Dirge of Cerberus

So, I've spent some time with this game (got it after reading this thread to try to give it an objective analysis).

I have to agree with everything that was said, most especially Pasqual's review of it. More or less it's Devil May Cry with only half the cool factor.

The good:

Weapon customization is cool.
Decent Voice Acting.
Interesting story (Though I haven't beaten the game yet).
Awesome Cutscenes.

Bad:

Cutscenes happen FAR too often, and for far too long.
No way to earn serious amounts of gil for upgrading weapons.
No serious evasive maneuvers.
Aiming and controls in general are wonky.
Rediculously easy boss fights.
Difficulty seems low all around.
Melee attacks are bland and mostly useless.

Overall, the bad doesn't hurt the good TOO bad, but it's enough that the game doesn't turn out to be one of those games you can pick up and play for hours at a time, you simply become bored.

The lengthy and all too frequent cutscenes get annoying very fast. I've always seen cutscenes as sort of a reward for beating a level, or to advance the story in the beginning of the level. Having 4-5, 10 minute long cutscenes in every mission was far too excessive.

The thing that bothers me the most however is the lack of a decent evasive maneuver. If this was an FPS you could at the very least reliably duck behind cover, but a lot of times it is difficult to do that in DoC. Running around doesn't do a whole lot for evading bullets, so you're stuck jumping around like an idiot and hoping bullets don't hit you. A rolling dodge sort of move would have been nice.

What you are given though, is a dash move. This -might- have been useful as an evasive maneuver if you didn't dash for such a short distance, and put away your gun when dash was used (forcing you to have to re-draw your gun, then get the sights back on the enemy). Not a major gripe, but it could have been done so much better.

Another thing that sort of irks me is how stiff the environments feel. Very few things are destructable at all, and there are a lot of places you should be able to go, but can't. There were plenty of times throughout the game that I would have found it useful to jump on top of a box, or even over one, to take some cover. The game simply wouldn't allow me to do it. One of those invisible wall dealies where even though you can jump high enough, and far enough, you just simply aren't allowed.

Overall, it's a decent game, and is definitely fun, but it could have been so much better.
 
Tyrath said:
Mod your ps2 and import it >.>
or you could soft mod your ps2 if you have a hard drive in it. You never have to open your case and all you need is a Ps1 game, and a ps2 memory card. That ps1 game will have to be in along with the memory card everytime you boot up the exploit, but youll be able to store (or copy straight off the ps2 disc while its in the drive) games to your HDD, theres some guides online and its really really easy to do.
Another good thing is it adds to your ps2 lasers life cycle by not using it at all! lol

if you dont have the official HDD u can get a regular HD and put it in there (ps, if u do have a regualr HDD and u play ffxi on it...dont do this cause it wont work with ffxi)

http://ps2drives.x-pec.com/?p=list

and some site guides
http://exploitstation.com/

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/288331

http://www.ps2hd.com/site/
 
Lecan said:
The thing that bothers me the most however is the lack of a decent evasive maneuver. If this was an FPS you could at the very least reliably duck behind cover, but a lot of times it is difficult to do that in DoC. Running around doesn't do a whole lot for evading bullets, so you're stuck jumping around like an idiot and hoping bullets don't hit you. A rolling dodge sort of move would have been nice.

What you are given though, is a dash move. This -might- have been useful as an evasive maneuver if you didn't dash for such a short distance, and put away your gun when dash was used (forcing you to have to re-draw your gun, then get the sights back on the enemy). Not a major gripe, but it could have been done so much better.

The sad thing is the JP version had a dodge roll...and SE decided it sucked and gave us the dash -_- I was wondering if I was the only one who hadn't been able to use it in a helpful way at all...

