Devil May Cry 5

[DJOGamer PT]

Regardless disappointing sales as Sekiro reached 4-5 million & wasn't even that good. Infact I would consider it among From Software's decline.

I being saying From has been stagnating since Bloodborne, but no one ever listens to me...
Even when DS3 came most people were still: "Nah it's fine.".

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

I being saying From has been stagnating since Bloodborne, but no one ever listens to me...
Even when DS3 came most people were still: "Nah it's fine.".

DS3 was an extremely fine game though, it's my favourite souls cause it finally plays like an actual game. Bloodborne really wasn't that great, I love the art-style, environments, design, weapons & enemies. But it felt like it was treading a little too close to souls & wasn't really that fun either. Not to mention it ran like shit.
Sekiro is just uninspired.

I really hope Elden Ring is it's own thing, and I hope I don't see their stupid dead currency loop again.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/annual/2019/annual_2019_01.pdf

full report for those interested

Though it seems the sales numbers haven't been updataed. Probably an old doc. still says sales at 2.1 million.
Regardless disappointing sales as Sekiro reached 4-5 million & wasn't even that good. Infact I would consider it among From Software's decline.

Edit:
Found it.
DMC5 is at 2.5m sold.

Shame.
DMC4 is at 3m.
DmC is at 2.4m.

Sauce: http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/finance/million.html

It's not too surprising Sekiro sold better, although I am a little surprised DMC5's numbers aren't a bit higher. Still, it's more than double the sales DmC had in it's first year. It's also sold a couple thousand more than DMC4 did by the end of it's first year.

I'd guess DMC5's numbers will go up a bit after Christmas.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

DS3 was an extremely fine game though, it's my favourite souls cause it finally plays like an actual game. Bloodborne really wasn't that great, I love the art-style, environments, design, weapons & enemies. But it felt like it was treading a little too close to souls & wasn't really that fun either. Not to mention it ran like shit.

Disagree. The core of the souls experience has always been the exploration and athmosphere. DS3 was the most derivative game From as made since DeS. And even mechanically is inferior to any Souls game because they tried to please the new fans that joined with Bloodborne by making the combat more like it (so pretty much DPS and roll speed is king and being slow, carefull and methodical are thrown out the window). After that first playtrough I never once picked it up, and honestely I was already tired of the roll roll roll r1 r1 r1 cycle by the Abyss Watcher boss figth.

I have a bigger post on my problems with the game in DS3 thread. Not to say it's a bad game, compared to everything else out there is pretty good, but as far as From games it's not their best work.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

I have a bigger post on my problems with the game in DS3 thread. Not to say it's a bad game, compared to everything else out there is pretty good, but as far as From games it's not their best work.

As far as I am concerned DS3 is the only one with proper enemies, level design and combat. I rank DS3 below Demon Souls. As far as I am concerned polishing the game to a tee gave me more enjoyment. And DS3 also has characters I can care about, so there was actual purpose. I hate DS1, novel & unique as it maybe, after seeing Demon Souls it looks to be the most derivative in the series.

You say methodical combat, but all I remember in DS1 is basically roll and hit. Maybe occasionally block? DS3 has a lot of cool items that can buff weapons & add attributes. Also, in DS3 I was much more free to switch weapons based on situations. You say, they changed combat to please Bloodborne fans, but that is not correct. Demon Souls combat is much faster than Dark Souls 1/2, all they did was fix the sluggish combat from 1. Parry timings were widened in DS3 as well, & parry tells are much easier to read. I used the gloves to get insta parry & worked well with bosses. The bosses also doesn't work on cheap gimmicks, they are much more proper straightforward test of skill. And abundance of items also means that you actually use your consumables. Weapon arts is an awesome addition & depending on the weapon it was an incredibly useful crutch to have.

Also, everything was fair. It was designed like a game and not a fckn murder trap like SAW. You can tell things & caution actually paid off. DS1 is designed with masochistic tendencies.

I do agree on the exploration as DS3 is undeniably linear & corridor like. But I prefer well balanced combat encounters and great bosses, and DS3 delivers best there. Almost all enemies were fun to fight as well.

As for Bloodborne, it is 3rd last, above Sekiro & DS2. Don't really care for it.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

DS3 is the only one with proper enemies, level design and combat.

