Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints

For the reader’s convenience, the thread in question is here: http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/index.php?topic=7963.0

DMC4’s enemies aren’t better than DMC3. Not at all. Some people even go as far as to say that they’re like DMC1 enemies, but that’s nonsense. DMC4 has so many problems that create the *illusion* of decent enemies, but really, the enemies are worse than DMC3 and have problems that arguably make them the worst in ‘notable’ brawlers. I wrote about this in the DMC4 thread on LTC (surely you’ve seen it) and its also an opinion held by the expert posters on the GFAQs DMC boards.

I don’t follow LTC, haven’t since I left.

Ey, maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but look over these lists:
http://devilmaycry.wikia.com/wiki/Enemies_in_Devil_May_Cry_3:_Dante%27s_Awakening_and_Special_Edition
http://devilmaycry.wikia.com/wiki/Enemies_in_Devil_May_Cry_4
I’m not doing a comparison to DMC1 here, I haven’t played it enough yet to judge (only beat the spider boss for the first time).

DMC3, most of the seven hells are the same, they’re alright fodder. Wrath sucks, greed and gluttony are alright and stand out a bit. Hell Vanguard is gold, dash attack, slashes, burst from under you, teleports. Enigmas are fodder, only good in combination with other enemies. The damned pawns have lame movement and only one attack, only fun because they’re so easy to jump cancel off of. Rook is simple, only dangerous in tandem with other enemies. Damned Knight is forgettable (does it even appear off the chessboard?). Bishop is alright, but again, needs other enemies to threaten directly with it. Blood Gargoyle is lame, shoot them, then slash them when petrified, avoid them when they dive at you. I liked the Fallen, except for their tendency to fly out of bounds, and the shields. Arachne are alright and unique, still on the simple side. The dullahans are really boring, can only be attacked from behind, in most appearances move in a totally fixed pattern. Soul eaters are simple too, like blood gargoyles, just a different gimmick to turn them solid.

DMC4 has the scarecrows, which are simple and nonaggressive, but have some different attacks, and mildly tricky timing. Not the best, but it’s alright. Frosts have ranged attacks, direct attacks, attacks from above and can juggle you, enter shields to regain health, teleport. Gladiuses are kinda basic and only work well with other enemies, have 2 different attacks. Assaults have a shield, ranged attack, melee attacks, burrow, dive attack, etc. Cutlasses are kind of simple and a pain, like 2-3 attacks. The Blitzes are awesome and have a bunch of nice attacks and teleports, and there’s tons of ways to take them down as Dante, between royal guards, ranged attacks, lucifer, so on. The basilisks are nice at a range, have melee attacks too. Chimeras are dumb and suck the fun out of things for not obeying hitstun rules. Mephisto and Faust have a bunch of cool attacks and are fun to fight as both nero and dante because both have a number of ways of decloaking them (less for nero, but can direct buster them). The angelo armors have unique juggle rules, shields protecting them, shieldbash attacks, melee attacks, rocket rush attacks, combination attacks. The faults are stupid, frustrating, and uninteresting. Mega Scarecrows have rollout, blade boomerangs, melee attacks, and drop the blade on death, Unique physics too.

A lot of the DMC3 enemies’ attacks work well in combination with other more direct threats, but are weak on their own, and only the Hells threaten Dante directly and effectively. Most of them only have one or two combat abilities. It would make sense to roll these abilities together into one enemy that was stronger.

The DMC4 enemies have ranged and melee attacks on the same enemy, allowing for direct aggression and ranged support interchangeably, they interact differently with the different weapons and different characters. They all have different interactions with Nero’s buster and bringer. They dropped some of the niches of the DMC3 enemies, which is kind of a shame, I wish those attacks like the Rook’s laser beam were carried on. However you’ll notice that most DMC3 style videos tend to be fights with the hells, which are rather similar. The armored enemies tend to get a bit samey with the charge shot on Nero, but Dante has tons and tons of ways of taking them down.

And honestly, DMC3’s enemies aren’t even that bad. They attack in large mobs, attack the moment they’re in range, hit hard, and you can approach them a dozen plus different ways (though this is more of a testament to the wonderful combat system). Anyway, the enemies can definitely be better, sure. Though I don’t see why weak enemies are enough to ‘reconsider’ the game. The combat and bosses (barring a couple stinkers like Doppelganger, Gigapede, and Arkham) are top-shelf, and magnitudes better than anything DMC4 has to offer. The reason DMC4 is even worth mentioning is because of how much it

They’re alright. They’re mostly just kind of one-note, and half the enemies you fight are some variation on the same moveset, the hells. I think they could be better, both in overall variety, aggression, team composition, utilization of the environment. I think DMC4 needs better enemies too, but a ton of the DMC3 enemies are totally lackluster (damned chessmen, enigma, blood-goyles, dullahan, soul-eater) recycles from DMC4 (and even then, it recycled poorly with stupid nerfs and gimps on practically everything).

True, it lost some weapons, it lost some style moves (poor wild stomp), had some gimps, Gunslinger sucks. However there are a ton of new combination moves between the tools that you can now use together (like the royal guard momentum tricks, and star rave). Lucifer is totally new, pandora in the air is alright, as is the boomerang function. They added just frames to gilgamesh.
DMC3, a bit like Melee versus P:M, feels better to my recollection, and has a bit more subtle complexity on a number of moves (crazy combos too), not to mention has nevan, spiral, artemis, agni and rudra, cerberus, and kalina ann.

