A Casual Devil May Cry Retrospective Part 1

Devil May Cry is a series I’ve known about for years. It’s one of the most influential gaming series of all time, arguably creating an entire sub-genre of action games. Like with fellow action pioneer Metroid it may not necessarily sell the best, but its influences are noticeable across the wider gaming spectrum and it has an incredibly and devoted fan following that continues to sing it’s praises today.

And I have barely touched it. To clarify, I did try Devil May Cry 4 and the infamous reboot DMC in the past, but I never finished either and it has been years since I last played them. I didn’t hate what I played, it’s just that there were other games coming out that grabbed more of my attention.

I always intended to give the series another chance but never got around to it. Well, that changes now. I’m going to look at every single entry in this series and see if it truly deserves the hype. That way I can scratch one series off my bucket list and get some content for the site in the process. Win-win.

But this series is sort of notorious for being very difficult and execution heavy. It’s got a reputation of being hard to get in to. It’s the kind of game that people spend hours grinding out until they get the best rank on the highest difficulty, and I am not one of those guys.

I want to see whether you can just sit down and enjoy these games without having to master them. If you’re a player who has played these games and learned all the tech and beaten Dante Must Die with triple S ranks, this isn’t the retrospective for you.

This is for people who haven’t played it and are looking to get into it for the first time like me. This is basically a newcomers perspective on the series, and as I always do when I start a series I always begin with the first game. Even if it may not be the best place to start.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Before we talk about it let me give you a brief history on the game’s development. Devil May Cry did not start out as Devil May Cry. Directed by Hideki Kamiya and produced by Shinji Mikami, the game originally was meant to be an entry in the Resident Evil series.

Kamiya at the time was best known for directing Resident Evil 2, which many fans consider one of the best games in the series. That game was so well received that Mikami requested Kamiya to work on the fourth entry.

So yes, Devil May Cry started as Resident Evil 4. Originally the game was about a man named Tony who was born with strange powers, who searched an ancient castle to find the truth of his origin. A stark departure from the series normal stories and having a more action focused tone.

So different was the departure that Mikami eventually realised that it didn’t really fit with the rest of the series. So Mikami requested Kamiya to just make it its own thing entirely. After all the game was already pretty far into development and was coming along nicely so why scrap all the hard work.

This also meant the team had more creative freedom to do what they wanted, so it worked out for everyone. And after some rewrites to the story to make it more distinct, Kamiya turned his version of Resident Evil 4 into Devil May Cry, while the actual Resident Evil 4 was worked on by another team. Which ended up taking an action-oriented route anyway. Funny how things work out sometimes isn’t it.

Devil May Cry would release in Japan on August 2001, and a few months later for the rest of the world. It would go on to receive critical acclaim and sold decently well with 1 million copies shipped. Not a huge success, but still a decent one for a new IP on a new console.

It’s considered a massive pioneer in the action genre. Without the first Devil May Cry there wouldn’t be God of War, the Ninja Gaiden reboot or Bayonetta. But does that mean the game is still fun to play today. Well… it’s complicated.

I can appreciate the innovations it brought to the table, but Devil May Cry is one of the most acute examples of “first game syndrome” I’ve seen. And it all starts with the story.

About 2 millennia ago a war broke out between the human world and the underworld. However, the conflict was ended when the dark knight Sparda betrayed his lord, Mundus, and sided with the humans. Waging a long and bloody war against the hordes of hell on his own until the day was won.

Sparda would then, many years later, fall in love with a woman named Eve and have 2 children. Twin brothers named Dante and Vergil. Then, Sparda dies. Yeah, he just dies off screen with no explanation.

Not even his family knows how he died, he just went on a walk one day and never came back. There is something suspicious about this. I think he pulled the old “going to the store for cigarettes” trick to get out of raising his kids. He may be a dark knight but he’s still a demon, I wouldn’t put it past him.

Anyway, with Sparda gone, Mundus decides to take his revenge by killing his family, though the young Dante manages to survive thanks to his mother’s sacrifice. Years later, Dante is now working as a professional demon hunter for hire out of his business, Devil May Cry.

