Dirge of Cerberus

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#1

I just rented this to give it a shot. I’m hardly disappointed (I didn’t expect much anyway, and there were the unanimous bad reviews) but certain things in the game were just damn annoying. I found myself dying multiple times simply because I was unaware that I was even hit, or that I was on the verge of being killed.
After I beat it, having shot a good handful of those little capsule things hidden in the levels, I learned that I unlocked a grand total of absolutely nothing(except cutscenes, but I skipped most of them, mainly because of Yuffie’s ability to get down into your soul and cause intense rage with her mere presence) and some kind of time attack mode that, had I not had to return the game, probably unlocked everything.
This is not a rant, or a review, just clearing my mind of the game and everything in it. In closing no matter how much of an emo punk rock zombie vampire monster man Vincent may be, he needs to speak up when he’s being shot.

edit: one last thought. The Ultima weapon may be powerful, but was I the only one who was disappointed that it was basically the default cerberus gun? no gold trim or anything.

#2

First off: It isn’t that hard to keep an eye on your health bar when playing the game. It wouldn’t suit vincent’s character to cry out in pain every time he was shot.
I don’t share your hatred of Yuffie but I can see how she can get annoying, I myself always found her rather amusing (In the orginal game, the movie and DoC…)
I was quite dissapointed in the game in the fact that the normal guns and the hidden ones looked exactly the same, they needed more variety. Limit Breaking was fun but he needed his other forms.

#3

I could’ve paid better attention to the life bar, and started getting the hang of it by the second half (although I still found myself “spontaneously” falling to the ground dead during firefights where I was too focussed on the enemies on screen firing at me) The weapons were a bit of a disappontment, especially the so-called silver and gold toy guns that looked exactly like the cerberus pistol. I guess Vincent sold the marketing rights to his personal firearm.
The Cait Sith level was almost entirely pointless and could’ve been covered easily in a cutscene. Speaking of cutscenes, and I’ve heard this mentioned in some reviews, I wish Vincent was as cool in game as he is in the cutscenes, taking down helicopters with one shot and whatnot…

#4

Taking down a helicopter in one shot is far too illogical even for Square-Enix to allow you to do. That one shot that finished the helicopter contained 3 bullets and it was after you had already fought it, so it was already heavily damaged. I think the Cait levels were there to give you something to do other than just constant shooting.

#5

You unlock things with those capsules? I thought it was a statement against drug companies.
In all serious, there must be a ton more than what I shot, because I got maybe 5 and thought that was a lot, since I’m a pretty observant gamer, and I unlocked barely anything.

#6

I assume they unlock stuff, otherwise S-E spent too much time hiding little capsule in the nooks and crannies of the levels and not enough time working on the lip-synch.

#7

The unlock the cutscenes. The ones you shoot in the side missions unlock image galleries and stuff.

#8

Yeah… I saw no point at all in unlocking cutscenes, since you can pretty much instantly skip to almost any point in the game, at which point you can view the cutscenes anyway.

#9

I wish there were a replay mode where you could run through the game with everything you had when you beat it. Maybe unlock a bonus character skin or something, like Vincent in his turks uniform, or Irvine…So those capsules unlock cutscenes? There were only two or three cutscenes I would’ve wanted to see again, and that was mostly because of how much I thought Cid sounded like a watered down version of R. Lee Ermey.

#10

  • When you get shot, Vincent grunts (quietly), the screen flashes red, your HP bar goes down, and a white ring appears in the middle of the screen with a flashing yellow cursor representing the direction(s) from which you were just shot.

  • You can replay with everything you earned along the way; it’s called Extra Hard Mode. Just go to Start Game, then navigate to the Prologue. Select it and you’re asked to choose your difficulty. Extra Hard Mode is available after you’ve won in Normal or Hard, and you begin with everything you finished the previous game with. It’s more than just dumbing down your offense and weakening your defense - the mob AI is much different than Normal Mode.

  • The extra missions don’t really allow you to unlock anything exciting. But the missions themselves are an absolute riot. Some of the mission stages are much cooler than anything else in game. If you want to get your money’s worth out of Dirge, play the extra missions. There’s a lot of them (50+?), they’re challenging, and like I said, some of them are just outstanding.

  • If you are going to do the missions, I recommend you attempt them after upgrading all your equipment to the max. Since you have the Ultima Weapon, you may have already done this. It’s quite helpful to have all 3 guns, max defense (relief), max melee power (cross), full materia power, etc. available due to different mission objectives. To upgrade everything, restart your game from Chapter 10: Deepground - Possession. Not only is it one of the coolest looking stages ever in any game, but there is an optional arena where you can kill 100 guys. You can redo this few times and earn a fuckton of gil by selling the reward to pay for your upgrades. (I think I did it 5 times in a row to cap everything… buy full handgun ammo and full meds before you enter…that and Ultima and you’re all set). Then continue through from that point and finish the game again, and everything will be available for the missions.

#11

I tried those missions without fully upgrading and I got totally pwned. It was HARD HARD HARD.

#12

I haven’t had much luck with the side missions yet either. i’ll probably go thru it again after I finish the game I’m playing now, Tales of Legendia.

#13

There are two really annoying missions in a row: one where you have to play as Cait Sith, the next is Misslebreaker Melee. I almost gave up trying to complete these two missions, but things start to flow once you eventually do.

I think I have 9 left to finish.