But for the money issue, remember, chapter 10 100 enemies mission = gil mine. Also I liked the fact that in extra hard mode your weapons and money carry over. I was able to scrounge enough money and sell my powered Cerberus to upgrade to the Ultima Weapon. Its hot ^^

Also, extra hard mode is just evil..I suck at shooting games and I die so much on some levels. Those snipers in Edge were taking out 800 of my 1200 hp...they were evil ;/
 
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hehe.. frankly I never liked Devil May Cry that much either :P I found it to be really easy a game to play with easy boss fights (though I will admit one or two here and there were tough). Though Devil May Cry did feel a lot more smoother and had a better control scheme I think. They tried to make it kinda like FF controls of the past rather than more comfortable controls I think. Though problems with controls also came from them changing it a bit from the japanese version (or so a review I watched one gametrailers.com said :P). They made it a bit more devil may cry like but since it wasn't made originally like that from the beginning some things didn't seem to flow well. And that's where the problems you were having are, Lecan. Cause some places that seems like you should be able to go (thanks to double jump they added and other things) you can't cause they didn't design it as such fromt he beginning. If they did they'd have to redign a lot of levels... something they prolly didn't care to do prolly cause it'd delay the project too long for NA players. SE at leasts likes to release NA side games a few months after JP side. Anyways, ya.. it's a fun game, story's much richer than Devil May Cry's story. Characters are good and well voiced, graphics good, the cutscenese never bothered me when they came up.. but that's me :P I think it's a decent game from what I've played so far.
 
Elemmire said:
hehe.. frankly I never liked Devil May Cry that much either :P I found it to be really easy a game to play with easy boss fights (though I will admit one or two here and there were tough). Though Devil May Cry did feel a lot more smoother and had a better control scheme I think. They tried to make it kinda like FF controls of the past rather than more comfortable controls I think. Though problems with controls also came from them changing it a bit from the japanese version (or so a review I watched one gametrailers.com said :P). They made it a bit more devil may cry like but since it wasn't made originally like that from the beginning some things didn't seem to flow well. And that's where the problems you were having are, Lecan. Cause some places that seems like you should be able to go (thanks to double jump they added and other things) you can't cause they didn't design it as such fromt he beginning. If they did they'd have to redign a lot of levels... something they prolly didn't care to do prolly cause it'd delay the project too long for NA players. SE at leasts likes to release NA side games a few months after JP side. Anyways, ya.. it's a fun game, story's much richer than Devil May Cry's story. Characters are good and well voiced, graphics good, the cutscenese never bothered me when they came up.. but that's me :P I think it's a decent game from what I've played so far.
Oh, I don't deny that DMC's story doesn't quite stand up to this, but what do you expect? SE made an action game with a good storyline (few and far between nowadays), but as a drawback it ended up impeding gameplay a bit.

Double jump was added in the NA version (as well as taking out the dash), but even without double jump there were quite a few places where it would have been strategically advantagious to jump over or on top of something, but you just can't do it. It seems more poor environment design than anything.

If you think about it, all of the environments look great but have little to no interactivity; much like their Final Fantasies. If this was an RPG where evasive maneuvers, multi-level exploration, and most of all jumping were of no concern to the player... I'd find this perfectly acceptable. However, seeing as how it is indeed an action game, they should have worked more on the environment you play in (which is a big part of action games) than the story. They could have easily conveyed the story to the player with half cutscene's and ramped up certain other things the game lacks: Difficulty, level design, interface.

I'd also like to know who came up with the control scheme. It's not terrible, but it could have been so much better. I tried retooling it to my own style of play, but it just didn't work. If the game had a lock on button similar to perhaps the Zelda games there would have been a lot better options for configuring the controls.

On a side note: If you want a challenging game (with a wonderful control scheme and a lot of depth) go pick up Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Special Edition when you get the chance. It should be cheap (got mine out of the bargain bin at Walmart for 20 bucks) and it's a hell of a lot of fun if you like action games.

Edit: I think the most frustrating thing for me when it came to gil was that there was no really good way to make any early on. You get so sparse amounts that upgrading your weapons is a real bummer at times. Side missions or even rooms where enemies "respawn" would have been nice. Even better would have been the ability to go back and play missions you've previously beaten with your current file to earn extra gil for upgrades.

Currently, if you go back to a level you've already done, the game automatically loads your progress from before the mission started, which means you don't add on to your gil (or exp) at all, merely replay the mission in hopes that you do it well enough to give yourself a few thousand more gil than you obtained your first run through.

