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  • Anti-Climax Boss:
    • The last two missions of Dante's disc consist of Boss-Only Levels, going from a rematch against Arius (now with even more Mooks) to Argosax the Chaos, followed immediately by a fast-paced showdown against The Despair Embodied that keeps players on their toes and is fondly remembered as the best part of the entire game. By comparison, Lucia's significantly shorter campaign ends on a much lower note. Her final mission begins with Possessed Arius, who can pack quite a wallop and is difficult to stagger but is generally a clumsy, lumbering oaf players can easily run circles around thanks to Lucia's speed and mobility. If that wasn't breezy enough, the next boss, Arius-Argosax, is an Eldritch Abomination that's so surprisingly easy it's considered a Zero-Effort Boss. Even with Lucia confined to a very narrow space, what few attacks the boss does have are highly telegraphed and easily dodged.
    • Lucia's final Secret Room fight against Possessed Arius, then two of them after the first one is down, is a letdown compared to Dante's final Secret Room. The latter has Dante fight The Despair Embodied, and once he kills it, the game ups the stakes by having him fight TWO of those. It's challenging on the lower difficulties and is easily the hardest fight in the game if you do it on Dante Must Die. On its own merits, Lucia's final Secret Room is not the easiest fight in the game, but it just doesn't keep up with the craziness of fighting two Despair Embodied at once, and it can be easier than Lucia's Secret Room 15 (which has her fight The Despair Embodied, with some mooks to assist it).
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Phantom's reappearance towards the end of both scenarios (Mission 14 for Dante and Mission 10 for Lucia). He just randomly pops out of nowhere, despite (in his last appearance) melting after being impaled on a spiked pillar. It doesn't help that he's inexplicably mute, although the description for Dante's mission hints that Time Travel may be involved — an aspect with interesting ramifications that also isn't touched upon in any capacity.
    Four lights will open the door to the future and the past.
    "Guidepost for the Hunters" Chapter 11, Clause 7
  • Breather Boss: The Infested Tank. Even if both its main cannon and its flamethrower are highly damaging and the machinegun fire is hard to dodge, when you get right next to one, it will no longer be able to hit you with a cannon/flamethrower, and the tanks never use the machine gun unless you try to climb on top of them. They don't have any other offensive attacks whatsoever. The only things that make them difficult depend on the character: as Dante, you fight three tanks at once, whereas for Lucia there's one tank supported by infinitely respawning Msiras.
  • Camera Screw: You'll often find yourself shooting away at enemies the camera seems to have no intention of showing you.
  • Cheese Strategy:
    • In some areas, enemy waves can respawn just by having your character walk back and forth into their spawn point even if you don't have to leave the room. This allows you to grind Red Orbs over and over again to purchase upgrades faster than intended.
    • Several bosses such as Jokatgulm, Furiataurus, Plutonian and Arius-Argosax can be safely cheesed by shooting at them from a distance (usually at a corner of their arena) with Dante's Ebony & Ivory or Lucia's Throwing Daggers. Most of their attacks won't reach Dante or Lucia from afar and they usually get stuck on doing the same attack patterns.
  • Common Knowledge: Much like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), it's not uncommon for people to believe that the game was officially taken out of continuity because of its abysmal reception. This was never the case. It's true that the subsequent games and Capcom went out of their way to avoid acknowledging this installment but both Devil May Cry 4 and 5 briefly reference it in their story recaps and Lucia returned in the Before the Nightmare novel.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • Players just mostly stick to the default ranged weapons (Dante's Ebony & Ivory handguns, Lucia's Throwing Daggers) and upgrade them first because they deal substantial damage and easily stunlock lesser demons from a long distance. Dante's ranged attack in Devil Trigger form is also easily abused as it essentially works just like the handguns but on a faster rate-of-fire. The Mooks aren't aggressive enough to constantly approach or attack you and they don't do much to break away from your ranged attacks when they're stunlocked anyway, so spamming the gun button is a strategy that works well even if it's not spectacular. It helps that many bosses can be cheesed, or are deliberately meant to be defeated by your ranged attacks.
