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Last night after about a month away from DMC3:SE I sprinted through the last three levels of the game with Vergil in Very Hard mode.

I found an alternate route through the level (I think it's 17) with the very blatant jumping puzzle featuring Tron-style blocks. By continuing to climb up that vertical shaft on the blocks I was able to avoid a vexing encounter and make my way to the Doppelganger at the end of the level more easily.

That Doppelganger, normally pretty easy to defeat, proved pretty tough this time around. It was more aggressive than on easier difficulty settings, using more combos that put Vergil in a tight spot since he can't dodge all that well.

After that it was the journey into hell featuring the chessboard, re-defeating about 5 or 6 of the bosses from earlier in the game, followed a few tight spots with the phasing demons, the blob fight, and finally the fight against the red Vergil.

I thought the Vergil fight was going to be extremely difficult, but either I'd warmed up quite a bit or I'd learned a few things along the way fighting Vergil a number of times. Don't get me wrong I needed to use more than a few healing items, but I got through it.

This unlocked Vergil's infinite devil mode skin. I immediately switched to it, jumped into Bloody Palace to earn back orbs to fill out the healing items inventory, and made a mad dash for the top. I was smacked down rather rudely in the 8000-series of levels by -- you guessed it -- a bevy of banshees nonstop charging and teleporting around. They are simply obscenely hard.

By some fluke I managed to defeat those screaming menaces but did so at great cost. I had so little health left it wasn't even enough to register the barest hint of green on the health meter.

When I jumped into the next level and came up against a smattering of spiders, I knew it was over. A few seconds later one slash ended Vergil's meteoric rise.

I've posted a bevy of videos of my playing DMC3 Bloody Palace mode with Vergil. I took them with the faulty, soon-to-be-replaced GameBridge TV adapter. If you expand the video to full-screen it's easy to see the artifacts and you can hear the static bits on the audio if you listen closely enough.

I spent an hour or so playing Vergil up through levels 6, 7, 8, and 9 last night.

The boss fights continue to be a real challenge with Vergil's dark slayer fighting style. One of the easiest fights for Dante was a major problem for me with Vergil: the three-organs fight inside Leviathan. This is normally a cakewalk but took four or five Vital Star L's to keep me in the game.

I ended up using a Gold Orb up against the vampire woman along with two or three Vital Star L's. A slip up with her -- blinking towards her instead of away from her by accident -- is devastating at Very Hard difficulty. Trickster style with Dante made getting away from her easy.

Vergil is now very low on items and I'm thinking I might just keep it going forward as long as possible until I'm forced to use Bloody Palace to earn orbs.

I'd been craving some DMC3SE action for a few days and this fit the bill nicely.

While playing through level 4 at DMD difficulty I had to slay the big crawler caterpiller-y thing.

Unlimited demon form helps, but I accidentally discovered that swinging the scimitars when about to be hit by its purple energy attack deflects the spheres with an audible *CLANG* sound.

It's nice, but it's plenty tough to time that swing when there's a good six or eight of them coming at you at various distances. Can't deflect all of them.

Two hours and 18 minutes later my quest for Bloody Palace domination was stopped in its tracks.

6000
In the 6000's, the second boss form of Agni and Rudra started showing up on occasion in the arena, not as a boss fight. He's not hard to defeat, but seeing him show up on the circular disc by himself where I normally fight everything else was a surprise.

7000
In the 7000's the game would sometimes throw a level of banshees at me. Two or three on one level was murderously hard. When they teleported around and flew past slashding, or erupted from the ground, scythe twirling, it was painful and knocked Dante down, even to demon form.

8900
At level 8900 I fought the final Vergil fight and just scraped past him with one segment of health left. I was worried I wouldn't survive, so close to finishing the Bloody Palace, but the infinite devil form skin proved its worth yet again. I celebrated with a victory dance, and quickly sat down to face the last batch of foes. This will be tough if they throw banshees at me, I thought, I'll have to be extra careful if I can.

