Bottom Line: Capcom's 2019 comeback is still the benchmark for character-action combat: three distinct fighting systems, each deep enough to carry its own game. The corridors you fight through are forgettable, but the fighting is superb.
The Combat Loop
The loop is simple to describe and endless to refine. You enter an arena, demons spawn, and the game asks one question: how well can you do this? Winning is the easy part. The style meter punishes repetition, drops when you take a hit and rewards you for using everything you own. Lean on one effective combo and the rank stalls. The game is telling you, politely, to stop being boring.
Red orbs earned in missions buy new moves and upgrades, and the drip is well paced. Each purchase adds a new option to a move set you're still learning, so the first playthrough works as an extended tutorial. The real game begins on the second.
Nero: The On-Ramp
Nero is where most players will feel competent first. The Red Queen sword has a rev mechanic that rewards timing, the Blue Rose revolver handles spacing, and the Devil Breakers add a layer of risk. Each arm does something different, and each can shatter if you're hit mid-use.
The catch is that you work through your arms in the order you loaded them rather than selecting freely. It's a deliberate constraint that forces you to commit and improvise, and I respect the intent. It's also the one system in the game that occasionally feels like it's fighting the player instead of the demons.
Dante: The Deep End
Dante is the reason this game has a community years later. Four styles, switchable instantly, layered over a weapon roster you can also cycle mid-combo. The input ceiling is absurd. Watching an expert play Dante looks like a different game from the one you're playing, and the quiet triumph of the design is that the distance between the two is all learnable skill, with no unlock required.
The weapons have personality, too. The motorcycle-turned-twin-blades is ridiculous on paper and heavy and satisfying in the hand. That's the series' tone in one object: deeply silly, executed with total seriousness.
V: The Interesting Misfire
V is the boldest idea and the weakest result. Commanding familiars from range while reading poetry is a striking concept, and his missions are a welcome change of pace. But the latency between your input and a familiar's action blunts the precision that defines the other two characters. You're managing combat rather than performing it. His missions are good, while Nero's and Dante's are exceptional.
Where It Stumbles
The level design is the honest weak point, and player reviews call it out consistently. Early city streets give way to a long stretch of fleshy, red-brown Qliphoth interiors that blur together. The missions are corridors connecting arenas, with little exploration beyond the secret missions.
The campaign is also short. That's a fair complaint if you play once and leave, and irrelevant if you engage with the difficulty ladder, which is where the game expects you to live. The cameo system, which drops other players into certain missions, is too limited to count as co-op. And the paid add-ons sit awkwardly beside a full-price game. None of them are necessary, which is exactly why they feel cheap.