The best enemies in the game are pretty much reiterations from the old games but worse because of the new combat's nature.
And the new enemies are cheap because they have pretty lengthy combos and seem to have infinite stamina. Then enemy mobs seems to have been placed without much though to them, and it's disgusting how most of them are harder than a lot of the bosses.

Level design has always been good (and DS2 has by far the best levels in this regard).
Also this point is the hardest to explain, because it's also the most subjective: while most levels are well designed, they just don't feel as charming as they were in DeS and DS 1/2; they seem to have been developed in the most boring way possible; like... they thought of a cathedral and then increased it to the third power - the first area for example, just seems like a city on top another city; it's big but empty, and when everything is that big and amazing, it loses impact halfway trough.
And again the exploration is very mediocre in this game.

As for combat.
The enemy speed, life and damage has been increased to ridicolous levels. Plus most enemies and bosses feel the same when figthing.
Poise has been removed. In fact all the stats went from being well done and polished in DS2, back to the broken mess of 1 (if not worse).
Dual Wielding and power stance was removed for reasons.
OP spells.
Parry and backstab again became cheap ass shit.
Also 5 damn games later and they still don't fix collision.

DS3 has a lot of cool items that can buff weapons & add attributes. ... And abundance of items also means that you actually use your consumables.

So did the other games.

you say, they changed combat to please Bloodborne fans, but that is not correct.

Again there's no poise, enemies have overly lengthy combos, infinite stamina and most bosses, and even enemies, play like Artorias/Orphan of Kos (i.e. spam those roll and ligth attack buttons).

Demon Souls combat is much faster than Dark Souls 1/2, all they did was fix the sluggish combat from 1.

DeS still has a far slower pace to the combat compared to DS3. Also you are talking like the combat being slower pace is a bad thing.

Parry timings were widened in DS3 as well, & parry tells are much easier to read. I used the gloves to get insta parry & worked well with bosses.

Insta parrying enemies bigger and stronger than your PC as always been dumb and exceptionally chep.

Also, everything was fair. It was designed like a game and not a fckn murder trap like SAW. You can tell things & caution actually paid off.

That's something they already since DS1, and I would even argue since King's Field 4 (from 2001).

I do agree on the exploration as DS3 is undeniably linear & corridor like. But I prefer well balanced combat encounters and great bosses, and DS3 delivers best there.

But the thing is, the Soul games focus, it's main draw as always been the exploration of the levels and the world. They are spiritual sucessors to King's Field. They are Dungeon Crawlers, not pure Hack 'n' Slash games.

As for Bloodborne, it is 3rd last, above Sekiro & DS2.

DS2 and DeS are the best game From has made in the last 10 years.

 

[mogwaimon]

Also, everything was fair. It was designed like a game and not a fckn murder trap like SAW. You can tell things & caution actually paid off. DS1 is designed with masochistic tendencies.

You might be smoking something, practically every trap in Dark Souls is telegraphed precisely so that you can see and avoid them. Every arrow trap has an obvious raised tile, every boulder is in plain sight, mimics quiver every few seconds, even the invisible floors in Seath's area are easily defeated by paying attention to the crystal dust falling from the ceiling. Granted I haven't gotten around to DS3 yet so maybe all the traps in that one have giant quest markers above them or something, but saying that Dark Souls' traps are unfair is just kinda retadred

 

[Machocruz]

So I saw something in this DMC5 video I don't understand. To preserve his score (under the impression that the score of each battle is counted against the previous one to determine an average, or something like that), which is just hovering above 5000 (min. requirement for S rank apparently), he just stands there and lets the boss kill him. Yet it looks like he is still able to complete the chapter, with 6000+ points at that. Is that just something with this particular boss, you can die to him and the story still continues? Or did the player use a continue, beat the boss, and edit it out?

 

[Belegarsson]

In that mission you are supposed to lose against Urizen, it's part of the plot. For the score, if he fights then Urizen gonna tank his score within the fight, thus decreasing score for the entire chapter with no way to balance it, so it's better just to lose right at the beginning to keep the score he already gathered before the boss fight.

edit: typo

 

[aweigh]

any good dmc5 tutorial videos to do stylish stuff?

