Devil May Cry 1 (HD Collection, Xbox360):
After beating the game on normal, i started Hard campaign and S-ranked all levels. So now i am the
king of hell. That's what bonus picture says. It's very similar to ending screens of Viewtiful Joe, Bayonetta and Wonderful 101 -- every single character from the game poses for you.
I used
speedrun for reference as to how cut the time and still collect everything and beat every single secret mission.
Last
boss fight with Griffon was probably the hardest to S-rank, took me most of the Saturday. Final boss fight was tough too, but surprisingly i even got a "special bonus" on it.
"S" is the highest rank you can get on the level, but special bonus is given for nearly perfect playthrough -- with little to no damage and exceptionally short time. I only got special bonuses on three levels (took too much damage on others).
Overall i found that S-ranking on Hard with a fully upgraded character (all unlocked moves, double healthbar and long Devil Trigger) was easier for me than simply beating the game on Normal. I can't even imagine how people do it starting from scratch with a blank character. Speedrun guys do it taking
no damage at all. Very impressive.
After beating it on Normal and Hard, the time on my save file is around 8 hours. Estimating that in average each level took me about 5 tries on both runs, that makes 40 hours.
Okay, the game itself.
This game is grand-daddy of all modern hack'n'slash games. It created completely new genre and created entire series that followed it's path: modern Ninja Gaiden, modern Shinobi, Bayonetta and W101, even God of War, the retarded sibling of the hack'n'slash family tried (and failed).
It is still halfway in the 90s and some of the UI and especially fixed camera feel very Playstation 1. Electronic cacophony they used for a music also sounds dated. Story is eh, but who cares about stories. Voice acting is decent, except for
that one scene.
The gameplay tho. Combat system is great and enemies are designed and fine-tuned to work against it, forcing you to learn and get better.
Obviously DMC1 isn't as crazy deep and fluid as later games that followed it's path, but there are still lots of things to learn in this game: counters, roll cancels, enemy step, re DT.
Overall tone and atmosphere of the game is closer to horror than outright "cuhrayzee"-ness of later games. DMC1 feels a bit more meditative, restrained, even melodramatic by the end. It still has a few flashes of WTF (Dante's son?.. okaaaaay).
Landmark title. Required reading for all interested in action game genre.
Devil May Cry 2 (HD Collection, Xbox360):
Oh boy.
They botched combat system -- the cornerstone and the main attraction of the series.
Combos are busted, dodging is extremely slow. You have to finish the combo and only then you are allowed to roll away, how am i supposed to react to attacks and dodge if can't do it instantly?
Instead of unlocking new moves as you go, you "upgrade" your weapons by simply boosting their stats which is stupid, because it leads to other bad design decisions, like instead of making genuinely hard and tricky enemy -- they simply increase it's health and call it a day.
Story is bad, and
voice acting by the end becomes outright cartoonish (and not in a good way). Two playable characters allowed them to rehash most of the levels and bosses twice to pad the length. Some of the bosses were kinda cool though. If only the combat system actually worked...
Watch
Accounting Nightmare's retrospective for a bit more detail.
I finished it on Normal a week ago and hoped i will find it in me to continue past, to grab more achievements but i couldn't and just played DMC1 and 3 instead.
The game has a few good things, like allowing you to replay previous missions once you beat the game (in the first game you had to mess around with save files and could only play missions in linear order). Italian/european setting is kinda sorta cool, but aside from garbled names it doesn't amount to much.
But overall it's a bad, bad game. You know it's bad when you see lots of developers hiding under nicknames (INOYAN, KISABON)
in the credits, like they were ashamed of it (just like in Famicom days). For reference, there were no nicknames in the credits of DMC1.