When comparing Devil May Cry HD Collection vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best hack and slash PC games?” NieR: Automata is ranked 2nd while Devil May Cry HD Collection is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose NieR: Automata is:
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Flashy and satisfying hack-and-slash combat
The combat in the Devil May Cry games has awesome animations, plenty of combos to master, and a helpful rating system that displays after each battle to let you know how well you did. Armed with swords and dual guns, you'll hack enemies into the air, and slash or shoot at them with cool-looking animations as blood gushes out from their bodies. Pulling off a chain of combos against an enemy not only looks great, but it feels satisfying to lock them in place while you slice away at them and maintain the upper-hand.
The ratings you get after each fight will give you a grade based on your speed and finesse for pure validation. New players can get away with button-mashing on the easier difficulties without caring about the rating, but more hardcore action game veterans could use the ratings to see where they can improve their play. The battle system as a whole is incredible for anyone looking for action-packed fights with either button-mashing or smart combos.
Pro Challenging boss fights
Bosses can be pretty tough, not only in how much damage they'll deal to you, but also the obstacles they throw at you to keep you on your toes. Their combat style is smartly matched with their design, including the ways they use their limbs or the environment to catch you off guard. One boss fight is against a lava-filled tarantula that swipes at you with its giant legs and makes spurts of lava shoot up from the ground underneath you. Another one is a giant bird that flaps its huge wings to blow you back, jumps up to the sky out of your view, and then swoops down to crush you beneath its feet. You'll have to react quickly to avoid taking too much damage, all the while finding windows to attack and bring the bosses down.
Pro The iconic protagonist Dante is witty and entertaining
Dante is an iconic character because of how clever and stylish he is, both in cutscenes and in combat. He's laid-back and has an air of confidence as he quips with witty one-liners during story moments. His combat style is slick and cool, with flashy animations with his swords and dual guns, and he loves showing off his moves during cutscenes. The opening scene of Devil May Cry 3 shows Dante slinging his dual guns at a group of monsters while he keeps a slice of pizza in his mouth, pulling off over-the-top kicks and acrobatics while he jams to a rock song on a nearby jukebox. He's such a cool guy that it's easy to like him and get invested in his story.
Pro Dark and tense atmosphere
The haunted locations in the games are dark and moody, giving you a tense feeling as you explore the levels. Shadows and unlit areas are stark in how dark they are, with the interiors of old style stone buildings lit only by torches or moonlight. Satanic-looking statues and archaic architecture are everywhere in the old, haunted mansions you'll explore. Demonic enemies and bosses will jump out at you from nowhere for sudden battles, forcing you to quickly react and strike back. The atmosphere can be downright creepy, but the dark mood and tense settings are really well-done, fitting perfectly with the devil-hunting themes of the games.
Pro Great bargain for its price with three games in one
For three games in a single collection, $29.99 USD at launch is a steal. Completing all of the games will take you about 30 hours, plus more time if you search around for all of the hidden secrets. If you don't want to pay the usual full retail price for a new game, there's a lot of value here for your money.
Pro Fast-paced, action-packed combat
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Pro Unique storytelling with a real emotional impact
NieR: Automata's outlook on storytelling is incredibly special. To get the full experience, you have to run multiple playthroughs of the game, each of which offers a new experience and perspective. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight.
Things take a real turn on your third playthrough, putting you on an emotional roller coaster all the way to the true ending. The plot twists and knocks on the fourth wall elevate the story to a truly unique place. Getting all the way to the very end can be a religious experience from how much heart and meaning you discover in the symbolism.
Pro It's got a hauntingly beautiful environment
NieR: Automata is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape after Earth has been overrun by hostile machines, and the artists really nailed what that would feel like. Abandoned and overgrown cities litter the landscape along with old refineries, graveyards, and eerie forests. When you add the beautiful soundtrack to the experience, it fills you with a bittersweet mix of loneliness and hope.
