Continuing a trend I started early in the year with the Uncharted trilogy, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Alan Wake, I have recently revisited the original Assassin's Creed to get the last few achievements I missed so many years ago and it was a complete f*cking nightmare and reminded me exactly why I didn't collect all the flags and kill all the templars before.
A mini map, a more detailed world map, and fast travel would have really gone a long way in a game like this that was already pretty bare bones, clunky, and repetitive even in 2007. I started a new playthrough and was astonished by just how massive and densely packed the game was for a relatively early 7th gen game. But the more progress I started making, the less I felt like actually playing the game just because of how tedious and frustrating the gameplay loop was, especially when collecting everything that I ended up playing the game in small sessions with long droughts inbetween.
I did however find myself feeling nostalgic for the early story of the Assassin's Creed series again and with a game like Mirage having just released, hopefully a remake of the original is in the cards because it would really benefit from the overhaul a lot more than Black Flag which is currently rumored to be getting a remake instead.
Currently on my third playthrough of Devil May Cry 5 and it's such an improvement over 4, which was a slog to get through. I started it about 2 years ago, got unmotivated to continue and left it for a year, and then pushed through just so I can move onto 5. As someone who really enjoyed the reboot, I appreciated Nero's redesign which was a lot closer to reboot Dante as it made him feel more distinct as a character as opposed to just being a Dante color swap without any of the charisma or story ties to keep the players engaged in his uninteresting and pointless story.
Devil May Cry 4 is known for being an unfinished video game and it shows with how much of its content is shamelessly reused and just how little impact the story and characters have. While not the greatest compliment I could make, Devil May Cry 5 on the other hand feels very much like the Devil May Cry equivalent of Resident Evil 6, if Resident Evil 6 were a much more focused game that successfully executed its ideas.
While the story was very predictable, it's told through 3 different perspectives and playstyles in one linear campaign and does the characters justice as opposed to Resident Evil 6's bloated and meaningless multi-campaign. There's actually a really cool gameplay progression because of this with Nero offering a very simple combat experience that gradually gets more complex and satisfying and Dante just absolutely expanding the combat variety with his vast assortment of weapons, guns, and fighting styles that just makes you feel like an absolute tank throughout most of the 2nd half of the game. V is the only outlier here as he feels more newcomer friendly with his hands-off combat experience which is luckily featured the least but also offers a bit of a change up from the usual sweaty button mashing. That is unless you play the story as Vergil which let's you get up close and personal in V's levels.
As incredible as the game's presentation, soundtrack, and gameplay is, there are some unfortunate shortcomings. While the game isn't as shameless in how it reuses content as DMC 4, there's definitely an element of incompleteness during the 2nd half of the game which features a couple of levels that are just a series of stitched together combat encounters in identical looking arenas. There's also a level centered around reusing bosses and there's a total of 4 stages that are just boss encounters, with 3 of them occuring towards the end of the game and 2 of them being the same exact boss. Even Lady and Trish are embarrasingly underutilized in the story and aren't even playable in any capacity. A lot of Capcom's recent games, mainly the Resident Evil games have felt stretched thin like this too.
And a personal gripe depsite how much fun I've been having with the game is the lack of massive encounters and set-pieces that these type of games are usually known for. There was one massive boss encounter that happened pretty early on that felt special and nothing close to that ever happened again. There was definitely plenty of boss variety and great ones at that, but they were pretty standard fare compared to some of the stuff you come across in games like Bayonetta and God of War or even earlier titles. I don't think the game took enough risks and it would have definitely paid off in a game like this.