Recent reviews by [DAM] Contradictory LFP HL S21

As my header indicates, I've put 140 hours into this game and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. For a single-player game, especially one released in today's era of one-and-done third person adventure games, that's an impressive figure. It's doubly impressive when you consider that the game isn't full of a bunch of sidequests or checklists to fill out- the depth of the gameplay is just that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good.

If you aren't familiar with controllers or DMC3/4, this game may end up being difficult to adapt to, especially once you make it to Dante's stages. Dante in this game has the largest, most insanely deep moveset of any character I've ever seen in a character action game, much less an action game in general. Fortunately, most of his options are quite viable, and you can just stick to what you like- there's no need to master every last move in his arsenal for basic completion of the game.

But where DMC5 shines is on subsequent playthroughs, as you continue to learn what you can do with each character and push them farther than ever before. The difficulty will climb with you, culminating in the brutal Dante Must Die and Hell and Hell difficulties, the latter of which limits revivals to 3 and makes every attack a one-hit kill. For true completionists and hardcore gamers, S-ranking every stage and completing the Bloody Palace with each character is sure to be a treat.

...and that's just in the base game. Add the mods, especially the excellent Co-Op Trainer, and suddenly you've opened a whole new world of possibilities. Playing as any character in any stage, or doing co-op in most any stage with players from around the world are both incredible experiences made possible only through modding.

If you love action games, and you miss the days when games were just trying to be good GAMES and not manipulative live services, then Devil May Cry 5 is certainly the game for you. The MTX are fairly unintrusive and can be easily ignored- just focus on improving your play, and you'll never need 'em.

The only real downsides I can think of is a steep learning curve for newcomers with Dante, occasionally-repetitive visual design in the latter half of the game, and the fact that there's no Vergil DLC.

Come on, Capcom.

Purchased as a birthday present for myself and have spent more time with it than any AAA released this year that isn't named Devil May Cry 5.

Truly excellent music, design, and feel. Easily in my top 5 platformers of all time, and I've been playing the genre since 3 years old.

Massive improvement in quality over Seal The Deal and the base game, especially seen in cutscene animations and overall graphical quality. The ending seems to be a bit of a sequel hook- and this was the last-planned DLC chapter- so whether there's more DLC or a new game on the horizon, this left me wanting for more.

This DLC is getting a bad rap, but trust me: it isn't as bad as you think.

The most pressing issues- new content being locked behind the uber-hard Death Wish missions, limited lives on everything in Death Wish- got fixed after day 1. Unfortunately, a lot of these reviews seem to be day 1 reviews, most likely made by people who just ran into the highly-difficult Death Wish missions and felt that the difficulty bump was too steep to be fair.

After a patch, all three of Arctic Cruise's new acts and time rifts can be accessed without touching Death Wish at all. This is roughly six brand-new levels, with the new purple time rift being a major highlight. For $5, Arctic Cruise and its rifts alone are worth the price of entry. I'll dive into more detail on Arctic Cruise later, but for now let's talk Death Wish.

=About Death Wish=

Death Wish...is definitely a step up in difficulty. I've been playing character action games and mascot platformers since I was very young, and many of these challenges are teeth-grinding even for me, a veteran to platformers and "hard games". Truthfully, I've never seen this level of difficulty in a platformer before, but I've come to relish the challenge.

One of Death Wish's first missions is a remix of "She Came From Outer Space", and it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HARD. HOWEVER, it's also much longer than the original mission and adds some seriously cool high-spectacle platforming challenges to the affair which weren't there in the original. The moment you figured out how to dive-cancel in the original mission, you were done and it was over very quickly. Here, you need to be REALLY good at it and all your other techniques to make it through, and it is absolutely enthralling. If you're willing to meet the challenge, Death Wish's remixed content is also well worth the price of admission.

In addition to Death Wish's base difficulty, there's also a "Peace and Tranquility mode" that can be enabled after you die a few times. I'm personally too prideful to activate this, especially if I know I can beat the challenge, but I think for less patient gamers it would truly improve their experience if they were to enable it. That being said, enabling it for a particular mission consumes "pons", which you may not have in excess, and it's not made clear exactly what enabling it does or if it can be reversed. In my opinion, there shouldn't be any barrier to enabling the easy mode at all, and I think the devs should consider either auto-enabling it at X tries for free or removing the cost entirely to encourage players who need it to use it.

To succeed in Death Wish on default difficulty, you really do need to know the game inside-and-out and be willing to use all the mechanics at your disposal to succeed.

For instance, the remixed version of the Mafia Boss has very very limited vulnerability frames- in order to defeat him, you pretty much have to use the Time Stop Hat in order to expand your window of opportunity to attack. What was a pushover boss in the original game, even with 1-hit-hero enabled, becomes what I can only describe as a Character Action Platformer Boss in Death Wish. Once you figure it out and overcome the challenge, it's amazing and offers a curious hybrid of my favorite genres, but that might not be for everyone.

Overall, I truly do think Death Wish is worth playing. I might do some testing of Peace and Tranquility to see if it's more of a reasonable difficulty jump from the main game- if I do, I'll add that to my review here. For now, don't be dissuaded- it's tough as nails but it's generally fair and pretty fun when you get the hang of it, just do NOT expect to win very easily.

=About Arctic Cruise=

Arctic Cruise's three acts are all a lot of fun. They're brimming with character and happiness and gorgeous graphics, but...there's a problem afoot here.

Arctic Cruise Act Two isn't bad, per se, but it's essentially impossible on your first few attempts. Even with the built-in guide mechanics, the fact is that you simply have not had the time to acquaint yourself with the layout of this ship. This makes attempting to get to rapidly-appearing Point As and Point Bs in an efficient manner pretty much impossible. The player has not had the time to memorize the layout of this place at all, but Act Two essentially requires that you already know it if you want to succeed. It's actually one of the few things I think are genuinely badly designed here.

Once you figure it out, it's definitely fun. However, it just feels like it came too early. In my opinion, even if they were filler, they should've added at least two more Acts between the current 1 and 2, taking place on different parts of the ship. Even if they're just very basic collectathons or "find the time piece" missions, the extra time to learn the ship is sorely necessary for Act Two to be genuinely fun on a first attempt.

Aside from that, I did find Arctic Cruise to be a worthy expansion to the main game. There are some finnicky things going on in Act 3...not enough to ruin the experience, per se, but enough to cause headaches on your first few attempts. I'd say this is mainly because of poor signposting, so it shouldn't be a difficult fix of the devs decide to address it.

=Overall=

This DLC definitely does have a few issues, but in my honest opinion as a veteran to the platformer genre, it is very much worth the price of admission. Full disclosure? I totally pirated the original game like a year ago, but I purchased the game at full price just so I could start over with an authentic copy and enjoy this DLC alongside it. I do think the base game could use a price drop, but this DLC is definitely worth $5.

It's alright, I guess.

Disregard the hours- I previously purchased this title on PS3, so I've played it through and through already.

Gameplay-wise, it feels very solid. I recommend using a 360 pad, but form what I've seen mouse and keyboard work well, too.

While the game is very short, I highly recommend it to Metal Gear fans who want to get a taste of The Phantom Pain (if they haven't already). I'd definitely recommend waiting for sales before buying it, though. Even on its release daily deal, the game's price tag is quite hefty for what is given, especially in comparison to other games on sale for less.

Nitpicks aside, the game is genuinely fun and is a great port- my rig doesn't meet Recommended Specifications, yet I was able to run at near Max settings with very little fps drops. This port really leverages the PC's power over its console brethren, and if you want a good title to benchmark your PC's performance, here you go.