Devil May Cry 2

The Good
Devil May Cry 2 is fun, stylish, and graphically great. The voice acting is good, the visuals are near perfect, the gameplay is addictive, the levels are a-plenty, and the son of Sparda, Dante, is as cool as ever. Secrets and cheats abound, along with the new addition of CG cinemas, which were absent from the first game. In the in-game cinemas, Dante sometimes rides a motorcycle and flips a coin, which make him even more cool. You can now do awesome evasion moves, run along and up against walls, and you don't have to learn any new abilities (which is good and bad). You can still level up your swords and guns, and now equip amulets to add special characteristics to your Devil Mode, which looks truly cool. The loading times are fast, too. New baddies and bosses are here, along with a new character, Lucia, who has her own disc! It's like getting two games for the price of a new one (And you can also unlock Trish, from the first DMC, as a playable character). Sound good? It is.

The Bad
A few problems arose when playing DMC2. The first is the story... The game begins with Dante, who apparently got a call from the mysterious Lucia, helping her gather some Arcana artifacts before a corporate businessman, who is using devils and evil powers to gain the Arcana's, which will give him the power of Argosax, a most powerful demon (who is actually a combination of the bosses throughout the game) and allow him to rule the world. Dante, I assume, has never met Lucia, the businessman, or Lucia's grandmother (who plays a small yet significant role) before. However, he acts as though he's known Lucia for quite some time, and done random tasks for her grandmother as well. It's all messed up, so I don't really qualify this as a true story. It doesn't seem to concern Dante, and he is only linked to it by Lucia's distress call. However, it's his job as a devil hunter at the Devil May Cry. No explanation is given as to what happened to Trish, but you can play her if you beat the game on Hard mode with Dante.

Now, I can ignore this story-thing because the game is so darn fun. But what I can't ignore is how easy the game is. I mean, sure, DMC was mindnumbingly hard, but that doesn't give them room to make DMC2 fit for a two-year-old's video game playing level. Maybe I'm being harsh... I mean, the giant orb-shooting monkey was moderately tough the first time I fought him. Then again, maybe I'm not being tough enough; I completed the game in 3, maybe 2, days!

The Bottom Line
DMC2 was a fun and awesome experience. I strongly recommend it to the fans of the first; That is, if you don't mind the absense of story and the low level of difficulty. It's a perfect rental, and a good buy. Go out and play it.

Oh... what? "Is it better than the first"? Well..... I guess I'll leave that up to you.