Gotta love how the game progressively funnels you into getting better.
At first you just think about survival while finishing a difficulty.
Then you start S ranking the difficulty and pretty soon survival becomes a complete non-issue and you become laser focused on just styling better and getting hit less to reduce style loss.
Then you go to Bloody Palace and survival and endurance are put to the test.
Once done with that then you move on to hitting the target times in each floor via warm up in time trial fashion. Now both survival and styling take a backseat to speed, all you think about is doing more damage faster. You start taking risks to get hits when you would be backing off previously.
The game just trains you up from all these angles into a better player.
It feels like Vergil was made to screw with everything you normally do with Dante. You barely have time to react to the BS he conjures up and deals so much damage, that he can chew you up while in SDT like it's nothing.
Anyway, now that it's done here comes my first ever DMD playthrough in any DMC game.
Nah, Dante has way too many tools at his disposal.
His summon swords alone screw over most of Vergil's BS.
Best of luck on DMD, it's super fun.