When comparing Vampyr vs Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition, the Slant community recommends Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best PS4 (PlayStation 4) games?” Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition is ranked 51st while Vampyr is ranked 135th. The most important reason people chose Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition is:
You'll immediately notice how nice it feels to attack the enemies with each slash, strike and shot having an impact behind it. Enemies will flinch, get thrown back and get suspended mid-air from your attacks, making it feel like you're always the dominant force. It's especially amusing seeing an enemy flail about and slamming it into the ground with your demonic arm. Some of the stylistic elements add fun as well. The prime example is Nero's greatsword the Red Queen, which is equipped with a motorcycle-like gear shift. You can use the gear shift mid-combo to add a flame effect to your sword. This increases your damage and the range of your combos and also looks very nice. It's especially awesome to see your character ascend in a whirlwind of flames.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Compelling approach to choosing your victims
The role-playing elements of Vampyr are the strongest parts of the game. You're a vampire, so you need to feed on blood to survive through killing the various characters you meet. These NPCs are regular townspeople, questgivers, and so on. If you decide to get to know your target better through solving their problems and speaking with them, you earn more experience points once you finally do devour them. This also has the interesting effect of blocking off future story paths and possibly making your city less safe once certain characters are dead, giving some weight to your choices through long-lasting consequences.
Pro Gloomy, foreboding atmosphere in London during World War I
The game's setting is very fitting for a horror story. Set in London during the years of World War I, the city is gritty, dreary, and full of despair, yet there are some bright spots, like the many flavors of characters you interact with. The time period also lines up with the outbreak of the Spanish flu, adding to how drab and creepy the city is. Buildings are run-down, the streets and alleys you pass through are dark and unsafe, and you can never be quite too sure if you can trust the people you run into. The atmosphere is really well-done here, with lots of detail and realism.
Pro You get to meet plenty of different types of characters
The breadth of characters you come across adds a lot to the atmosphere and culture. Since this is in London, you meet both highborn and lowborn NPCs, with certain accents and style of clothes to match their class and status. The people you decide to help through quests have all sorts of personal histories and secrets for you to learn about, adding to the dynamic of whether or not you decide to feed on them for your own survival. Vampyr's diverse characters adds more weight and intrigue to the role-playing aspects, making the game's story much more memorable.
Pro Fun combat
You'll immediately notice how nice it feels to attack the enemies with each slash, strike and shot having an impact behind it. Enemies will flinch, get thrown back and get suspended mid-air from your attacks, making it feel like you're always the dominant force. It's especially amusing seeing an enemy flail about and slamming it into the ground with your demonic arm.
Some of the stylistic elements add fun as well. The prime example is Nero's greatsword the Red Queen, which is equipped with a motorcycle-like gear shift. You can use the gear shift mid-combo to add a flame effect to your sword. This increases your damage and the range of your combos and also looks very nice. It's especially awesome to see your character ascend in a whirlwind of flames.
Pro Great soundtrack
Most of the battle music has the lyrical styling of progressive rock while mixing in dark electronica guitar riffs. It matches the rhythm and speed of the battles really well, spurring on your combos and devastating attacks.
The exploration sections and cutscenes have an entirely different style of music. It ranges from divine vocals accompanied with organ music to eerie pieces with harp and piano sounds creating a bone-chilling ambience.
Pro Highest level of combat depth in any hack and slash game
An open-ended cancelling system (Jump Cancelling) stacked with individual character mechanics (Dante styles and style/weapon switching, Nero ACT and parries, Vergil being Vergil, Lady and Trish are the weakest in terms of combo-ability of the 5 but you can still style with them) and system physics create a combat masterpiece that rewards practice and creativity.
Pro There's a bunch of stuff to do even after beating the game
You can replay the game on higher difficulties, try to find all the hidden missions or collect all the upgrades. You can even try to get the max style rank on all the missions. Doing any of these will award you extra collectibles or unlock new modes.
There's also the The Bloody Palace, which is an arena consisting of 101 levels. Each level contains enemies and bosses found within the main game. The first few levels are quite easy, but each level becomes increasingly more difficult. Only the most skilled players can reach the end, giving you another goal to strive for.
Cons
Con Combat isn't all that fluid or fun
The hack-and-slash style action combat leaves a lot to be desired. It's not terrible, but it's not good, either. When trying to lunge and attack enemies, there's a strange sensation of your attacks not quite connecting and your overall movements not really syncing up with your button inputs. It's pretty clunky and it lacks a cohesive flow, though there are some cool moments like grabbing opponents to feed off of their blood. If you don't mind how weird everything feels, you might find some enjoyment from the combat anyway.
Con Subpar character animations
The character animations in Vampyr aren't the best. The main protagonist's animations are okay, since they clearly had the most work put into them over the other NPCs. His combat moves lack weight, though, which is part of why the fighting doesn't really live up to much. For everyone else, their movements are stiff at best and wonky at worst, always looking unnatural or weird.
Con Some performance issues
From time to time, you may run into some framerate dips and other stuttering problems. The unstable performance is made even worse by the autosaves that pop up and completely freeze the game for a few seconds. Even though these things don't happen that often, when they do occur, they're distracting enough to pull you out of the moment. They give the overall impression that the game is unpolished.
Con Occasional difficulty spikes
Upon reaching the first boss you'll encounter the first difficulty spike. The boss attacks a lot faster and stronger than the enemies leading up to it. Messing up means you'll die in a couple of seconds, which can be really frustrating. Especially because you have to switch gears so suddenly and adapt to a new playstyle, where the enemy stands on equal footing.
Con Recycled stage designs and lack of character-specific bosses
Capcom basically just slapped on the 3 new characters (Lady, Trish, and Vergil) and they suffer the same problems that Dante does, and that's lack of bosses designed specifically for their toolset. They run through the same bosses and levels instead of getting unique missions.