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

You might be smoking something, practically every trap in Dark Souls is telegraphed precisely so that you can see and avoid them. Every arrow trap has an obvious raised tile, every boulder is in plain sight, mimics quiver every few seconds, even the invisible floors in Seath's area are easily defeated by paying attention to the crystal dust falling from the ceiling. Granted I haven't gotten around to DS3 yet so maybe all the traps in that one have giant quest markers above them or something, but saying that Dark Souls' traps are unfair is just kinda retadred

lol. I admit there are a bunch of traps that are telegraphed. But for every telegraphed one there are 3 others that are completely nonsensical. ANd even the telegraphed ones in DS1 are next to impossible to dodge on a first time play through & not to mention so much of them come from off camera. Nice joke.

 

[mogwaimon]

Post examples.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Post examples.

The catacombs should be enough, besides the spikey thing I don't remember anything else be fore warned. Atleast enough to pay attention. My issue is, it is hard to nearly impossible to understand what is happening on the very first run in DS1. I find Dark Souls 3 to much more fair in that sense. Stuff being fair in hindsight isn't the same as being fair.

I think wheel spinning skeleton thingies at the bottom of catacombs are probably one of the worst thing to exist in games. Don't even attempt to tell me that shit is fair or you saw it coming the first time.

The best enemies in the game are pretty much reiterations from the old games but worse because of the new combat's nature.
And the new enemies are cheap because they have pretty lengthy combos and seem to have infinite stamina. Then enemy mobs seems to have been placed without much though to them, and it's disgusting how most of them are harder than a lot of the bosses.

Level design has always been good (and DS2 has by far the best levels in this regard).
Also this point is the hardest to explain, because it's also the most subjective: while most levels are well designed, they just don't feel as charming as they were in DeS and DS 1/2; they seem to have been developed in the most boring way possible; like... they thought of a cathedral and then increased it to the third power - the first area for example, just seems like a city on top another city; it's big but empty, and when everything is that big and amazing, it loses impact halfway trough.
And again the exploration is very mediocre in this game.

As for combat.
The enemy speed, life and damage has been increased to ridicolous levels. Plus most enemies and bosses feel the same when figthing.
Poise has been removed. In fact all the stats went from being well done and polished in DS2, back to the broken mess of 1 (if not worse).
Dual Wielding and power stance was removed for reasons.
OP spells.
Parry and backstab again became cheap ass shit.
Also 5 damn games later and they still don't fix collision.

Dark Souls 2 is the worst. No consistency between levels. You take an elevator up into a lava mountain. Enemies are fckn retarded spam bullshit. I honestly don't care if DS2 does anything good because it's an utter trash of a game.

The new enemies in Dark Souls are not cheap, you have an incredible amount of stamina. You can parry enemies in-between their long chains. You can roll in directions, the enemies take time to turn so you have the advantage.

The enemy mobs are the most thoughtfully placed in the whole damn series, you can tell where they hide, it makes sense for them to roam in that designated area. You clearly weren't paying attention.

Agreed on when everything is amazing it loses impact. My favourite area in the game was the dungeon with skeleton knights after you beat the fire sword guy.

Along with enemy speed, life & damage. Your own speed, damage & life was increased as well. Along with weapon arts. Fair.

Parry & backstab became functional to bosses since most of their attacks don't take 90% of your damn health if they land. Collision does have issues based on youtube videos I've seen, but it is vastly improved & I didn't have any issues.

Insta parrying enemies bigger and stronger than your PC as always been dumb and exceptionally chep.

Insta parry might be cheap but it requires skill. Sufficient amount of skill as well as moderate amount of risk. It's fine.

I won't disagree on the stats thing, it certainly was a downgrade.

I do agree the exploration & levels are not the best in the series. It's probably middle, memorable but not outright special.

Yes, my inherent love for action games is colouring my love for Dark Souls 3. But that just goes to show you how good the combat has become interms of flow that my action game love comes alive to defend it.

DS2 and DeS are the best game From has made in the last 10 years.

Your love for DS2 makes me question your sanity.

