Without Itsuno

 

When legendary developers fade from our studios it is often usually the end of a run we're not going to see again for quite a while. When Hideo Kojima left Konami that was pretty much the end of thier relevancy as a game developer- they've not even managed to scratch the AAA world since despite recent attempts- but hey, I guess they're happy serving slop up to their audience of awaiting guppy fish. When Shinji Makami left Tangoworks, he did so under the force belief that if they just kept making award winning games then someone would want to keep them around- obviously they ended up being shut down in the next year and had to be bailed out in a temporary resurrection we can only hope sticks. (Bailed out of a shutdown? Huh, I guess that means someone found the award winning studio worthwhile. How bizarre.) And now that Hideaki Itsuno has left Capcom- what does that mean for the franchises he left behind?

Itsuno's legend began a little bit into his career when the man was brought on as a 'reorganiser' to a failing project that was spiralling down a pit. The horrifically disastrous Devil May Cry 2 was being helmed by a figure purposefully hidden to history because the mess they were making of the project was that bad all have stricken their name from the books. Devil May Cry 2 was apparently on a nose dive and with the hard work of Itsuno in refocusing the project the team managed to squeeze out something that could actually be released in the public- but if you've ever actually sat down and played the thing you'll know that's small praise. A largely gutted charm and wit, distinctly missing stylistic flair of the original, thoughtless level design, unambitious combat improvement, (or, more appropriately, regressions) laughably ill-conceived bosses- yet also the only actually worthwhile secondary campaign in the franchise. It wasn't something worth resting your cap on. And Itsuno agreed.

What happened next could only have been the result of someone with a fire lit under them, because the absolute heel turn from Devil May Cry 2 to 3 is a mind-blowing achievement. When I did my playthrough of the franchise recently, even all this years removed from the original environment and release dates, I could feel that Devil May Cry 3 was something special without any context. Combat wasn't just revived, it was rewritten- they created the style-based combat the franchise has been known for ever since. Dante and his brother Neo-Angelo/Vergil got their souls this game. The supporting cast stood out proud with great moments and designs so good we're still comparing modern Lady redesigns to her original. The game was challenging, the bosses were impressive and memorable, the title was a powerhouse- plain and simple. And Itsuno established himself as a director with a mark to leave.

He may not have birthed the series himself but Itsuno would go on to help define Devil May Cry over the years with the honestly under-appreciated Devil May Cry 4- which refined a lot of what 3 was doing into an actual half-decent evolving narrative, the heavily critiqued DMC, which is the only game I haven't had the pleasure of in the franchise so far, and my favourite of the franchise- Devil May Cry 5- the absolute pinnacle of this genre of games, a master in every facet. All with Itsuno either in the director's chair or on as a supervisor. If the man was so eager to rewrite history so he wouldn't go down as the cause of Devil May Cry 2- he ended up going above and beyond in his role. But what if I told you the reason I lauded the man's work had nothing to do with any of that?

You see, a while ago there a little Fantasy title that dropped off the face of the earth for being released at the same time as Skyrim- the single biggest fantasy game of that console generation. This title was not as big as Skyrim, nor as immersive, nor as pretty. But do you know what Dragon's Dogma of that age did well? God it was charming. And unique. Dragon's Dogma was an action adventure hack-n-slash brimming with identity and purpose in the robust grapple and climb mechanic to the cleverly designed and dynamic boss enemies- I could go on about my love for Dragon's Dogma until the cows come how- and how severely underappreciated it was by the public! 

Itsuno similarly agreed that the game never got it's flowers from the public and spent a decade trying to give it another go around. In that time we'd forever hear allusions to a potential sequel, got a middling Anime to tide us over and had to endure China bragging about their country only MMO version of the game. Only now, in the year of our lord 2024, was Dragon's Dogma 2 finally given the greenlight to release and it finally introduced the world to a game unlike what they expected. A creativity machines begging it's audience to play around, just like the modern combat for the Devil May Cry franchise. And whilst I have my issues with it, I would love to see more content come to DD2 to push it ever further beyond! But now, I'm not sure that's ever going to happen.

Like a spirit hanging around past it's due it would seem that Itsuno was just hanging around Capcom in the hopes of getting Dragon's Dogma out the door and now that's done- so is he. Itsuno has left the company behind and in doing so robbed Capcom of their strongest talent- in the shaky hope that those left behind will be capable in his absence. But so far? All I know of non-Itusno products is the absolute mess that was made out of the non-chinese release of the Devil May Cry Mobile game- a once exciting little product in it's own right. And Dragon's Dogma? I'm afraid to see that delicately balanced little swansong dragged off a cliff by weak directors manhandled under dumb executives.

Capcom aren't going to drown, they'll always have Sonic. But my reasons for still keeping up what the blue studio was up to? Yeah that was pretty much exclusively caught up in the many machinations of this one creative powerhouse. Truly the company isn't going to be the same and the legacy he leaves could be in shaky hands. Dragon's Dogma 2 pleads for more content but do I really want a DLC that Itsuno didn't work on? Do I want more Devil May Cry games that he didn't work on? We kind of starting from scratch in the trust department and that's always the sad part of departures like this. I just hope the man is proud of himself.

Dead Risen: reanimated

 How did they not use 'Reanimated'?

I will forever lament everything we didn't get out of the Dead Rising franchise, but from the space of what was possible, rather than the reality of how it would have actually ended up- you get me? For example, that original idea for a follow-up to Chucks story where we played a co-op kind of Souls-like guiding Katey through Mexico? How different, how unique, how interesting! People would've hated that! The people love knowing exactly what they're going to play, they hate not recognising setting, or gameplay styles or even environments sometimes. And yet- they hate things getting to familiar too. Dead Rising 4 I think did itself no favours returning to the exact same mall from the first game, regardless of improvements and expansions upon that map. And being bad certainly wasn't a major sales driver I guess...

Dead Rising is a franchise I'm pretty sure has been dead for a while now- uhh, that pun slipped out of nowhere, I meant to say that it's 'inactive'... you get what I mean! No one at Capcom really saw the point of hyping up the corpse of what Dead Rising 4 turned into. There were no big pick-up DLCs beyond that one where Frank turns into a zombie or something. No references in connected Capcom properties over the years, and this has been the only game to escape their voracious remaking wrath- at least until now- kind off. Because yes, after all these years waiting and totally forgetting about what this franchise did to make us so wary of it- finally we have ourselves a brand new Dead Rising game coming our way and it is... a semi-remake kinda? (Capcom have been bizarrely vague on the matter.)

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster comes to a world that has already endured a console remake of the original Dead Rising, a more-current generation remaster and a direct spiritual successor or two- now what we have appears to be some sort of... 'visual remake', so to speak. Which is to say that Capcom are only touching what the game looks like, and for some reason the voice talent involved- removing the iconic voice of Frank for those who care. (Personally I always thought this franchise clung too desperately to the character of Frank for no reason but that's neither here nor there.) But it appears that beneath the hood all the gameplay aspects are untouched, making this yet another re-release of the exact same game to a new console generation- but with enough bits flipped around they can internally justify charging full price for it? Is that about right?

Now as far as the headspace that Capcom are at is concerned, they see the original Dead Rising as a point within video game history from which experiences blossomed. They see the experience of the original supermarket zombie-slaying game as a cornerstone moment of that console generation, and that every release since has visited that moment to a new generation. And to be fair- I do think Dead Rising was pretty influential back when it launched, pretty much setting a standard for Zombie games that hasn't really been upended to this day. I just played through Dead Island 2 over the past month and that game owes so much to this franchise... and yet- to be honest I think it was Dead Rising 2 that deserves most of the plaudits.

Dead Rising brought us the concept of 'chop till you drop', living the life of dancing circles around hoards of zombies as you lazed about and survived- casually ignoring the many dying survivors as you watch their timers tick down. (Just me?) Capturing the spirit of that one five minute scene in the middle of Dawn of the Dead where the group enjoyed having all those stores entirely to themselves- yeah, that makes for some fun gaming. But what about the actual surviving, the glorification of zombie murdering the creativity now inherent to zombie games? That was really sharpened to a point with the coming of Dead Rising 2 and their combo weapons when you really think about it. Dead Rising's contributions are noteworthy, but 2 really hit it home!