9000
Level 9000 started with a ghastly backdrop, and three spiders flashing into view, a blue aura protecting them. This was a shock! No creature in BP had had an aura until now. I really didn't expect the blue auras to show up in BP mode, but there they were, and around spiders no less. With so little health it was very hard to stay in one place for any length of time.

I took to slashing and dashing, but they hit me often enough that my health was falling too quickly. That gave way to dodging and using the Spiral cannon, and finally dodging and using the twin guns. I didn't slay even one of the three spiders. Not even one. They were too strong.

When the last hit landed, Dante's corpse exited demon form with a flare of red energy and flopped onto the ground.

So close. So close! But the last ten levels of enemy are all covered in blue areas?! Who could endure that!

I spent last night slashing and shooting my way through the Bloody Palace levels for a couple of hours total to earn orbs. I'll probably do it again tonight to pay for restocking healing items for another stab at the final Very Hard boss fight.

I've swapped out Beowulf gauntlets and boots for the Agni+Ruda swords. While Beowulf is more powerful per hit, the swords make fighting off the spiders and the angels a little easier, and that makes a big difference. In fact, I might toss out Rebellion entirely next time I play and use Agni+Ruda along with Beowulf for sheer stopping power.

The Agni+Ruda swords are fire and ice swords, and they help against the spiders differently from the angels. The flurry of hits you execute with them seems to catch the spiders at key moments when they rear back to strike, interrupting or staggering them a bit, and the swords do a bit more damage with fire while you fight.

The swords have a mid-air rave ability where you can swing both swords out in an X-arc while falling -- something that you can't do with Rebellion unless you're using Swordmaster style. This is a great way to tag the angels as they fly around. Jump up, rave them, repeat.

I also swapped out the Kalina Ann rocket launcher and picked up the heavy single-shot rifle. It's a pretty good alternative, can knock over most smaller enemies, and will usually turn the blood gargoyles to stone in one shot, making them vulnerable to attack.

I've spend near zero time with the electric guitar weapon, though, so I'll have to see what that can do for me sometime.

I pulled ahead with another BP record with Vergil: 2987. I started out walking up the ladder using the water portal one level at a time, then after a while figured I'd ascend using the fire portals and see how far I'd get.

Three (count'em three!) angels and a grinder demon did me in. Angels are tough, but three is just insane.

Then I managed to take out the bosses on level 19 and 20, so I've finished Hard mode with Vergil. Phew, that was a workout! I also managed to slay all 100 demons during the credits, ending with a banshee. You get a congratulatory message if you do that, but no unlockables as far as I can tell. Last time I finished it with Dante I remember that the closest I got was 99.

All it did was unlock a new costume, since doing Hard difficulty with Dante unlocks the Very Hard and Dante Must Die difficulties for any new game started on the same memory card, Vergil or Dante.

I managed to push Vergil through levels 11 to 14 last night, and man did it hurt. Not just because dodging with him is very tricky given his lack of an Air Hike move on any weapon, and the inability to do the Trickster style Dante has, but because he's strapped for cash. I frequently had to do a boss fight with no Vital Star L (full healing) items to use in the heat of battle.

After that I fired up the Bloody Palace mode and was surprised when I handily defeated the fire-and-ice sword-wielding twins and then pushed on to a level 1900 finish. On 1900 I had just finished a really, really punishing boss fight up against the stagecoach, but was too weak to survive the regular wave of enemies right after it -- a few spiders along with some teleporting scythe-wielding enemies. It was humbling to be cut down by something other than a boss. I'd been completely out of juice, just squeaking past the stagecoach in devil form.

Very Hard mode is not as hard as Dante Must Die, but it's still very tough. The blue protective halo doesn't show up on your enemies, thankfully, but they do swarm aggressively and do some significant damage.