 

[mogwaimon]

i'll give you that the wheel skellies are annoying little shits but they aren't traps, in my opinion, they're monsters. If you 'play cautiously' as you described, then you can in many cases bait them out, block or dodge, and punish. Only time you get taken out by those things is if you're overextending yourself and pulling the whole room or have poor execution. As for the pop out spike traps, I wonder what your definition of 'playing cautiously' is, since by the time you get to the catacombs you should know to be wary, and when seeing spikes protruding from a surface approach with shield raised or dodge-roll through just in case it's a trap.

Though thinking on it, there actually is one trap that is purely reaction-based that i can think of and can't be countered purely by cautious play and that's the elevator trap in, I think, Sen's Fortress, if you happen to get on it from the bottom floor and have never seen it from the top floor, you may be taken by surprise or assume there's a third floor and end up getting skewered by the spikes at the top of the shaft. But really, that's the only blatantly 'unfair' trap I can think of and that only happens in one location in the game and is easily defeated after having failed to it once. Maybe the trap can be defeated simply by looking up, I'm not certain, but in that tight space I'm sure the camera gets wonky.

 

[Carpalone]

https://twitter.com/SSSiyan/status/1186809535798882304

 

[Leechmonger]

Finally got around to playing this. Overall, as a huge fan of DMC3, I'm disappointed. The levels are shit, the story is shit, the cutscenes are mostly boring, there's loadings screens fucking everywhere, and the default difficulty is far too easy. The only DMC element that was kept is Dante's and Nero's gameplay, everything else has been lost. Where's the gothic architecture, is this some shitty Ubisoft open world game? V is a fucking abomination. There are weapon variations that can only be unlocked via microtransactions. Etc. etc.

I'll give Son of Sparda a shot, but as of right now: meh.

 

[sullynathan]

Finally got around to playing this. Overall, as a huge fan of DMC3, I'm disappointed. The levels are shit, the story is shit, the cutscenes are mostly boring, there's loadings screens fucking everywhere, and the default difficulty is far too easy. The only DMC element that was kept is Dante's and Nero's gameplay, everything else has been lost. Where's the gothic architecture, is this some shitty Ubisoft open world game? V is a fucking abomination. There are weapon variations that can only be unlocked via microtransactions. Etc. etc.

I'll give Son of Sparda a shot, but as of right now: meh.

What weapon variation can only be unlocked with microtransactions? The only loading screen iirc is when you go to change your weapon in nico's van and that's what, 1 second. The levels are of the same quality as DMC3, and yes there are castles and multiple hell levels like DMC3. I guess you didn't get to Dante's level?

 

[DJOGamer PT]

No consistency between levels. You take an elevator up into a lava mountain.

The game world is suposed to be a country, which does admitedely make it a bit jarring in the first playtrough.
No consistency is bullshit has you can see the levels in the distance and there's clear tranistion from area to area.
The Iron Keep is the only exception to this and it was the fault of having to restructure the game partway through development (the salamander tunnel below Forest of Fallen Giants was planned to wind its way through the mountain and let you out in Iron Keep, and there was an area below Earthen Peak that was meant to lead down into the Undead Crypt).
And saying the game has bad world level design just because of this one flaw, is dumb man.

Enemies are fckn retarded spam bullshit.

How can you say this of 2 but give a free pass on 3 that clearly suffers from this problem?
The only enemies in 2 like this are the big knigths in Dragon Aerie.
In 3 it's every fucking enemy.

I honestly don't care if DS2 does anything good because it's an utter trash of a game.

You're being very biased.
If a game has more good aspects than bad ones than it's a good game.
And DS2 does a lot of good:
-best NG+ of any From game
-some of the best levels From has made
-best DLC's
-best PvP
-best Convenents
-best magic
-the most solid mechanics in the 4 Soul games
-the lore isn't fanservice like in 3 and expands upon past themes
-possibily the most creative aesthicts
-a very good batch of bosses (even in the base game)

The new enemies in Dark Souls are not cheap

They have pratically infinite stamina, are super agressive and can stun with any hit.
How is this not cheap?

The enemy mobs are the most thoughtfully placed in the whole damn series, you can tell where they hide, it makes sense for them to roam in that designated area. You clearly weren't paying attention.

Something that every From game since DeS has and even the King's Field series had.

Along with enemy speed, life & damage. Your own speed, damage & life was increased as well. Along with weapon arts. Fair.