Instead we're headed back to Willamette with all the individual gameplay elements largely untouched? It just seems bizarre living in a world where we've seen Zombie games pushed beyond the wildest dreams of their original. Resident Evil 2 Remake has to be one of the best Zombie games ever released even now! Couldn't they have taken a better look at the movement of the original? The combat? The Ai? (God, please don't let them ship with the same AI from the original!) They don't need to totally plunge the game into the modern realm, but just apply a layer of modern development standards on what originally worked in order to know them up to snuff- then you can call this a remake. Although come to think of it- that does sound like a lot of work, no?

Dead Rising has been a property that has lost Capcom money most recently, and given we live in the industry of 'what have you done for me lately?' maybe the powers that be aren't willing to reinvest their money into a proven shaky franchise despite the years of separation inherent. Seeing that there are already versions of Dead Rising available on this generation of console, I can't help but wonder if Capcom aren't pushing themselves into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy- half-assing a remaster literally designed to poach their own players without offering a substantial reason to switch- the name alone will push units but how many are going to see the much more cost-effective 'triple pack' and just stick with what they know? I wonder...

Due out for this year Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster seems like a canary dropped into a well to judge whether or not we're due for more from this franchise and I have to be honest- I'm really not sure that we are. What Dead Rising brought to our screens is unforgettable, but also played out- as proved by the franchise which couldn't even reignite that spark by going back to the place that started it all for 4. Dead Island has trounced this franchise in creativity- Resident Evil has surpassed it in sheer gameplay- Far Cry is set to do a typical Ubisoft move and steal their classic timed-game formula- Dead Rising gave so much of itself away I'm not sure there's anything left all of it's own to carry forward onto the future anymore. But hey, maybe if this does well we'll get a Dead Rising 2 'Deluxe Remaster'. That might be fun at least.

Dragon's Dogma 2 Review

I knew you loved this world too much to leave it behind!

Being quite honest with you all- I, like many other diehard Dragon's Dogma fans, never thought this day would come. For years it seemed a forgone conclusion that the quirky little action RPG with a sprinkle of something indescribably swashbuckling and reckless was consigned to forever populate the annals of cult-status curiosity. Even when the announcement was made and the clock fully set- I'd be lying if I didn't confess a bit of disbelieving whiplash, an unwillingness to really comprehend the fact that one day soon I would be playing a brand new Dragon's Dogma adventure, therefore it was only really in the final week that those last second jitters started creeping up upon me. Is the magic still going to be there? Will I find some of those returned design directions cumbersome in the decade apart and deprived of these here rose-tinted glasses? Will I get back that easy 'pick and play' wonder that I've missed from my RPGs of late?

In answering these queries I picked up my copy, on the Xbox Series X for hopes of taking advantage of the 4k offering to see this game at it's best- a decision which might have saved me a lot of the PC launch woes we hear the game suffering from. That being said, even the Series X console version is not free from some stutters, occasional slowdowns in the more busy post-game sections (never prolonged but enough to be temporarily disruptive) and one crash, early on. Although across about 49 hours of playtime, that isn't the most terrible occurrence in the world. I'm also quite surprised to report there were no quest bugs for me throughout the entire game, which seems strange to gloat about but... man, I've endured Assassin's Creed, Baldur's Gate and my umpteenth playthrough of Skyrim across the past few years- totally bugless quests are a novelty to me!

Upon starting Dragon's Dogma you will confronted with the most brazen aspect of this game's ethos- that it is in some ways as much a reboot of the DD franchise as it is a sequel. I was actually quite surprised to see the game entitled 'Dragon's Dogma' on the title screen, sans the 2, and actually 'tabbed out' (so to speak) in order to check that the software name was still called Dragon's Dogma 2 and that Capcom hadn't suddenly decided this was a definitive remake at the last second. (They hadn't, the game is still called 'Dragon's Dogma 2'.) And it is a decent point to check on because with this release Dragon's Dogma appears to be much more of a 'Final Fantasy' style anthology than we might have originally believed. (Although I've never had the opportunity to play the Chinese MMO release- so maybe such groundwork was laid there.)

Sure, those that are familiar with the original might think they know what that entails- to spoil the original game a bit; (it released in 2012- you've had your chance!) that narrative was framed around a loop of 'Arisen' revenants hunting the Dragon that stole the hearts out of their chest only to go on to then become the next Dragon or rise even further to assume the role of 'Seneschal' and watch over the loop on your own. Dragon's Dogma 2 was sold as an 'alternate world story', but we're already familiar with the 'world hopping antics' of our Pawns (player designed companions who remain our allies throughout the game) as they enter the games of other players and return with useful snippets of information- 'Alternate world' is not as grand of a concept to introduce as Hideaki Itsuno may have believed when he said it. But let me be clear for him- this is an alternate universe.

That is to say, Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't even depict the same Dogma that the original game did. The order of the world that we knew, of Arisen meets Dragon meets Seneschal- entirely irrelevant in this new setting- and I think that is an important nugget of the world for new players to grasp lest they confuse themselves trying to fit in the rules of this new world within the constraints of the one we knew. (Not least of all trying to figure out how any of this is happening in the first place when the canonical 'true ending' of Dragon's Dogma 1 involved, as the theme song quoteth 'Finishing the cycle of Eternal Return'.) This story is a story anew.

And with a new story should come a fresh introduction- for those coming in for the lesson. Here we go- Dragon's Dogma 2 tells the story of 'The Arisen' an immortal warrior chosen by the herald of doom itself 'The Dragon', to be the world's champion. This individual is identified for their display of abnormal will, typically in the form of courage, and then has their heart delicately ripped out of their chests by an overly-long dragon claw before that beast then pops the organ in it's mouth and scarpers. Thus forms the bond between Dragon and the now-immortalised Arisen, and thus starts the prophecy wherein that Arisen must slay their Dragon, lest risk their will breaking against their nerve, thus severing the covenant- roaming the world as a failed Arisen forever more.

To this task the Arisen, the player, commands AI companions known as 'Pawns'. Pawns are soulless beings born to be directed into action by the Arisen, and crucially each one is designed by another player courtesy of the neat 'shared world' of Dragon's Dogma's online! Each player designs their 'Main Pawn' near the beginning of the game to be their one constant throughout the adventure, but that Pawn can spawn in, or be summoned into, other Arisen's worlds to serve as one of their Side Pawns. Everytime you rest (in this game that means sleeping at an Inn or your bed but not when you do it at a campsite) you'll get a brief report of the other people who hired your pawn, be awarded some Rift Crystal currency and maybe even receive a little gift for the hardwork your little helper put in.

                                        

Pawns go a little deeper than that too this time around. Quests that they go on enter into the Pawns memory, meaning that when you have an objective that is obscure or far away, knowledgeable Pawns in your party that experience that same quest in another world will chime in to lead you to your destination with pin-point accuracy. (And only the occasional AI pathfinding meltdown.) They can also be equipped with one of a few specialisations which gives them a role beyond their vocations (class) to stand out as unique. One might feed you consumable curatives in battle if you equip them with some, others might democratize picked-up loot automatically in order to prevent the Arisen becoming overloaded and hitting those 'slow down' thresholds in carry weight. And one might just translate Elven for you. Which is so insanely helpful- I've got no idea what the knife-ears are saying about me behind my back!

This forms the pseudo-online character-sharing aspect of the gameplay trifecta which characterises the unique gameplay loop of Dragon's Dogma with the second being the actual combat itself. Vocations of the Arisen and their pawns can be switched out without any cost at any of the guild members found in all populated settlements- this isn't one of those games where you build a character for one class and stay rigid in that role, nor is this one of those games where there aren't really any classes and every character kind of just evolves into becoming the same character once the obvious better skills start becoming apparent. Instead you swap between being a spellcasting mage one day to a cartwheeling rogue the next, a elemental arrow raining 'Magic Archer' to a pirouetting sky dancing 'Mystic Spearhand'. And much to the game's credit- every single class feels like a fresh character.

With the pedigree of the recent Devil May Cry games on the game director's resume this shouldn't be any great surprise, but the amount of small details that go in to make each class feel mechanically simple but blossom with systemic distinction is quite masterful from the design department. Magic Archers will balance a lock-on reticule to disperse their magic effects over a wide range of enemies, or focus in on a single big enemy with a dozen simultaneous effect arrows. Whereas a non-magic archer has to aim true and move fast, with the trade-up being unbeatable single target damage when you get in that perfect zone to focus. Mystic Spearhands are constantly vying for the all-import stunstate which allows for a devastating finisher hit so powerful it knocks entire health bars off some bosses. Fighters become moving fortresses, Thiefs are free-scrambling death dealers- and Tricksters are a particularly difficult to manage class of decoys, feints and enemy misdirection. Not a single class is tacked on to fill a gap- and I have played them all extensively because they're that much fun to mess around with!

