>>1305169
Well, I don't really consider the Itsuno games to be similar enough to DMC1 either. They have surface level similarities, but it's very much an entirely other direction with how the combat has gone. The priority has become making things combo oriented, hitting enemies with a bunch of attacks and not letting them move. DMC1's combat isn't about combos you are way too strong to need to deal with hit stunning enemies, it's about full on aggression, taking out enemies fast and efficiently. The Styles give Dante a bunch of variety, but variety and efficiency do not go hand in hand. There is also the fact that in order to make the Styles viable to the gameplay they needed to heavily nerf Devil Trigger. Devil Trigger is THE Mechanic in DMC1, the whole game is about managing DT as a resource, and using it most effectively, you gain access a bunch of powerful moves that let you swiftly deal with most enemies. DT is never given the power it once had in DMC1 again. It's mostly just a damage multiplier, rather than something that fundamentally changes how to approach a fight.
They needed to come up with Sin DT to give you back something that's comparable to DMC1 DT, but Sin DT is by itself considered overpowered in DMC5 so they had to come up with an entire other bar for you to manage, and have drawbacks to using SinDT unless you can maintain a SSS combo. If you can maintain SSS then you can abuse the hell out of Sin DT and the game is easy. Any competent DMC player should be able to do that, but the games bosses are not designed around fighting someone using so much Sin DT, they're designed with the assumption the average player won't be using SinDT nearly as much as a good player can. With Nero you can just Buster enemies whenever you feel like doing a huge chunk of damage, and Vergil is always overpowered. DMC1 you were very powerful, but this was balanced by having good enemies to fight. The bosses especially, and I by no means intend to say the later games don't have good bosses, but DMC1's all challenge how Knowledgeable you are about the game. Phantom rewards you for knowing about enemies weakness, Griffinon is a ranged battle, and tests you avoiding projectiles, Nelo Angelo tests you fighting an Opponent similar to yourself, Nightmare tests how well you can control the flow of battle, and Mundus is the final boss that has you contented with all sorts of things.
Later DMC's don't have bosses that are able to specialize in how you fight them because there is so much customization to how the player can approach a fight. They need to be able to accommodate a player who both has zero abilities and all abilities, or playing as entirely different characters. DMC1 is so fine-tuned to that move set Dante has, it's just a better balanced game in all aspects. To me what makes DMC1, so good is that sometimes less is more, you have everything you need, and no extra fat in the movelist, there is a right time to use every Ability. The games are still good, but as they went on the Ballance became either going to be a new player is going to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of abilities, or a good player is going to break the game in half. The direction of DMC became giving the player more and more to be able to do, but not more to challenge them with. DMC3 more or less worked because you are intended to suit your loadout for the challenger going to take on, but DMC5 there isn't much to contend with the vast arsenal of abilities a player can have access to. The fight that's the best challenge in DMC5 is mission 08 Urizen, and that's only the case because you're not supposed to win that fight.
It's easy to tell that DMC1 is directed by Kamiya, and the rest are Directed by Itsuno. Kamiya puts far more care into properly challenging the player in his games. DMC1 is a game that is designed around NG playthoughs it's far more like a trandtional beat-em-up, where the extra moves help a lot, but aren't actually necessary. When you are good enough you can start a DMD playthough from scratch and still stand a good chance. DMC5 doesn't even give you the option to start a fresh new game, or have multiple save files. It assumes you'll never want to play from a fresh NG. Later games cater toward NG+ far more, and I do understand that I can still play DMC3-5 in a NG kind of way, but that's just not what their design is encouraging from the player. DMC1 wants you to play on a fresh file for runs, the others don't.