The blue-bolt archers are still firing red bolts, and it seems like Continues start the whole level over. Yow.

Starting the whole level over is not an insurmountable problem -- the trick is to use healing items during the level or, worst case, a gold orb in the level itself. I'd just earn lots of them out in Bloody Palace mode and then come back in and play another level or two in Very Hard mode. Time-consuming, but it would work.

I zipped through a few more levels towards the end game last night, and found myself popping more than a few healing items even outside of boss fights.

The boss fights are definitely getting tougher towards the end, with some of the variables involved changing to fit the Hard difficulty. For example, in the boss fight against the shadow Dante, you have to strike the edge of the arena 5 times instead of 3 to switch on the light on that portion of the arena. Plus, he so aggressively snuffs out lights that you don't really have a hope of turning them all on at once, which stuns him for a long enough time to do major damage. I found myself having to strike the edge four times and keep running at it with my back to him so he'd zoom in to strike. Just bofore he reached me I'd strike it one more time, stunning him with the short-range light and denting his health just a bit with a few hits. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Snowdog came by last night and learned the ropes using the Bloody Palace mode. His learning curve became a brick wall when the game dropped him into one of the later boss fights against Virgil just nine levels in.

I spent about a couple of hours over the past two nights upgrading the Royal Guard style. It turns out blocking is very handy and not terribly timing-oriented.

Level 1 lets you block while standing on the ground, with a Release attack that basically does a short, dash-like forward strike. I'm not certain, but it appears that blocking an attack and then doing a Release at a foe does more damage than just a release. Level 2 upgrades the Release and allows blocking in midair. Level 3 upgrades the Release attack and also adds a special block called Ultimate which creates a sort of pentagram-styled disc in front of Dante for a second or two. I'd guess the disc can block any kind of attack, but I'd have to try it against boss creatures to be sure.

Blocking does have limitations. Very strong attacks will shatter the block, so to speak. You'll see a glass-like crash on Dante's arm and he'll stagger a bit. You'll also see the block shatter if you keep it on too long and block two consecutive attacks without releasing it. I noticed this when fighting the banshee-like enemies, which will sometimes give two swipes of their scythe. Blocking the first slice works, but the second slice will shatter the block. However, releasing the block in between them and then blocking again blocks the second attack without the stagger.

Certain enemies are far easier to deal with when blocking, especially the spiders. You just need to listen for the two audio cues -- the one for the charge, which is easy to hear, and the other one for when they slash at you with their front legs. Being ganged up on is still tough regardless of whichever enemy you're up against, but blocking lets you avoid jumping around constantly and can let you take advantage of an enemy as it recovers from an attack.

Blocking also gives you a nice surge in the style meter in the upper right corner of the screen, so it's a good way to start a set of combos.

I read about what you get when you have a DMC3 save game on your memory card.

I finished level 20 tonight, which is the end of the game. It unlocks Vergil as well as the Bloody Palace mode. It's pretty fun. I spent over an hour getting into the 1100-something level of Bloody Palace.

I died fighting the quicksilver horse and carriage, which is quite a bit harder in the Bloody Palace version. Both the horse and I had a sliver of health left and I didn't zig-zag when I should have. From time to time it throws a boss fight at you as you jump up in levels.

I dragged myself through 18 and 19. Thankfully they made the very arduous 18 be Continue-friendly, not requiring you to replay all the tough fights you'd already won on the level.

I'm pretty sure 20 is the end, a boss battle. I managed to get it down to half health on one of my attempts so I've gone back to load up on orbs and buy healing items. It shouldn't take a terrible number of them to win.

I did notice, however, in the File section describing Style moves via mini TV's that there were static-covered screens where moves should probably be. Hm.

I've made it to Mission 18, which is probably close to the end. I definitely knew I wasn't going to make it through 18 tonight. You'll see why when you get there.

Dang my wrists hurt from playing this game.

You're an animal!

I got to Mission 15 tonight. Up way too late playing. Time for bed.

