I played DmC for free on PS+ and this was also my first DmC. I have played hack-n-slash games like God of War and never particularly liked them. However, I did like DmC and its combat mechanics.
There are A LOT of weapons in DmC. If they didn’t space their reveals out so well, it could easily be cumbersome to try and combo with all of the different weapon types. Even for someone that is not skilled in these types of games, I did fairly well.
The atmosphere is one of the best this generation. For a game that plays heavily on Light and Dark themes, there is a dynamic color palette. The set-pieces are very pretty. However, in the former stages of the game, there are a few too many ground crumbling, impending doom concrete sequences. Overall, the PS3 framerate was satisfactory.
One of the biggest disappointments is the length. It couldn’t have been more than 8 hours for the core story. With such attention to detail to the environment every second of the story, it is easy to see why. The benefit of the duration is that there was never a dull moment and the game was well paced.
I thought the dialogue was actually pretty decent. A little too “punkish”, but still felt very real given the characters situation.
The combat surprised me the most. For a game that shares much with God of War, I was amazed how much I liked it and how easy it was to make it look fluid.