And if that isn't enough, there is the final ultimate vocation that even I, with my plus 100 hours playtime, still don't feel comfortable enough to work properly. The Warfarer (not 'Wayfarer' as it is so often mistaken to be) allows the player to wield all weapons at once but only with a very specific selection of skills curated from the larger list. Core skills of each class are retained, as are playstyles, and the Warfarer's special skill is essentially the ability to switch through each in a line- presenting a logistical puzzle of setting up complimentary class switches in the right order; a direct evolution of the Devil Arms system Nero works with through Devil May Cry 5. Warfarer is essentially the end-game way to play the game, and those who master it will essentially have turned their arisen into a medieval version of Dante through bitter trial- a jack of all trades and the all around master to boot.

Together with the slot-in abilities that you can switch between in rotations of 4 in order to refine an exact tool set and you've got yourself dozens of ways to play through the 10 different available classes. The only real let-down of this system is the fact that the absolute tons of great looking weapons and class specific armours you pick up throughout the game hold no further influence upon playstyle. All they offer are stat numbers and the occasional miniscule resistance to certain debuffs. In that vein the game offers similar itemisation to Souls-Borne games in that they largely serve only to feed the 'fashion souls' gameplay angle. To which I can actually attest- there are a bunch of really cool different types of armours throughout Dragon's Dogma 2 that cater to a vast array of medieval fantasy tastes from your chainmail solider to your tin-hat paladin, fur cloaked mountain barbarian and bone horned hunter- all with mix and match potential. I don't typically comment on cosmetic variety in my games, and when I do- it's because I find them particularly noteworthy.

All these tools go into crafting the monster slaying arsenal, with the large-scale boss battles making up the heart of the Dragon's Dogma play cycle. Squaring up against towering Ogres and monstrous dragons feels run-of-the-mill on paper, but until you've scrambled up the swinging tail of a floating drake and stabbed a knife in it's heart sending the beast crashing back to the ground in a brutal heap- you've never seen these scenarios at their best. There's a undeniable cinematic quality in the spectacle of Dragon's Dogma's 'David vs Goliath' approach to boss design, and coupled with the popping beauty of Capcom's RE engine, some of the the most frantic moments of the biggest fights are simply mouth-watering! But the combat is more than skin deep- each boss is infused with inherent weaknesses that the player must pick up and exploit in order to bring creatures low- and they span far more than just your typical elemental weakness! One-eyed Ogres can be blinded, Griffins falls out of the sky if their wings are set ablaze and Trolls lust after women so much they put themselves in harms way. Scrambling up both sides of an armoured Ogre in order to break it's fastenings, stripping the armour that keeps you crawling up to that ever-vulnerable single eye is peak Dragon's Dogma at it's absolute best.

The key most evolution of Dragon's Dogma from 1 to 2 is the way that the team realised the world space- which is a pretty big deal given that the gameplay loop of Dragon's Dogma 2 always revolves around travelling and navigating their overly hostile world. Seeing as these roads are one's you'll be walking up and down for hundreds of hours, part of the thirst for a sequel was the fact that these routes were often so simple and basic and easy to grow tired of. Which is probably why Dragon's Dogma 2 ramps up it's exploration so considerably. You'll find dozens of caves, alternative paths, breakable rock walls, collapsible floors, gaps that can only be covered with special skills, heights that can only be reached with Levitation. I even know you can push a stumbling ogre over a cliff edge in order to form as bridge. (I know it's possible, I just haven't managed it yet.) And just this morning people learned that you can feed stone blocks to the giant discarded trebuchet around the map to destroy even larger clumps of rocks and open up even more paths. 

With the introduction of a whole new biome, the craggy deserts of Battahl, that exploration has spanned out even more with crumbling ruins of some bygone civilisation scattered across the wasteland, and precarious pully-rope bridges that suspend you over the deadly gorges, but themselves are often beset by gangs of harpies. Even the city world spaces you'll be traversing, Vernworth and Bakbattahl, are so much more alive than the duke's city from Dragon's Dogma 1. They are less flat and more varied, stuffed with nooks and crannies to discover, and constructed with obvious cultural distinctions. From the Western European inspired medieval buildings to the Eastern European inspired mountain dig-out homes- you'll feel like you've travelled the breadth of a continent from one end of the world to the other. It makes you wish that the Photo Mode didn't suck so bad. (Seriously- it might as well just be a 'turn off HUD' button for how useless it is!)

The Beastren, who occupy Battahl, are your typical anime 'monster people' race- only with the good grace to actually commit to making them cat people, rather than just giving them vague cat accessories. This race is actually fairly well conceived on a visual level, carrying enough distinctiveness for one to be recognised to another, although obviously not nearly as much as regular humans do. I just wish there was perhaps a bit more material detailing their specific cultures or origins, as even the narrative makes it clear that Battahl is not inherently their land, meaning it's customs are not their ancestral ones. Heck, Vermund was founded by a Beastren! A little more thought could have gone into to realising their narrative distinctiveness, similar to how Races are handled in The Elder Scrolls franchise. (Speaking of The Elder Scrolls- I'm sad that the Beastren don't speak in Khajiiti voices. Big shame.)

One of my fondest memories of an unforgettable trek was during my journey to track down a Dragon to seize it's valuable blood. A journey that led me through an in-game business week of pushing through the Battahli wastes. Making ground until my party couldn't stand straight anymore and then camping over the night. We were beset by duo Ogres and swooping Griffins here and there, and even ended up getting lost down an ancient cave and coming face to face with a Medusa, which I managed to grapple onto the back of whilst it failed and brutally decapitated it. All this before the actual designed intended showdown against the Lesser Drake atop the mountain sliding ruined Coliseum. That alone was my own personal little 'Jason and the Argonauts' style adventure.

The only real problem with all this is the fact that, lo and behold, there's little tangible unique content worth exploring all this world to uncover. Inside all those caves, atop all those rooftops, and tucked in all those back corners- all you'll typically find are a clump of the same few monsters you've seen dotted around the open world. Chests with a small assortment of decent to good consumables stuffed in them. Maybe now and then you'll get a cool piece of armour, but it's rare and there's little logical sense as to where these items spawn. (And you'll need to buy all the best gear anyway.) The bosses, Dragon's Dogma 2's most fun content, aren't plentiful enough for many unique one's to be squirrelled away in these back corners of the open world either- as far as I know I think there are only two hidden unique monster spawn locations- one for each biome.

Which touches on what is easily the biggest let-down of Dragon's Dogma 2- enemy variety. We heard a lot of talk about the way the team have handled monsters since the days of Dragon's Dogma 1 and a little bit of mention of variety. But I remember watching those previews and seeing the same Goblins, Wolves, Ogres and Trolls from the original. Fantastically realised monsters, of course, but one's we were already familiar with. With the full game out, it actually seems there is less enemy variety than we got in the first game! There are no Beholders or Cockatrices or Dire Wolves- in fact, the 'petrification medication' is literally only used for a single boss in the game that spawns in a single location across the map. Killing monsters with fantastic skills, learning their unique patterns and how best to exploit them- that is the height of the gameplay cycle in Dragon's Dogma 2- which is why it is so unthinkable that the team pulled back so heavily on expanding these vectors out! At the very least, if they couldn't greatly diversify the rooster, they could have least focused on monsters unique to the one's we know from the first game! Granted, each monster has been designed totally from scratch, such that Saurians are no longer impossibly annoying to fight and Harpies actually take advantage of the fact they can fly to stay out of reach- But I think we are all saddened by the inability to meet and learn about a fresh new cast of monsters.

Aside from the beastly, the world of Dragon's Dogma is stuffed full of the NPC characters that are designed to give the world a heart- and through a series of robust world generation tools the team have given Dragon's Dogma 2 a decent foundation. You'll find every NPC with a daily life they live, jobs, friends, and frequent haunts- and the player is able to interact with them by learning of their favoured types of gift and showering them in those until they receive some attention in return. The procedural job board from the original game is entirely gone this time around, so there's no hope of earning profitable quests from liked individuals, but sometimes a few might show up outside your home to embark on a 'journey' to some backwater part of nowhere. Don't expect all these NPCs to be fully realised personality driven fonts of exploration- that isn't the point of the game- but expect just enough life to buy into the fiction of this world's existence and why you might care to keep people safe. Particularly given how easy it is for NPCs to die now that monsters have a chance to invade the capital cities!

