Dante's styles nerfed?

I was considering this while playing through BP with Dante earlier today.

It seems to me that most of Dante's styles have been weakened noticeably since DMC3 to compensate for the fact that he's allowed to switch between them mid-game.

For example... Trickster used to allow three dashes in a row and wall-running, and Air Trick seemed better. Now it's one dash, no wall-running, and Air Trick seems less useful, and the only new ability is quick knockdown recovery, which isn't that great a skill seeing as you don't often get attacked in the brief instant that you're on the ground. (Plus, if you're good at the game then you shouldn't be getting knocked down often enough for this skill to be a huge help...)

Swordmaster is the least weakened, but Dance Macabre is somewhat less useful now with the huge lag on the final slash. Drive is definitely powered up from DMC3, but in 3 it was a default skill on Rebellion, not a style action. Gilgamesh's style moves are pretty much the same as Beowulf's, and Lucifer's have too much of a lag for all of the blades to penetrate most enemies.

Gunslinger is completely nerfed. Ebony and Ivory's skills are more or less the same, but Charge Shot is now nearly useless. Coyote-A's are weaker, with GunStinger no longer causing an automatic charge shot and Charge Shot being a lot weaker as well. Pandora's are useful, but need a lot of Disaster Gauge to be useful - and despite the huge amount of damage the style forms can deal, they're not good at building the Style Gauge. And the loss of Artemis and Spiral means that the two guns that benefited most from the Gunslinger style are gone.

Royal Guard is the only unchanged style, but it takes such a high level of mastery that most players will simply ignore it. I'm better with DMC games than most and even I barely use Royal Guard as I can't always get the Just Guard (or "Royal Block" as it's called in this) to work 100 of the time.

Dark Slayer is obviously a new style for Dante, but Dante can't use Yamato nearly as well as Vergil could (shorter range, no Judgement Cut, no launchers, harder to Jump Cancel). And Quicksilver and Doppelganger have been removed from the game.

Now, although you can switch between styles mid-mission now, you can obviously only use one at a time. So I feel that Dante is now a less effective character in DMC4 than he was in DMC3, as styles make up a huge part of his fighting style. (His reduced choice of weapons isn't ideal either, but Rebellion and Beowulf were generally enough to get you through DMC3 if you were good with them. The other weapons were useful, though. But I think the styles are more to blame for the reduction in Dante's abilities than the weapon choice.)

Thoughts?

Yeah.

Charge is useless on both Cyote and Ebony and Ivory, Gilgamesh is almost useless, and Lucifer IS useless. I just use Pandora and Rebellion.
Also, Dante's Devil Trigger doesn't do much other than make his health recharge. It strengthens a few of his attacks, but thats about it.

On 04-Aug-2009 imaloony8.0 said:

Yeah.

Charge is useless on both Cyote and Ebony and Ivory, Gilgamesh is almost useless, and Lucifer IS useless. I just use Pandora and Rebellion.
Also, Dante's Devil Trigger doesn't do much other than make his health recharge. It strengthens a few of his attacks, but thats about it.

Charge on Coyote can be useful for taking down shields - the marginal increase in damage means you can decloak Fausts/Mephistos and de-electrify Blitzes a little faster, but it's not THAT noticeable. Compare that to how overpowered Nero's Charge Shot 3 is and you wonder why they bothered giving Dante any charge shots.

Dante's DT is... I wouldn't call it useless, the extra Air Hike and incredibly overpowered Stinger are both useful, and Dante takes less damage and is less likely to get knocked down in DT. Automatic charge shots on ALL weapons including Pandora can be good too. But Nero's DT is so overpowered that Dante's fails in comparison.