Letdowns are a fact of life. They can almost kill a series, as in the case of Metal Gear Solid 2, or they can simply turn the promise of a potentially great game like Devil May Cry 4 into something that's merely not bad. While the production values are top-notch and the fighting engine is fantastic fun, DMC4 tries to do more with varying success. It constantly throws out design quirks and events that distract from the things it does best, and those distractions just aren't very fun.
Little details accumulate one after another, siphoning out the fun and leaving you wondering how something with so much sheer awesome can also be so incredibly obnoxious. Devil May Cry 4 is an excellent example of gilding the lily, with the beauty of its fighting engine weighted down by all the excesses ham-handedly piled on top.