No it's not fair because every playstyle that doesn't revolve around roll roll roll followed by R1 spam is worthless.

Your love for DS2 makes me question your sanity.

Why?
It's a good game.
And has much less issues than DS3:

• The most linear of all the games, less branching options than DeS and even BB. Rehashed areas in an already short game (and third of the game is a swamp). First DLC was a 1.5 hour long disappointment with a rehashed arena. Second DLC had no end despite being the very last dark souls thing we'll get for the forseeable future. Bonfires out the ass. Overall the less replayable game From has made in this decade;

• Filled to the brim with shitty references, nostalgiafagging and pandering out the ass;

• Armor variety is less than DS2 base game, despite copypasting a 3rd of the armors from previous games. The heavy armors are the heaviest they have ever been in the series, while offering basically no additional defense over medium/light sets (in short they suck). The armor system is in general a horrible imbalanced mess;

• Too many useless fucking stats. Awful scaling balance. Poise working as intended. Equip load is now done by VIT, which for some reason gives less per level than fucking dark souls 2. Some Ultra Great Swords, Great Axes, and Hammers weigh more than entire armor sets. Some weapons have retarded stat requirements where they don't even scale with said stats.

• Enemy design is overall catered to Bloodborne R1 spam. And even simple mobs are more troublesome than most Bosses;

• No backstep i-frame, but rolls cost next to nothing with extremely fast recovery and many iframes;

• A majority of the small weapons sped up to bloodborne speed, but most of the Great weapons have been made slower and consume more stamina, while barely doing more damage. Straight Swords and Curved Sword are as fast as daggers. Left hand weapons no longer have full movesets. Weapons in general are 90% quality based. These quality weapons are also usually the best weapons in their class, no redeeming qualities for special weapons resulting in less weapon variety than even BB. This also means Boss weapons are shit. Weapon Arts are mostly just special R2's or Powerstance moves copypasted. Very little moveset variation;

• Magic needs 2-3 ring slots just to dish out melee level damage. Magic itself does reduced damage for PvP. Removes a shit ton of cool spells from the previous game. FP is the most awful casting management system introduced yet (worse than DeS mana, which had better regen options and more efficient), it's horribly ineffiecent with damage, ends up causing everyone to use 1 or 2 FP efficient spell like Great Heavy Soul Arrow. Miracles suck, the best and most viable ones locked behind the final boss. Hexes are gone and dark magic is shit. Overall magic is garbage;

• Covenants are stickers which can be changed on the go - also awful covenants (ex.: blue sentinels and darkmoons are the exact same). They also have shitty rewards. No blue eye orb. No arena. Dragon form the worst it's ever been in both aesthetic and practical sense - also no Dragon covenant. MLGS is the worst its ever been. The game punishes invaders and encourages ganking;

• Lowest Boss count after DeS. Half the bosses are the same roll R1 spam fest, the other half are gimmicks...

 

[DJOGamer PT]

The levels are shit,

Level design has never been a hallmark of the series aside from 1.
The levels are streamlined to cut the menial tasks and focus on what the series has always been about.

the story is shit,

Like Carmack said, story in gameplay driven games is as important as story in a porno.
Besides it's on the same level of quality as 3 (i.e. campy shounen-tier telenovela about the Sparda family).

the cutscenes are mostly boring,

That's subjective. I found them rather entertaining.

there's loadings screens fucking everywhere,

With this level of graphical detail plus the amazing optimization, loading screens are nothing but a necessary evil.

and the default difficulty is far too easy.

That's what the higher difficulty modes are for.
IMO the normal here is as hard as 4's normal.

The only DMC element that was kept is Dante's and Nero's gameplay, everything else has been lost.

This is bullshit. The game has every defining characteristic of 3 and 4.

V is a fucking abomination.

Don't exagerate.
Maybe he isn't an appropriate character for this game, but he's still a well designed character with a very good level of depth to him.
Which makes him a good fun, and honestly original, action character:

There are weapon variations that can only be unlocked via microtransactions.

What the DLC Devil Breakers? Who cares about those. They don't bring anything important to the table.
And the Cavaliere skin just adds new 1 move. Dante's moveset is already huge enough without it.
Besides none of the above can be brought with microtransactions.

