I had a feeling it was going to be another DMC2 (what were they expecting farming it out again? to a company with such a mediocre track record?). I didn't realize the boss battles would play out exactly the same way.
When Nintendo approached Retro and asked them to make a new DKC game, they very first thing the designers did was they played all three of the main SNES titles. Then, they created a a game based on the mechanics and feel they had observed.
Clearly, Ninja Theory doesn't do this, or if they do they somehow think that radically changing a proven formula in order to make the series seem new is a good idea. It's kind of strange that they have taken DMC and somehow created a game that looks like the series, feels like the series, plays like the series, but somehow isn't quite a DMC game. It's in fact the exact same thing they did to the Metroid series with other M. As a matter of fact they also did this with Ninja Gaiden, but they ended up with a good game at the end since what they were deviating from was an 8-bit side scroller. Their ability to destroy franchises for the sake of not wanting a similar sequel is amazing to behold.
Designing a sequel to a long running series that is not yours (recent or retro) is a fucking tight rope act. It isn't as simple as "play the other games, do what they did, done".
The audience puts the designer in a catch-22 where the game "needs to be different and new in a vague way, but not too different and new or else in another vague way it won't be (fill in series name here)".
Sometimes you get a Symphony of the Night situation that nails it dead center with innovating around the core gameplay or, conversationally, a Ninja Gaiden(Xbox) that is nothing like the original, but is such a genre changer that it doesn't matter. Every other time you get...bleh.
Ninja Theory (DmC) and Team Ninja (M:OM) are different studios FYI
It being a completely different game was intentional, Japanese devs are kind of falling apart this console cycle and now they're infatuated with being "western" in an attempt to hit Call of Duty sales figures. It's why Resident Evil 6 was a hodgepodge and why Capcom intentionally made things different this time around.
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