, holy water) are no longer a thing during gameplay, which means the store is a bit simpler. As such, proud Souls have been eliminated here - everything is purchased with red orbs. There's no need to separate currency for orbs and items when there are no items! Orbs carry over between characters (including health and devil trigger upgrades), which helps keep things a bit more continuous. Gold orbs (continues) are much more plentiful this time around, since you get one as a login bonus every time you start the game and get bonus ones for S rankings. Not only that, but the levels feature checkpoints, though it's never clear where they are or when they're happening. You'll never have to restart a level from the beginning, even if you choose not to use a gold orb. This may be the only concession the game makes to modern audiences, and I'm honestly grateful for it - it makes the game a bit easier, sure, but it also reduces the frustration and feels a bit more respectful of my time. On that note, the game feels a bit shorter than the last two - the length is just right. And don't worry - the game starts getting wickedly hard on Dante Must Die difficulty, if that's what you seek.
The camera is the freest it's ever been in the mainline DMC series, never locking you into a single angle. This really allows you to admire the game's graphics. The visual design of the game's central tree is great - it does a good job taking the atmosphere of the nastier bits of DMC3's tower and updating them. There's a lot of enemy variety, featuring many creatures reprised from previous titles. Nearly every boss in this game is some sort of callback to an older boss - this game knows it's a bit of a nostalgia trip, but I think it strikes the balance very nicely and manages to be just nostalgic enough without inducing eye-rolls or feeling redundant. The bosses are a good bit less difficult on the whole than the in the previous titles - not once did I get stuck on a boss and have to try again later. This is at least partially due to the checkpoint and gold orb system, but I also found the few secret levels I played to be more straightforward - I didn't encounter any levels that had an obvious solution but frustratingly impossible execution, unlike in the previous titles. Instead, there was more focus on making the player find creative optimal solutions, which I appreciated.
There is technically a cooperative multiplayer component to this game, but I don't really understand why it's there. In the levels that feature multiple characters, other players randomly enter your world as the characters you didn't pick. You're asked if you'd like to give them a stylish rating at the end of each mission, which is fine for some of the fights, but often doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The problem is that you can't actually see them or what they're doing the vast majority of the time, so good luck giving them an accurate rating. You'll often progress through levels at different speeds, and many of the levels are designed so that the two characters are in different parts of the level for most of its duration. This system even matchmakes between different levels which follow different characters during the same timeframe, making it highly unlikely that you'll ever catch a glimpse of your cohorts. There isn't even a way to team up with your friends, nor can you chat with the other players. It seems like a system which probably took a lot more time and effort to implement than it was actually worth given the absolutely minuscule impact it has on the gameplay.
Once again, the PC port was an extremely buggy experience for me. The cutscenes often stuttered, with audio and video going out of sync, and I experienced many crashes to desktop. There isn't much in the way of DLC for this title, and I didn't buy any of it. Most of it consists of the pay-to-win orb buying system from DMC4 (you can't even buy the game on Steam anymore without getting 100,000 orbs, perhaps to address complaints of early game dullness - thankfully, I bought it elsewhere), costumes, and alternate weapons. The only piece of DLC that interested me was the live action cutscenes, which are basically live-action storyboards for the game, providing some insight into the development process. It's something I'd like to pick up someday, but seeing as it's inexplicably no longer available for independent purchase on Steam, I'm not sure when that will happen.
RATING: 7.8/10 Scissors - One of the best entries in the series. 3rd best in my ranking, but that's disputable.
Inline Image:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sgOhsGgYu-0/maxresdefault.jpg