The game starts when a woman named Trish bursts in on a motorcycle to hire Dante for a job, to stop the return of Mundus. Turns out the dude has been gathering forces in a place called Mallet Island, and now Dante has to stop Mundus before he can break the barriers between worlds and invade the human realm.

And that is literally all the plot there is to the game. A big evil guy is doing big evil things, go stop him. Devil May Cry is not a game you play for the story. It is pure action schlock, with very little actual substance.

Does it need to have much substance though? Not really. Look, Devil May Cry is not a narratively driven series, I knew that going in, it’s just a fun romp where you see a cool character doing cool things. It’s just supposed to be fun. So why is the first games story not very fun?

Well, the answer for that is obvious, it was the first game in the series. A lot of the eccentricities the series would be known for weren’t properly established yet.

Look at Dante for example. Dante is known for being a wise cracking asshole, but he’s also a bit of dork. He’s the kind of guy that will ride missiles like a surfer just because it’s fun. He’s a goofball who does over-the-top things because he thinks it’s cool, that’s why people love him so much.

But that isn’t the Dante we get in the first game. He still talks a lot of shit, but he’s a bit more of a reserved guy. His coolness comes more from how nonchalant he is about everything. I mean the dude gets stabbed through the chest and walks it off like it was nothing. He’s fucking ice cold in this.

Which does work. The entire point of Dante was to be a cool character, but he’s also a bit one note. There’s very little depth to his character in this. To their credit they do try to give him some depth in the more serious moments, but those moments never feel fully earned.

Case in point, throughout the game Dante fights a dark knight called Nelo Angelo. A dark knight who’s just as skilled with a sword as Dante. Your recurring rival character essentially, every anime and videogame had one at the time.

Well after you defeat him for the final time, it’s revealed that Nelo Angelo is actually Vergil. Dante’s long thought dead twin brother who was brainwashed to be part of Mundus’ army. It’s a big moment of the game because Dante losing his family is one of the driving forces of why he does what he does.

So him killing his brother should be a big deal. It’s treated as one. There’s a serious scene where Dante picks up a necklace that was given to Vergil by their mother and he remember when they got them as kids. You can tell he’s torn up about this, but I felt nothing out of it.

And a lot of it is because, I don’t really know Vergil or Dante. We never see them together before this point, so we never get an idea of what their relationship was like. We get hints about it, but nothing much is shown and without that I don’t have much of a reason to care. I like Dante, but the game doesn’t give him enough depth to make those serious moments have the impact they need.

You could argue that all of this was gone into in later games. Which is true, but it doesn’t change the fact that the first games story is lacking in a lot of details. Even the backstory I went into earlier, we’re only given the bare minimum here. A lot of it was fleshed out later on in manga adaptations. Here all we know is that Sparda is Dante’s dad, his mom died, and that’s it.

There just isn’t much substance to the story. Which sucks because it also isn’t nearly as fun or stylish enough to compensate for it. In fact, some of the serious moments are some of the most fun in the game for all the wrong reasons.

And with that I should talk about the ending. So, it is revealed near the end of the game that Trish is a minion of Mundus. A being created in the image of Dante’s mother so he would trust her enough to lead him into a trap.

Which she does, only Dante escapes the trap because he’s just that awesome. Despite being betrayed though, he spares Trish’s life because she looks like his mother, even though that was done to trick but whatever, and he heads off to face Mundus.

Unfortunately, Mundus turns out to be way more powerful than he thought, and Dante is overwhelmed. But before the killing blow is struck, Trish pushes Dante out of the way and takes the hit. This causes Dante to go into his full devil mode, because that’s how anime transformations work, and he fights Mundus in a weird trippy space scene.

Dante wins, obviously, but Trish is unconscious and presumed dead. Which leads to…

Never gets old. Anyway, the island then starts to collapse, because now the game is Metroid for some reason. Dante attempts to flee but runs into Mundus again who manifests in one last ditch effort to kill him. Fortunately, Trish is still alive and helps Dante send him back to hell.

