Should I bother playing this if I hated DMC3?

[Samz]

For various reasons, I felt DMC3 was extremely unfair and poorly designed so despite loving DMC1, I honestly hated DMC3 more than DMC2. (Since while DMC2 was also badly made, it at least the decency to be easier so it was less of a slog.)

Things that annoyed me:
Dodging and jumping being on the same button: with the camera constantly shifting during some of the more hectic bosses/encounters, this made dodging a gamble if the camera decided to abruptly shift make Dante jump in place instead of rolling.

Not being able to cancel out of Rebellion's first sword swipe: with how aggressive and how many enemies existed, it felt like I'd constantly get cheap-shot by some partially off-camera enemy deciding to attack just as I started swinging making it impossible to dodge due to how Dante wasn't fast enough.

Bosses felt like trial/error over anything else and did way too much damage, this only got worse with any boss that was designed around dodging if I didn't happen to have trickster equipped (Nevan and Beowulf come to mind) as it felt like I'd constantly take cheap hits due to the camera abruptly changing and suddenly I'm jumping in the air towards the enemy's attack instead of rolling.

Certain bosses like Nevan/Cerberus were practically Devil May Cry 2 bosses with how melee was extremely risky against them, so I'd just find myself slowly shooting them to death as if I was playing DMC2.

[Director Bison]

First to answer your question DMC4 is easier then DMC3. DMC1 and DMC3 are by far the hardest in the series, just make sure to learn about Nero's Exceed/Max Act ability, it makes him much more fun to play. Dante in DMC4 & 5 also has style switching so he can switch to Trickster when ever you want.

DMC1 on DMD, and DMC3 are trail and Error, they're supposed to be hard, you're actually lucky you played the Special Edition, the original western release of DMC3 bumped Easy and Normal up a whole difficulty level, so Normal was actually hard difficultly, and there were only Yellow orbs, so a game over without Yellow orbs mean restarting the entire level again.

As for Dodging it seems you relied on dodge rolling too much when you shouldn't have. The Normal Jump actually has quite a bit of Invincibility frames, and it can be just as useful for dodging all manner of things.

I personally don't find Trickster necessary for Nevan, rather your weapon choice is much more important, You need to use Cerberus against her, it quickly takes care of her bat shield. You can also jump in the air and fire Ebony & Ivory to extend your Air time to help you avoid the floor lightning blast, When she's shoots the pillars of Lightning you can just run side to side to avoid the vertical ones, if you're not confident with walking between them.

The Cerberus boss you're meant to shoot off it's Ice Shield with E&I, and then go for melee if you hurt his leg enough he'll fall over and give you a free opportunity for damage, Swordmaster's arial attacks with Rebillion can het all 3 heads, Agni and Rudra are also very good at hitting the heads.

Also I'll assume you never found out about Devil Trigger Explosion, a move only in DMC3, when you buy the purple orbs the extra DT slots can be charged up by holding the DT button, and then instantly used for a massive blast of Damage to near by enemies.

Regardless of all of this if you ever go back to DMC3 try looking at no damage videos on youtube and learn from their strategies, it'll help you get better, and realise where you went wrong.

[Samz]

Originally posted by Director Bison:

First to answer your question DMC4 is easier then DMC3. DMC1 and DMC3 are by far the hardest in the series, just make sure to learn about Nero's Exceed/Max Act ability, it makes him much more fun to play. Dante in DMC4 & 5 also has style switching so he can switch to Trickster when ever you want.

DMC1 on DMD, and DMC3 are trail and Error, they're supposed to be hard, you're actually lucky you played the Special Edition, the original western release of DMC3 bumped Easy and Normal up a whole difficulty level, so Normal was actually hard difficultly, and there were only Yellow orbs, so a game over without Yellow orbs mean restarting the entire level again.

As for Dodging it seems you relied on dodge rolling too much when you shouldn't have. The Normal Jump actually has quite a bit of Invincibility frames, and it can be just as useful for dodging all manner of things.

I personally don't find Trickster necessary for Nevan, rather your weapon choice is much more important, You need to use Cerberus against her, it quickly takes care of her bat shield. You can also jump in the air and fire Ebony & Ivory to extend your Air time to help you avoid the floor lightning blast, When she's shoots the pillars of Lightning you can just run side to side to avoid the vertical ones, if you're not confident with walking between them.

The Cerberus boss you're meant to shoot off it's Ice Shield with E&I, and then go for melee if you hurt his leg enough he'll fall over and give you a free opportunity for damage, Swordmaster's arial attacks with Rebillion can het all 3 heads, Agni and Rudra are also very good at hitting the heads.

Also I'll assume you never found out about Devil Trigger Explosion, a move only in DMC3, when you buy the purple orbs the extra DT slots can be charged up by holding the DT button, and then instantly used for a massive blast of Damage to near by enemies.

Regardless of all of this if you ever go back to DMC3 try looking at no damage videos on youtube and learn from their strategies, it'll help you get better, and realise where you went wrong.