I love how you can find certain NPCs walking the wilds and being beset by monsters who you can choose to save. Fast travel, achieved through travelling in the back of carts, can come under attack by ambushes who will destroy the transport if you let them, and might even murder the drivers too! There's this curious sense of a world simulation happening around you that not many games manage to properly convey, not even those that apparently go specifically for it. (Starfield comes to mind.) I was struck silly when rocking up to the Hot Springs on the otherside of the world from Vernworth, where I bumped into Sven the Regentkin- on his way back from a vacation of his own. Those little moments enforce the fiction of the breathing world, and they alone are what makes a world like this feel so special and alive on the most important level- the inconsequential one! 

Beyond the NPCs are the heroes and heroines you'll meet through side questlines and get to know, and of these we have a much more interesting slate to work with. Characters like Ulrika and Menella actually have places of import that shift throughout the world, and the amount you interact with them can ultimately decide their fates in the endgame. Character writing is far from this team's strong suit, however, and none of the cast are what I would call 'fully rounded individuals'. Brant, the captain with which you'll interact the most, is easily the most boring out of this cast. But engage with the game on it's level and you'll find some rudimentarily evolved relationships to tie your Arisen to the world around them- all important steps to making the themes of the game take root- particularly in the post-game sections.

The quests of Dragon's Dogma 2 are their own curious blend of freeform 'figure out where you need to go' mixed with slightly disguised fetch objectives. The actual fun of a lot of these quests are the expectation of scouring the world and listening to clues, or the directions of hired pawns who have already played these quests in their host worlds and want to guide you, to find waypoints not marked on your map. The team knew to feed back into their exploration loop and that results in a lot less quests than a typical fantasy RPG would boast, but a lot more infused with their own dynamic stories you carve simply by travelling their beaten path. It's an interesting way of sprucing up otherwise rather rudimentary quest lines. Yet there's little hiding the fact that many of these quests are pretty bare bones when you look at them objectively and unless you've already brought into the flow of the game and how it expects you to engage with it's world- you'll likely find most largely dissatisfying. And also- stealth missions are a total joke- I have no idea why this game even has one, let alone several! 

Dragon's Dogma 2's story was where I was the most curious to see how the team had evolved, given how the original game's narrative was largely bland and unmemorable whilst Dark Arisen was grand and complex. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but Dragon's Dogma 2 seems to have mixed both storytelling tools and come out with something disappointingly straightfaced on the surface with a pleasing amount of background depth if you actively try and engage with the world. The quest to depose the false Sovran should never have been the main drive of the plot, for how weak of a draw it is given that 'king-ship' is a mere side effect of being the dragon-slaying Arisen- but peeling back the layers of the story to peer at the world beneath by listening to the context clues of the right bizarre NPCs, or interpreting the silent ruins conveying non-obvious information: you'll see there's something here, just not anything the team were confident enough to commit to. It's rather disappointing we don't get the massive exploratory environmentally-explicit narrative story it seemed we were building towards from Dark Arisen. Now I have to hope we get another giant expansion re-release in the future to see that height of story out of this franchise again!

                                

And just as the original has, Dragon's Dogma 2 does boast a robust post-game that- I am happy to say- greatly outshadows the original's. Dragon's Dogma's post-game, tied to it's 'secret ending'- (Which is so not-secret I stumbled into it accidentally) is essentially the garnish to the dish you've been building unconsciously the entire game. It's where consequences come to fruition and what you've learned throughout the game really comes into play in a world where the stakes are finally somewhat real. I love the idea they went with, leaning a bit into the world building of Souls-Likes without slipping into being just another copy- my sadistic ass just wish they went even further in some regards! Again, though, I think the team missed a huge trick buy not having a final boss! It seems unthinkable that there's no blow-out post game fight against, I dunno, the Ur Dragon or something? Anything to cap off that genius concept of a post-game! Seriously, it's like the game keeps hopping around all the obvious routes to greatness and I can't even conceive of why!

Conclusion

Dragon's Dogma is as ever itself, which is what we kept the original in our hearts so long to preserve. It's less than average way of handling basic gameplay concepts, a world built around explorative navigation often without explicit waypoints in even the most obscure quests, dynamic world bosses with unique character traits and quirks you'll intrinsically learn how to exploit and inexplicably meaningful world interactions- are all uniquely clever in a way only this franchise can boast. But the game still holds a lot of the hang-ups from the original, in largely risk-lacking storytelling and a frustratingly lacking pool of enemies and bosses- which can often undermine the long journey of 12 years we've gone on waiting for this game. In some ways the game is every bit what it use to be, which is comforting, yet in other ways that is so frustrating it makes you want to tear your hair out! At least the core gameplay has undergone such significant bounds that this feels like a genuine revival for the action RPG genre outside of the Souls-Like sub-genre that every Action RPG has felt obliged towards.

I have enjoyed my time with Dragon's Dogma to the point of light addiction, which is probably why I feel comfortable giving the game my 'Brilliant but with room to improve' 'grade of A-'. In many ways it's the game I wanted, but in many more not the game I think this could have been. Still, Dragon's Dogma 2 achieves just enough that I think with one giant blow out expansion this could easily become a game lovingly referenced for the next 12 years hence. (And look at that, I didn't even mention the word 'Microtransaction.' Guess they truly are utterly impact-less on the title.)

How about that Character creator!

 

One of the most intimidating first bosses that any Role Play gamer has to contend with is the character creator- that moment when you are well and truly confronted the limitless potential of eternity and told to whittle everything down to split second- life changing decisions! Anyone who doesn't spend a good ten minutes looking over the options available before even seriously getting started making their face will never understand the sheer horror of looking back on the toil of a thousand petty slider movements only to realise- oh my god, I've created the most boring/horrifying creature ever conceived- back to the drawing board! And with many games that you wouldn't expect getting surprisingly varied and approachable character creators in recent years, I wonder about the philosophy behind what such creators are even supposed to achieve.

The spurring of these thoughts came at the insistence of Dragon's Dogma 2 to launch early it's character creator for the purview of the curious. Through this we've been able to enjoy one of my favourite iterations of a slate of creation tools that I've seen in a game to date. Versatile and varied, Dragon's Dogma 2 enters into the nitty gritty of miniature slide management whilst bridging the gap for those that can't be bothered for the granular improvements by a wide slate of pre-set options making the art of coming up with a unique face a matter of a few moments work. Which I suppose is what empowered the team to fill the world with, reportedly, up to 1000 NPCs that seem to be hand-made- not just generated! I always love when the players get their hands on some slither of the full breadth of creation tools- because that is when the sky is truly the limit in character creation.

With Dragon's Dogma you start with 6 pages worth of pre- generated faces, and when you click one you'll receive a new page of faces similar to that choice, and after that selection you'll get another page of subtle facial structure alterations to pick from. From there you'll have your default character, and that is the canvass upon which you'll make the subtle tweaks to the rise of a cheekbone or the curve of a nose- as well as enjoy the decently robust scarring and tattoo system which allows for mostly free-form placement along the entire body so you can create the image from your imagination to a tee. It's this perfect meeting of complex and approachable which I can see really getting aplomb from all sides- a solution few were actively seeking but I feel that most all can readily appreciate.

Bethesda are well known for their character creators, ever since Skyrim decided to do away with the honestly mediocre systems of Fallout 3 and Oblivion and instead cobble together the most really robust slide-based system. That slide system was limited in it's functionality afforded to the player, however, which is why most people consider the commonly available mod that unlocks those sliders to their fullest potential an automatic download on even a casual playthrough. But there's a problem with that- with it's full potential unlocked, and even to some small degree in it's vanilla state, the Skyrim slate of options are just so vast- it's a bit overwhelming to be honest.

When you get to the sorts of games that offer several hundred slides for each slight tweak of a nose it can get to the point where you're just testing out what a slide does, figuring out you don't like it and immediately going back to defaults. Unless you have a crystal clear idea of exactly what you're going for, it's hard to maintain a unified design philosophy that guides your process. And when the options overwhelm you and you can't get a handle, you'll be less inclined to experiment which will lead to more generic creations. God knows I give up pretty quickly everytime I try to make an interesting player character in a Souls' like game for this very reason. Too much choice can be a curse in itself.