9, 10, 11
A couple of hours of focused DMC3:SE time allowed me to tear through Missions 9, 10 and 11. The story is progressing well enough, the locales are varied, the environments are nicely detailed, and the difficulty of the enemies is also climbing. I don't think you'll be upset if I mention that you end up having some very nice fights against some vicious spiders, complete with web-slinging abilities.

The boss fights continue to be a challenge, but the gold-mode continue system keeps them from being frustrating. I often use the first few lives just to see the different modes the boss fights in as it gets weaker, and then spend the next half dozen or so trying to kill it. Once I have a handle on it, I make sure I have health replenishing items on hand and use those when I think I can pull off slaying it. Some of the most recent fights seem to me like there's no way anyone could do them with anything but Trickster style on, but if a player is exceptionally skilled I think they could squeak by without its very handy system of dodges.

As the enemies get tougher, fighting older enemies seems significantly easier and a lot more playful and fun. You need to move around so quickly to avoid the newest foes that the pokey older foes are just fun to throw around the room and try more exotic moves on. Sure I could juggle this one kind of enemy with the pistols until he died, but what fun would that be?

Secret Missions
I've also tripped over a couple of Secret Missions along the way. Blue-hued doors or panels trigger mini-game side missions. I haven't been able to clear the two I found most recently -- they're tough -- but I was surprised at the variety.

The first is a variation on one part of an earlier level. A platform rises up, and waves of bad guys appear on it. Knock the bad guys off the platform fast enough or it slides back down to the ground, or die trying. If you can knock all waves of enemies off the platform, it finishes rising and you win -- at least that's how I got past it in the regular game. In the regular game this took a little bit of trial and error for me to figure out. Basically blast them over the side with the shotgun and you're good to go. It took some good aim and movement, and you had to act quickly, but it was do-able. In the Secret Mission they have that blue protective aura I mentioned -- they don't get staggered easily. So I wasn't able to even get the first wave off the platform before it wheeled back down to the ground and left me to deal with them. Dealing with them in a wide open room isn't much fun either. They're slow, but they can block pistol shots, and the blue aura keeps a charge attack from slamming them onto their backs.

Dying in a Secret Mission doesn't kill you, it simply throws you out of the mission. I think the game automatically fully heals you when you exit a Secret Mission, but I'm not sure.

The other Secret Mission involves you having to break every breakable thing in a replica of the bar you go into in an earlier mission. You have a very short amount of time, it must be 45 seconds at most, and every time I tried it I had at least 10 of the 50 breakable items left when time was up. I'll come back to it, maybe with a more appropriate and wider-sweeping melee weapon if I get one.

Trickster style
Correction: With Trickster style level 2, you get mid-air dashes that work like the ground dash. A red flare of energy propels you in the direction you push the stick when pushing the circle button while you're in midair. You can do it just once.

On the ground, you can do dashes one time per Trickster level. So starting out, you could do it once. With level 2, you can dash twice in succession in different directions.

Mission 5 demons
I managed to defeat the ice and fire demon guardians at the end of Mission 5 -- the trick is to stagger them by persistently trying to hit through their guard stance with your sword then switch to the chucks to really do major damage to them before they can get back up. All the while dodging the other demon. I lucked out when I managed to defeat them -- when you defeat the one demon, you get a little bit of time before the other demon leaps off the stage to claim his slain brother's sword. By keeping him engaged in combat and by luck staggering him to one knee, I managed to slay him before he could power up.

Take us with you
The two demons had some funny dialogue starting things off. They have headless bodies, but their heads are actually shrunk down and sit on the pommel of their scimitars. Once defeated, the scimitar heads call out to Dante that they've been waiting an awfully long time for someone more powerful than them to come along, so they want him to take them with him. So the ice and fire scimitars become another sword weapon for Dante. Dante's condition? No talking. I was bummed -- I was hoping they'd become a source of advice for Dante complete with back-and-forth arguing between the two pommels, recounting things they'd heard about different areas he was going into.

