New to the series and I feel welcomed.
The gameplay in this game is solid and style is the main thing in combat. Because of Nero's Devil Bringer it opens up many combination of combos to unleashed on your enemies. Once you get use to the combos and know when to use your attacks at the right time you could pull off some insane stylish combos which makes the Devil Bringer add depth to the combat system. Besides his Devil Bringer along his set of weapons is his Red Queen(his sword) and his Blue Rose(his twin barrel magnum).
The story takes place as Dante assassinated the pope and Nero was sent to kill Dante. As Nero progresses through his journey every enemies he will kill will drop Red Orbs. Red Orbs are use to buy healing items, health upgrade, and reviving items. How you purchase more combos is by collecting Proud Souls. How you obtain these Proud Souls is by getting a getting good ranks by completing each mission.
If you're missing Dante already then let me cheer you up and say Dante is playable in DMC4. You'll be able to play Dante about half way through the game, but most of his levels are retracting where Nero was which made the campaign seems repetitive and recycled. Even though Nero and Dante kinda look the same the gameplay between the two is pretty different. Dante doesn't have the Devil Bringer obviously but he still have his own deadly weapons. While Nero own have his Devil Bringer, Red Queen, and Blue Rose, Dante has the ability to switch between his many variety of swords and guns.
The enemy in this games are aggressive and can be challenging at times. Each enemy requires a different tactic and won't be push overs. One of the best part of the game is the boss fights. Each boss fights has their own way of killing them and weak spots to take them down. Because of the backtracking in Dante's part you'll have to fight the boss again which can get tiresome. Even though the boss fights are 100% pure awesome having to fight them again is just dumb for the developers to do instead of introducing Dante a new boss to fight. What is even more stupid is that you'll have to fight the boss a third time, that's right, a 3rd time later on in the game as the story progresses!
Despite the repetitiveness of the campaign there is a lot of replay value in the single player. The campaign should take you about 10 hours to complete depending on the difficulty. There are 5 difficulties to choose from and the last 3 need to be unlock.
Another down side to the game is the camera angle. There are some parts of the game that will have fix camera and a free camera for you to rotate around your character. The fix camera areas I have to say make some of the platforming areas frustrating and it is hard to identify which place to land or if you're far enough to reach a platform. The free camera angle is a little better then the fix camera but it still have some problems. Some situation that I got into even though I have a camera to locate 360 degree around my character, is that I can't see the enemies or if I'm stuck in the corner the camera would zoom into my character too much.
The graphic I have to say is great and the details are top notch. The game runs in a silky smooth 60 frames per second and during my gameplay experience I encounter no frame rate problems.
The audio is great and it gives you that really bad A word feel when the metal music starts playing. The voice acting is pretty good but there is some really cheesy dialog at times, especially when it come to Dante with his very sarcastic and non serious attitude.
Overall this game is solid and people who are the Devil May Cry series will love this. The hack and slash gameplay is similar to the gameplay of Ninja Gaiden for anybody who is familiar to that series and it is just hardcore slashing all the way. Despite the repetitiveness of the campaign and camera angle, people who are looking for a decent action adventure should check this out.