March 18th, 2019
Eleven years ago, in an attempt to sate my hype for Ninja Gaiden II, I walked into a GameStop and pre-ordered Devil May Cry 4. A month later I was writing a scathing review that complained about poor combat flow and terrible music, but two years after that I was writing an article for the Badger Herald where I complained about Capcom ruining the Devil May Cry franchise by catering to what they thought Western audiences wanted. So what changed?
Devil May Cry, as a series, is one of those franchises that gets better the more you play it, with your first playthrough of any given game acting as little more than a tutorial, with forgiving (though it may not feel like it) enemy attack patterns as you learn new skills and acquire new weapons. As you replay on harder difficulties you’ll slowly start to learn what works and what doesn’t, and how to string together combos at a more efficient rate. After eighty hours on Devil May Cry 4 (don’t ask me why I kept playing after hating it the first time through) I finally hit the point where I “got it,” but even now after beating the game’s highest difficulties with the best ratings I still only have an entry level grasp on how to play Dante. I’m telling this story because it’s the only intro I could think of where I didn’t complain about how Capcom tried to nuke the franchise eight years ago, but it’s also to stress that even though I’m about to review Devil May Cry 5 it’s going to take me another sixty hours or more to fully get my head around it.
One of DMC5’s big selling points is its three characters with different playstyles: Nero, Dante, and new character V. Rather than trying to compare and contrast them throughout the article, I’m just going to talk about each character in their own section below.
Dante returns to Devil May Cry 5 very much like we saw him in DMC4, with the ability to switch between four different styles in combat: Swordmaster, Gunslinger, Royal Guard, and Trickster. The styles have more depth than they did in DMC4, thanks in part to the brand new weapons that Dante gets to use. My favorite is Balrog, the newest version of DMC’s traditional “punching weapon” that is far quicker than earlier Beowulf or Gilgamesh and also comes with an additional kick mode that you can switch to at any time. Dante actually has several weapons with different modes or forms in DMC5 and messing around with them can be equal parts rewarding and overwhelming, but the one melee weapon that doesn’t is also the one I dislike the most: Cavaliere. A demon motorcycle that is honestly a very cool weapon in terms of design and insane damage output, Cavaliere lets me down because of how slow it is. Devil May Cry, to me, is all about speedy combos and fast weapon switching, but when you get Cavaliere’s slow style mixed into otherwise fast weapons it just slows down my rhythm. Fortunately Dante has the option to use as many or as few weapons as he wants, so I generally just stick with two melee weapons to have some consistency to my combo chains, even if it isn’t the most optimal for style.
Nero, the main protagonist from Devil May Cry 4, returns as well with a much more in-depth move list than his relatively sparse options in DMC4. Much of this comes from his new Devil Breakers, metallic arms with a high variety of offensive and defensive moves that you can utilize to suit your playstyle, but Nero’s kit has also been improved with some incredible gap-closers and some quality of life changes to how his Blue Rose revolver and pulling himself across the map works.
Unfortunately the Devil Breakers are probably my least favorite part of DMC5 for a few reasons. While the arms themselves feel very good to use in-game, almost every single one of their features seems to be designed to be as frustrating as possible. The biggest problem with these arms is that you cannot cycle between them freely, and outside of DLC items you can’t even change the order of your arms at all. The only way to get to a different arm in your inventory is to DESTROY the arm you’re currently wearing and every other arm that might be in the way between you and the arm you want. You can carry up to eight with the proper upgrades, but the inability to shuffle your gear either means that you should just load up your inventory with eight copies of your favorite arm or memorize the entire level through multiple playthroughs and figure out which arm you want in every fight throughout the level. This all might sound fine, if a little inconvenient, but to top it all off you have to actually buy these Breakers with red orbs/upgrade points. It’s a small amount of orbs in the grand scheme of things, but it’s pretty obnoxious that half of Nero’s kit is endlessly stuck behind red orbs on top of everything else, especially when your Breakers best moves involve destroying the arm in use. It takes me back to Mass Effect 3 when you would use power weapons but have to spend in-game currency to buy more.
This isn’t to say that I hate how Nero plays. In fact he’s probably my favorite of the three characters right now due to how his abilities develop over the course of the game, but it’s a shame the shadow of some of these mechanics is floating over him.
It would be no exaggeration to say that V is one of the strangest and most original characters to ever grace an action game. While most action game characters use guns or melee weapons to deal damage, V summons demons to fight for him and only gets his own hands dirty to land the final blow on enemies. This makes V very irregular and it sometimes feels like his combos don’t actually work due to the distance between V and his foes, which can mess with how it feels the fight is going. Enemy AI is also a little weird in response to V and his demons, as sometimes they attack V’s demons and they sometimes make a beeline straight to V, who is incredibly vulnerable so you have to constantly be on the lookout for danger to avoid it precisely.
V’s biggest “problem” is how incredibly easy it is to do well with him. Devil May Cry’s main appeal, other than difficulty and the combat engine itself, is mastering the style system to get “S” ranks in every mission, and V can get S ranks without even trying. I don’t know if this is because it’s very easy to use all of V’s demons at once (he has three that he can use, two tied to regular attacks and a third on his super form) or because the game gives too many points for V dealing that finishing blow, but either way it makes V’s levels very comfortable. That isn’t to say he’s easy to follow in action though, as there’s so much to keep track of while you’re playing him and with all three demons on the board it can be really hard to be aware of everything that’s going on.
