One word to describe \Devil May Cry 3"" is ""hard."" This serves as a nice contrast to the relative ease of the previous entry in the series and places it back on par with the original's greatness.
When ""DMC"" first hit the PlayStation 2 back in 2001, its revolutionary style and game play shocked many. While a unique experience, many gamers quibbled over the steep challenge offered by the game-many did not finish due to the extreme difficulty.
Capcom tried answering this complaint with 2003's ""DMC2,"" which retained some of the style and lost all of the difficulty. People complained about ""DMC2's"" five hours of game play, and many hated the game.
With ""DMC3,"" Capcom once again heeds the complaints of its customers and cranks up the difficulty to an extreme level. Gone are the easy bosses of ""DMC2."" In their place Capcom added bosses who might take several attempts to overcome and, if one does beat them, it is usually by the slightest of margins.
Also gone are ""DMC2's"" custom combos in which just tapping the triangle button several times would result in massive string of attacks. Now, gamers must work to obtain the high powered combos. Successfully pulling off a combo gives a feeling of accomplishment.
Despite the three at the end of the title, ""DMC3"" is actually a prequel to the other games. It tells the story of half-demon, half-human, Dante, and how he embraces his demon side to prevent his brother, Vergil, from opening the portal to hell and releasing demons into the world.
Aside from the uppage in difficulty, the most notable difference from the previous entries in the series comes from the inclusion of styles. Styles vary the game play and adapt the game to the player's preferences. If one likes playing a defensive fashion, then they can choose the ""Royal Guard"" style-while if they like being the aggressor, ""Swordmaster"" is the style for them.
Another great addition for ""DMC3"" is real-time switching of weapons. In the previous games, if the player wanted to switch from Dante's sword to his gauntlets, the game needed to be paused, and a subset of menus entered before the switch occurred.
This process no longer exists-a simple tap of the R2 button will now switch weapons. This change allows for some awesome combos to occur. It is possible to start a combo by peppering the bad guy with pistols from a distance, then fly across the room and nail him with repeated sword thrusts, launch him into the air where the nunchucks come out to knock the bad guy to the ground, where the combo is topped off by a shotgun blast to the head.
This new system allows the game play to occur at an even faster pace than the first ""DMC."" It seems the aforementioned combo might be dizzyingly hard to pull off, but the setup of this fight system allows the player to pull off these attacks with ease.
""DMC2"" left a bad taste in many people's mouths. However, do not let that game's shortfalls prevent you from picking up this incarnation. ""DMC3"" takes all that was good about the original and infuses it with even more style and amazing game play.