    • Lucia's Bowgun is the more preferred weapon in her underwater sections because the other alternative weapon that can be used there, the Cranky Bombs, are considered Scrappy Weapons.
  • Contested Sequel: DMC2 isn't as technically polished as the other games, but some think that it still holds up fine because it contains some memorable concepts note  in spite of the game having a Troubled Production. Others swear off its existence and events entirely.
  • Difficulty Spike: Bloody Palace gradually increases in difficulty the higher you go; the first 100 levels are set in Normal Mode, Levels 101 to 1000 are set in Hard Mode, then all other levels past that are set in the "Must Die" difficulty mode, all without prior warning.
  • Event-Obscuring Camera:
    • The Fixed Camera angles can be confusing depending on where they are placed, but usually, the camera faces the door where you just came from, so you have to walk several steps further when you enter a room before knowing what you're about to deal with.
    • There are some sections where the camera is so far away your character becomes a little figure almost indistinguishable from the similarly-colored objects in the environment, or is hidden by a foreground object. Fortunately, moving your character around reveals their position or shifts the camera to a nearer perspective.
  • Fan Nickname: See here.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Many skip or forget DMC2 entirely because of its questionable gameplay and plot relevance (or lack thereof), and later installments barely reference it at all; it's only mentioned briefly in the story recap of both the fourth and fifth installments, while female lead Lucia only made one other appearance outside of 2 in the Before the Nightmare novel that serves as a prequel to 5. From that novel, Argosax was also deemed inconsequential to the point where Dante forgot the demon king's name even though in-universe lore paints the entity as being on par with Mundus. Even the PS2 version of Viewtiful Joe has Dante fail to remember what happened at Dumary Island when crossing paths with Alastor. note  DMC2 being last in the games' original Anachronic Order also retroactively created conflict with later games and their greater emphasis on narrative and continuity, such as Dante being more mellow here than in any other classic game (a stark contrast to his cheerful personality in 4, which originally took place before 2) and the lack of references to major characters introduced later on (i.e. Lady and Nero). Very little from the first game is brought up either (likely on account of DMC2 being greenlit before DMC1 even finished production), and Trish doesn't have a role in the story of 2 despite being playable. The timeline was later revised to move 2 between the anime and 4, a decision that was better received because Dante's personality here is more cohesive if it follows the anime, though it can be argued a few plot holes still exist. note  As noted above, the prequel novel to 2 actually does explain Dante's drastic shift in personality (he regrets killing an Alternate Universe Trish), but not everyone is aware of the side materials anyway.
  • Franchise Original Sin: The melee mechanics of this game are criticized in part because Dante's BFSes Rebellion, Vendetta and Merciless all share the exact same combos, only the look and damage differ. The same goes for Lucia's blades. DMC1 also had this in effect; the Force Edge, Alastor and Sparda share some similar attacks even if they differ in their appearance and damage output, but the implementation was more acceptable back then because the swords from the first game still had some unique mechanics to spice things up instead of playing the All Swords Are the Same trope straight; the starting weapon Force Edge has few basic combos, Alastor retains them but adds more purchasable combos and its Devil Trigger allows Dante to fly. And then in the late-game, the Force Edge gains some plot relevance as it transforms into the Sparda, which adapts Alastor's combos and can further transform into other weapon types (albeit at the cost of Devil Trigger, which the player is locked out of until the second phase of the Final Boss).