The thing is I didn't find DMC1 half as frustrating as I found 3, (Not helping is I actually used Yellow orbs on my first attempt at DMC3.) stuff like how DMC1 Dante can dodge instantly after an attack (as far as I can remember) compared to DMC3 dante having a delay helped. (Since the enemies are so fast and numerous in 3 that it felt pretty unfair at times.)

At least in my experience, the I-frames of jumping didn't work against a good few attacks without luck so I'd rather try moving out of the way instead of trying to tank with I-frames. (Such as the teleporting big grim reaper dudes, Nevan's Electric projectiles and a few other attacks.)

I had no idea Cerberus would be stronger against Nevan but I still find her last "kiss" stage to be pretty tedious to fight. (The one where you HAVE to stay away and just slowly fire away at her)

I know you can hurt Cerberus leg but in my experience on my first run I found it very hard to get in and do damage before he'd recover, so I ended up just shooting him to death from a distance. (The fact you have no Devil Trigger and therefore no healing for this boss fight really didn't help either, how long you take to get Devil Trigger is pretty much one of the big reasons I hate 3.)

Had no idea the explosion existed.

At least when I've asked around, most of the advice I've seen for DMC3 is to exploit I-frames or other quirks which I don't really consider a good sign for the game. (I like to play games blind and if it's considered vital for basic gameplay to know exploits, I feel that really reflects poorly on it's design.)

[ProjectXsent]

Originally posted by Samz:

but I still find her last "kiss" stage to be pretty tedious to fight. (The one where you HAVE to stay away and just slowly fire away at her)

When in Devil Trigger form, she won't be able to kiss and touch you as she succ the life out of you.

[Samz]

Originally posted by ProjectXsent:

but I still find her last "kiss" stage to be pretty tedious to fight. (The one where you HAVE to stay away and just slowly fire away at her)

When in Devil Trigger form, she won't be able to kiss and touch you as she succ the life out of you.

The game didn't exactly hint towards that so I just used DT to run away faster and shoot her quicker.

[ProjectXsent]

Originally posted by Samz:

The game didn't exactly hint towards that so I just used DT to run away faster and shoot her quicker.

Probably one of the games that has "fk around and find out" moments. Even red orb caches and blue orb fragments that were hidden by fixed camera angles were quite tedious.

[Director Bison]

Originally posted by Samz:

The thing is I didn't find DMC1 half as frustrating as I found 3

Yeah DMC1 your Damage output is incredibly high, and DMD difficulty balances this by taking away healing, and essentially only giving you 3 hits before death. It's my personal Favorited game of all time. When you master DMC1 on DMD then you really master how to avoid all attacks in the other games with just the basic move set.

[Samz]

Originally posted by Director Bison:

Originally posted by Samz:

The thing is I didn't find DMC1 half as frustrating as I found 3

Yeah DMC1 your Damage output is incredibly high, and DMD difficulty balances this by taking away healing, and essentially only giving you 3 hits before death. It's my personal Favorited game of all time. When you master DMC1 on DMD then you really master how to avoid all attacks in the other games with just the basic move set.

I swear enemies arent as fast in 3 as they are in 1.

[Little Seizures Pizza]

That is one wild ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ take lmao

[Samz]

Originally posted by Little Seizures:

That is one wild ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ take lmao

Well it's my take.

I found DMC3 the least enjoyable game in the HD trilogy by a longshot.

[Samz]

Originally posted by Comfortable_East:

From your gaming history it seems you are really into FPS games. And considering you enjoyed DMC2 (which has the strongest firearm damage out all games), I assume you heavily relied on guns over melee attacks.
If that's the case, then I'm sorry to tell you that is not the most optimal way of playing DMC3 (or any DMC game for that matter).

Main appeal of DMC games is owning the enemies that kicked your ass the first time in most badass or efficient way possible. This requires learning enemy patterns and deciding when to go in and back off. Pressing one button over and over is not rewarded in these games.

Since you are an FPS gamer, you already gave great reflexes. All you need now is a little bit of effort to learn the game mechanics (your arsenal and enemy patterns) and a bit of patience. I promise you the payoff would be very satisfying.
Also, there is no shame in looking into some guides or videos if you are struggling, a lot of us do.
If this is too much to ask of you, then maybe DMC games are not for you.
You can still play it for the story, it's decent, nothing crazy.

I was surprised by the title, that someone dislikes DMC3 when it is hailed as a goat unanimously.

Side note - Make sure "turbo mode" is turned off. (if it is on, it boosts enemy and your speed by 20%)
- enemies off camera won't aggro and hit you, so you can use that to your advantage by cornering individual enemies.

