About item purchasing...

[Neonetik]

I noticed that you can only buy a certain number of items, like 30 vitality stars and such. I was wondering, does this number reset after beating the game? Or is it like, if I bought 30 stars on normal, I would never be able to buy any one dante must die?

I don't really intend to buy any items, but when I first started playing, I did buy 1 vitality star, and that "1/30" notice is sort of annoying to me.

[EEPY]

Not to my knowledge. However on PC, Yellow/Gold orbs do not work when you buy them, so you will be able to buy 3 of them, but never be able to use them. Only the ones you find by playing missions are usable. The port is garbage.

[Neonetik]

Hell, well, if I don't want that 1/30 there to constantly taunt me, I guess I have 2 options. Either restart the entire game, or over time, buy every single consumable item and beat the hardest difficulties with them, then claim I've beaten DMC3 on the hardest difficulties.

I'm sort of going towards options 2, though having already lost the ability to use 1 vital star has put somewhat of a damper on me. And yeah, the port is garbage, but I made it work. Got 1920 by 1080 and got the xbox controller to work, so it's all fine for me. Very minor slowdown occasionally, but that's rare.

[Broadsword]

Playing using items is generally considered extremely casual unless trying to speedrun the game, and is frowned upon by the game's system itself.

[Neonetik]

Oh I know, but that single item bought really bothers me for some reason.

Well, not REALLY that much, but enough to make me use any spare orbs I have to buy items after I buy everything else useful.

[Broadsword]

I'm pretty certain that's just there for the amount you can carry.

You should 'learn' all the moves for your devil arms, upgrade all your firearms, and then level up your styles, more or less in that order.

Ebony & Ivory take precedence in terms of firearms upgrades, though. It's extremely difficult to pump the style meter or even keep it where it is without the damage buff.

[Neonetik]

Hey man, I only ever purchased a single vitality star when I fought cerberus, I was still pretty damn new to the game and was figuring stuff out, and cerberus was kicking my ass. Funnily enough, it didn't help and I died anyway, then I beat him without it.

I'm doing pretty well now though, I'm up to mission 14 I think, and I know the moves and have upgrading everything I want.

Rocking out with a Rebellion/Beowulf+Shotgun/Spiral+Trickster loadout, all of which at their max level. It's awesome.

[Broadsword]

If you're playing the standard game, I would keep in mind that certain styles and weapon combinations are better for dealing with specific situations. Cerberus pretty much chews up and spits out most new players to the game, and your first time fighting him pretty much requires Swordmaster.

If you're playing with the style swapping mod, the 'strategic' element of picking your style appropriately for what you're going to be facing is basically gone. Also, I wouldn't ever play in a non-Swordmaster style without E&I, you just can't follow an enemy and hang them in the air as easily.

[Neonetik]

Thanks for the tips, but, I don't really feel that way. I've only been using trickster so far because it's the one I enjoy and I'm doing just fine. I know some weapons are better for some situations, but I'm not trying to be a uber 1337 pro killa 360 no scope SSS rank badass over here. I'm just trying to play videogames and have fun. As such, I've spend most of the game using only those weapons I mentioned, as they are the most fun for me.

I am not playing with any sort of mod either, I prefer playing games in their original forms, so I can have an accurate feel of how good the game actually is. Rare exceptions exist, but this is not one of them.

Also, I hate E&I. Tapping the shoot button for every single pistol shot really hurts my thumbs. It's one of the few weapons in any game that is actually literally painful if you want to use it well.

[Broadsword]

I hate to say it, but Devil May Cry 3 is built around mashing and not punishing you for it, but actually rewarding you.

That said, you can use something like Xpadder to double up on your input controls, or you can use the style swapping mod. The style swapping mod does not require you use its namesake or any of its options, but presents you with the ability to. One of the options allow you to lower the buffer requirements for Crazy Combos.

And even if you're not playing it to be stylish, you can actually learn a bunch of stuff from playing the game that way. After all, it's sort of the only way a game can go from combat room -> corridor combat -> combat room -> boss fight and still, y'know, be fun.

[Neonetik]

Build around mashing...? Well, once again, I have not really experienced this at all. When I play, I don't just keep pressing the same buttons over and over, I combine them with different analog movements and gun shots and jumping and stuff. I mean, I guess I'm always pressing buttons, but it's hardly just mindless mashing, you need to think to excecute these combos and get a good rank.

As for using the style swapping mod or xpadder to make getting combos easier, as I said before, I feel that ruins how the game was originally meant to be played. To me, doing that would be like downloading an infinite HP mod. Combos are supposed to take some skill to excecute, using a mod destroys that.

As for your last comment about DMC3 being the only game that makes you go through repetitive events and still be fun... couldn't you say that about like, 95% of videogames? Pretty much most games can be boiled down to a simple formula like the one you said.