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Devil Trigger was strong in the first game, but it's just ridiculous here. Unless you're playing on Dante Must Die/Lucia Must Die, most bosses are trivialised by the ability to just charge up Devil Trigger and then unload an insane amount of non-stop damage (enough to melt through most bosses in one or two goes). You're also (practically) invincible and heal from the damage you deal (though unlike most DMC titles, this is not a default passive ability of Devil Trigger, instead tied to the collectible Devil Hearts used to customize the Amulet). Devil Trigger is the main reason the game was considered disappointingly easy by critics. It applies further for Dante because his Devil Trigger has more perks than Lucia's:
      • Dante's Devil Trigger replaces his firearms with three-barreled revolvers embedded into his palms, which have a very efficient, rapid rate of fire just like the Submachine Guns... but with increased power on top. Because of this, boss fights tend to boil down to accumulating enough DT Gauge and riddling the target with bullets, as Dante's projectiles eclipse all other options in terms of DPS. Comparatively, Lucia's throwing knives are fired as a Spread Shot with longer start-up and recovery, meaning she can't abuse this tactic to the same extent and thus has a tougher time against bosses Dante can more easily shred through.
      • If Dante's health is low enough (signified by his lifebar turning red), he can unleash a more powerful "Ultimate Devil Mode" better known to fans as the "Majin Form". Its only drawbacks are its single use per life and its tendency to burn through the Devil Trigger Gauge in seconds, but it's Purposely Overpowered anyway. It can kill anything in the game (including the Final Boss) with minimal effort; Dante's fireball projectiles alone deal immense damage in a short amount of time. If that wasn't overkill enough, Dante can also use two lethal Secret Arts that expend his remaining meter: an AoE shockwave of demonic energy or a Yin-Yang Bomb Kamehame Hadoken. Both attacks can and will eradicate most on-screen enemies, even if used standalone instead of as post-fireball volley finishers. note  And unlike the regular Devil Trigger, Dante is completely invincible in Majin Form, giving the player impunity to destroy everything in sight.
    • Trish. She is playable in both Dante's and Lucia's campaigns (only requiring the player to beat Dante's campaign on Hard as opposed to being a Bragging Rights Reward), her sword Sparda combines the immense reach of Dante's Merciless with Vendetta's damage, her Luce & Ombra deal damage comparable to Dante's Ebony & Ivory while firing faster (both weapons also start at maximum level and don't need to be upgraded), and her moveset is incredible in general: her Stinger has greater range unlike Dante's, Round Trip is easily the best non-DT move in the entire game, and her DT is only slightly less damaging compared to Dante's Majin Form without having any of its drawbacks. Trish only struggles during the underwater levels, as Nightmare-γ is nowhere near as effective as Lucia's Bowgun.
  • Goddamned Boss:
    • The Infested Chopper. Not only does the damn thing chase you through half the level, but once you actually face it, the "fight" mostly consists of mashing the shoot button, occasionally dodging homing missiles, and trying not to fall off a skyscraper.
    • Noctpteran. The challenge comes not from the moth itself (it's completely harmless) but the eggs it constantly lays, which hatch into hard-to-avoid larvae that try to eat Dante and Lucia after they burrow out from underground. If they succeed, you're left helpless for a moment until Dante/Lucia breaks free (though rotating the analog stick speeds up the process). Being a flying boss also means close-range combat is out of the question — it's simply too high up for even Aerial Heart/Air Raid to reach at most times and is only briefly vulnerable when it descends to lay eggs. And since you have to defeat every single larva before the battle actually ends, the battle ends up far longer than it should be.
    • Tateobesu is not that dangerous, but fighting it is quite annoying on difficulties lower than Lucia Must Die, as swords are useless, guns are occasionally turned useless by the boss becoming invisible, and the Devil Trigger Gauge is hard to recover without melee attacks. On Lucia Must Die, though, it becomes That One Boss, as Tateobesu is now permanently invisible.
    • Trismagia hovers somewhere between this trope and That One Boss due to how the fight is structured. The usual strategy has players slowly filling their DT Gauge (either by attacking Trismagia directly or slicing up the icicles occasionally spawned by one of the three heads) and then using it to unload on Trismagia between his attacks. Unfortunately, only one of the three heads is vulnerable at a time and the heads tend to stay out of your firearms' range (let alone your melee weapons'), all while Dante/Lucia is being assailed by several projectiles and ranged attacks. The glacial pace of the battle only slows down further when Trismagia periodically halts his attack pattern(s) so that he can recombine, deliver a Combined Energy Attack, and then tear himself apart. This all would be infuriating enough on its own, but Trismagia's constant barrage will likely leave you in dire need of healing when his lifebar has been whittled down — whereupon Trismagia proceeds to take one last shot at you, forcing players to start the battle all over again if killed by his final attack.
