Characters
The first few missions of the game are essentially one big exposition trip, with Dante re-learning about his heritage and the like because his memories were wiped for his own safety, the same happening to his brother Vergil, who unlocked his memories long before the events of the game.
Back to Donte, however. It's hard to avoid talking about some of his more famous scenes. So here, the legendary F*** YOU! moment. Can't forget the cringeworthy comeback he gives to the game's primary antagonist,, either. What about the limpest introduction to a new enemy of all time? Or whatever the fuck they thought this line was? But Donte forgetting why he was there despite that information being given to him not five minutes ago is also notable.
It shouldn't take much convincing, then, when I say that Donte cannot pull off taunting like Dante should be able to. He's far too petty and bratty to make most of it work, and when he tries lines like the last one it really falls flat because, while it is a reference to a line from DMC1, it doesn't have nearly the same kind of effect without the endearing hamminess of the original Devil May Cry, or the voice actor's ability to actually pronounce the word 'flock'.
Oh, Vergil, what did they do to you? To put it simply he does not have the personality or appearance to make the katana look work. The Original Vergil just works so much better with it.
Vergil's character makes no goddamn sense whatsoever in the reboot. The big twist in the final mission of the game is that Vergil was actually seeking to rule the world the whole time and is willing to fight his brother for it at the end of the game. It comes right out of nowhere and makes no sense. Watch, and be amazed. His attitude clearly implies that this outcome was always an obvious fact to Vergil, and his confusion is genuine when Dante and Kat start questioning him. If he was completely unaware they would react negatively to it, why bother keeping it hidden in the first place? It never came up, not once? Not in all the time they were in a secret organisation together? Whatever.
To add more insult to injury; the fact that Vergil is even strong enough to be a boss fight, let alone the final one. In DMC3, it's made quite clear that Vergil is your equal and in fact better for the majority of the game. He deals easily with enemies that you struggle against, he handily beats you in your first encounter and draws with you in the second round, and still puts up an incredible fight at the end. In DmC, however, none of that is there. The entire game, it is implied that only Dante is strong enough to put up a real fight. Vergil cowers and hides from enemies, Vergil's only real skill appears to be hacking, Vergil needs you around to do anything. Then, in the penultimate mission, he starts showing off some powers he has never had in the game up to this point. He throws summoned swords like original Vergil, he uses Trick teleports like original Vergil againt Mundus. And even then he needs your help to land any real hits. The final fight has absolutely no tension, because by all rights you have proven yourself Vergil's better in combat at literally every step.
But no, he whips out even more powers he has never once shown throughout the game. If you bothered to watch the full fight, you might notice how poorly Vergil's battle plays out. His attacks look weightless, they have no impact, and every time he takes a decent chunk of damage you see a cutscene of him being thrown back and scowling angrily at you. He's pathetic. In pretty much every aspect that matters, the very first Vergil fight in DMC3 outclasses DmC's final boss fight. Vergil's attacks are faster, snappier, and he doesn't even use the vast, vast majority of his moveset in this fight.
To top the rest of that list off, Vergil has absolutely no real basis to think of humans as pathetic and weak in DmC. He's been working alongside a group of humans for a presumably decent chunk of time, and without that secret society support network and what have you, Vergil would have gotten nowhere. Kat's the one who makes the portals in and out of Limbo, Kat's the one who does the planning, Kat's the one who gets you into the places you need to be, Kat's the one who pretty much does everything.
But at least he has a bigger dick than Dante.. Do not ask me why the fuck he possibly knows this, some things are better left unanswered.
Put short, Vergil is downright awful in the reboot.
Story
I believe the story can be summed up best in a post-mission bout of laughter I suddenly went through that caused my friend to ask me what I'd just thought of. I believe it went something like this: "So, if I've got the story straight so far: our katana-wielding, fedora-toting Anonymous brother has conscripted us into a fight against society, and our two main targets are Coca Cola and Alex Jones, after which we finally go after the big CEO that controls the world with money?"
You and your brother Vergil are half-demon and half-angel people called Nephilim. So the games gets rid of the important themes of humanity from the start. It also makes no sense for DmC Dante & Vergil to even look like humans then. For poorly written reasons only Nephilim are able to defeat the main villain, Mundus, who controls the world through debt and spends a lot of his early cutscenes simply loating over his power and having sex with a very boring demon woman named Lilith. His tools to remain in control are intrusive demon security cameras, a highly popular soft drink spiked with vomit from a Succubus, and a demon news presenter named Bob Barbos. So an obvious political agenda from the writers.
Does all this sound incredibly unsubtle and in-your-face to the point of being annoying? It is. Extraordinarily so. An extremely obvious "we live in a society" plot.
Condescension Towards the Original Fanbase
They insulted the original fanbase every step of the way while doing so e.g. The wig scene. The smug aura that the game near-constantly projects ruins any kind of enjoyment I could feel from the game.
Gameplay
Donte's voice actor does not do well with combat shouts and dramatic screaming. Why, oh why, did they make two entire weapons that involve him doing the former? I would show evidence, but I can't find any isolated clips and frankly I can't be bothered to open the game and record anything.
Eryx is the worst fist weapon in the franchise bar none. They look like Hulk Hands, and their moveset is incredibly lacklustre.
Actually, every weapon's moveset is lacking with the exception of maybe Rebellion. The lack of a lock on button (fixed in definitive edition, I know) means that an entire button is dedicated to a launcher move because you can't do the traditional 'Lock On + Back + Attack' input to do so. In fact, the lack of lock on means that your inputs are so limited, each weapon essentially has two ground combos, an air combo or two, and maybe one or two special moves depending on whether you're in the air or not. Upgrades feel incredibly static, in the sense that you unlock a move and pretty much the only thing upgrading that move does is increase one aspect of it such as range or damage. The mainline games do this too, but most upgrades there have more stages than just one, and the boring upgrades usually only apply to the moves that need them. Stinger or Streak gaining more range, for example. Mainline upgrades tend to be more dynamic. Upgrading Nero's exceed, providing V's summons with more effects to their moves, Dante's everything...
Colour coded enemies were a mistake. Donte has Rebellion as a base weapon that is always equipped, and then two Angel weapons alongside two Demon weapons. Blue and Red, respectively. There are Red enemies that can only be damaged by Demon weapons, and Blue enemies that follow suit the other way around. Trying to attack those enemies with anything other than the intended weapons will result in your attack pinging off of them and making you stumble. Limiting your weapon choices in a franchise well known for using as many options as you have available to you to fight opponents is not good. The definitive 'fix' is that you can damage enemies with the 'wrong' weapon types, but they will never stagger from the wrong weapons.
On that note, enemy variety is really, really bad. You have three different variations of the 'Stygian' enemies, those being Lesser Stygians, Stygians, and Elite Stygians. None of them act differently, really. They behave the same, they seem to have the same attacks, I genuinely never noticed a difference when each level was introduced. The little cupid-type assholes that I never bothered to learn the names of can go die. There are genuinely like five different types of them, and they are so visually indistinct from one another with the exception of their shields that you fight them all in the same way regardless.
Donte's guns are bad. All of them feel and sound pathetic. They are also extremely boring. Revenant has the default shoot and two other moves, and Kablooey (I wish I was kidding) has literally just the one. Oh, and one of Revenant's two moves is garbage and the other I never even bought. Ebony and Ivory are okay-ish, but both rainstorm variations (both incredibly stiffly animated) being linked to the jump button to input while not working half the time is a crime against humanity.
Oh, and the boss fights are boring. Pretty much all of them. They're all set piece bosses, where you fly around platforms on massively telegraphed visual cues for no reason and just wail on them otherwise.