[Broadsword]

I suppose I should be a bit more accurate and elaborate more: in DMC3, the controls are specifically set up so that you are, at any given time, soft-buffering instead of hard-buffering; soft-buffering being that while your inputs are still counted, as opposed to hard buffering, you are not forced into compelting a combo's final swings because you pressed the melee button X amount of times, whereas in a game with hard-buffering like Monster Hunter, you would be forced, or 'trapped' in your combo. DMC3 will never 'trap' you except with moves that specifically require a 'charge-up,' you can only trap yourself by choosing to perform those moves. It's not 'mindless mashing,' but you're not punished, you're even rewarded, for being able to perform extremely rapid inputs. To give you a better understanding, I press the buttons so fast that occasionally I go into a Crazy Combo when I specifically don't want to do a Crazy Combo.

DMC3SE, as-is, actually presents you with an option which was never designed to be in the game, but actually was sort of a carry-over from the localization, and that is Turbo Mode. Simply put, the game was never meant to be played in Turbo Mode (120% speed for everything), but it was carried over from the Japanese version of DMC3 (not Special Edition), where it was originally designed to make the 50 FPS Japanese localization play at the same pace as the 60 FPS American localization.

Y'know, one of the things that's extremely popular in Devil May Cry is an 'anti-trainer,' and that is a 'trainer' that actually stops enemies from dying, so you can pound away at a single enemy to work on your combos and finish them when you choose. This is actually present in the style swapping mod, again, as an option you can enable or disable. At no point does the mod force you to use any of its features, and quite a few of the aesthetic ones are extremely nice and pleasant - and yes, you can argue that the aesthetic ones do present their own advantage because it's easier to jump cancel Helm Breaker with Force Edge than it is Rebellion due to size of Force Edge's model encouraging you to get closer than you would with Rebellion - but you could also do things which have absolutely 100% no affect on the gameplay and simply are a matter of personal taste, like changing aura colors, removing Beowulf from Dante and Vergil's model, or forcing all the melee weapons you're carrying to be shown.

Finally, though, DMC3 is most certainly not the only game to use this formula, nor is it going to be last, it is, however, one of the few games which can carry itself purely on its combat, and not the story, presentation, or any of the added fluff which is at least done well (DMC knows it's juvenile schlock and it revels in it). So basically, DMC's combat is like the dude on a team for an FPS game who goes 10-0, captures the enemy flag, while the story and presentation are busy holding the front just well enough to possibly peak your interest.

[Neonetik]

For your first point, can we both just accept that DMC3 require lots of button pressing, but is not mashing? That would simplify so much.

As for the turbo mode, well, it's in the game, the developers put it in there, so I feel it is designed to be in there in a way, but I don't use it and probably never will. Still a developer included option though.

For the mod, I'm not saying the mod is bad or anything, but I really just don't see any good reason for me to bother with it. The game works absolutely fine, and I still feel that playing with it will somewhat change the way I feel about the game as a whole, especially since I have not beaten the game yet.

In terms of using a repetative formula, sound and presentation is still pretty important I feel. DMC3 has pretty damn good music and nice weapon sounds, and it's visuals are absolutely beautiful. The different settings in the game are all really quite nice and have a good feel to them. Of course, the main focus is the combat, but plenty of games can get by the same way DMC3 does. In fact, I'd dare say most games do. I don't really know what you mean when you say that it only gets by on it's combat. I mean, it's combat is it's gameplay, and pretty much most games have gameplay in them. I probably wouldn't be playing DMC3 if all the character were white blocks in an environment made of white blocks with no music, but I could say that for pretty much any videogame at all. There are very few games I feel that I would still play even if everything was just white blocks. The only example that really come to mind are puzzle games.

[neonfatum]

Originally posted by Boogie Van:

DMC3SE, as-is, actually presents you with an option which was never designed to be in the game, but actually was sort of a carry-over from the localization, and that is Turbo Mode. Simply put, the game was never meant to be played in Turbo Mode (120% speed for everything), but it was carried over from the Japanese version of DMC3 (not Special Edition), where it was originally designed to make the 50 FPS Japanese localization play at the same pace as the 60 FPS American localization.

That's not true. Both Japanese and American versions of videogames use the NTSC standard and run at 60hz. And DMC3 always ran at 60 FPS.
The PAL version runs at 50 but even there you have the option to use NTSC mode and play it at 60. Turbo Mode is a feature that was put in to add more challenge and speed to the gameplay. It's not there to counteract a slower refresh- or framerate.

[Broadsword]

Sorry, I got my regions confused; the point still stands - where do you think they got the code to speed up the game by a factor of 1.2?

[ItchyDani3l]

Hey seems you figured this out, but I'd like to clarify a few things:

The gold/yellow orbs DO work when you buy them. Idk where that guy got the idea that they dont, but they do. A yellow orb will allow you to continue, a gold orb will revive you.

The 1/30 or 1/10 or other this doesnt represent a number of items you can buy total. It is the number you can hold. So, the number 1 means you have 1 star, and the 30 means you can hold a total of 30. Even if you pick up a star, it will increase this, so maybe the 1/30 will bother you less as you pick up new items.

However, there is a different consequence to purchasing items: Each time you purchase an item, the cost will increase exponentially. So if you were to buy up to 30 vitality stars, the first might only cost 500 R, but the last one would probably cost around 50000000 R. I havent personally tried, but it would be a very large sum.