  • Good Bad Bugs: During the Elevator Action Sequences, the Mooks may randomly clip outside the arena if they're pushed through the elevator doors.
  • Growing the Beard: An in-game variant. The final two missions of Dante's scenario clearly show that, by this point in development, Itsuno was at the helm and doing the best he could in course-correcting the game: Dante "crowns" Arius after pulling a fast one on him (resembling his personality in DMC1 and subtly hinting how Itsuno would depict Dante from the next game onward); Lucia angsts over her origins as a demon created by the Big Bad as Dante comforts her with the words "Devils never cry" (providing a parallel to Trish's conflict of allegiance and resulting Character Development in DMC1 while tying into one of the Central Themes of the series — the question of what separates humanity from demonkind); and the game ends with a Final Boss that behaves far more like your typical DMC boss than any other foe in the game, testing one's reflexes and reaction times extensively while providing a fair and fun challenge.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Lucia's line about her being expendable becomes this when you consider how this game has come to be seen by fans and that Lucia has not appeared in a DMC game ever since.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Arius's corporation is named Uroboros. Sound familiar? Remember that the series was birthed from a discarded concept for Resident Evil 4. The hilarity only magnifies if you consider how Arius's international enterprise resembles Wesker's dealings with Tricell, never mind Possessed Arius sporting some very Ouroboros-esque tentacles along with a core on his chest that resembles Wesker's weak points in the final battle of RE5.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!: This entry is criticized for being extremely easy for most of the time, in contrast to the first Devil May Cry, which could be mercilessly difficult at times but otherwise presented a consistently fair level of challenge. DMC2 lowered the difficulty so much that the game is usually regarded as a rather unengaging experience overall.
  • Just Here for Godzilla:
    • Most newcomers to the series play this game just to find out more about Lucia.
    • Gameplay-wise, those familiar with the ins and outs of DMC2 usually cite one of three highlights from this game:
      1. The final battle against The Despair Embodied at the end of Dante's campaign.
      2. Dante's ability to activate Majin Form and gloriously toss any prospect of difficulty out of a 100-story building. This saw increased interest come Devil May Cry 5, as its abilities, aspects of its design, and its sheer sense of power serve as the basis for Dante's Sin Devil Trigger.
      3. Trish's stint as a playable character, as she plays the closest to DMC1 Dante while possessing a number of unique and fun quirks, most of which found their way into her kit for 4:SE.
  • Memetic Loser: The Infested Chopper, for being a boss that's not fun to fight and a concept that's too ridiculous for a series that runs on Rule of Cool demon-slaying.
  • Memetic Mutation: See here.
  • Mis-blamed:
    • Hideaki Itsuno got all the blame for the game's problems due to being the sole credited director, but as it turns out, the game was directed by someone else (who remains unknown) for most of its development, and left production in a very disastrous state months before release. If anything, the game might have been even worse if not for Itsuno. He would even go on to direct Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, which is considered one of the best entries in the series, and has served as the director of every mainline installment since.
    • The storywriting of this game was also often attributed to Bingo Morihashi due to being the classic DMC games' recurring scenario writer starting from 2. But according to Bingo's statement from page 208 of the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, the story of 2 was actually "outsourced to a non-company writer", Bingo was just a new Capcom employee at that time, and he himself wasn't even sure how that draft ended up like it did. He was told that he could fine-tune it for as long as the changes weren't big, yet the exact scope of the fine-tuning wasn't even clarified.
  • Narm: Arius' voice is silly-sounding, especially during his Villainous Breakdown. It's no wonder Dante shuts him up.
    Arius: No! My dream... my life... I was going to be the KIIIINNNNG of this world...!
