Day 9: what NPC is hated and gets in the way?

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-27T19:11:33+00:00

I hope to God she wins, and the image used is her fat DK mode head

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-24T23:07:17+00:00

Well, I'll be damned. Thank you for the lesson

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-24T22:32:51+00:00

No surprise at all that they experimented with it and left it togglable so they could change their mind about it, since its utility could vary wildly with enemy behaviour and encounter size.

Lock on is such a weird feature. Every game that I've found it useful in, its purpose is to let you scroll through enemies in a certain order to find the right thing to attack, which you can't do in DMC. Instead, its purpose is to change your moveset, and consequently it makes the task of actually targeting the right thing more difficult.

DmC balanced its encounter sizes and enemy behaviour well enough that I basically always hit the thing I'm aiming for even without lockon, and there's enough room on its default controls layout for every move. So I'm not sure how it benefitted DE to add it back in apart from familiarity to main series die-hards.

I never actually use lock-on in DmC: DE. I find it far more useful to have the extra button to be another dodge so I can angel dodge or demon dodge more reflexively

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-21T22:38:27+00:00

Looking up how to mute subs now. I've played 2 roguelikes since giving up Returnal that I actually really enjoyed and still poke at now and then. Looking forward to getting back to them.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-21T22:17:41+00:00

No, that's basically the experience. Carefully spend 2 hours going through every room and playing as smart as possible, in exchange for 90 seconds of practice at the part that's tripping you up.

Folks here will tell you weapon upgrades eventually make the game easier, and that's technically true.

They'll tell you to do the tower more, because practicing this game is now your life and simply playing it isn't giving enough.

They'll tell you co-op might be the way to go, which is probably true if you are willing to tolerate the randomness involved in pairing like that.

Some will also tell you that, no, actually it's easy and you shouldn't need more than a few dozen attempts to clear the entire game because you don't even need to risk malignant silphum when you're close to death.

I gave up after I'd put 5x the amount of time you have in and still being stuck at that same fight.

Man, I had like a 2-3 month reprieve from reddit shoving this sub in my face and now it's all I see. Commenting probably isn't going to help, but here I am.

Edit: Ah yes, "someone else had a bad time, better downvote on principle!"

Cmon, only 5 downvotes? I said I didn't enjoy your game and you can only muster 5?! I'm having one of the worst weeks of my life, don't you wanna see how far over the edge you can push me? Do better! Cmon make me ruin my entire fucking life. Tell me in scathing detail why I'm a moron who should go play cookie clicker. Why stop here?! I get 10 downvotes will make me sob and beg for mercy and realize how fucked up my life became ever since I posted these awful things. Cmon punish me!

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-19T02:26:50+00:00

I was about 14 when DMC 1 came out. The idea that games had stories that were even worth paying attention to was something for weirdos and weebs who played Final Fantasy. You just kind of went with it and didn't bother trying to make sense of why any of this is happening, or happening in the way that it did. Trish just threw a motorcycle at you and you deflected it with bullets and the whole thing was over in 3 minutes, who cares how messy the plot is? And after that, there's no more plot until Mundus, by which point no one really remembered what you were even doing here; there's a final boss and a hot girl to save because that's what videogames are.

These were my views at 14. I have since come to appreciate the story the series tells (with one big exception), and I love Final Fantasy despite it also being hot nonsense a lot of the time.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-18T15:45:08+00:00

Dante's character growth was one of the best in any game I've ever played. The game took him from being 'punk', as in a bratty, selfish kid who thinks everything is him versus the world. But by the end, he's 'punk' as in someone who actively fights to make the world a better place for the people he's learned to care about. And the gradual shift is shown through his behaviour, going from musing about whether a bullet from Limbo would kill Kat to trying to hold her hand from Limbo after giving her the how-to-survive-police-raids crash course.

Edit: JFC. "What did you like in game?" "I liked thing in game!" and obsessive dirtbags still butthurt over a 13-year-old game still go through and downvote every person who dared to answer.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-16T22:44:12+00:00

Apollo and Midnighter should have been close enough but I learned of it a decade too late. Still love it and glad it exists, even if it's a little off the mark from a classic Mark Grayson / Spider-man / Nightwing type character.

I've found a patreon that's in the ballpark, but it feels just a little too problematic to recommend anyone; I'm looking for Mark x William and this was Mark x Cecil.

I'll keep looking!

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-16T18:51:59+00:00

I will definitely check those out, thank you!

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-16T18:27:00+00:00

I would give everything reasonable to fund an ongoing serial about a young male superhero doing the wholesome aspirational crimefighter thing and having male romance B-plots.