For me, I found several bosses to be pretty unclear about when attacking them is safe or not with melee (I had no until now that DT makes you immune to Nevan's kiss for instance so I just slowly shot her final form to death.) which means I found myself heavily using guns on alot of the early game bosses because no DT (Since unless I used the quickly-expensive healing items, Dante had no way of recovering health mid-boss while at least post DT I could use taunts and other means of building up DT to recover the damage from a few hits across the course of the fight especially combined .) and Dante being a bit slower with Rebellion in DMC3 resulted in me never feeling as confident about going in for hits. (Since Dante needs to finish the first sword slash before he can dodge, he's slightly slower than DMC1 Dante sword swings and the enemies are faster.)


I found the off-camera strategy unreliable, mainly since If I wasn't using trickster, I'd have to lock-on to dodge, which often caused Dante to lock-on to an off-screen enemy and move the camera so more enemies would target me. (and often throwing off my dodge because he wasn't facing the direction I was expecting, so I'd fail to dodge the attack and then have more enemies become "active".)

I did do alot better once I mostly switched to trickster instead of other styles but that felt more due to abusing I-Frames than "properly" dodging out of the way. (Especially stuff like the Arkham boss, where the camera frequently had his projectiles be off-screen until they were right about to hit Dante so just being able to press one button for I-frames let me avoid the damage better, at least until Vergil shows up and disables your styles.)

[Samz]

Originally posted by Comfortable_East:

Originally posted by Samz:

At least when I've asked around, most of the advice I've seen for DMC3 is to exploit I-frames or other quirks which I don't really consider a good sign for the game. (I like to play games blind and if it's considered vital for basic gameplay to know exploits, I feel that really reflects poorly on it's design.)

Originally posted by Samz:

Not being able to cancel out of Rebellion's first sword swipe

You think i-Frames are cheap and is an indicator of bad game design. While also wanting animation cancellation (it exists with certain setups).
Both of these mechanics are no where mentioned in the in-game texts or tutorials.

This makes me conclude you are the type of player who wants to beat the game the way you find it fit, correct?
There is nothing wrong with this, the game allows for multiple strategies to be used under same scenarios.

BUT, is YOUR strategy the most optimal?
Sub-optimal strategies will not give you a good time, that is true for all games.
Take for example the FPS games you play. CS2 must have its optimal loadout, locations to camp and some other niche strategies pro players come up with. None of these strategies will be in the game texts or tutorials, but is it shameful to use them to have fun? no right.

At least to me, cancelling an attack feels more natural than "dodging" by using the fact the dodge lets me go right through attacks. (Especially trickster.)

To me, trying to abort a melee swing to dodge is something I'd expect more than I-frames. (Especially since you can see when your character cancels an attack while there's no real indicator of I-frames outside of a guide or being told online.)

I actually don't like CS GO (Never actually played CS2, I only have it because I had CS GO) because of how I feel the balancing works in that game.

While I know style-switching kinda fixes this, in DMC3 it often felt like I was crippled by going into certain bosses/encounters without the "right" loadout, such as bosses with hard to dodge attacks (or simply a camera that's all over the place making it hard to properly see projectiles, like Arkham or reliably do a dodge roll instead of a jump like Nevan) or the wrong weapons. (Like Arkham's attack where he swarms you with the small enemies, I went into that fight with Spiral and the pistols originally and both were woefully ill-suited for them so I got stomped by them while taking the rocket launcher on my next attempt drastically reduced the challenge.)

For this run (since I originally tried to beat the game several years ago but gave up) I beat almost every boss (aside from the first Vergil fight and if you count using an orb on Arkham) on my second attempt but it often felt more that changing my loadout (or having the camera cooperate better) was the solution more than any actual improvement on my end, it didn't feel like I got better personally.

[Samz]

Originally posted by Comfortable_East:

I think your response can be summarised as - Struggling due to getting hit (more than you would like) by the enemies. Heavy reliance on trickster is not fun for you. Dodge rolling is not great because you believe rebellion is slower. You rely quite heavy on healing from DT and items. And the infamous camera.

DMC is challenging but most would agree it isn't unfair. The reason being most enemy's and bosses' attacks are telegraphed (both visual and audio cue exists).
So, what I'm guess is, you are trying to "dodge-roll" right before something is going to hit.
Which will of course not work because you are in your attack animation.
For example in cerberus fight, most players would jump back when he raises his paws. But if you wait till the last millisecond before the paws' and your hitbox collide, you are going to get hit.
This is true for all enemies and bosses. You need to dodge immediately after the telegraph. Some telegraphs are slower or faster, so it can throw people's timing off.
So it is better to keep an eye on the enemies around Dante, than Dante.

Dodge roll is quite bad in this game ngl. It is slower, requires lock on and i-frames are not instantaneous (i-frames only when he is completely rolled into a ball, not before or after it). Many players don't use it at all. Jumping is better (instantaneous).

And if you don't get hit as often, then the reliance on DT and items are automatically reduced.

Camera, what can I say. Big fan of the "cameraman".

During some of hectic fights in DMC3, I'd start a sword swing, hear an enemy audio cue after/just as I started and get hit by an enemy teleporting/charging into Dante before the game let me roll, my only delay was that I was already attacking another enemy. (This was when I was trying to use sword master so no trickster)