Baldur's Gate III on the otherhand veers into the direction of simple to such a degree that it is shocking how successful the character creator turned out! You literally only select between a small collection of faces and chuck some hair on top alongside some racial features- there isn't a slider in sight when it comes to building your character. Which to be fair is a lot more than they really needed to do given that this was supposed to be an isometric game- but Larian's obsession with making a fully cinematic RPG masterpiece necessitated high quality character models so I guess they were stuck between a rock and a hard place- and choosing to make every single character creation choice a curated 'body part' or 'extra feature' was certainly a bold choice indeed.

This could easily have turned out as utterly pathetic as Destiny's character creator (which still doesn't have any option to change after the tutorial despite this franchise closing in on over a decade old later this year.) Larian really honed in on all the character appearance choices that also crossed over with class building, including race and Class options, and threw in as many high quality assets as possible to give as much variation possible. Scales, Horns, pigmentation, there are even selectable genitals are in the game for some reason. The result is perhaps on the best simply character creators of all time, lacking the range of Dragon's Dogma 2, perhaps, but creating no less as memorable and unique love dolls for lonely BG3 players to vicariously find companionship through whilst convincing themselves that they'll also fall madly for some hyper interesting personality one day. 

 At it's very least a good character creator should give us the ability to conjure some rough approximation of ourselves to self-insert into a video game for the truly imagination deprived. But at it's best character creators invite players to launch themselves into tailor made shoes of their own conjuration, dreaming up a whole life to roleplay. Those who spend all those hours getting someone just right, as generic or fantastical as they ultimately end up, feel that pull of the other letting them step out of the shoes of the mundane into another life for a brief few hours. Maybe those who simply can't connect with that would be considered healthier individuals in a traditional setting- but name one mentally healthy person that's fun to have drinks with! Exactly! 

Dragons Dogma 2 approaches

 

Sooo... turns out I'm really bad at keeping schedule with upcoming releases, given that for some bizarre reason I expected Dragon's Dogma 2 to be a January release- Whereas instead I'm going to be waiting a few more months before getting my hands on the game I've waited a near decade for. Still, it's gratifying to see the surge of interest in this, new series, which I've always held to the highest regard- seemingly in spite of it's forgotten nature. Ever since it was brushed under the cultural wave which was the 'Skyrim' release, I knew Dragon's Dogma would be a series that needed to fight for it's attention, and given that the game originally won out my attention over the equally as brilliant Borderlands 2- the game was as much a heavy hitter in my book as any other generation defining console game. I just never realised it managed to worm into the headspaces of any other player like it had with me until reading all the equally as unhinged players desperate for a bit more of that unique ambrosia once again.

Dragon's Dogma impressed originally with it's sense of scale of how that actually factors into it's gameplay systems, rather than existing as a visual representation of power and scale. You could feasibly beat a dragon by stabbing at it's toes as in any other RPG on the market, but it would be much more effective to scale it's back when it isn't looking and plunging your sword into it's eye socket before the lizard can throw you off. Grappling feels like it should be one of those gimmick concepts that totally overshadows the breadth of the rest of the game, but the sheer utility it affords you, dynamically creating memorable battle moments, justifies the mechanic all on it's own. We've already seen, with their Colossus of Rhodes inspired boss, how this is legacy that the Capcom team recall and are feeding into. Team Ico should be proud of the solid foundations they no doubt inspired.

Of course, the 'box' feature which most people remember the game for would be it's Pawn system. The online system within which players share their personally built companion character with the world in such that they enter other people's games and share the knowledge of their experiences, as well as their combat vocations, with the team. A very diverse way of creating a party slightly sullied by the fact that every pawn feels roughly similar, like emotionless dolls who fight because they're told to- rather than members of a collaborative party who are working towards the same goal out of shared interests. That's probably why I don't remember them as fondly as everyone else. Once you've the same voiced character, with a slight octave change, in the same party- the magic starts to fade.

As such I find the proposed improvements to the system coming with Dragons Dogma 2 to be interesting, but ultimately not something to rest my hopes and dreams on. In a developer interview we've seen acknowledgements from Itsuno that Pawns used to repeat themselves too often, and how that is something they've tried to address directly with more voice actors and repetition redundancies. There will only ever be so far a system like this can feasibly go towards making these AI controlled companions feel unique, and I suppose my heightened cognisance of that reality dampens any hope I want to have about what they might achieve. At the end of the day, without relying on some incredibly complex AI generative system, all we can rely on is the recreation of appropriate 'Game Feel', a variable totally impossible to judge without hands-on playtime.

Just hearing the testimony of the developers however manages to paint a very confusing image of what it even is that they are going for with this game- to the point that I wonder if Dragon's Dogma 2 is even going to resemble the same play structure as the title I love. For example, just their comments on the dynamic nature of NPC interaction has me head scratching, as I'm trying to decipher exactly what is meant by 'affinity' interactions that can lead to NPCs 'fighting over you'. They tease systems wherein relationships between NPCs can permeate your good deeds, so that doing a good turn for one person makes you friendly with all their acquittances too. And apparently when two people who come around your house "to play" as part of this system (god knows what that means) "A fight might break out." Is this what a game like this even needs?

Personally hearing confusing testimony like this brings to mind memories of of early days of FABLE, when we heard stories about acorns that could grow into trees over the course of the game- despite there being no functional purpose for an idea like that existing. Such ideas became whittled down and removed as the game can into clearer focus, which made a liar out of the man who babbled about it in Interviews. (That's Peter M, of course.) The same happened with Hello Games and No Man's Sky. These comments are being made in the months before DD2 drops, so it really does seem like we're fast past the stage of experimental feature pulling- but do I really believe in some complex system of NPC affectations that lend nothing to the core fantasy of the Dragon's Dogma product? Honestly, I don't know. It certainly sounds roundly bizarre.

At the very least the forest isn't being lost through the trees; everytime I here Itsuno sit down and talk about the things that matter I nod to myself hearing the thoughts of a man who gets it. This isn't one of those wonder games that was made by an accidental collision of conflicting ideals that no one in the team quite understands how to live up to or replicate, like Saints Row 2- Itsuno seems to know what made that original great. Even just his comments on Fast Travelling made me smile. Yes, there are slightly more ways to get around the world for this new game, but actually going on the journey on your own two feet is the ideal way to get around. "Travel is boring? That's not true. It's only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun."

Dragons Dogma 2 sits at the conflux of a lot of elements, and I do wonder whether or not the game will live up to the promise we all have held in our hearts all this time. I know that myself I wanted to see our interactions with boss monsters get a focus for a sequel, so already this game isn't quite what I had envisioned all those years. (I wanted to see aquatic mythical beasts get brought to life. Maybe next time around, eh?) At the very least I know for certain that Itsuno is working on the game he always wanted to make, which is worth quite a lot considering this is the game who helped bring the Devil May Cry Franchise into the cultural eminence within which it currently resides. Slip a little bit of that grandeur and style our way, and I'll be one happy dragon slayer!

Jackpot!!!

 Can't believe I said it...

Dragon's Dogma 2 feels familiar... and that's a good thing!

 

I can't rightly voice how long I've been waiting for a follow-up to my personal 'most underrated RPG of all time' Dragon's Dogma. A game it felt like literally no one in the world had played except for me, yet one I couldn't help but fall madly in love with each time I played it for the style it possessed that no one seemed interested in replicating! The monster climbing mechanics with body part crippling, the Pawn swapping systems with dynamically learning and teaching AI moments, the sense of on-the-ground adventure in the vast swathes of travelling you were required to do, the supremely weird yet bizarrely memorable characters who under any other team would have all been classic RPG stereotypes but under the Dragon's Dogma team feel almost like winking homages both exaggerated and subverted. It teemed with possibility, life, intrigue... and all that snubbed because of a little game called Skyrim.

But times have changed! Bethesda have pretty much proven outright that they no longer have that magic spark to change the gaming landscape anymore and everyone's on the look out for the next swords-and-sorcery RPG to keep us satiated. In steps Dragon's Dogma 2, swept on wings of fury, claiming their rightly place as the it thing... at some point. We still don't have a release window and that slightly bothers me. We've gotten far too many 'forever in development' games for my liking. Still, at least Dragon's Dogma 2 is no longer an odd rumour that would pop up ever year or so hinting at the desire to 'get back to it' from the original director. We need wait no longer, gameplay and footage is here to consume! And with that we come across the big elephant in the room: It looks exactly like the first game.

