How are you meant to perform stylish combos in DMC2?

[Holding These Alligators Down]

I never had DMC2 on the PS2 so this is my first time playing.
In DMC1 it's very easy to get Awesome or Stylish level combos without really trying all that hard but in DMC2 Dante has this 1 sword combo and all i am getting is a D rating all the time.

Am i missing something?

[Director Bison]

DMC2 isn't exactly the most intuitive game to understand right away, it takes allot of testing out things to actually figure out how the game functions.

DMC3 fixes and improves everything DMC2 tried to do.

But as to your actual question. Basically your style rank will go down when your not attacking an enemy. So using sword or guns will reset it's timer and raise the style rank, in other DMC games you would taunt while waiting in the middle of a combo, but DMC2 doesn't have a taunt, instead your Dodge has the function of pausing the Combo timer, and reseting the timer and raising style when dodging an attack.

in combat if you want to get to Showtime!! rank your gonna want to never run normally, all of your movement should be either Shooting or dodging when your not close to an enemy.

I'v written a guide that goes into as much detail as there is, about how DMC2's ranking system functions if your curious.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1753766220

But more likely then not you'll end up thinking DMC2 isn't worth the effort it takes to get good at it. like the vast majority of people do.

[Sidyctism]

the game actually does have multiple combos, though they are executed differently than in the other games. instead of pausing between button presses, you need to shift your left stick into a direction after different hits of the combo (the direction doesnt matter), for example
Y (shift stick) Y Y Y or
Y Y (shift stick) Y Y
and so on.

[Holding These Alligators Down]

Oh ok I just tried moving the left stick and he does different combos. I think I prefer the system in DMC1 but this isn’t too bad. Thanks for the help guys.