Devil May Cry 3 was the only good one.
The lack of reinvention in (unshaven hobo) Dante make 4 and 5 more convoluted and the complete lack of scripted camera angles in 5 takes your thumb away from the action buttons. I'm not impressed that you chained 3,000 moves on an enemy that mostly stood there (unless you replay on the higher difficulties, which might never happen due to the stories/campaigns in both games being so damn boring and structurally poor, which I'll get to) with, in the case of 5, the dumbest looking weapons the once stylish series ever had, because I prefer efficiency and elegance. I don't need three different ranged weapons at once in a melee action game.
The often cramped camera that can't highlight scale or assist with platforming/traversal like the scripted, cinematic camera of previous games rotates on its own for useless cinematic flair and zooms in for finishers even when there are still other enemies in the scene. I have been told that the camera in 5 works better with a mouse and keyboard. I use a mouse and keyboard in a variety of games, but they're not a solution for a series that reached its peak on PlayStation and then stagnated as multiplatform.
The gothic architecture was dropped for bland realism and flesh environments. 4 and 5 have poor structure thanks to the multiple playable characters. Just when you begin to appreciate how one plays, they switch you to someone else. If they wanted multiple playable characters, they should have made two campaigns that maybe run in parallel, like in the first two Resident Evil games. The story of 5 goes nowhere and lacks a compelling villain. The backtracking in 4 was far lazier than how it was done with the rotating tower in 3 and reeks of rushed development.
Blander bosses in 4 and 5.
At least the unshaven hobo is an improvement from the overdesigned cowboy (chaps, big buckle and cowboy boots) in 4. But they both suck.
Itsuno is a has-been. Maybe even a one-hit wonder. People overpraise Dragon's Dogma, whose sequel apparently was a big letdown.
"Paul {Atreides} had always said that stasis was the most dangerous of those things which were not natural. The only permanence was fluid. Change was all that mattered."
