The most challenging PS2 game I have ever played.
STORY:
You play as the demon hunter named Dante, in the prequel to the first game. It's really more engaging than the first game's story. There are great characters; I never thought I would actually like Dante but I did, because I like his cockiness.
Score: 9
GAMEPLAY:
The reason I find this game so difficult is because of how tough the AI is. It's not like anything you'd expect to find in a video-game. First of all, they react at anything you try to do. At the very beginning, when I started this, I found this incredibly difficult because of how weak I was. It took so many bullets to kill an enemy. The sword took quite a while to kill. Also, I was starting on a Normal difficulty where I tried to live but they killed me on the second mission. Then I went on Easy Mode, which I thought I had to do because of how hard I found it. You do take quite a lot of damage - five hits and you're dead. Easy Mode took ten hits. Despite this, it's very entertaining. It's probably one of the best action games I've played because the combinations you can do keeps you entertained and never gets boring. Besides using the sword, you can use guns which is very cool. You start off with two pistols but can alternate between them and the sword. Basically the game has twenty missions. Each mission can take up to twenty minutes to complete - some are short. When you kill enemies, you collect orbs from them. Red orbs are for buying stuff, the green orbs are for your health and the blue orbs which you buy from the shop makes your life bar bigger.
When you fight enemies, you have a rank system which are D, C, B, A and S. Every time you make a different combination, your rank system goes up and that means you will gain more orbs. Dante has four different styles of fighting - Trickster (which allows him to dodge enemy attacks), Swordmaster (for focusing on sword attacks), Gunslinger (for focusing on gun-based attacks) and Royal Guard (allows him to block attacks). You also can make your guns powerful and your new melee weapons can have more combos. Boss battles feature the most difficult enemies in the game. Puzzles are good as well. They are not really complex but they're still good.
Score: 10
GRAPHICS:
The game kind of reminds me of looking at God of War. Frame rate is very fast in gameplay. In cutscenes and action sequences, the graphics look absolutely great - best graphics I've seen on the PS2.
Score: 10
SOUND:
The sound effects like using your sword and your guns is very good. The voice-acting is superb. The music, I personally think, is a major factor in keeping you fighting the enemies. It's hardcore.
Score: 9.5
OVERALL:
It may be difficult; I recommend people who want a challenge to definitely consider checking this game out because it's one of the best action games on the PS2.