As someone who probably played like over 150 hours of DMC4 back in the day, this is exactly what I thought it was going to be. It's a tighter, cleaner, more forgiving version of that combat system. The EXceed mechanic is a few frames more forgiving, which is good because the timing was simply too tight back in DMC4. I eventually got good enough to hit MAX-acts with like 60% consistency, but the timing was literally 2-3 frames. If you were playing on a TV with high latency (and a lot of them were in 2008), you had a hell of a time hitting those. Not surprising, considering Capcom moved away from 1-frame links going from Street Fighter 4 to 5. You also get get a half-rev if you are way the hell off on your timing.
Definitely seems easier to stay in the air. Not DmC levels of nonsense, where you would only touch the ground if you wanted to because of how almost non-existent the gravity was and how dead simple JCing was, but it's way more forgiving than 4. Blue Rose was already incredibly powerful if you used charge level 3 in DMC4, but in this game it's very powerful, even without any of the upgrades the full game will no doubt have. It's a nice change of pace, since the last time guns actually felt powerful was DMC1 (DMC2 guns were broken and trivialized the game, and that game doesn't count).
I'm imagining Dante plays pretty similarly to 4, as well. Which I'm fine with, the only problem with Dante in 4 was that they threw everything at you at once. You play Nero for over 60% of the game, and then they throw you into this character who has 5 styles, 50 bajillion moves and zero tutorials, who you then have to fight late game enemies with. Which was DMC4's biggest problem, obviously. It was half of a game, maybe less. That combat system deserved so much more, and now it's finally gonna get it's time to shine.
Couple things that rubbed me the wrong way. I can't believe they didn't find a better alternative to doing Shuffle and Calibur. Yes, it's easier to perform them now, but they felt awkward to input in DMC4, and they still feel awkward now. Also, why the fuck is Split backwards+ button? Why the hell would they change that, it makes zero sense. Either way, by all accounts this game will probably be incredible when it comes out. Pretty excited.
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