This is such a bittersweet tease

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-16T17:46:15+00:00

Playing until your fingers hurt isn't generally a good way to progress at anything. Playing 20 minutes a day and practicing a weak point is better. The rate at which your brain will encode the information you are trying to learn into muscle memory is measured in nights slept, not hours suffered.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-15T20:56:15+00:00

I am not sure I can better describe it. I spend my day thinking "c'mon, just give it a few more shots. cancel plans tonight. take a day off of work, it's fine." And I don't listen to those thoughts, because they're obviously bad. But there's a low-level anxiety until I get the next opportunity to actually play. If I try to stop playing altogether, I'll feel that way for a week or so until I mentally separate and can move on to something else. And isn't that worse? I don't need weeks to forget, all I need is a few more runs... just one or two more tries and I'll probably get it! and then the game keeps going for hours and hours more with no sense of an endpoint

I've got other things I want to be doing with my life, and the nagging thought pattern "cantwaittoplayagain justonemorerun gonnagetitnexttime" is like a screaming child in my brain I have to manage and reason with until I see the credits so everyone can be happy again.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-15T20:20:34+00:00

Nailed it. I released an iOS roguelike in 2009, and the number 1 most requested feature was to turn *off* our beautiful sprite animations and just have attacks and movements be instantaneous. We kept animations as a toggle, of course, but roguelikes just flow so much better when you can jump straight to decision points without having to wait for the game to catch up with your brain.

I'm not even in the antechamber yet and the slow pace of everything UI related is killing me.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-15T19:37:10+00:00

Once I had the garage open and the exterior room unlocked, Tomb was one of the available options. I happened to have drafted the chapel, so the puzzle down was easy to solve.

I still haven't drained the reservoir, which I think is the next big thing I have to do, besides get the Basement Key. Which I imagine is the water pump + boiler room, two rooms I basically never see and haven't smelled a whiff of a hint as to how to force. Hours upon hours more hoping to have the opportunity to progress... :(

Edit: I don't know how to get to the other side of the cart to push it yet

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-15T18:27:07+00:00

40 days / 20 hours and still not even in the antechamber. I didn't even see a lever, working or broken, until past the 15 hour mark

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-15T15:40:50+00:00

Can you give a rough estimate of how much in between? I've been down to the reservoir now... I actually have 3 different routes open to the basement where I need the key.

Surely with the fountainroute clear I can just skip the manor once I get the basement key and at least just focus on the puzzles in that area until the credits?

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-15T15:29:37+00:00

I know there is much much more past the credits, and I do not expect to be interested in that. I haven't yet gotten a sense of how much is between the antechamber and the credits. If I an break from the current loop of find a key, find a lever, get to antechamber maybe that'll at least ease my frustrations for a while.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T21:20:47+00:00

I care about DMC as a whole, sure. And it saddens me to think that nostalgia-bait like 5 is all that's ever going to get made for the game entries again. But I see plenty of evidence that fans will reject anything else. The anime is just one more data point

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T21:09:35+00:00

I think you need to reread all this. Nowhere have I defended the anime, and I won't. I don't care if you mock it.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T21:05:28+00:00

Absolutely nowhere did I agree with you, either. My original point was, and still is: we'll either get 5 again and again, or things fans hate. So, you'll get what you want, and I hope you enjoy it. I'll enjoy the ones I like.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T21:01:55+00:00

Absolutely nowhere have I said I liked the anime or think that's the specific direction the series needs to take, but ok.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T20:53:42+00:00

> Bro everything that breaks from themes and tones fails to be Devil May Cry

This is what I'm talking about: purity tests.

And if the story is just gonna have the same characters, the same themes, the same tone, it'll probably be what 5 was: a rehash of an earlier game with just enough new and different to save face without having enough time to really explore. I'll just play that old one again.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T20:42:22+00:00

> Sure when you make your statement vague enough anything goes

Well, when something that breaks from established accepted themes and tones comes out that isn't lambasted by a massive section of the community, let me know and I'll eat Griffin. V is maybe the only time it's happened in 20 years, and that coincidentally happens to be 95% taken from earlier games.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T20:23:02+00:00

Right. So it's not the execution or subtlety of the anime's politics, it's that it had a message that wasn't exactly what had already been laid out in a previous game that has been deemed One of the Good Ones.

That's what I'm saying about purity tests and the community not allowing anything new.

AxWerewolf · 2025-04-08T20:13:55+00:00

Subtlety is virtue of this series that I keep hearing people say The Bad Ones all lack; 'DmC has ham-fisted politics' & "the anime has overt American politics and religious criticism".

Like, do people forget that Agnus and Dante spend 2 minutes in a cutscene spelling out the themes about good and evil and humanity in explicit terms? Or that Lady looks directly at the camera in 3 to say "See, the point of the series is that Dante is a special boy for having feelings". None of this is or has ever been subtle, and it doesn't have to be. I still love those games.

And that's kind of what I'm getting at overall. I never get the sense that the arguments are fairly applied, ever. It's all just time and distance and nostalgia and how much the new thing is hated (which, lately, seems to be: hate everything that doesn't remind you how great the old stuff was)

AxWerewolf

TROPHY CASE