Devil May Cry 4

The Good
There is an odd sense of kinship between the even-numbered Devil May Cry games. Neither 2 nor 4 are actually bad games, but as a result of rushed development and some bad design decisions, they both end up very disappointing in comparison to their immediate predecessors. They also actually share some gameplay elements and visual themes.

The main thing that keeps DMC 4 together and makes it work is its core combat gameplay. Despite some problems I'll talk about later, Nero's combos and special moves do flow great together. Accurately executing an entire sequence of attacks against an enemy is genuinely satisfying.

The game's visual design can be its strong point as well. While it does borrow a lot from its predecessors - with locations bearing strong similarities to 1's Gothic castle and 2's vaguely Mediterranean coastal region among others - it's still varied and interesting. Between the white-and-gold Neoclassical buildings, icy mountains, lush green forests taking over ancient ruins, and dark underground labs, the colour palette does its best to make the player experience more exciting.

The Bad
One of the biggest and most obvious problems with Devil May Cry 4 is its division into the main portion where you play as Nero and the seven-mission Dante segment squeezed into the second half. The two parts completely lack balance, as the latter is clearly rushed and unfinished, with no unique goals or mechanics, no new locations or enemies, and a general lack of polish. To make the contrast even larger, Nero's missions tend to overstay their welcome, trying to cover too much of the large, convoluted locations at one time. Sometimes more is less - but less is less, too.

There's a slightly similar problem with the game's arsenal. Between 4 base combos, many special moves, the Devil Bringer, a chargeable gun, and "Exceed" mode for his sword, Nero has a much larger combination of attacks available at the same time than any character at any point in the first 3 games. However, because he cannot switch weapons and the Devil Bringer upgrades mostly apply to story progression and platforming rather than combat, this abundance actually feels more limiting than switching between wildly different playstyles in DMC 1 and 3. Again, more is less.

Dante's weaponry is disappointing as well. Playing as him, you can choose between the basic sword Rebellion (because I guess Alastor was too good for this game), yet another Ifrit clone (which at least looks even cooler than Ifrit and Beowulf), and a hybrid melee/ranged weapon probably meant to compensate for the absurdly underpowered guns. It's a very uninspired set that clearly shows the developers didn't have the time to properly think over Dante's portion of the game.

When it comes to its camera system, DMC 4 goes even farther than its predecessor, making the camera mostly controllable by the player. It means the carefully planned angles from the first two games are almost completely gone, while you have yet another thing to worry about during intense combat (as if the very out-of-the-way Exceed trigger and slowly charging gunshots weren't enough). The occasional fixed camera angles, which worked very well when they were the norm, are now disruptions that can mess up the gameplay flow on several occasions.

Another problem with the game is its portrayal of female characters. After Dante's Awakening made pretty good progress by introducing the strong, confident tomboy Lady, 4 regresses to blatant sexualization of both Lady and the newly designed Gloria through a combination of skimpy outfits (which, to be fair, were already a thing in the first two games) and absurdly in-your-face camera angles during cutscenes. The only female character who's not clearly sexualized, Kyrie, is a painfully generic damsel in distress who completely lacks personality and whose dialogue revolves almost exclusively around the male protagonist Nero.

An interesting similarity between DMC 2 and 4 is the simple fact of player attacks pushing the enemies relatively farther than in 1 and 3. In both cases it serves to facilitate the game's main gimmick - as 2 is designed around rolling which allows you to both dodge and close gaps, so 4 expects you to snatch enemies from far away with the Devil Bringer. Though it's absolutely not a bad mechanic in itself, it feels a lot like web-slinging in a Spider-Man game, while 2's solution is much more in tune with DMC's overall theme of high player mobility.

The Bottom Line
Offering more and at the same time less gameplay variety than 3, often looking and feeling more-or-less like a combination of 1 and 2, Devil May Cry 4 is an unfinished game whose decisive advantage is the great flow of its base combat. The weakest entry in the series at the time of its release, it's still definitely not an actual bad game. 6/10

[based on the Nero/Dante campaign in Special Edition]