Then the two escape on a conveniently placed plane and fly off into the sunset. Trish even sheds a tear over being free, which Dante says is proof that she’s human since devils never cry. So, the two become partners in demon slaying and Dante even renames the shop to Devil Never Cry. Which makes no sense given what happens later in the series, but that’s for another day.

So overall, not a great story. Obviously, they aren’t going to knock it out of the park the first time, and given the game was rewritten midway through development it shouldn’t be surprising it ended up the way it is.

I’ll give the game this at the very least, it does a good enough job at setting-up the world of Devil May Cry. I wish it did more with it, but it is intriguing enough that I want to see more of it. Something the sequels can hopefully deliver on.

That’s all I’m giving it though. There’s not much of anything to the narrative and it honestly just feels like an after-thought. But that’s enough about the story, let’s talk about the actual meat of the game. The gameplay.

I’ve said multiple times now that Devil May Cry started as a Resident Evil game, and that becomes readily apparent once you start playing it. It’s got a lot of the classic Resident Evil staples like fixed camera angles, multi-tiered level design and “puzzle solving”.

And yes, I put that in quotations for a reason. Devil May Cry puzzles are puzzles in the most basic, brain-dead sense of the term. All you do is find an item and put it in its proper place. It’s not difficult at all and compared to Resident Evil puzzles are utterly anaemic.

I know complaining about the puzzles in an action game is a little silly. You don’t play them for brain teasers after all. But if you’re going to have them, at least put some effort into them. Even God of War has puzzles but those are still designed to work with the games combat and platforming mechanics. Devil May Cry puzzles do not. It’s just finding things to put on other things.

The puzzles are just an old artefact from its time as a Resident Evil game. Even the atmosphere is more like a horror game than an action one. Honestly if it wanted to go full horror it probably could because it’s not that bad at it. The atmosphere can be very creepy and foreboding, even some of the enemy designs can be a little unnerving.

It isn’t the same kind of atmosphere as Resident Evil. It goes more for gothic and supernatural horror than body/science fiction horror. Even so it’s really good at it. next to Castlevania it’s one of the better uses of a gothic horror aesthetic I’ve seen. Albeit with more John Woo influences than Bram Stoker.

As a quick aside, for an early PlayStation 2 game Devil May Cry’s presentation still holds up pretty well. The graphical fidelity is showing its age, and the pre-rendered look too much like the in game ones, but there are some creative levels to gawk at. Any game that features a giant pulsating heart is at least trying to be creative.

The Music is also pretty good. Rocking when it needs to be, and atmospheric when it needs to be. It isn’t quite as memorable or bombastic as later soundtracks, or as memeable for that matter, but it’s still decent stuff.

The actual sound design though is a bit of a mixed bag. In game it’s fine, but cutscenes have that Sonic Adventure 2 problem where the sound mixing is off, and the music is louder than the voice work. Mind you considering the voice work is kind off, well…

Yeah, that may not have entirely been a bad thing. Also, last time for that clip. My hand to God.

Although let’s be honest, the bad voice acting is probably another artifact from it originally being a Resident Evil game. I know you’re probably sick of the comparisons, but I can’t help it. There’s a lot of Resident Evil in this that’s hard to ignore. The familiarities are there, but it does differentiate itself.

For one thing its level based. The game is broken up into 23 different missions with a clear goal to accomplish. It isn’t like a survival horror where your dropped into a location and need to find your way through it, it’s a more linear affair. There is some backtracking, but they usually separate the parts where you backtrack as separate missions with a clear path of where to go next.

There are some hidden collectables to find, but not much in the way of branching paths or secret areas. It’s straight forward as far as the level design is concerned.

Also, you don’t really need to go out of your way to find them. They help, but you can just buy most of this stuff with the Red Orbs dropped from defeating enemies. So, exploration isn’t a major factor of the game.

There’s also no resource management. You don’t have to worry ammo or anything, you’re an action hero and they don’t worry about petty things like ammo. Make no mistake, this is still an action game first and foremost. You aren’t trying to survive and run away from enemies, you face them head on and go in guns blazing.

