Caltrops - Reviews - First impression that matter (mine)

Forum Overview :: Reviews

by FABIO 03/05/2005, 10:10pm PST

Mischief Maker wrote:

If anything, the game is even more over the top than DMC1.

POSITIVE

The first DMC's intro was some chick impaling Dante with a giant sword, electricuting him, then lifting up and throwing her motorcycle at him. Dante whips out his pistols, blows the bike back into the chick, and rips himself free of the sword. DMC3's intro is about a dozen times more over the top than that.

Basic enemies are at least as tough as Ninja Gaidens' and come at you usually in packs of 6 or more.

POSITIVE

So far I think it's easier than ninja gaiden. Took me about 3 times longer to beat the first couple levels of ninja gaiden. I think maybe because in Ninja Gaiden I was trying to be stylish which is a mistake when you should just be hitting jump+slash over and over.

NEGATIVE

Which isn't to say you won't die a lot. The problem is that there are some load time issues. Die, hit "restart mission", wait at a loading scrren, go back to mission start screen and hit "next missions", hit start to skip through a cutscene, wait through another loading screen.

The first big boss at the end of level 3 is absolutely gigantic, constantly switches its moves throughout the fight, and has been kicking my ass on a pretty consistent basis.

The ice guardian? Hit legs with sword. Roll everytime he rears up. Repeat. It's pretty easy to beat him without taking a single hit.

The moves are much flashier and feel way brutaler.

NEGATIVE

What the hell is up with all the enemies having sand for blood? I feel like I'm playing Prince of Persia. I actually liked the DMC puppets, because it felt like you were smashing the living fuck out of them as parts of them broke off and flew across the room. In DMC3 I'm hitting phantoms that dissapear into a swirl of robes and sand.

The combo system is much more straightforwards than DMC1's comparatively obscure one.

MEH

The bar fills up as long as you're hitting something (except if you try to keep doing the same move over and over). That's how they did it in DMC2. You can now taunt enemies to raise the bar (positive).

Any worries about the "style" system screwing up the mixture of gun and swordplay from DMC1 can be put to rest. All they do is add a few extra moves to your basic repetoire.

NEGATIVE
My main concern was actually that I'd be denied a full arsenal of cool moves that they could have easily included all of them at once, which they certainly could have. One of the only cool things DMC2 had was the ability to shoot two different enemies at once with the pistols (only it was impossible to pull off on a consistant basis). They have it again here, and it's much easier to pull off, but you must be using gunslinger style in order to use it. Likewise there's a cool sword move, but you must be in swordmaster style to use it. Cool acrobat jumps and dashes? Gotta be in trickster style (there's some "royal guard" style that you won't use unless you like holding down the block button like a PUSSY). The crock is that none of the controls for these moves overlap each other, so they could have easily let you use them all at once, but either to extend replay value or cater to the obssesive compulsives who think that you shouldn't be able to do anything cool right away and need to spend hours unlocking it instead, they went with the styles. I want do crazy flips to jump into an enemy, totally slash him up with crazy sword stuff, then cross my arms and blow away two enemies on either side. You can only switch styles between levels and at item shops. Feel like some variety and want to switch up often? Sorry, you have to stick with the same one for awhile if you want to gain experience in it to unlock new moves.

So far no preachy plot. Dante's even more of a wisecracking badass making fun of giant fanged demons to their face than before. Losing the shirt is about as far as they went in bishieing him up.

Cutscenes suffer from the same thing that plagued MGS3's, they're in need of trimming. Shots last too long. What could be done in 5 seconds takes 25. The cutscenes are pretty content thin like in DMC1, but they last much longer. One of the first cutscenes is just basically some tower coming up out of the ground, some guy on top saying "Demons shall rule the earth again", and Virgil saying "whatever". It takes five minutes to play this cutscene because they just linger on shots far too long. Then they try to make Virgil look badass by having him kill one of his henchdemons for no reason. Has anyone EVER thought this makes a villain look badass? All it does is make him look like an insecure, desperate psychotic and everyone just loses respect for him. I can picture SB starring in a movie, having the internet police close in on his layer when some forum post tries to warn him at which point he wirls around in rage and pounds the delete key.

Reccomended if you want a huge fucking challenge. If you thought Ninja Gaiden was too tough, don't bother.

It's starting out tougher than the original DMC, but not as much as Ninja Gaiden did. Either that or Ninja Gaiden's baptism by fire has hardened me to these types of games.

Question: Is it worth it to level up your guns? Or are they going to made useless by better guns down the road? So far the pistols seem extremely powerful (first boss defeated entirely with them) and the shotgun totally useless (doesn't hold enemies back like pistols, get raped while reloading). Which style is the best to stick with? I was thinking getting a bunch of freaking jumpy trickster moves then going for the john woo gunslinging with swordmaster as a distant third.