The awsomeness of total badassitude. It's a party of carnage, and you're invited!
Devil May Cry 3 on the otherhand approaches it from a different Angle. A tower of DOOM springs up just a few blocks ouside Dante's business. When Dante rides out to meet this threat, it's not for the sake of a greater good, or because it's his job...
It's because it's party-time.
So when you reach the foot of the tower and are greeted face to face by Cerberus, the giant, three-headed hound of hell, threatening you to leave before it crunches your soft head between it's mighty jaws, you're going to take a second to make fun of it before you KICK IT'S FROSTY ASS, and SHOW him exactly WHO HIS DADDY IS!
First and foremost. The game is built differently that the rest. Dante may be a half-demon with super strength, but the enemies you fight are all FULL demons and they're a LOT stronger. Unlike the other action games, you can'te really afford to take many hits in DMC3, but Dante wouldn't be much of a fighter if he just LET the demonic horde stab him to death. Dante has a lot of options to get out of the way of the petty swings of the army. The game starts out quite difficult for those who don't pick this up, but once you learn how to time your jumps and dodging correctly, you'll understand that the merit of the gameplay comes from schooling your foes.
With the importance of "getting out of the way" of these deadly strikes, the combo system designed for this game is totally free-form. You can cancel out of any combo mid-way if you need to, and you can have fun learning how to juggle enemies. Compared to both of it's predicessors, the cobo system in DMC3 far exceeds them both. Most notable are the pistols, Ebony and Ivory, magically enchanted with the gift of infinite ammo. In Devil May Cry, the pistols were so weak they couldn't hurt a fly. They only sereved to deliver enough of a blow to stun them while you set them up for another killing blow from your sword. In DMC2, they got a muscular upgrade, and totally outclassed swordplay. Now in DMC3, they're perfectly balanced in the game. The pistols are strong enough to take out enemies from a distance at a moderate pace, but you're melee weapons can kill an enemy much faster will a well delivered combo, so you have the incentive to rush into battle brandishing your blade without a totally useless sidearm.
The music is also important. Since you are technically crawling through a tower of doom, you would expect the music to be pretty creepy, but that makes it all the better when you encounter enemies, because sweet, satisfying rock rises to the occation when Dante must kick ass! All the bosses have their own tracks, and what you hear throughout the game is not unpleasant, especially in the cut scenes. The voice acting, is what brings the characters to life. Dante is over the top, and sits pretty along side his brother Vergil. Noteably are the similarities in both characters despite the clear differences in how they speak. There's a hint of Dante in Vergil's attitude. Arkam and Lady are very well perfomed, but my overall favorite is deffinetly Jester, who lives on the tip of the needle smack dab between awsome, funny, and annoying. By awsome an funny, that's for the audience, and by annoying, I mean for Dante.
The graphics are beautiful, that goes for all 4 catagories: protagonists, environments, enemies, AND effects. The sand-demons and the blood demons bleed everywhere, and not a bad twitch in the animation for any of them! Motion capture is used to it's fullest extent during the cut scenes. The only annoying part is that the game uses a fixed camera. it's not so bad when you're fighting, becuase it's always zoomed out enough so you now witch way to swing your sword, and catch the right visual cues, but it gets REALLY pesty when you're platforming. Say you're trying to hit all the right places so you can get that last blue orb fragment that's "just" out of reach, and then BOOM the camera cuts to a new angle at the peak of you're jump.
The thing is that despite the testosterone-driven attitude of the brass, rockstar, hero-type, Dante, the game itself has enough value in the system to equal, and even exceed the cuts scenes you are treated to at the beginning and end of each mission. A cut scene may be cool, but it gets less cool every time you see it. The gameplay of DMC3 is why you by the game.
You want a power trip? You play Devil May Cry 3.