Walkthrough
Opera House
Note: The following only applies if Tutorial is set to "On" in the Game Options menu. If it is set to "Off", the mission will skip directly to the boss fight.
The mission starts with a forced tutorial in which Nero must successfully perform a specific action the designated amount of times. These tutorials are divided by cutscenes, and Nero can only use the required techniques during each tutorial, whether he has acquired other techniques or not.
Nero and Dante clash.
The first tutorial will teach you how to fire Nero's Blue Rose (Press 
/
). You must shoot the Man in Red (Dante) 5 times to proceed. Next, the Man in Red will begin to rapidly fire streams of bullets that cannot be blocked, and you will be given a tutorial on how to jump (Press 
/
). You must jump over the stream of bullets 5 times to proceed. Next will be a tutorial on how to perform a Side Roll (Press 
+
/
+ for PS3 or press
+/+ for 360). The Man in Red will begin to fire vertically as well, so you must avoid his shots five times by Side Rolling as they near you. After doing so, a cutscene will play.
After the cutscene, Nero will have picked up a Durandal, and you will be given a tutorial on how to perform a Melee Attack (Pressing 
/
). Attack the Man in Red 3 times to proceed. You will then be given a tutorial on performing High Roller (Press +
+/++). The Man in Red will often dodge this attack, but when he taunts you he can always be hit. Perform High Roller on the Man in Red 3 times to move on and watch a cutscene.
After the cutscene, Nero will be able to use his Devil Bringer, and you will get a tutorial on how to perform Buster (Press 
/
). Dante will often try to dodge this attack, but you can easily avoid this by continuously firing the Blue Rose at him until you get close, and then Bustering him. Perform 3 Busters on Dante to end the tutorials.
Boss: The Man in Red/Dante
Attacks (1)
Dante's normal attacks (Human and Devil Hunter difficulties)
- Helm Breaker
- Rebellion Combo A
- Stinger
- Normal Shot
- Honeycomb Fire
- Coyote-A
Attacks (2)
The Man in Red's additional attacks (Son of Sparda up to the higher difficulties)
Buster uses
- Normal
- Air
- Clash Counter (does more damage but can only be done if Dante blocks Nero's buster and enters clash stance).
Strategy
Compared to the Dante you fight in Mission 10, this Dante is a piece of cake on Human and Devil Hunter difficulties. If you went through the tutorial, just use the skills you learned to take him down. Dodge his attacks and gunfire, and use Buster on him to win.
At higher difficulties, Nero's most important moves in this fight are level 3 charge shots, Shuffle, Buster and Devil Trigger activation. Charge shots should be used as a counter while Dante is doing something since he is able to dodge or destroy them if they are idly fired at him. Shuffle can be used to counter Dante's hits due to its invincibility frames, and can also be cancelled into firing Blue Rose. Buster should ideally only be used in the air or with DT. Finally, DT activation is vital due to its invincibility frames and ability to interrupt Dante's attacks, as well as overriding knockdowns.
It is a very bad idea to attempt to fight Dante at long range: he can deflect Nero's shots with Ebony & Ivory, and if the player persists he will eventually randomly interrupt his gun attacks by switching to Coyote-A and fire a shot that knocks Nero down.
Despite him being a human-sized enemy, jump cancelling Dante does not work: after a few hits he will break an aerial combo by falling in a manner that is too fast for the player to keep up with him.
Dante will sometimes "counter" a Buster, resulting in a cinematic face-off between Nero and Dante: the animation consists of four sword strikes, followed by Nero locking his Buster against Dante's sword. If the player can hit any button just as Nero's Buster strikes Rebellion, the clinch will end with Nero throwing Dante for significant damage. If not, either Dante will knock Nero back or both Dante and Nero will recoil: the player should have Nero jump immediately to avoid Dante's counter-attack. Dante cannot perform this counter against aerial or Devil Triggered Busters.
Regardless of the difficulty level, he cannot access any Style move except Honeycomb Fire, so the player need not worry about him switching to Royalguard Style. He also tends to prefer to use attacks with excessively long setup times such as Gilgamesh's back-dash at full charge or Pandora's laser.
Dante's attacks tend to come out faster and have higher priority than Nero's and AI Dante reads the player's control inputs rather than reacting to Nero's animations, so will quickly punish a player who is too aggressive. For example, Dante will almost always react to a Streak by side-rolling and attacking. AI Dante should not be regarded as having the same limitations as player-controlled Dante: among other things, his Coyote-A has infinite range with almost no spread.
Getting the full S rank requires the player to destroy the pews for Red Orbs during the fight, as the mission ends immediately when Dante is defeated.
Strategy DMD
The boss fight against Dante can be hard with all that use of the Pandora, Lucifer, Gilgamesh, and Coyote-A. It doesn't help that he counters almost everything you do. However if you know how to exploit him, he is relatively simple.
The fight will start with you Dante and Nero standing opposite corners of the room. Start by smashing the chairs as fast as possible, dodging any attack Dante does, to get the Orbs. Avoid the gunfire by rolling left or right, and do NOT get hit by Pandora as it will do a lot of damage.
Now to exploit Dante, get close enough to him that you can reach him with your snatch move and shoot at him, he should deflect your gunfire with his own. Straight away, use Snatch. As long as Dante isn't moving left or right you should be able to bring him in. If you miss, dodge roll as Dante will do a Stinger attack straight to your face. If you brought him in with snatch do a 3 slash combo. (y) (y) (y) and then buster him. A cutscene will show up giving you style for each deflect you do during the cutscene. Straight after, you will either:
A)Charge through Dante taking a bar of life.
B)Dante will knock you back
C)You will knock Dante back
If in the case of A and B, get away from Dante by jumping or rolling as he will likely Stinger/Kick-13 right away. In the case of C, do another (Y) (Y) (Y) Devil Buster/Buster combo quickly or he will either Stinger or shotgun you.
The animation and the combo if done over and over will give you an S in Stylish. Rinse and repeat and Dante is dead.
Trivia
- The mission name, "Birds of a feather" indicates that Nero and Dante are both half-demon and half-human.
- This is the shortest mission in the game, which can be completed in less than 5 minutes (approximately less than 2 minutes if the Tutorial is set to "Off").
- The first three in-game cutscenes for this mission are only viewed if the Tutorial is set to "On"