Great game but can be tedious to play

I bought this game because I was attracted by the cover and screenshots, and since I'm not usually an action-game player, I wanted to try something new. Devil May Cry 3 (DMC3) might not have been the best game for a novice like me to start out on.

THE STORY

Dante is the character you control. He's half-demon, half-human, and his twin brother Virgil wants to kill him in order to get the necklace he has in order to become a full demon. Thus, the story starts off with his brother sending over some demons to kill him. After Dante (controlled by you now) kills the demons, he sets off to find his brother, who's living in a huge tower that's emerged from the ground, presumably to kill him.

THE GAMEPLAY

DMC3 is a classic action game with a lot of fancy gun and sword fighting action, cool moves, testosterone, loud music, and corny (but often humorous) dialogue. You go from mission to mission, fighting monsters you come across. You follow a more or less set path although you can come back to old missions to get more experience. Every now and then you also come across some puzzles you have to solve, such as doing things in a certain order. They're not overly complicated.

Dante starts off with four fighting styles: Trickster, Swordsmaster, Gunslinger, and Royal Guard. Trickster is a good style to start with because it's a balance of attack and defense. Swordsmaster emphasizes his sword skills; Gunslinger his shooting skills; and Royal Guard his defense. He also starts off with two weapons: a sword called Rebellion and two guns. Eventually he will acquire more weapons and styles as he moves through the game.

It's important which styles and weapons you pick when you start each mission because you can't change them at will unless you come to specific monuments in the game that lets you do that. Different styles also allows you to perform some moves and not others, so you need to think ahead. Of course, you can't think ahead the first time you encounter a new boss so you most likely would be repeating missions a lot.

Another thing Dante can do is to turn into a demon. He can't do that till halfway through the game, but turning into a demon allows him to fight better, move faster, and to regenerate his health. Of course, there's a time limit to it, and he can't do it unless he's fully charged. He can do that by waiting or taking yellow orbs that he comes across or purchases.

You can redeem health using these green orbs which you buy using the red orbs that you earn from beating a monster, completing a level, or ones you find randomly around. The health orbs will cost progressively more the more you use them, until they max out at 10000 red orbs. The problem is that, after beating a boss (during which you might have used one or two green orbs) you get only about 2000 red orbs in return. You also get other bonuses at the end of the level, but that still doesn't count for much, so you'll find yourself going back to old missions just to earn red orbs. It can get old pretty quickly.

THE REVIEW

You might have heard that it's a very difficult game. The difficulty is not the problem in and of itself. After all, some of the best games are also the most challenging. The problem is HOW the designers made it difficult. It's one thing to make difficult games by creating more complex puzzles, or having more difficult monsters. The lazier, and more annoying way, is just to take out save points and force you to repeat large portions of the game, and then make it very unrewarding.

I love Dante as a character, and the plot, while not great, is fairly decent for an action game. The graphics are also beautiful and the controls are fairly easy to use once you get the hang of it. Dante is able to make special moves with his different weapons by pressing down a combination of three buttons, so it's not that hard to use. However, due to the orientation of the camera, it can be tricky to pull them off accurately.

In addition to the difficulty, what also made the game challenging was the poor camera angles. Sometimes you can't see what enemies are ahead or what they're doing. I'm also disappointed that most of the monsters were fairly similar in terms of attack modes. Even though you'll encounter a variety of monsters, most of them have this tactic of rushing towards you and attacking you at great speeds, which is annoying because Dante has all these fancy moves that he has to complete. You will often find yourself vulnerable to attack when Dante's finishing off a move.

FINAL WORD

I haven't played the earlier two incarnations of Devil May Cry, but I've heard that they made this one so hard because the second one was too easy. People have said that it's the hardest game they've ever played, but like I said before, I'm a novice and I managed to struggle through it, so most likely you can as well. The cutscenes are pretty cool, and it's a great stress relief. I'm looking forward to Devil May Cry 4 for PS3.