u/Director_Bison

Not that there is any urgency to do this in normal circumstances, but lets say you wanted a level 3 style before unlocking DT.

It's pretty simple, it's just starting mission 5, beating Jester, Saving, and the restarting the mission.

The group of Blood-Goyle at the start of mission 5, will probably get you around 1176 style XP, than the Jester fight gives you 5000 XP.

You need 129,999 XP to get a Style to Level 3, so after 21 Jester fights that'll be around 129,696 xp so you'd only need to fight a few more enemies, you wouldn't even fight jester a 22nd time.

If you felt like doing this for all 4 styles, that's 84 Jester Fights, but more than likely, less since you'd get XP getting to mission 5 in the first place, so lets say it would take around 80 Jester fights to level every style to LV3.

With no upgrades, Playing on Easy it took me less then 2 mins to get to and beat jester.

but lets use 2 mins as a base to account room for loading and whatever.

It might take around 2 hours and 40 mins to get all 4 styles to level 3. Less so if you were to have upgrades. Even less so if you happened to get DT first before starting this grind.

Getting to and beating jester with max DT took me like a min. So if you saved your Red Orbs until you beat Vergil, then bought all the Purple Orbs, then started this grind it can be less then 80 mins.

Playing as Vergil you might be able to get lv 3 Darkslayer in less then half an hour of this grind.

Edit: Also I suppose if you used the cheat code to unlock Heaven and Hell mode, you can do this even faster.
DMC3 on PS2 allows you to save after using the Unlock everything cheat fyi.

https://preview.redd.it/uwipa9opu3hh1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d090ee52b86d1281f0e146a1e5f5e4a45e0ebeb

All the music equipment here shows Dante already knew how to play the guitar, and being a master with Nevan instantly wasn't something he just magically pulled out his ass.

You can see two handguns on the wall here, could they be Luce & Ombra? Waiting for the day they're passed on to Trish.

The hanging target makes it seem like Dante might have practiced his aim in his own office.

"Click on the post to see screenshots"

I also only now noticed that Dante's coat is hanging there on the coat rack during gameplay, and the bathroom entrance blocked by half the pool table.

Maybe the abundance of music equipment. shows Young Dante was more frivolous with the cash he was able to earn. His shops close proximity to the bar/strip club certainly didn't help him save money no doubt.

I know it's natural to think you've certainly got DMC3 down when you've been playing it for years, But the western release of DMC3's settings "The equivalent of playing DMC3 on Hard with Yellow orbs" really makes all the diffrence when you're starting from a fresh save file. At the start when you don't have all the Health and DT upgrades, don't have level 3 styles, don't have DT, Don't have your choice of all the weapons, and unless you invest in Yellow Orbs dying means restarting the stage so you need to make a conscious effort to save your game before a boss to avoid losing progress if you die. This game still as Hard as it ever was.

Sure I'm far better at DMC3 then I was when I first played this version all those years ago, but that doesn't mean I can simply breeze through this, I'd have to spend a bunch of time grinding to make things easier, but if you purposefully try not to do that, just the risk of having no Yellow orbs so dying is a stage restart makes the stakes of fighting the bosses so much higher then just being able to have unlimited continues with Gold orbs.

This playthough is certainly reminding me of how I felt the first time I played DMC3, and what a journey It was to try and beat missions on "Normal" for the first time before I'd allow myself to grind beaten ones on "Easy".

I know it's natural to think you've certainly got DMC3 down when you've been playing it for years, But the western release of DMC3's settings "The equivalent of playing DMC3 on Hard with Yellow orbs" really makes all the diffrence when you're starting from a fresh save file. At the start when you don't have all the Health and DT upgrades, don't have level 3 styles, don't have DT, Don't have your choice of all the weapons, and unless you invest in Yellow Orbs dying means restarting the stage so you need to make a conscious effort to save your game before a boss to avoid losing progress if you die. This game still as Hard as it ever was.

Sure I'm far better at DMC3 then I was when I first played this version all those years ago, but that doesn't mean I can simply breeze through this, I'd have to spend a bunch of time grinding to make things easier, but if you purposefully try not to do that, just the risk of having no Yellow orbs so dying is a stage restart makes the stakes of fighting the bosses so much higher then just being able to have unlimited continues with Gold orbs.

This playthough is certainly reminding me of how I felt the first time I played DMC3, and what a journey It was to try and beat missions on "Normal" for the first time before I'd allow myself to grind beaten ones on "Easy".