Not in terms of graphical parity, mind you. Dragon's Dogma 2 is running on the latest iteration of Capcom's gorgeous RE engine, which has bedazzled the world year after year powering the stellar Resident Evil Remake series. (plus 7 and 8, obviously.) Of course liberties had to be taken on the complexity of character models, (I suspect Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't have the budget to so much as consider facial capture tech) it all still looks good. No complaints there. What I mean to imply is that Dragon's Dogma feels like the same principal of game that the first one perpetrated. Muddy green European country beset by grandiose, if crumbling, stone edifices- vast swathes of untouched fields populated only by wayfarers and dynamic beasts. It feels like the first game but more, more alive. And that's exactly what I wanted.

Dragon's Dogma always felt like it was meant to be one of those 'sandbox style' open world games where the world doesn't care about you. Everything reinforces that from the sheer scale of the giant boss creatures, the relative stinginess of the economy, the scale of the home hubs, even the rudimentary individual relationship system wherein you built friendships (and even love interests) on a one-to-one basis rather than by becoming the celebrated hero of the world. But at the time it was beholden to tech constraints. Still, there were hoards of monsters that would spawn in the brush and attack travellers, they just happened to be the exact same creatures that spawned in the exact same places everytime you went anywhere. (Until you entered the end-game world state, of course.) That seems like a dream Capcom's DD team are finally ready to capitalise on.

As we're still in the era of only talking strictly about what was shown off in the demo footage, there's not a lot that people on the game can talk about beyond ideas they wanted to explore. For one we've heard that a point of inspiration was Grand Theft Auto 5 and the way that game made every NPC feel like they are going about their daily lives. With a map 4 times the size of the first game it's important that Dragon's Dogma 2 put a bit of effort into feeding that illusion, and that hints back to the idea of a breathing open world that I think this game is going for. Already we've seen footage showing Griffins just raiding the countryside, which were more flagship encounters in the original game that stole the show. If those majestic creatures are more of a dynamic occurrence now, that just makes me wonder what the show stealers are going to be!

One word I always come back to when it comes to Dragon's Dogma, and which is starting to populate my thoughts on my favourite games, is 'robust'. I love an engine that will allow me to bend it's rules without breaking. Being able to throw an ally at an airborne beast so they can grab ahold of it felt great in the original game and we're already seeing examples of that being built upon for Dragon's Dogma 2. That one shot of the Troll having it's balance blown out from under it, forcing the monster to fall back over a mountain gap and wildly grab the otherside of the ravine, creating a makeshift bridge for the characters to scale, is just wild levels of creative ingenuity in gameplay- I just pray that's merely a taste of what's to come in the whole game.

And then there's jank. Dragon's Dogma is far from the smoothest running video game you've ever played in your life, in fact- it's a bit of a jittery ride. AI can be confused to the point where your own team can be an impediment to success, monsters sometimes stumble off of tall buildings to their own demise. The game is silly, but in the most endearing possible way. All that roughness is very much part of the identity we very much want to see replicated, and according to the preliminary impressions it's sounding like the game is every bit as adorably off-kilter as we need it to be. Not enough to ruin the experience, but enough to colour the gameplay in a way that's memorable. Because if there's one thing that can be said about Dragon's Dogma, it sure is memorable!

Dragon's Dogma is one of those games where what we love about it only requires magnification in order to satisfy the fanbase, and as long as narrative cues were taken more from 'Dark Arisen' than from the base game of the original, I have no doubt that 2 will finally scoop off the recognition this budding franchise has been lacking. You know, unless they do a 'Horizon' and surprise release the game during a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion or something else equally as moronic. There's magic in what Dragon's Dogma did, and that magic was alive along enough to bounce around Capcom for 10 years without abating, and I can't wait to load that up on my console once again. You know, as soon as we get a darn release date! (What is it with modern games slipping back into the 'no release date' meta? It's starting to get on my nerves!)

Devil May Cry 5 Review

Don't you dare say it -

Onwards to the end. It's actually a little surreal to think that my first real desire to play the famed and beloved Devil May Cry franchise was spawned the very first time I played the demo for Devil May Cry 5- and now I've finally had the chance to satiate my curiosity for What lay beyond that small snippet I played and what context defined it to begin with. Whilst speeding through over 2 decades of video game history I can finally deduce that the answer to one of those questions is at least- nothing, never once has this franchise ever deigned us worthy to learn why it is that Demons just populate the world every now and then. I mean sure, we can blame the Qliphoth but why? Why does a demon tree mean demon summons? Why did the events of DMC 4 suddenly summon demons? Why were they summoned in the prequel Vergil cutscene? DMC 3 one's kind of make sense, there was specifically a portal to the underworld mentioned- but otherwise: are demons just a natural thing that people of the DMC world deal with?

Questions that shall go an unanswered because at this stage in the game no one involved in this franchiser was interested in deconstructionism, especially not after their last game, just named 'DMC' was lambasted for attempting exactly that through a reboot of the franchise. Casting a younger Dante, reframing the elements of the story in order to tell a founding narrative that was a bit more constructed and deliberate in the style of DMC 4 ended up slightly erasing all the things that fans loved about these games, the history they shared with them. As well as the personality quirks of post DMC 2 Dante by some people's reckoning. The result was that when time came around to do Devil May Cry once again, the team decided to abandon the new universe and do their best to return to what DMC fans wanted in such a hard U-turn that they low-key kind of just retold DMC 3 in broad strokes- albeit in a totally new fashion.

In many ways DMC 5 is an amalgamation of everything I've wanted from a DMC game up until now; it tells a active and fairly engaging story with properly written characters that have actual stakes in the plot's events, (Weep harder: DMC 2) and it brings memorable set-pieces, decent missions and fun bosses. Unfortunately it never quite catches the level of difficult intensity that DMC 3 boasted, but on the flipside the combat this time around was so smooth, flashy and brimming with character, (between the three playable characters. 4 with DLC) that I never got bored. Despite being about 4 years old now, Devil May Cry 5 looks pretty enough to put most modern games to shame both in cutscenes and in the heat of battle, which might be a comment on how we're reaching the edge of the visual fidelity arms race, but I just like to appreciate the pretty looks.

I quite like the effort that went into the visual design of both gooey bubonic terrain of the demonic tree which has infected the world called the 'Qliphoth', (Yes, it's another random word from mythology that the team borrowed and used without any thought put into it's potential thematic significance.) and the red-phone boxed streets of a demolished city called 'Redgrave' which that tree is growing out of, a city I would have found instantly identifiable as this universe's version of London even if I didn't already know that because I'd see a making of video years ago. The solid design work, much stronger than this franchise's earlier days, actually persists to the various monsters and bosses you'll encounter and stops only short of the main bad guy, who is back to being a sludge monster. (What the hell is it with this franchise and sludge monster main villains?) At least his final form for the last two missions is more... shall we say... palatably familiar. 

In gameplay Devil May Cry 5 is exactly what you would have come to expect by now only refined to it's flashiest and, in my opinion, best feeling. Of course, now that we have three protagonists there are some curious points to each hero that makes their playstyle tantalisingly unique. Nero, for example, features a collection of robotic 'Devil Arm's' that replace the one he lost, all providing new functionality to the 'B/O' button (Some much more useful than others) and each will break if Nero takes damage whilst using them. A curious risk and reward style mechanic that can spice up your combo chain in a manner that feels flowing and dynamic depending on whatever arm it is you have lined up, making Nero's playstyle feel just that little more than 'Dante without the variety'.

Dante plays much the same as he did in 4 with the insta-switch melee weapons, ranged tools and styles to back up a movement set that has never quite gotten old. He's still perhaps one of the most utilitarian fighters in this genre-type, made even more accessible with the modern simplification of his 'Royal Guard' stance making dodge play obsolete if you know how to time a quick switch or two. (It can make those more frantic boss fight moments flow like wine when you catch that perfect block/retaliate combo.) He almost feels like the Kiryu of the franchise, the baseline you just can't go without. And with the focusing down on Dante's close combat tools rather than ungainly briefcase canons- there is an unparalleled smoothness which makes his levels a blast.

