Review #470: Dragon Ball Z - Idainaru Dragon Ball Densetsu / Dragon Ball Z Legends

 Two wrongs don't make a right, but between all three PS1 DB games, this is the only good one.

 It was pretty funny when Capcom decided to prank all American player by making the Normal difficulty of Devil May Cry 3 the equivalent of Hard from the Japanese release, but trust me, they got nothing on Bandai. Y'see, once Dragon Ball Z caught wind outside Japan it was time to bring the games, so what did they do? They localized the two horrid, terrible, awful nigh unplayable games but left the best one, the good one, behind. Good one, Bandai.

 It's hard to place Idainaru Dragon Ball Densetsu under a genre, but let's call it a fighting game. A 3-on-3 open-arena fighting game of sorts. You get a Story Mode, that covers the entire Dragon Ball story from the Saiyan Saga to the Buu Saga in 8 brief chapters, a VS CPU and VS Player mode and an unlockable Special Battle mode, which tasks you with defeating specific teams while using specific characters. It's a nice selection of modes and characters, although Tien and Yamucha are mysteriously missing, most relevant characters are here. In this game you, and up to two other CPU allies, do battle against 3 other opponents(Who can be helmed by another player too) on big open-ended, but simple looking, arenas while moving on a 2-D plane.

 So how do you play this game? Pretty simple, you hold Up on the dpad to go towards you opponent and you hold Down to retreat. It sounds weird, but trust me, it works beautifully. Circle is used to produce simple punches, but using direction(Up, Down, Left, Right) will produce different power-launchers that can be chain together(Unless your opponent counterattacks), as well as combos(Double tapping towards your opponent) or circular assaults by doing half-circle motions. The Square button produces weak ki blasts and Triangle is used to charge Ki or dash. And you need to charge Ki since everything consumes Ki, punching and shooting, and if you run out you'll be defenseless for a few valuable seconds. Lastly R1 and R2 is used to switch between your characters and L1 and L2 to switch which enemy you want to target.

 Landing hits doesn't actually do damage but instead pushes the 'Power Balance' gauge towards your advantage. Fill the gauge with your color(Blue or Red) and your character will perform a super move that will actually do damage. Do this 3-4 times to defeat a single character. It sounds weird, but it's pretty fun. It also means that battles can take a while since a 'round' can last a long, long while you push-and-pull the power balance, and then you have to do this quite a few times to finally kill of an opponent for good. As for the characters, all characters are basically the same, save for their super attacks and even then the difference is negligible, a few might need 3 supers to take down an enemy and others 4, not much difference, now is it?

 All things considered, the game should not be considered a 'competitive fighting game', sure, there's fighting, but 1 on 1 duels are pretty lame and lack strategy, you just try to get in the first hit and perform combos, while the victim tries to counter-attack when the power-launchers come. And when battles have more than two combatants, well, the CPU takes control of every other character, so any skill goes out the window and luck factors in. It's a fun fighting game, but it can't and shouldn't be taken seriously.

 Dragon Ball Z - Idainaru Dragon Ball Densetsu is a game that managed to capture Dragon Ball Z's action perfectly while remaining constricted to the limitations of the Playstation 1. Not only is it a fantastic Dragon Ball Z game, it's a great game period, and one that's pretty unique in what it does, there's no other game quite like it, and what it does, it does with aplomb.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #469: Devil May Cry 3 - Dante's Awakening Special Edition(PS2)

 Jackpot!

The Story is pretty silly, but every single cutscene is made of cool and badass.

 I don't know what I was smoking when I scored Devil May Cry 3 a 9.0 last year, because after playing it a second time... This game is amazing. I don't need to go over the game's basics again, since everything I said back in 2016 still holds true today, so I'll just gush over the game for a couple of paragraphs.

 First of all, the combat has never been this good before, and I could argue even after it. Dante's one versatile dude, being able to carry two weapons, out of six, before each mission, each with its own unique moveset, and you can even equip him with one out of 6 different styles which do anything from granting you more defensive options to more offensive options. The combat feels so good, creating combos is easy and intuitive and you can do all sort of shenanigans by switching weapons mid-combo or even bringing your guns into the mix.

Dante can't get a day's rest since everything is out to get him, even ghostly steeds.

 And then you unlock Vergil, who has his own unique three weapons, and brings all three of them for each mission, as well as his own unique 'Gun', energy swords, that have a few different uses and work nothing like any of Dante's guns, not to mention that Vergil gets his own style, the DarkSlayer, which can be used both offensively and defensively. While Vergil gets the same levels as Dante, a better choice than having half a game that's a repeat of the game's first half like, y'know, Devil May Cry 4, his adventure is over sooner since there're no cutscenes(Well, there're a two) and Vergil is a bit of a powerhouse.

 Devil May Cry 3 is easily, easily a Playstation 2 classic and a seminal game in the hack-and-slash genre. This is how you make an action game.
 10 out of 10

Now Playing: Devil May Cry 3 - Dante's Awakening Special Edition(PS2)

 And now, for the finale...

I played the rest, now comes the best.

 Well, since I've replayed 1 and 2 might as well replay the entire trilogy, right? The game's as tough as always and as fun as always, there ain't much else left to say. Maybe the fact that they got the best things about DMC 1 and DMC 2, removed all the the flaws, and blended them together into this fantastic little disc.

 I'm up to stage 5 and I've literally nothing bad to say about the game, it's easily, easily one of PS2's finest.