Speaking of being aware of what’s going on, the story of Devil May Cry 5 is a relatively lore-heavy tale but has a very small scope. It includes references and call backs to almost everything in the DMC franchise (including the anime) but entirely revolves around a demon-infested city and an ancient underworld tree called the Qliphoth. This means that the environmental variety is rather lacking, with everything set in either a damaged city or demonic tunnels, but we’re not here for level design critiques. The story doesn’t have very many twists outside of the origins of V and the main antagonist, Urizen, but it does get very “anime” as characters repeatedly gain “not even my final form” powers reminiscent of Naruto or Dragonball Z. Overall it’s as passable as any other Devil May Cry story, aided by probably the best voice acting the series has ever had, even if the writing sometimes can’t keep up.
There are a large number of demons that you have to fight as you move through DMC5, with some returning classic enemies such as the Death Scissors joining the ranks of numerous new monsters. Unfortunately I’d argue that the demons you fight are one of the weakest parts of DMC5 as they fall into two categories: either they’re enemies that you can easily stagger out of any potential attacks so they only threaten you with large numbers, or they’re teleporting enemies that are no fun to fight because they always teleport to the other side of the arena before you can do any sort of combo to them. The Fury enemy is one in particular that calls back memories of the Blitz from DMC4, where it has very few windows of vulnerability but unlike the Blitz it’s invisible while moving around the level and can only really be countered with knockback weapons and well-timed melee attacks. It’s the ultimate “get good” enemy, and until you do get good (or you spam Dante’s shotgun while constantly dodging) it can be a real headache.
The bosses can be a real headache as well, but not in the way you’d think. Some of them can be difficult or frustrating, sure, but the big problem with the bosses is when the story gets in the way of gameplay. You’ll fight the same boss multiple times throughout the game, and many of them are “supposed to lose” fights which is absolutely disgusting. As a concept I’m fine with the idea of fights that are designed to beat you for the sake of setting up a challenging enemy for you to overcome later, we’ve seen such things in action games like Metal Gear Rising for instance, but these fights in DMC5 happen almost all the way through the game. Other action games, like Ninja Gaiden 2, DMC4, or DMC3 have had fights where the story dictates your character loses but has a boss fight like normal that ends with defeat in a cutscene, which is a much better way to do it in my opinion. Leave the lost fights to cutscenes and set every enemy in front of the player as one that they can overcome, otherwise you get boring fights where the player knows they aren’t supposed to win, creating several levels that just end on a flat note when bosses are supposed to be a big and exciting culmination of a level’s events. These doomed-to-fail encounters, coupled with two of Nero’s bosses essentially being total snoozefests leads to a high percentage of bosses that just aren’t memorable, which isn’t something you want to hear when talking about an action game.
When you aren’t fighting bosses and lesser demons, DMC5 eats up some time with rather braindead puzzles and obstacles that have led reviewers to say that the game feels like a Playstation 2 title. They’re either “your path is blocked, go out of your way to find the way to unblock it” or “find a key to unlock this ‘door,’” which aren’t the best additions to gameplay but do encourage exploration. The worst part about them is during V’s sections where you have to use his super form’s monster to break walls or other obstacles to clear the way, and if you don’t have your super meter available in these moments then you’re out of luck and need to come back on a later replay. Either way these minor excursions can lead to frustration if you’re the type of player that wants a more linear experience, or if you’re on your eighth replay and you’re sick of having to play fetch quest.
DMC5 runs on the RE Engine, which means that it’s one of the best looking games out there. The desire for 60 FPS and pretty graphics does mean that some tech has issues keeping up, so my computer occasionally stutters during particularly high-stress situations, especially with V. The slow down can also be blamed on the game’s “multiplayer,” where you are constantly/arbitrarily connecting with random players that are playing the same level as you but from the perspective of a different character. Turning off this setting instantly helped reduce the lag, but it’s not a 100% perfect fix. The only thing you can get from this feature is bonus golden orbs if the player you’re “playing with” gives you a positive vote for how well you played, but this is also a completely meaningless score because you rarely see your “partner” over the course of a level and almost never fight alongside them.
Devil May Cry 5 is possibly the best DMC game of all time…on paper. Dante and Nero are unquestionably the best that they’ve ever been, and the game is certainly more difficult than what we had to deal with in DMC4. Unfortunately I think some hiccups in the boss and enemy design might hold the game back compared to DMC3 when the hype of the game’s release dies down. But until that happens DMC5 is a beautiful, fluid, fantastic action game that is a breath of fresh air in a genre that hasn’t had a slam dunk game like this since…well I guess since the DMC4 Special Edition came out. However, if you are interested in DMC5 and haven’t played any of these games before I’d recommend checking out at least DMC3 and even DMC4, as things in DMC5 will be less confusing if you know what’s going on in the story.
Now where’s Ninja Gaiden 4?