V is the newcomer to the rooster bringing with him a quite unique take on 'Summoner gameplay'. V himself isn't capable of hacking or slashing, but his retinue of demons, including a tiny version of Griffon, a panther and a special rock golem, all fill different roles of combat in his stead. However as individuals, each creature has a certain amount of health before they get knocked out of the fight for a bit, and V himself is helpless if all his critters are knocked out at the same time, so there's a curious aggression versus defensive rhythm to get into whilst playing his levels which is quite unlike any other character in DMC. It can hardly be disguised that his levels are slower and can be somewhat frustrating even if you have a decent hand of the basic moveset of the game, but for the change of pace alone I rate V's levels as adequate. 

Now as I've teased, this time around the team actually tried to tell an evolving narrative in the vein of where DMC 4 went and in doing so created a very straight forward and digestible campaign with memorable story beats- only this time starring a plethora of well performed and distinctive personalities to breath life into the sillier moments. I particularly am a fan of the fact that Dante's constantly breathy performance now perfectly fits since the character is getting a little older, and the fact that newcomer Nico is just... the best. She seems designed from the ground up to seem like she's going to be a forgettable and unlikeable character but she just... isn't. I really like her. More so than the other reoccurring girls who, with all due respect, were utterly superfluous throughout the entire game. I have no idea who the girl opposite of Trish is, but she ain't the badass character Lady we got to know back in DMC 3. For Nico's sake I hope she managed to stay away from the core team lest she get her personality sapped dry until she's just a mindless valley girl archetype eye-candy waste of screentime.

Devil Trigger is back and being useful in this game, with a brand new extra mode tacked onto the late game called 'Sin Devil Trigger', which adds a new game changer transformation capable of stunlocking and performing just gross amounts of damage. It takes a while to build which is supposed to be the trade-off, but when you go SDT it's practically like you take over the entire fight for a brief few seconds of unbreakable carnage. You don't even heal during SDT, nor are you invincible, because either would be too broken. Honestly, and this might be the first time you'll ever hear this said about the franchise, I might actually prefer how DMC 2 did it's alternative Devil Trigger. Desperate Devil Trigger only activated when you were on the last slither of health and that would change a losing beatdown into a heroic resurgence anime-style. However, Desperate Devil Trigger didn't come with the Devil Sword Dante, now did it? And I love the summon sword powers of the Devil Sword Dante. Finally Dante feels as cool as Vergil to play as, it only takes half the game to unlock it.

And finally there is the music, which is indeed good enough this time around to deserve it's own shout-out because wow- this game has the best soundtrack without any serious competition. To be absolutely transparent I did actually know about both 'Devil Trigger' and 'Bury the Light' before I played the game to experience them, but what I didn't know was that both of those insanely catchy, great tracks were standard battle music! Most games would save epic handbangers like those for epic character moments but not Devil May Cry! They want the desire to hear the songs themselves to be enough to dry you into each fight, and you know what? It absolutely is! I will prolong fights as Vergil just so I can absolutely annihilate alongside announcements of how "I am the storm that is APPROACHING! PROVOKING black clouds in isolation!" Nero and Vergil got down right by this game's soundtrack, which I suppose is fighting when you think about it...

Summary

I've reached the point in reviewing these games wherein I know them all well enough to be arguing semantics. They're all some baseline version of good (apart from 2) so rating always comes down to splitting hairs and personal preference over what I think makes the better action hack'n'slash. Or rather, whatever features bring the experience closer to Metal Gear Solid Revengence, which is objectively the best action hack'n'slash game that exists. (That's just a fact.) Still 3 presents the most interesting challenge experience, and 4 takes you on the best feeling journey. But 5 looks the best, brings the best characters and now, I can slip this accolade off of 4's shoulders, feels the best to control by a country mile. I once speculated that 4 might be the game I keep installed on my Xbox to come back to when I'm feeling the need for "Motivation", but 5 supplanted that. In many ways, 5 is the experience I was kind of looking for out of this franchise, and I'm glad it rose to this point. That final fight could have laid on the fire a bit more, but I came out wanting to jump right back in and that's the kind of excitement these types of games are born to engender.

So of course I'm going to be recommending this game. You already knew that was coming just from how I'm talking about it. But what you didn't know was that I loved this game enough to slap it a solid A grade on my arbitrary grading scale. That's right, this game manages to be as fun to me as Metal Gear Rising is, thus earning the exact same grade. That is as high praise as I can dish for a game like this, because I absolutely loved my time and I'm still playing even now because of how kick-ass of a game it is. Coming to this franchise I was expecting slightly more at times, especially out from the characterisation of characters which the gaming world have told me are untouchably iconic, but I can't deny that the level of reverence this franchise has enjoyed feels just about well earned by the time I reached 5. And it was the general overall quality of this game which pushed me over the edge, because I was shaking on whether we'd ever reach the 'A' bar until now- but 5 just brought the whole package, in pristine wrapping, and solidifying the Devil May Cry games as one's I will try to trick people into becoming helpless addicted to in my years to come. 

Now I've finally put this behind me, it's time to get back to a franchise I was right in the middle of so I can finally get around to capping off- what do you mean there's been 5 Yakuza games either released or announced since I stopped reviewing them? And the franchise changed name? Oh god... I'm never going to catch up...

Jackpot!

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition Review

 Time to wake up, you're missing all the fun!

Finally we come onto the Devil May Cry game which stood as fan's sole bastion for the many year span between 2008 and 2019; their only satiation to that thirst for DMC goodness which afflicts them all. Because no other game or Devil May Cry property was released within that gap and that's exactly the story I'm sticking to so I can wrap up this franchise retrospective within an orderly time frame- we all cool with that? Cool. Then let's talk about the second game to land during the point at which this franchise really developed it's personality. Not that the original DMC was itself a bad title, mind you- it's just one of those games that doesn't quite shake hands with the characters and stories that the franchise tells today, and after finishing 4 I can categorise that as a good thing. I quite prefer the Dante of today to the Dante of the distant past.

But before we get into specifics let's talk a little bit about the overall game, from a development process level. (We always seem to touch on that in these reviews, don't we?) So it would seem that with the release of Devil May Cry 5, Itsuno unsealed some old wounds to talk about issues that befell 4- most prominently being a lack of funding. Despite being a sequel, and thus presumably being more ambitious, Devil May Cry 4 was apparently afforded roughly the same budget as 3 was, which led to a scrapping of planned scope during the development stage. Essentially that meant the team ended up creating the first half of the game in the way that they wanted and then had to dig around reusing assets and levels to make up the second half of the game- which is probably why you end up fighting most every one of the major bosses three times throughout the game, including in the boss rush level. 

Circumstances being what they are is ephemeral to the raw matter of the game itself, however, so let's focus on the specifics of what Devil May Cry 4 actually ended up as and see the issues from there. Firstly, I feel it's important to note that this is easily the smoothest feeling Devil May Cry game I've played to date on a gameplay level. From the fluidness of the animation to the way that each character has their entire movesets scrunched up into one controller, meaning there's no more need to go digging through menus in order to swap up and re-equip the things that you want. Even Dante's styles have gone the Yakuza route and can be switched to in an instant via the face buttons. I makes the gameplay feel fluid and opens up the range of possibility in each combat encounter, but it does come with the cost of a very slight pull back on individual complexity. Some weapons don't quite feel like they're designed to be stand-alone anymore, and the styles carry over the main features they had in 3, but with a little less of the extra punch that made them solo-friendly. It's an infinitesimal drawback in the grand scheme.

In many ways I really like the condensing down of everything into one hand, as it allows the player to switch off their mind from all the styles of play they aren't currently engaging with and just flow with the moment. Those moments when you're juggling an enemy with Swordmaster and then switch to Gunslinger quickly to pepper the surroundings with a quick shotgun blast and quickly dip back before your original target can recover, are what stories are made of. Nero, on the otherhand, feels strangely static by comparison, but his moveset is just about stacked enough to be okay to a blanket degree against every possible threat. His Buster Arm in particular is a wonderfully cool little addition, allowing the player to pull enemies around the battlefield and smash them for heavy damage. Nero can even pull off special grapple set-piece attacks on bosses during their vulnerable stages, which just lends to the bombastic action of the big fights.  Honestly, it's a toss-up of whether I like this or DMC 3 more... until I remember the painful buster arm platforming sections. Definitely 3.

Devil Trigger has gone through another reworking this game around, and now has regained a scant few of the special moves we used to enjoy in our winged forms. (No flying though. DMC 2 killed that dream for good, it would seem.) This time around the regen of Devil Trigger is actually alright, not overpowered but not painfully nerfed either, it just takes a while to warm up- so you can't just pop on DT to gain a few handy hit points and pop out again, which is a fine enough middle ground. I also appreciate how there's a difference in the actual way that Dante Devil Trigger's compared to Nero. Dante has his instant switch like in previous games, allowing him to flip on mid combo, but Nero's stops him in his tracks with a little burst animation that also breaks the chain of any combo he's being punished by- neat little trick there.

