Force you to play Hard? Do not want.
I don't know what Capcom was thinking anyways it goes like this:
If you pick easy on your first play through you'll be struck on the easy mode for endless cycles. Meaning you can't choose any other difficulty as long as you're on the same file. That's the trade-off for making a relatively challenging game very easy.
If you continue playing on Normal and beat the game. You'll be forced to start on Hard Mode if you save at the end of the game. Sucks right? ...BUT you carry over EVERYTHING from your previous file which makes Hard mode considerably more bearable and even then some boss fights will STILL kick your ass countless times. However if you finished DMD on DMC3 then DMC1 Hard mode won't be a problem. But then again DMC1 Hard is much harder then DMC3 Hard mainly because of the limits in using health items. Good luck.
And I did play the first mission of DMC2 and didn't hate it. It wasn't impressive, but I have incredibly low standards of course
Your opinion for the rest of the game will pretty much be the same or even lower. The game stays at this pace throughout the game. DMC2 is an incredibly mediocre game and a very easy one at that too. Trust me the DMD or LMD mode here will probably make you laugh.
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Rock n' Roll and Glam Metal... It never died