Two weapons
And here's where it gets a hint of strategy. You can only carry two of each weapon type. That means two melee weapons and two guns. At that point I had Rebellion the sword and the chucks (the name of those escapes me), so whenever you start a level or meet up with one of the special statues, you can swap out weaponry.

Missions 6 and 7
I made it through Mission 6, including a set of three trials and the classic maze puzzle. Enter a square room with three exits other than the one you entered. Choose the correct door the next three times to make it through. Choose the wrong door along the way and a room fight starts. The room fight was pretty tough -- the mix of enemies is pretty varied so dodging is even more important.

Mission 6 also had that room with the demon switches I mentioned.

I'm now in Mission 7, and along the way Trickster upgraded to level 3. This added a really slick new aerial dash move which is basically a teleport a la Nightcrawler from Marvel Comics. While in the air, push the stick towards an enemy and hit circle and POOF teleport right over by him. It's great for teleporting over and slamming a melee weapon down on them from above and looks really good.

Your enemies have been able to teleport similarly for quite some time, mind you, so it's not like Dante is going to wipe the floor with them.

The variety and detail of the enemies in the game really is very good. The art style is very cohesively gothic and demon-oriented. The most recent, most striking enemies I've faced are ghoulish guys carrying what looks like a big coffin. They move slowly but can swing the coffin around as a weapon if you get close. They'll occasionally slam the coffin into the ground and it lights up bottom to top and opens at the top, releasing a ghost. The coffin acts as a very good shield. You can only hit them from the side where they're holding onto the coffin, and when I first met up with them they were generators for other bad guys -- I had to kill the coffin bearers to stop the really annoying, fast-dashing other guys from spawning.

This game is really fast and gritty action at its best. God of War was slick and really pretty easy, but this is gothic, darker, grittier and so much faster-paced.

Gamespot Reviews
Gamespot has reviewed DMC3:SE. Greg Kasavin seems to complain a little bit about the easier difficulty level, calling the game less rewarding as a result.

Here are the web review and the video review.

Mission 5
Mission 5 in the game has proven to be a bit of a tough climb for me. It's forced me to go back and replay previous Missions and earn orbs to build up abilities and at the same time I'm getting better at the game and more accustomed to the combat system.

I'm able to go through the level pretty well, but the end boss is really tough.

It consists of a pair of headless humanoid creatures, each with a scimitar. One is heat-oriented, the other is cold-oriented. Each of them has a separate, very long health bar.

It took me quite a number of tries before I was able to slay one of them, but all that did was trigger a cut scene where the other one grabs the fallen one's sword, locks it into place back to back with its own sword, creating a kind of long-bladed polearm, and then it jumps back into the fray with anavoidable attack, followed by waves of elemental fire and other ranged attacks.

It was just crazy, and after dying in record time I decided to stop playing and go back to boost up Dante's health meter, weapon skills, and so on by replaying earlier levels and earning orbs.

As I'm going back through the Missions I'm experimenting more and taking more risks, relying less on the handguns and getting more up close and personal with the bad guys with the Rebellion sword. Occasionally I'll also use the ice nunchuks (sp?) but I miss one of the handiest attacks when I'm not using the sword: the charge attack that sends Dante racing across the room to stab straight into an opponent, sending them flying.

Today's the release day for DMC3:SE. I called around and found the local Gamestops and EBs in my area will have it tomorrow.

Gamespot notes the release and says it'll have a full review of the Special Edition soon.

Only if you didn't have continue orbs. Yellow orbs. You chewed through those like chicklets, though.

Yellow "continue" orbs were in the original DMC3, nothing new. Gold orbs are new and I'm sure they'll cost yay too much cash.

I might pick this one up as well, I enjoyed my time with it but it was too frustrating to restart a level over and over.