Well, I just won DMC3 on Normal mode. I have to say, most fun I've had in a while for a game.

Well, it started off with a really cool cut-scene, but the scene was so cheesy shoving the notion that "Dante is Cool" down your throat that I was prepared for a stinker. The guy at the game shop also said he didn't like it, so I didn't have too high of hopes.

Well, at first the game seemed a bit hard. After playing about 3 levels, I saw that it wasn't too hard, it was just that each level seemed to be hard when you first got to it.

At level 5, you have top fight a couple of demons named Agni and Rudra. I'll admit, I had to get help for this one. It was kind of odd to have the second hardest boss in the game only on level 5, though. It's the kind of boss that even when you figure out a strategy for them, it doesn't make it easy at all.

The levels after that weren't a breeze, but they were definately a lot of fun and were hard enough, unlike DMC2. It was nice having so many cool cutscenes, too.


Something that separates this from DMC2, if you are just looking at Dante's game from DMC2, is that DMC3 makes you use your sword. A lot. In fact, it's half useless to use anything else until you get Spiral and Kalina Ann (Spiral is basically a Rail Gun, and Kalina Ann is a missle Launcher).

The biggest dissipointment in DMC2, other than the fact that the girl's story was practically the exact same thing as Dante's story, was that all the bosses had to be defeated by guns, and therefore, you could see all of their attacks comming way before they happened. I remember that I think I only died a few times, once on that tri-face thing and a few times on the dude that has 2 wolves. In DMC3, although I found guns rather useless in it, you have the option to be better at swordsplay or shooting guns. I naturally chose swordsplay, especially since most of the bosses seemed to be too hard with guns right from the beginning. This makes you get up-close and personal with the bosses, and it really takes a lot of skill to take them on.

I saw that my skill in the game increased well, and before when I thought the game was going to keep me weak, I saw that you still can be hella strong, you just have to be good at the game. Although, it has a video showing people using the "craziest combos ever" or whatnot, and by the end of the game I could kick any of those guys asses because of how much I used the sword.




High Points:

It allows you to switch weapons in the middle of combat to best fit your needs. Same with guns.

Swordsmaster style and Gunslinger style really add a lot of fun into fighting, especially Swordsmaster.

There wasn't a single place in the game that was easy.

Cool cutscenes.

Bosses are not easy to figure out strategies against them.

The fighting in it was a whole lot of fun.

A new "Heaven or Hell" mode adds a completely new form of gameplay to it, with everyone, including yourself, being one hit.

Nakid bat chick! Woohoo!

The bosses weren't easy, and were fun to fight.

Hell Vanguards were really cool, unlike the moronic other enemies.


Low Points:

I wrote more in this section than the High Points section, but that's only because writing in detail here doesn't give spoilers when doing it above would require plot/boss spoilers.

Instead of getting more useful the farther you go, your beginning weapon is always the best. The only other weapon that is at all useful is Angi and Rudra, but they still aren't quite as good as your starting weapon, because the Stinger ability it has is faster than it's charging ability, and the starting weapon has a "falling cut", which is suprisingly unique to only it (when it shouldn't). So there are like 5 or so melee weapons, all with different abilities, but 3 out of the 5 are useless. Nevan is hella slow, Beowulf is a ripoff of ifrit from DMC1 and is way slow, and although Cerberes is better than those two because it is fast, it has little to no ability to knockback, rendering it useless.

There are 5 guns you can get. Only 3 are of any use at all. Ebony and Ivory (starting guns) are useful for keeping you in the air longer, and are good for boss fights and fighting Aracnes for this simple reason, but their damage completely sucks, and Spiral and Kalina Ann (Rail Gun and Rocket Launcher) are good for doing decent damage at a distance, but mostly because they knock back enemies, scattering them. The other 2 guns are crap. The shotgun is practically useless, unlike in DMC1. It is more convenient to attack the enemies with your sword when you have to be so horribly close to them, and you sit there for a second after every use. Artemis is slow and doesn't knock the enemy back. It hits multiple enemies, but because it has no knockback, it's more useful to just slash them.

There are more styles in the game than just Gunslinger and Swordsmaster. These styles, well, suck. Trickster is alright, it puts an extra dodge on the O button, but it isn't even that much more of a dodge. There is a video on it of the person dodging Virgil's super-fast sword attacks with trickster mode. I could do it even better than him, and I was in swordsmaster mode so I had tons of sword skills as well. Just not AS useful. Royal Guard mode is just pathetic. I'm sure it's alright when fighting enemies, but it's completely useless against bosses, and it gives hardly any new skills for when you level it up. Swordsmaster and Gunslinger give you about 3 new skills, per level, per weapon. Then there are the "ultimate" styles, which suck. Quicksilver is very useful, but it uses your devil trigger gauge like crazy and therefore it's just replacing your ability to devil trigger with something that isn't that much stronger, and making your O button useless. Doppleganger, the last style, is the same way, but it puts you in devil trigger mode AND doubles your damage by making another one of yourself. This would be alright for some bosses like Arkham and Virgil 3 (hell, those are practically the only real bosses after you get it), but it would be useless when having to fight the hordes of hell.

The weapon Nevan may have come from Nevan, or "Nakid Bat Chick", but never, I repeat, NEVER is a guitar a cool weapon. It has the ability to turn into a scythe, a SCYTHE is a cool weapon, but watching dante jam on a guitar which shoots homing "electric bats" at his enemies is rather dumb. I also bet this weapon was completely useless against bosses, as if I even tried knowing how much it sucks.

The game has a few boring levels, where you have to find lots of artifacts and put them in the right places. I guess it's due to the fact that in DMC it leads you everywhere you need to go, but that just isn't fun. The game made up for that a ton by the other levels and making the bosses so fun, but I didn't like those levels.

In DMC1 the enemies were almost wicked. Sin Scythes/Sin Scissors/Death Scissors, the bladed puppets, etc. In this one, the enemies are almost morons. They have cooler names, unlike in DMC1 and 2 where their names were like "fhdjafoeiojhroanv", these were named after the 7 deadly sins, which is cool. Also, although the music went well in DMC3, Phantom's music for DMC1 owns all, they should have made even better music. I also don't really like singing in game music.

One of the Hell Jailor enemies (I believe Pride?) is just a big walking bomb. I don't get how a big walking bomb can torcher damned souls when they die every time they explode!





Graphics: 10 (Wonderful, looks good, goes great, and has wonderful animation)
Sound: 9 (Perfect minus the fact that there is singing in the music)
Story: 9 (I can't remember the DMC 1 story too well, but I do believe it was better. This one was great, but it had a lot of moments that are "there's just no way...", and to someone who likes logic like myself, that can be bad)
Gameplay: 10 (Although it has some low points, those low points don't get in the way unless you let them)
Replay Value: 8 (Although it DOES have 1 more interesting mode and it tries to give you replay value with the other new modes, I don't find doing the same things over again, just them being harder, much fun. I like to see new things. H&H mode is interesting enough to play, but the other modes aren't. Normal is hard enough, Hard and Dante Must Die modes are just going to be annoying.)

Overall Rating: 9



My next review will be for Half Life, but that won't be for a while. Stay tuned...