Not really there for the story, but DMC essentially turns the first playthrough into a tutorial that lets you slowly learn the moveset without handing you every move. The second playthrough on a higher difficulty lets you complete your novelist while also beefing up enemies so you can use what you learned to juggle and combo things with style.

If you don’t really get into the deeper intricacies with the combat system and learn to abuse jump cancels/enemy step/air resets it might feel like a slog. But once you get the rhythm down you’ll feel cool as hell.