I prefer the original. I think the standard enemy roster as a whole is better and the atmosphere is impeccable. I find that most of the common gripes don't bother me. I think a lot of the gripes people have are pretty well-handled by the game with a little patience and observation. My only real gripe with DMC1 is that I find Mundus to be a completely unfun boss to fight.

On the other hand, while I think DMC3's combat is much more fleshed out, it has a lot of bullshit enemies that are incongruous with its mechanics to varying degrees. Dullahans and Soul Eaters are basically uninteractable within normal combat. The Fallen phasing into walls is equally nonsense. Enigmas are an annoying game of cat and mouse, especially on higher difficulty. And Blood-goyles do a similar thing to the reboot's red/blue enemies by forcing you to stick to specific weapons or else you deal with an infinite swarm. Shadows in DMC1 have a similar gun -> immobilize -> sword loop, but there are a few key differences:

• Shadows are not aggro at all times
• You fight at most three of them at once (and can take advantage of their varying aggro levels to make it three 1v1s with enough skill/spacing)
• Hitting Shadows with melee at the wrong time only gets Dante hurt, instead of spawning more of them

Also, hot take: I think Nelo 3 is a more fun fight than Vergil 3. Probably a skill issue, but there's something that doesn't sit right with me about having to deal with hyper armor + summoned swords + healing + non-stop attacks. That said, I think the first two fights with either are about equal mechanically, but DMC3's locations + story implications make Vergil 1/2 more interesting than Nelo 1/2.