The Devil May Cry series has long been popular among consoles, and only with the release of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening in 2005 did it visit personal computers. Despite the fact that the port of the game turned out to be quite crude, the game and its demon hunter named Dante immediately gained crowds of fans. Seeing clear commercial success, the developers announced Devil May Cry 4 on all platforms at once.
One of the main differences between DMC4 and other games in the series is the change in the main character. A young man, Nero, falls into our hands, whose character is very much like Dante: the same wit, also arrogant and impudent, but also charismatic. Dante hasn’t gone anywhere either, and they’ll let you play for him.
The gameplay has not changed much, it still has the same mechanics, but refined to the smallest detail. But you won’t be able to do button mashing here; a blind battle will not benefit you at all. This is precisely the first drawback of the game: in order to truly enjoy the gameplay and gain high ratings during battle, the player will have to thoroughly study all the techniques, all the character’s movements and be able to make combinations of various combos. This, unfortunately, is not given to everyone, and it will take quite a bit of time to master. In the game, of course, you can turn on the automatic combat system and by pressing one button, the character will perform all the techniques that are in the arsenal. True, there is little pleasure in this; it is much more pleasant when you do all the techniques yourself.
But in general, the game is very fun and interesting: the dynamics increase with each battle, the enemies, after a couple of swings of the sword, give up their souls to the devil, and with the help of Nero’s Devil’s Hand you can relishly slam the adversaries face-first into the wall. In general, this innovation changes almost the entire gameplay. With its help, you can pull up enemies and beat them, as well as carry out very effective and spectacular finishing moves on bosses. Additionally, the Devil's Hand is the subject of most of the puzzles in the game.
Having completed half the game, and having already gotten used to the controls, we are given the character Dante, whose gameplay is somewhat different. The demonic hand is gone, but now you can change fighting styles during the game itself, which brings some convenience and variety. But here lies the second drawback: the game has just wild backtracking. In the second half of the game we will have to visit the same locations and fight the same bosses, only in reverse order. This, of course, somewhat blurs the overall impression of the game. The artificial increase in the passage time played a cruel joke on DMC 4 - you go through the second half through force.
A few words about the controls: it’s not that everything is bad, but playing on the keyboard is quite inconvenient. So having a gamepad will be very helpful.
What the game cannot be denied is its staging. The work on the game's universe has been done with a bang. The authors very succinctly continue the story, introduce new characters and present more and more non-trivial situations in the spirit of the series. The creative approach is also noticeable in the dialogue scenes, as well as in the competent presentation of the plot. Dante cracks jokes and teases Nero at every opportunity, and not only is Dante well-developed, the rest of the characters are charismatic individuals. The DMC series is famous for its excellent staging of story scenes, and by the 4th part the quality bar was raised to a new level: with the directing and staging of the videos, everything is so excellent that after completing them you want to watch them again as a movie.
The musical component was also performed at the highest level. During battles with ordinary enemies and bosses, hard rock plays mixed with electronic music, and in calm moments, light and melodic music plays. The title theme of the game is absolutely gorgeous and still lives on in my player to this day.
In general, Devil May Cry 4 can be praised and criticized at the same time for a long time. BUT there are really no serious disadvantages. The plot is certainly not brilliant, but quite good.
In general, the game is a worthy representative of the series and the genre as a whole.
Final score 8/10