It really was a good first try for SE as far as action games are concerned, since their forte is most definitely RPG's. I just wish they had spent a bit more time refining everything, it just feels kinda sloppy to me. I don't regret the purchase, I have fun with the game, I just feel irked because I know SE could have done better.
 
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Tyrath said:
Mod your ps2 and import it >.>

My PS2 "mod" > all others

Allen%27s%20PS2.jpg


lolhacksaw
 
hehe, I found devil may cry 3 to be fun, but really easy over all and too quick a gameplay. I beat it in one night in about 3 hours I think.. that might be less time but it was short... hehe... and this was made to be a bit different from other action shooter games but they did screw up some places.. I agree.. poor level design was a problem, but it was decent. They could've prolly had a jump and latch onto a wall option and made some more challenges taht way :p but oh well.. hehe

edit: I will say this about SE.. the way Dirge of Cerberus' story has been progressing so far from what I've seen.. it makes me wonder if they had all this story planned out years ago when first creating FFVII.. hehe
 
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Elemmire said:
edit: I will say this about SE.. the way Dirge of Cerberus' story has been progressing so far from what I've seen.. it makes me wonder if they had all this story planned out years ago when first creating FFVII.. hehe

I dont think so. This is all coming about because of how popular FFVII was and SE wants to make money. Its elaborate how they bring out the soldiers from Midgar and then say "this was top secret, not even Rufus knew about it." That just says they made this up after FFVII was made
 
Tyrath said:
I dont think so. This is all coming about because of how popular FFVII was and SE wants to make money. Its elaborate how they bring out the soldiers from Midgar and then say "this was top secret, not even Rufus knew about it." That just says they made this up after FFVII was made

hehe, I was more talking about another thing.. but I'm not gonna say it here as it is more of a spoiler.. I dunno, granted it isn't a big a thing but ya.. hehe
 
Elemmire said:
hehe, I was more talking about another thing.. but I'm not gonna say it here as it is more of a spoiler.. I dunno, granted it isn't a big a thing but ya.. hehe

PM me!
 
Elemmire said:
hehe, I was more talking about another thing.. but I'm not gonna say it here as it is more of a spoiler.. I dunno, granted it isn't a big a thing but ya.. hehe

Me too! D:
 
HELL YES HELL YES, November 24th is the UK release date for this, so ive got KH coming tuesday should keep me occupyed till KH2 which should keep me occupyed till Derge which should keep me occupyed till FF12.

Woot?
 
Nice :P I need to pick DoC up myself, and beat it before Xenosaga III(ugh 7 days away) FFXII, FFV advance, and FFIII >< lol
 
My friend is a big FF fan. Mostly a big FF7 fan and he said this game was complete crap. He said they completely ruined Vincent's storyline and the entire game had gay jpop all throughout it.
 
there was only really one jpop song.. hehe.. and it didn't really ruin his storyline I think. he didn't have much of a storyline in FFVII other than you know he was feeling guilty for something with the creation of sephiroth and he knew lucrecia who was the mother of sephiroth that Hojo helped create :P it kept that and just added to his story really. *shrugs* guess it's jsut his opinion that it ruined the storyline, wonder why he thinks it was. The gameplay was lacking a bit, could have been much more fun if the level designs were a bit better so you could go places you should have been able to when you jump and had some other things in. It was fun though.
 
Bustaballs said:
My friend is a big FF fan. Mostly a big FF7 fan and he said this game was complete crap. He said they completely ruined Vincent's storyline and the entire game had gay jpop all throughout it.

It certainly wasnt a great shooting game...but I disagree with it ruining Vincent's story. If anything it actually went deeper into it and gave you more insight on him. Story was the best part of this game.
 
Bustaballs said:
My friend is a big FF fan. Mostly a big FF7 fan and he said this game was complete crap. He said they completely ruined Vincent's storyline and the entire game had gay jpop all throughout it.

... I have the song on my computer & I listen to it like three times a day. Gackt rules.
 
Alyada said:
... I have the song on my computer & I listen to it like three times a day. Gackt rules.

If you think Gackt rules...did you like the special "G" ending?:wink:
 
hehe, special G ending was interesting :P but meh.. I'm not really a big fan of Jpop and such though XD but that was a pretty cool thing to be seen.
 
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