| Thoughts on my first time playing DMC 2: Update #1 (yes, really) Posted: 15 Jan 2022 12:12 AM PST Now that I've finished DMC 1, here we go with my opening thoughts about my first playthrough of the game that is almost universally hated by the DMC community. I've made it through Missions 1-5, so this post will cover those. I've quickly learned that guns are as OP as everyone says they are in this game. Honestly you could basically just stand there or jump and shoot the common enemies and most of them will be juggled and die before they can even get a hit in. The guns also increase your air time, which is nice. The wall-running mechanic is cool, but I feel like it's just that. Not much of a practical use for it. On the other hand, I appreciated that I got to start with Air Hike instead of having to buy it like in DMC 1 and 5. This game still bears quite a few similarities to DMC 1, which makes sense I guess. Weapon powerups are still quite expensive, Dante is still more serious, there are still those sealed-off doors with the grabby hands on them, and a lot of the mechanics are the same. There are also some key differences between DMC 1 and 2 though. In terms of difficulty, DMC 1 definitely felt harder. Even the most common enemy in 1, the Marionettes, were more dangerous than most of the common enemies I've encountered in DMC 2, and 1 actually required you to read the enemy files to learn the optimal strategies to fight each enemy. With 2, when you get a new enemy file, it's about one sentence long and tells you next to nothing about the enemy since it doesn't really matter, you're just gonna shoot them to death anyway. XD One thing that I like more about 2 is that the maps are pretty straightforward, not interconnected between levels, and once you reach an area it stays revealed on the map, so for someone who spent way too much time getting lost in 1 like me, this is a welcome reprieve. Along with no confusing puzzles so far; you beat the enemies, the door opens. I like that. And Red Orb stashes are thankfully much easier to find in this game. I liked starting out with the Electro Heart, it was basically like having Alastor from the start of the game (well, minus the moves). Blasting lightning from E&I is always cool to see. I wasn't prepared for the house to explode in the cutscene at the end of Mission 1, and then Dante saved Lucia and the cutscene just...ended with an abruptness that was almost comedic. Mission 2 started off with a cutscene with some weird elements, like Dante flipping a coin to decide whether or not to help and Arius being some corporate douche (I haven't played the reboot, but this villain already sounds like he'd fit much better in that instead of in the mainline series). I found it interesting that Matier supposedly fought alongside Sparda all those years ago though, cuz I was under the impression that Sparda fought alone (it's even stated in the DMC 1 intro that he did). So uh...what gives? I mean, I guess she could be lying, so hopefully the game explains that later. I wonder if the Flambat was like a prototype for the Pyrobats in DMC 5? The blue flame puzzle wasn't much of a puzzle at all, I really just kept breaking random spheres until the door opened. XD The Savage Golems were tanky, and fighting them was a bit of a slog. Flying with the Aerial Heart kind of reminded me of Dante's Sin Devil Trigger form from 5. By Mission 3, I had noticed that this game has a big lack of meaningful cutscenes, so I'm guessing that the story isn't important here. This mission might as well be called "Dante Shoots Big Monke a Bunch (as in bananas, heh) of Times Till it Dies." After a highly interactive boss fight, I got the key and tried going back the way I came after exiting the room, but I ran into a seemingly endless horde of enemies which I eventually got tired of fighting, so I decided to turn back around and accidentally ended up completing the mission by using the key on the last door. That wouldn't have happened in DMC 1 cuz it always gave you the option to use an item or not when interacting with an object. Oh well. Mission 4 was a little more challenging than the previous missions. Not in terms of common enemy difficulty, of course, but just in terms of getting around the map and the boss fight. Initially I didn't know how to get past the gate before it closed after hitting the spherical device, so I decided to save myself some frustration and leave it for later. And then even with the Quick Heart, it still took me two tries to get past the gate (yep, I suck XD). The Jokatgulm boss fight actually brought me my first and only death in the game so far. I was trying to keep airborne while shooting her, and it seemed to be working, but then she just stopped taking damage at a certain point and repeatedly hit me with her tentacles. So I finally decided to DT and go for her head, which worked, but I was already too low on HP by that point. Had to revive to finish it. You'd think I'd have learned after the gimmicky Phantom and Nightmare boss fights in DMC 1, but I guess not. Honestly I just hate bosses that are completely immune to damage with no clear source of immunity (e.g. Urizen's crystal). There's no two ways about it, Mission 5 sucked. There were basically three boss battles in this one mission, and none of them were fun. I mean, at least the Monke had a ranged attack this time to make it more challenging...? That's about the only good thing I can say about this mission. The Infested Tanks were bad but bearable; at least they went down relatively quickly. Why was there so much jumping though? I suck at jumping, so having to do all of that was awful. And then...there was the Infested Chopper. Fucking hell, I am absolutely baffled by why they put this thing in the game. It's probably the worst boss fight I've ever seen. Why did I have to fight it not once, but multiple times? Why did it take so little damage in the boss fight at the end of the mission when compared to before? Why was it actually offscreen at points unless I jumped to see it? Even the sound design was terrible, you could legit use the unedited sound of the Chopper firing bullets as earrape. I was just standing there shooting till my hand got sore and praying to get some DT gauge to end the fight even a millisecond more quickly. I actually never want to play this mission again. Like with the underwater missions in DMC 1, I'll return to those only if I'm going for the plat, but I just don't want to replay this mission ever, even if it means not getting the plat for this game. It's not worth the suffering. So is the game as bad as people say it is so far? Well, Mission 5 certainly fit that description. But despite that, I think I can keep playing. Cuz unless there's another mission down the line that's as horrible as that one, everything in the game seems bearable, if a bit lackluster and easy. I'm trying to throw in some melee attacks here and there to make the combat a bit less monotonous. I found the Shotgun too, but from what I've seen E&I are just vastly superior to it, so I don't think I'm gonna bother using it again. As with DMC 1, I'm focusing on buying Blue Orbs to increase my vitality first; I don't really need better moves to deal with the enemies the game is throwing at me at this point anyway. The game does have its merits, and I can recognize some elements in it that appeared in later installments (such as the Rain Storm move). For now, I'll persevere and hope for no more Mission 5-quality shit. If you guys have any tips that could help me have more fun with this game, they'd be much appreciated. Thanks for reading! :) submitted by /u/russiakolkhoz [link] [comments] |
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