Devil May Cry is the first in what would later be dubbed the “Character Action” genre. A genre that is in desperate need of a better name but that’s a discussion for another day. Character Action games are usually characterised by their stylish combat systems. It’s not just about killing enemies; it’s about doing so in the coolest way possible while racking up huge combos.

Despite it being one of the earliest examples of the genre, Devil May Cry has a lot of the features and mechanics that define the genre. You’ve got delayed attacks, super states in the form of Devil Triggers. switchable weapons (sort of), an upgrade system where you can unlock new moves with the Red Orbs dropped from enemies, a ranking system.

A lot of what we expect from Character Action games is here and accounted for. But it is still an early game in the genre. A lot of this stuff isn’t as refined as what it would later become. It’s almost like a beta version of what the genre would later become.

The move set, for example, isn’t very big. Compared to later games in the genre it feels bare bones. It doesn’t exactly allow for much player expression, which is a big deal considering how important that is for these kinds of games.

You can still do some sick combos, but the combo system is unrefined. They drop way too quickly and there isn’t really a benefit to getting a high combo anyway. There’s no reward for doing so.

Even the ranking system doesn’t really take combos into account. The only thing that matters is how fast you finish each level. It’s actually beneficial to skip battles to try to finish as quick as possible. You may think you’ll miss out on Red Orbs, except your rank gives you an end of level bonus anyway. The higher ranks of which give you a lot.

So you have an action game that rewards you for not partaking in the action. That doesn’t seem right. That said, don’t bother with the ranking system in this. You get plenty of Orbs playing normally, and it doesn’t make sense to skip the main draw of the game just to get a stupid grade at the end.

So screw the ranking system. You’ll still be able to unlock most of the moves if you just play through normally. Though that’s mostly because, as I said, there isn’t a lot of them to unlock in the first place. And honestly, I only found myself frequently using a handful of them. I’ve got 3 words for you, Air Raid and Stinger. Those are what you’ll be using 80-90% of the time.

There’s also not a lot of weapons to pick from. You have the sword and the Ifrit gauntlets for melee weapons. The sword is more combo focused, while the gauntlets are slower and have chargeable attacks. I mostly stuck with the sword, but there were certain enemies where the gauntlets where a better option, so I did end up using both throughout my playthrough.

There are 3 different swords to pick from. They all have the same basic move set but have different properties. You’ll only ever use the Alastor sword though. For one it’s the only one that has a Devil Trigger and given half the moves you unlock require Devil Trigger that’s not something you want to do without.

Even the final sword, Sparda, lacks a Devil Trigger. It’s stronger in terms of raw power and has better range, but Devil Trigger has much more beneficial properties like healing. So there’s no reason to use it over Alastor. And the first Sword you get at the beginning has nothing going for it. Once you get Alastor, you will never use it again. It’s not that balanced.

Thankfully your guns fair a bit better. You have your standard handguns, a shot gun, and a grenade launcher. I mostly stuck with the handguns, but there’s nothing wrong with the other two. They have their strengths and weaknesses. I should mention there is another gun, but I missed it during my playthrough and don’t know what it’s like. My bad.

So, you have different options for combat. Not a whole lot, but you are allowed some room to get a little creative. But it isn’t just the small move set and weapon selection that stifles player expression, most of that comes from the difficulty.

I had heard that Devil May Cry was a hard game, but after playing it I don’t think I 100% agree with it. Not that the game isn’t challenging, because it certainly is, but I think most of the complaints about the difficulty came more from the fact that this was a new gameplay style that most players weren’t used to yet.

It isn’t because the game is super hard because most of it isn’t. The difficulty comes more from figuring out the best approach to combat. It’s that classic style of difficulty where there’s one best way to win and most of the challenge is figuring out what that approach is.

Take the first boss against the big lava scorpion. This guy kicked my ass the first time I fought him, but once I started spamming the stinger move over and over with Devil Trigger, I whooped in in under a minute.

In fact, once I learned to use Devil Trigger as much as possible I never had much of an issue getting through the game. I’m the kind of guy that will save his super forms for certain situations, but Devil May Cry is the kind of game that wants you to use it as much as possible.