Review #468: Devil May Cry 2(PS2)

 Twice the discs, twice the disappointment.

Now with two discs, two characters and a shorter game!

 And thus, one year later, here I am replaying Devil May Cry 2 and, much like I did with my Devil May Cry re-review, I won't be repeating my words but rather commenting on what has change since I last played it.

 For starters, the game comes in two unlabeled discs, so there's no way to know that 'Disc 1' is Dante's disc and 'Disc 2' is Lucia's disc. Most of what I said remains true, both characters are near identical, weapons might as well be identical, the environments are too large for this kind of game, the movesets are pretty limited when compared to the previous game and the game lasts 2:30 hours for each character, which is kinda lame considering both discs share a lot of stages.

 If the game gets something right is its coolness.

 Regardless, I didn't find the game as boring as I did last year, actually, I thought it was a nice breather after finishing Devil May Cry 1! One thing fans are fixated on hating is how the game created new enemies and bosses designed to be taken care of with the guns, but I liked it. In the previous game guns were pretty much useless save a few situational bosses or the Shadow enemies that required you to use your guns, but now there're moments in which guns are a better alternative to swords and vice-versa. That said, they could've done a better job with it's since bosses like the chopper are pretty boring, all you have to do is hold the square button and tap the dodge button every now and then. It's a good idea, but poorly implemented.

 And you can't deny all this game did for the series. It introduced a dodge button, about time, and gave us the 'Bloody Palace' mode. And what about all the new nifty thingies like wall running or maintaining, but not increasing, your combo rank with guns? It also let you switch guns on the fly, although not swords, for whatever reason. I think the problem with the game is that they wanted to make a more adventure-like game, thus the speedier and floatier movement, making guns something you have to use, larger environments... but they were trying to keep the game faithful to the first game too, thus why there's so much squandered potential.

Guns get more prominence and use in this game.

 Y'know, I'm gonna bump up the score 0.5 points. Yes, there're boring segments, and yes, there're clashing gameplay elements that don't mesh very well and yes, there're two characters that are pretty much the same, with pretty much the same stages and weapons that are pretty much the same... but I had fun playing the game. It's a more 'turn off your brain' affair that focuses on being stylish, looking cool and letting the player look cool... but without depth. It's easily the weakest game in the franchise, but it has its good moments.
 6.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Devil May Cry 2

 Another devil may or may not cry.

That's one badass cover.

 Since here I am, waiting for Bloody Roar 2 to arrive, why not play a little bit o' Devil May Cry 2? I fondly remember playing this game for the first time this one day my parents had a meeting to attend to, so there I had this game all night long. And I liked it. A lot, even more than Devil May Cry 1.

 ...And then I played it last year and found it to be rather bland. But it's OK, because I'm gonna give it another go! I'm up to mission five with Lucia, and it ain't horrible. After making an assessment of my own I went back to my DMCHD review and found a lot of my newest opinions echoed, plus, a few complaints about how Dante and Lucia are so much alike, which I can't agree or disagree with yet. I mentioned how each playthrough lasted about 2:30 hours, which is kinda surprising considering I'm on mission 5 and only played an hour's time... but then again, maybe there aren't 23 missions this time around.

 Regardless, as of now I think I was a tad harsh on the game last year, I'm leaning more towards a 7.0 than the 6.0 I gave it. But there's more left to play before I can say for sure.

Review #467: Devil May Cry

 Dante will cry though.

The cover is terrible.

 Well, it's been one year since I played DMC 1 and... Everything I said still stands, the game has aged a lot but it's still really flippin' great.

 I don't really want to tread old ground so I won't dabble on the basics, but I will mention a few noteworthy things I picked up on my second playthrough. Firstly, the PS2 version of Devil May Cry is definitely harder than the PS3 HD port, not even Air Strike will get you out of this one. Still, the game is bloody fun to play, even if limited when compared to future games, so retrying doesn't hurt too much. That said, the game can be rather cheap, there're a few enemies that attack you as soon as the cutscene ends, and if you don't know it's coming... it's gonna hurt, particularly when it comes to Shadow enemies.

Meet the noobstomper, if you ain't ready he's gonna have you for breakfast.

 Something that hurts the game a lot is the fact that every boss, but the last one, must be fought three times. Three times! And if you get caught by Phantom you'll get to fight them a fourth time. The fixed camera angles can be intrusive at times, and the couple of first-person underwater segments are dumb, but they are short enough.

 Honestly, DMC3, DMC4 and DmC blow this one out of the water, however, it's still a fun game that shows its age. I'd advise to sticking with the HD ports, since not only does it look better, I also felt the difficulty was a bit more fair, not that it should make much of a difference since it's only a teeny tiny bit harder.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Devil May Cry(PS2)

 Back to the PS2 original.

Why so depressed? Dante m'boy, this ain't DMC 2.

 After basically cruising through the HD port of the game last year, here I return to the original PS2 game and... it's kickin' my butt. Like, I almost died on the first mission since the Marionettes did so much damage. And the first boss? Owned me 8 times. EIGHT TIMES. I defeated the first boss on my first attempt last year. And then I got up to the Shadow who started the fight by taking about a third of my health with one move before I even knew what was happening. And then it killed me.

 So I had to do some research, was the HD version actually easier? Most people said it wasn't... until one brave soul gave me the answer I was looking for: Yes, the HD version is easier because it's based on the Japanese PS2 release which was, you guessed it, easier.

 Game's still fantastic though.