Pro Varied genre-spanning gameplay elements
NieR: Automata has different types of gameplay to keep things interesting. From the very start, you're on an on-rails bullet hell section, and then you switch over to the more traditional action RPG style of fast-paced combat. Things change up again not long after with some side-scrolling platforming from a 2D view. Later on in the story, there's a hacking mini-game where you navigate a tiny ship through a short puzzle, with the music changing to a charming retro sound to fit the theme and mood. This is a game that doesn't stay boxed in a single genre.
Pro An incredible amount of content
Outside of the main story, there's plenty of optional content to dive into. The side quests are the best way to get to know the characters and lore of the world, with some of them giving clever and subtle foreshadowing of the game's most critical events. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. And after reaching a certain point in the story, you get access to Chapter Select that lets you go back and replay whatever you want. You can easily spend 60+ hours exploring the world and still have much more to do.
Pro Gorgeous, ethereal soundtrack with amazing vocals
NieR: Automata's music is out of this world. It's so stunning and elegant in a way that nothing else can really live up to. The soundtrack manages to emotionalize the game through music, from the action-packed tracks with hard-hitting wind instruments and percussion, to the softer, somber songs that encapsulate the hauntingly beautiful environments and story moments you encounter. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. This soundtrack is definitely one that you can go back to again and again without getting sick of it.
Cons
Con Devil May Cry 2 isn't as strong as the other games
Devil May Cry 2 is the weakest game in the trilogy, with combat, exploration, and a story that doesn't have the same quality as the other two games. Fighting against enemies and bosses feels bland and generic with almost no skill required to beat them. Running around the open city is also boring since it's way too linear and doesn't have the same tense atmosphere as the haunted locations from Devil May Cry 1 and 3. The story is pretty horrible as well, mainly because of the bad characters and terrible writing.
It's so awful that Devil May Cry 3 basically carries on with its story and characters as if the second game never existed. There's always a chance that you'll enjoy Devil May Cry 2, but it has so many problems going for it that it's hard to praise or recommend.
Con Annoying camera issues
The fixed camera angles shift in strange, frustrating ways as they try to keep up with your perspective. As you walk through a level, the camera will suddenly change from one point, for example, to somewhere right behind you. You're presumably still making Dante go in one direction, but the camera won't give you a few seconds to adjust your controls, forcing you to go in some other direction while the camera shifts wildly around to follow you. It's an antiquated design decision that showed up a lot during the PlayStation 2 era, making the games feel dated in this day and age.
Con Latest HD release adds nothing new over the previous one
This is the exact same version of the HD collection released for the previous generation, offering nothing new. If you already played the collection on the PS3 or Xbox 360, then the most you'll have to look forward to is earning trophies and achievements again. If you wanted something extra with this latest re-release, you'll sadly be disappointed.
Con Limited open world
Even though NieR: Automata is technically an open world game, it doesn't always feel like it. It's more that there's a big open space in the center of the ruined city you explore, with branches that lead off to vastly different environments, like a desert, a village, and a few other places. These locations aren't that spacious, either, and it's a bit of a stretch to even imagine all of these places being so close together in the first place. It's not too much of an issue as long as you find the story and combat engaging enough.
Con Second playthrough can get repetitive
Once you get to Route B, your second playthrough, you may find that too much is the same. There are some big differences, such as the new way you get to see things play out, but a lot of it rehashes Route A, your first playthrough. There's a ton of hacking you have to do as well, which gets pretty boring after repeating it over and over again. But if you stick with it, Route C and onward are absolutely worth the time spent getting to that point.
Con Some boring fetch quests
The pacing gets messed up when you're forced to run certain fetch quests near the start of the game. This is somewhat forgivable after the fun and action-packed introductory level, but the quests themselves are still a drag to play through. Some of the side quests can also boil down to the same thing. Even though these quests give a lot of useful information about the world, they're not all that fulfilling, and you may dread having to repeat them when playing through the game again.
Con Buggy on PC
Some players complain about the game crashing, freezing, their save files mysteriously disappearing, and more. As of June 2018, over a year after the game's initial release, there is still no patch to fix these problems. Not everyone on PC will have these bugs, but it's still quite prevalent. If you continually run into issues, your best bet is to find a mod or play the console versions instead of waiting on an official patch that may never happen.