Progression has been seriously switched up this time around with a brand new currency used exclusively for levelling that is now separate from the Blood Orbs still used for the item store. These new Proud Souls are awarded at the end of each level rather than as you progress (or they get tallied up if you die) and are based on the rank you get at the end of each mission, particularly your style rank total. Style is actually ludicrously easy to build up in this game too, the developers seriously toned down on the 'no consecutive moves' stipulation of the old system, making getting to SSS only a matter of finding an enemy with enough hit points to last that long. (I actually only managed to nail it once on the Snake-Dragon boss. Which is insane considering how often I'd max on Devil May Cry 3.)

That 'ease' is not exclusive to the stylings either. Devil May Cry 4 is actually quite a bit more chill paced than 3 was, but a heck of a lot more engaging than sleepy 2. 4 has it's share of annoying enemies, mind you, including one, the Blitz, which is so frustrating that on Hard difficulty the game only makes you fight it twice in the entire game. You fight every boss at least three times. They knew the Blitz is the worst creation in the franchise since... the helicopter. (Although you know... for different reasons.) One point of contention I maintain due to this direction of 'accessible ease' is the 'enemy handicap' feature that comes tied to encounters and lies totally out of the player's control. As in any Devil May Cry, if you die enough times to a single encounter the game offers the choice to turn down the difficulty, except for Devil May Cry 4 there is no choice. Die enough and the game will do it automatically without alerting you, so you only figure it out after basking in the glory of your victory in the results screen. (That's just arse system design which fundamentally misunderstands what it is that challenge gamers are looking for.) 

I particularly enjoyed the bosses of DMC 4, even if they were considerably more light weight than their previous game counterparts, (excluding 2) and the game makes us fight them way too much, they all asked for different skills and boasted some of the most consistently solid game design in the entire game. (Even if most are best hurt by jump flurry attack spam.) The Dante boss was the only real standout, boasting a totally distinct philosophy of reactive action which mirrors the players moves, he plays more like a Elden Ring boss begging you to bait him into cheese strikes. My only gripe is a universal design flaw that every boss in this game shares that I like to call the 'last gasp' system. Basically, whenever an enemy enters their last two slivers of health notches, they enter their second phase. (Yeah, that late!) And every enemy has a second phase specifically designed to draw out their final moments as long as possible. It's such a head screw to feel the rising relief of a sinking healthbar only for all progress to grind to a halt, forcing the player to devote twice the amount of time to drag the needle those last few yards across the finishing line. It isn't particularly fun, the second phases are simply frustrating, and the best moments are the times you time the enemies vulnerable stagger and your own Devil Trigger just enough to totally skip by the stupid second phase altogether. Not my favourite design idea by a long shot.

In world, Devil May Cry 4 takes a bizarrely fantasy-tilted approach that feels fundamentally distinct from the gothic castles and modern/ruinous style of previous outings. At times you almost feel like Dante has been isekai-ed to some strange fantastical realm where placid villages, snowy tundras and rainforests can be found within the same square mile of one another. This only gets reinforced by the residents, all wearing hoods and rustic quasi-religious garments, affixed to some vague praise of Sparda, because it's always about Sparda in these damn stories. Even the yawn-worthy damsel who is inexplicably the beacon of our chief protagonist's desires, Kyrie, looks like an almost dead-ringer for Princess Elise from the worst Sonic game. I'm not sure this game really looked like this franchise usually does.

But the world did feel that way. In fact, the movement from one area to the next, split between missions that funnel you though it all, felt almost Resident Evil reminiscent, which is a sensation I haven't properly felt since DMC 1. And I like it, to be clear. It's just a shame that these explorations are never as detailed as Resident Evil maps, and that due to the somewhat linear nature of mission based exploration, you really notice it in the late game where Dante's entire campaign are literally Nero missions backwards. At least it was a lot harder to get lost this time around thanks to the clear movement from one area to another, but I wish a Devil May Cry game could get away with surprising me with new environments until the end. (Maybe 5. They had a good 11 years to work on it, and absolutely nothing would have been in the way to soak up development time.)

Within that world comes out story, which I'm happy to report is the most comprehensive this franchise has ever delivered! I was almost shocked to experience it all, there was establishment of setting, characters properly introduced a decent time before their showdown moments, properly built stakes and potential consequence, and events seemed to actually unfold instead of just sporadically occuring. These seem like basic tenements of narrative but you have to understand, Devil May Cry has never enjoyed the fundamentals before! It's actually nice following along with the story and feeling the progression of acts and building of plot momentum. Now next time maybe they can focus on making the actual events themselves a little more interesting... Bah, it was serviceable enough. I enjoyed the story.

As you may have caught, Nero is our new protagonist this time around and he makes for a decent enough stand-in for Dante, who seems taciturn and a little off-colour early game, to a point I feared the writers were trying to make this older depiction of the character more in line with his painfully goofy and dull original self. As it so happens he just needs some warming up, which means we're left most of the game with Nero as our Dante and he... well, he's pretty much just Dante. A bit more punk and less certain of his own immortality, Nero acts almost exactly like young Dante with a one drawback. He is unfortunately afflicted with 'generic anime protagonist' virus, specifically the 'obsessively in love' strain.

Nero is hopelessly affixed to the affections of the franchises singularly most dull heroine ever, she's such a nothing character I hesitate to even identify Kyrie as a heroine. What the box sees in the cardboard box girl I cannot possible imagine, but the desire to protect this girl forms the backbone for most of his core motivations to such a nauseating extent that by the midgame you won't at all be surprised to hear him screaming "KYRIE!!!" every other scene like he's in Sam Raimi's Spiderman. I actually somewhat prefer Dante's bizarre play of not caring about anything or anyone that doesn't even feel like an act most of the time. He seems constantly surprised whenever someone manages to get him to care about them, and that strangely detached relationship with... well, relationships, helps identify him as this kind of other entity in the way his, occasionally churlish, brand of charisma disguises. Nero's chief most interesting features are fully in his design, with it's send ups to Vergil and Dante, and in the mystery of who he is which is addressed (He's directly identified as part of the Sparda bloodline) but never explicitly stated. I can't really blame DMC for lacking exposition, it's kind of the franchises thing at this point, but the utterly miniscule offering the DLC gave us to hint in that narrative direction felt a little like an insult. In fact, I going to assume it was an insult for the crime of being invested.

As for the supporting cast, they were all fine if largely forgettable. I found that most everyone, in writing and, sometimes, in performance were totally overshadowed by their designs. I personally don't love the heavy shades look of Lady, but it's one of her most iconic looks and I was utterly surprise to see it matched with an almost entirely absent character who lacks everything which made DMC 3 Lady unique. (Apart from in look, she's literally not even the same character.) Trish and Dante are as good as ever, it's fun to see them interact in the few moments they get to, but everyone else? I literally can't remember the city cast's names. But their designs! Solid, even great in some instances. Across the board the design work was simply top notch, and I wonder if there isn't a happy medium between great designs, cool and memorable characters and a nifty narrative that this franchise can't hit. Please? For me.

Summary

Devil May Cry 4 seems like it correctly identified what it was that made 3 such a revolution and thus solidifies those improvements to a neat fluidity. Outside of visuals there aren't a great many overall leaps forward that the game offers, and though the narrative does become admirably ambitious to an extent that DMC has not tried before, the broadening in scope does lead to a loss in narrative focus and memorability in some places. But gameplay is king in games like these, and DMC 4 neatly balances it's class of solid characters and gives each one solid and strong movesets that are easy fun to get into and tough fun to master. So far I could see myself coming back to this game the most in order to refine my abilities against it's many gauntlets. Still, in terms of 'moments in history' I think that the surge of Devil May Cry 3 may burn brighter in my heart and mind. I'm still recommending this game, it's simply great fun, but I think my arbitrary grading system can only dish out a surprising B Grade, when I was really hoping to push things to the next tier. So far Devil May Cry has demonstrated all the elements I want in one of these games individually- (aside from a seriously interesting narrative, but I think that might slot together if the others come first.) if 5 can bring them all together, then my wait for the next title might have actually been worth it! Fingers crossed...