    • Not helped by the fact that up to the final encounter, he had been fairly serious and not all that ridiculous at all. Then Dante swaps the coin that was supposed to help his plans, and Arius turns so utterly pissed off that the batshit shrieking voice enters the fray with an absolutely ridiculous noise before his fight starts.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Lucia became this to Trish, which is ironic as Lucia's creation was a response to the lack of a playable Trish in DMC1 and Trish herself was a Secret Character in this game. While the sentiment died down in the intervening years, partially because many fans actually like Lucia (or feel that she was wasted potential), it was mainly because the majority of DMC fans deliberately blot out this game from memory.
  • Salvaged Story: Dante is mostly mellow and stoic in this game, which is Out of Character in contrast to his snarky, energetic, and cocky personality from DMC1. On its own, this game doesn't explain why he changed, but the fandom retroactively found some justification for it twice after Capcom revealed additional info and context:
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The Gameplay Grading is very unforgiving. Taking a single hit can drop "Damage Taken" from S to B or C, even on Normal difficulty; "Stylish Average" practically requires you to kill every enemy with an S rank, which is not exactly easy considering enemies usually don't last long enough to reach high style levels, and because the Stylish gauge is difficult to raise in most battles; "Clear Time" is usually very strict for getting an S rank; and while "Orbs Collected" is normally a cinch, it's a pain during levels with bosses and no mooks. So even if completing the game is easy, getting anywhere above B on mission ranking is really hard. It's telling that when Devil May Cry 3 eased up on the ranking system, it benefited from the change.
    • You automatically proceed to the next area when you make contact with virtually any door, unlike in other DMC games where closed doors have to be interacted with, and automatic transitions are only limited to open doors or open pathways. This can interfere with battles, especially if you're fighting enemies that can easily knock you back to a door and force you out of the area even if you don't want to.
    • Your character's exact location isn't indicated in the Map interface. This makes navigation harder than intended, and is a significant factor that makes Dante's Mission 14 That One Level.
    • Wall Hike, as it almost always activates when you don't want it to, doesn't really help with dodging or conserving Stylish Rank and, for Dante, trying to shoot Ebony & Ivory after it will activate Rain Storm instead.
    • Rain Storm is a very annoying move, whose very existence causes many players to swear off using E&I in this game. The problem with it is that it always activates if you shoot after an Air Hike or Wall Hike, and it always shoots straight down. This can easily ruin the player's Stylish Rank, since it only takes about a second of not hitting anything for the rank to vanish.
    • Melee combat is often scruntized because of how cumbersome it feels on the whole, with combos being generally slower and more drawn out than other DMC entries. Additionally, and unlike every other game in the series, the recovery lag after basic melee animations is horrendously long, with Dante and Lucia unable to act until they completely return to a neutral state and therefore left vulnerable to enemy attacks no matter how telegraphed. This adds to the ubiquity of gun usage among most players, as firearms are efficient at any range and usually a much safer option they can commit to. (Trish and Dante's unlockable DMC1 outfit suffer from the same drawbacks, though not as severely as the default characters due to retaining more of the first game's combat mechanics.)
    • While the underwater sequences in the first game were neither horrible nor impressive, they become annoying here because of hampered mobility/attack speed and a very limited selection of usable weapons — a few of which aren't all that great. You play through these sections only in Lucia's disc, and there's an Underwater Boss Battle to be fought.
  • Scrappy Weapon:
    • Lucia's Cranky Bombs. While powerful, they are also awkward to use, and it is hard to hit anything with them. You can also use them underwater, but Lucia cannot throw them; instead you essentially have to use them like mines, which goes about as good as one might expect underwater — not at all.
    • Trish's Nightmare-γ — its regular shots are not that strong, and its Charged Attack, while flashy, is nearly impossible to hit anything with due to Pinball Projectiles not meshing well with huge rooms you have to fight in underwater. An interesting reversal of the Nightmare-β from the first game, which was arguably the opposite (unless used against the real Nightmare) even at lower levels of charge.
