Not sure what put this game on my radar, but I bought this game over a year and half ago and never got around to it. That is... until EA announced their upcoming server shutdowns, which includes this games dlc, so it was time to finally check it out.
The base game is lots of fun; extremely cool visuals and timed-moments where you have to either follow a button prompt to kill a boss in spectacular cinematic fashion, or to just simply kill a demon or absolve someone's soul. Especially loved a moment where you're walking a big demon to the last rings of hell and it just slowly zooms out as you get closer. Perfection.
So the plot is quite sick; about a man named Dante who made many mistakes during his lifetime, and now when he's killed, and defeats Death himself, learns that his wife has been killed too and is in Hell, where you, Dante, must travel back to find and absolve her soul. It's a trip of a game, supposedly based off the 14th century poem of the same name, but that doesn't really matter. You essentially just kill multiple kinds of demons throughout the game (the game has names for each "kind", but they're all demons to me) and go deeper and deeper through the 9 rings of hell. A ghost figure named Virgil (who is in the poem as well) gives you guidance through each new area, usually giving you lore bits and new relics. Also, relics. These, and the silver coins are what this games collectibles are. After playing the game twice (with no guides I might add) I still was yet to find every silver coin podium or all the holy and unholy relics. I was able to get lvl 7 in both unholy and holy levels and I maxed out all my abilities so I was good there. It's just those damn relics/coins. After beating the game a second time and maxing out Dante, it was time for dlc time. The first one, The Gates of Hell arena, was pretty simple; I think it was 30 rounds of just killing demons in the same map. Wasn't too bad but can't say it was mind-bending or added lore to the story. The 2nd dlc, the Dark Forest, was closer to the right direction the dlcs should have went, adding lore and somewhat interesting levels to the game, telling the prequel story that introduced St. Lucia. It was neat, but wow it was short; probably took me less than an hour to fully beat with both achievements unlocked. The last and final dlc, Trials of St Lucia, was a way bigger mix bag for me. Essentially, the lore of the game explains St Lucia and why she's in Hell, exacting revenge while also being Dante's "guardian angel". Sounds cool enough, right? Wrong. It's literally just playing user- created levels in the worst way possible. Essentially felt like Gates of Hell Arena since it's wave-based, but the developers decided to make it a headache and implement modifiers such as: Don't kill the prisoner (but the prisoner attacks you the entire time), or Kill only certain demons (which if the wave is on a high difficulty, it's damn near impossible sometimes) and ect ect. The only thing about this dlc that could have been neat is the EA trials, which are these user-created levels, but made by the Dante's Inferno developers. Let's just say,, if they added lore to each trial, I would of been more open to the absolute rage most of these levels gave me, but because there is no substance to these levels, I ultimately decided it wasn't worth the pain and suffering. The biggest factor was because I had 3 other games to play before their servers shut down, and with this dlc, you must connect to servers to play and because the servers were going down in early December 2023, i bit the bullet and ended my play through. Despite getting the rest of the achievements for the dlc, the EA trials were impossible to fully complete in time but I did end up completing like 6 of them. But yeah, after I'd say 20+ hours, I ended my playthrough. It's a fun game that may be frustrating playing on the hardest difficulty, but stick with it; it's got some great stuff for fans of this genre.