There’s reasons to come back to each game, though I think DMC4 is the one that shines above at this moment in time. Not to mention, DMC4 Bloody Palace is pretty damn fun, more fun for me these days than the campaign, because it really binds together all the different systems of the game in a way that makes sense, and DMC3’s nobody really plays. (wonder why speed running Bloody Palace never caught on, it would probably be interesting).

I figured you still lurked over there, but in any case, here’s my post: http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/index.php?topic=7963.msg81307#msg81307 Please take a look and let me know which parts you disagree with.

I looked it up when you mentioned you made it.

I am fine with enemies having limited super armor, it means that you cannot aggress completely unopposed. Bayonetta enemies act like this for example. Enemies need super armor or something to that effect to be dangerous in a 1v1 scenario in a game where the player has as many infinites as dante does. That’s why the bosses all have it of course. Short of that, to remain threatening, there need to be multiple enemies so that even while you’re wrecking one, you have to worry about the others. If you see them about to attack, then royal guard. I’m pretty sure you can cancel most attacks into that when enemies hit you. And the attacks are properly telegraphed, far as I can remember.

Chimeras are kind of a bitch, but the interval isn’t actually random, I’ve definitely stepped away from them right before they do it (which is lame, drops the combo, they weren’t a very good enemy idea).
Blitzes are dull when you first pick up the game and get more interesting as you get better. Nero can wreck them rather easily and simply with his charge shot and ground buster into air buster, which is kind of lame because you have to wait for that shit to charge. DT burst also works.

Dante meanwhile has tons and tons of options for dealing with blitzes that don’t involve standing around charging, he can honeycomb shot them, fireworks, teleport, DT rainstorm, prickle them with lucifer, do ordinary attacks canceled into royal guard. Omen on Dante breaks any sort of shield enemies have, even if the disaster meter is totally uncharged. You can RG his lasers and royal release for massive damage.

Stinger RG is really easy, even I can do it.

Mephistos and Fausts you can fight in the air. Their cloaks can be removed easily by teleporting to them and DT rainstorm, or you can generally just do air combos like air rave mixed with yamato, with jump cancels thrown in for good measure. With Nero I like how the devil buster is more effective on their cloaks, which can only be used while lock-on is off, because then I need to manually run up to them and aim at them with it.
Dante can close distance easily on basilisks, he has a teleport, airdashes, stinger.

Agnus certainly can be jump canceled, I jump cancel all over him as both dante and nero. He’s really fun to fight with nero, I stay entirely in the air. You can even hit him while he’s flapping his wings hard while getting up, as long as your feet don’t touch the ground (it’s a quake-box).
E&I are useful for honeycomb shot and rainstorm.

The different styles all have useful moves that are in one style but not the others, like aerial rave in swordmaster/darkslayer, teleport and airdash in trickster, RG (which can cancel certain moves, and useful for aerial momentum), rainstorm honeycomb shot and fireworks in gunslinger

Then you get cross-style stuff:

EDIT: This was asked and answered later on

I replied to the DMC4 thread, if you’d like to read it. There isn’t much of interest, I was mostly just deflecting the other guys’ arguments, but yeah. I wanted to write up a pastebin reply to your ask when I linked my original post, but I guess that’ll come at a later date.

I read it.

DRI is OP, kinda sucks I guess. Should have either made landing it harder, or not had DT distortion. Or to have other things that are meter hungry. You can choose to not use it if you want, but I won’t deny it’s a mistake.

The stun doesn’t feel particularly inconsistent to me. I always thought of it like working as Poise did from Dark Souls (or bloodborne, which has really nuanced super armor rules for different enemy attacks versus different weapons), where specific attacks deal specific amounts of stun damage specific to the attack, and past a certain threshold enemies lose their armor for a period of time until it resets. I believe bosses work the same way. Super armor helps make it so you can’t just attack enemies without worrying about retaliation. Besides, Royal Guard cancels everything when you’re actually parrying a hit if I’m not mistaken (I might be, I don’t RG).

Disagree with agnus (hard to stay on top of him and he’s generally aggressive), Berial has good moves otherwise, like flame pillar and explosions + melee, Dante’s weird overall, but good if you don’t cheese him I guess.

Super Armor rules aren’t always about multi-hitting enemies, and I’m pretty sure no enemies have special hitstun rules for their attacks, unless I’m mistaken. I mean, in general you should treat it that enemies have super armor unless you’ve specifically broken their super armor or whatever, and remember which moves do and don’t have hyper armor (uninterruptable attacks) otherwise.

I agree with most of the artistic praise of DMC3, disagree with most of DMC4, especially the character designs which I thought were great except Gloria, and Lady. I think Lady’s change of character makes sense in the absence of her father. She’s allowed to loosen up, but be serious in a different way. I thought Dante and Nero’s character designs were pretty good. I think DMC1’s design is the worst there, with 2 coming in second (though it’s pretty alright, 1 is just silly).

Don’t think you’re right about cloaks, plenty of options work versus them.

Consider taking up speedruns of bloody palace mode, I imagine that will probably bring out the more interesting aspects of the game in a search for efficiency, like DRI wasting time except in boss battles, and I’ll be honest, I want to see what that would look like. I think BP mode in general brings out the best traits of the game. Would rock to get an enemy aggression mod.