    • Downplayed with Dante's Ebony & Ivory; they are perfectly serviceable, they just have to contend with Rain Storm existing.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: One that existed beforehand but was popularized by/saw a resurgence thanks to YouTuber Null in the summer of 2023: Beating the game without using any guns. note 
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: This game is easier than the first one, due to less aggressive enemy A.I. and overpowered guns that let Dante safely snipe enemies from a distance without fear of any counterattack.
  • That One Attack: Nefasturris can spit dozens of laser beams that are individually treated as separate damage instances. Just like a shotgun blast, the beams collectively deal massive damage at point-blank range, presenting a huge risk when fighting the boss using melee attacks.
  • That One Level: Dante's Mission 14 is criticized for its confusing level design that makes players want to look for a walkthrough. You have to find and activate four Seal Spheres that are scattered in the area, but three of those are found in non-conspicuous spots that require some effort to reach, such as by looking up, double jumping, or flying via the Aerial Heart. By comparison, the Seal Spheres in Lucia's tenth mission are easier to find. The Fixed Camera angles can make it hard for you to spot your objective since they change at almost every corner, and the entire stage's dark atmosphere also makes it very easy for you to get lost. The map won't help you that much either as it doesn't pinpoint Dante's exact location. To top these off, the mission ends with a boss fight against Phantom.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Trish, both in terms of plot where she just plays through Dante and Lucia's stories for the battles with no bearing on either sequence of events, and in her playstyle which is effectively Dante's moveset and mechanics from the first game. Yes, an optional, hidden character has attacks that are way less clunky than Dante's default, just like his gameplay from DMC1. Unfortunately, it's all stuck in a post-game bonus playthrough long after the player probably had enough of the game.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The entirety of the game is a footnote in the mythos: Dante has barely anything to do with the story (despite his father yet again having been embroiled in a past conflict that shaped the current narrative, something which Dante hardly comments or dwells on), with Lucia being the central hero with a personal stake in the battle. And even then, we barely learn anything about her or how she was freed from Arius's control. Also, while Trish is a playable character, she has no role in the story, wasting the potential to tell tales of hers and Dante's partnership, or even her own parallels to Lucia in terms of backstory and character arc.
  • Vindicated by History:
    • While even its defenders admit that DMC2 is easily the weakest of the first four titles and may admit that, from a technical standpoint, it's a worse-designed game than the controversial reboot, a growing contingent stands by its opinion that the second game is merely dull and mediocre by DMC standards, but not abjectly terrible like the fandom might paint it. This sentiment grew when more players discovered via the Devil May Cry: 3142 Graphics Arts artbook that Hideaki Itsuno not only came in about halfway through the game's development period, but also had a mere six months to slap together the finished project. note  Given how Itsuno was similarly constrained during 4's development yet that game turned out an adequate product (to say nothing of how the third and fifth games turned out when he was given a proper budget and development time), this revelation made many wonder how DMC2 would've fared if not for Capcom's actions behind the scenes.
    • Dante's characterization was also vindicated over time. Rather than being a snarky showoff from the first game, he was instead quiet, standoffish and drained of energy, coming across as eerily Vergil-like (to the point that some fans joked "Dante" was actually Vergil in disguise note ). While fans largely hated this characterization, the anime, supplementary material, and even DMC3 to an extent would depict Dante as a more subdued and surprisingly nuanced character. Fans began to re-evaluate and eventually warm up to this version of Dante (who, to his credit, did exhibit flashes of his usual personality throughout the game). And with the revised timeline that came with Devil May Cry 5, Dante's character in 2 seems like a logical progression from his muted personality in TAS, which fans interpreted as a carryover of Dante suffering from depression, most likely following the apparent death of Vergil. This also popularized an Alternative Character Interpretation dating back all the way to DMC1 (but made prominent by Dante's "I love this! This is what I live for! I'm absolutely crazy about it!" line at the end of 3) that Dante's bombastic nature in later games is something of a facade, which adds additional depth to Dante's character as a whole.

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