 

[Darkforge]

Action GOTY for me gets extremely good in the higher difficulty settings. I guess people just don't actually like gameplay...

 

[Lutte]

I tire of seeing 'level design' always being reduced to what DS1 did ie 'interconnected world' when that term applied to most games means more than that (even a straight purely linear game can in fact have good level design) always ending in "it's bad level design cuz it's not an interconnected world that feels like an entire country is a tiny plot of land like DS1".

Level design is also things like enemy placement on a map, traps, does the environment match the kind of enemy you throw into the room etc.
For me, DS2 has far better level design than DS3 on every single front except for the whole "booh iron keep doesn't make sense". DS3 levels are exceedingly boring, with very open spaces and very mediocre enemies that you can easily ignore even on a blind playthrough, with a few exceptions like Irithyll Dungeon, bits of the undead settlement, and the Painted World of Ariandel, where even the open spaces are good because they threw group of enemies that were well designed and complemented each other rather than, say, the bunch of shitty peasants in road of sacrifices (there's not a single good thing to be said about the entirety of this location bar the time you meet a black knight which is just a DS1 mob). DS2 had a few boring areas like Heide but they had the common sense to keep them short and they're just intermediate areas that connect to the real meat (no man's wharf is a real treat).

DS3 only has in its favor the fact that it has some challenging bosses, more than most of the previous entries.
Even the much maligned Shrine of Amana provided far more entertainment to me than breezing through all the boran garbage DS3 has. Replaying through DS3 I always skipped every single thing, not paying attention to anything but the bosses.

They also have shitty rewards.

Except for one, that is. Watchdogs of Farron will get you quicker access to the old wolf curved sword than farming mobs and it's among the bigger damage boosts you could get for your twinblades (you can have that sword on your back while in dual wielding mode which looks dumb and gives a hefty boost)
Combined with the other buffs to doing consecutive hits you become a murder machine.

 

[sullynathan]

Please stop talking about Dark Souls

 

[Machocruz]

I don't think calling the level design in this game shit is the proper way to put it. There are no egregious flaws with the layout. But I find their choice of locations strictly boring, which is what I think some people mean when they say 'level design'. There is nothing on par with Temen-ni-gru as a setting, imo. Or the castle in 1. This is clearly subjective. Some people may prefer city streets (didn't like them in any other DMC game either), hotel, subway, rooftops, demonic tree, etc. Or they don't care at all and wouldn't mind if it took place entirely in the training room from SF4. I would say these people are hopelessly boring mechanicsfags who I hope have no influence on video game production, but to each their own. The phenomenal enemy design deserves more interesting backdrops.

On the flip, just having a castle or gothic architecture isn't an automatic win. Look at DMC4. The castle in that game was lacking in any ambiance to me, a mere shadow of what previous games held. Perfunctory "this is a DMC game, gotta have a old timey structure of some sort". There are considerations of color palette, lighting*, texture, and other artistic choices that come into play, and 4's iteration felt sterile, workman-like.

On a side note, the level design in DKS2 hits on both levels, structure and setting. The layouts are varied, complex, and interesting. They made excellent choices in light source, texture, architecture, color palette for each location. Everything looks how you would expect it to look considering the theme and tone of the game.

*what's with the bleach bypass and de-saturated filter look in games now? DkS3 has it, DMC5 has it, Diablo 4 looks like it will have it. You can have all the gothic or horror themed shit you want in your game , but with that kind of lighting they'll amount to naught. Video games and their continuing hard on for movies will wind them up in the same digital aesthetic trashcan as modern filmmaking.

 

[sullynathan]

I don't think calling the level design in this game shit is the proper way to put it. There are no egregious flaws with the layout. But I find their choice of locations strictly boring, which is what I think some people mean when they say 'level design'.

I know this is what people mean by level design, they just don't know how to put it in words for whatever reason. It's too regular for what the series has done but at the same time Itsuno and Co. are boxing themselves in by specifically making DMC have two settings: the real world and hell. In a way it can get very repetitive in its looks similar to Bayonetta when everything looks rather brown and drab.

 

[Machocruz]

Speaking of Bayonetta, I liked the city areas in that game. They fit with the kind of urbane, fashionista theme it has going on. Plus cities have a lot of gay in them, and Bayonetta is pretty gay and fabulous game.