Meter builds up quickly so there’s no real benefit to saving it anyway. And with half the move set being locked behind transforming, not using it just means your intentionally neutering yourself. It’s why there’s no reason to use the other swords other than Alastor. You need Devil Trigger.

That isn’t to say Devil Trigger was always an automatic win button. There were certain enemies that required a specific method to defeat them. One such enemy required me to shoot it enough times with my guns to expose its weak point to deal damage. Which I didn’t know until after I died to it a few times.

This is really what stifles the player expression, because a lot of the enemies have a certain strategy needed to beat them. And with the much more limited move set, the game isn’t open enough to let you make absurd wacky combos. Maybe on the most basic of enemies, but not for anything else.

The problem with the difficulty isn’t that it’s hard, it’s the difficulty design itself. In fact, most of the challenge in Devil May Cry comes more from the games clunky design not the enemies. Hell, the biggest enemy you’ll deal with is the camera.

I have said before that I prefer fixed camera angles for action games. I would much rather not have to deal with it and focus on the enemies. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and Devil May Cry isn’t exactly what I would call the right way.

There are a lot of awkward camera angles. You can tell a lot of them were from when the game was a survival horror title. Apparently Kamiya wanted the camera to be more dynamic. It’s one of the reasons the game uses full 3D levels rather than the pre rendered backgrounds used in Resident Evil at the time.

To be fair, he did succeed at that. The camera isn’t static and will follow you in certain areas. In fact, the game got praise back in the day because of this camera system. But time has not been kind to it. It still switches camera angles a lot and in some of the bigger areas it gets obnoxious. And because the game doesn’t use tank controls it can be easy to lose control of where you’re going.

I’m glad the game doesn’t use tank controls, but there’s a reason why Resident Evil used them. It just works better with this kind of shifting camera system. They had a good idea for the camera, but you can tell they were still trying to figure out how to properly implement it.

Combine that with the cramped level design and you have a game that’s harder than it should be. It’s especially bad during the Nightmare boss fights. This guy was by far the most frustrating enemy in the game because the awkward camera makes it hard to see his weak point, or deal with his attacks.

Mind you, Nightmare was the only boss that gave me much trouble. Most of the others weren’t too difficult all things considered. Poor Nelo Angelo had it the worst since you could beat him by just hitting the attack button over and over again. For being the big rival character, he was honestly a bit of a pushover.

Granted I did have to use items for a few of these, but it wasn’t like I was starving for them. The game gives you just enough for you to get by without going so overboard that it trivialises everything. That’s not an easy balance to get so credit to them for getting it right.

I want to make it clear though that the bosses weren’t brain dead easy. Outside of Nelo Angelo I still had to learn to dodge their attacks and learn the best approach. Even Nelo Angelo had attacks you needed to dodge; he just didn’t use them often enough to be a big threat.

So, the actual enemies aren’t that much of a hassle. It’s really the awkward camera and level design that will screw you over more times than not. If you can get over some of the clunkier and dated elements of the design, Devil May Cry can still be a fun time.

Its combat might be limited, but it is still enjoyable, and you can still do some cool manoeuvres. Launching an enemy into the air and blasting them with your guns to keep them airborne will never not be cool. And while the game can be challenging, it isn’t overly frustrating. Health drops are frequent, and while Yellow Orbs, essentially the lives of the game, are rare, missions are short enough that replaying them from the beginning isn’t too big a setback. it’s not too unforgiving.

There is a skill curve, but it isn’t as steep as I was led to believe. You will need to learn to vary up your attacks, you can’t just spam the same thing to win. Unless your fighting Nelo Angelo.

But because of the more limited move set it isn’t too difficult to learn everything, and there are some attacks that are overpowered enough to help get you by without making the game a cake walk. Again, Air Raid and Stinger are your best friends in this.

It’s not a difficult skill curve to learn. Meaning even casual fans should be able to pick it up and have a good time. The combat is simple enough to learn but there is just enough depth and complexity to prevent things from becoming too shallow.

That said I do wish the enemy variety was better. There are a lot of repeated enemies throughout the game. Even a lot of late game enemies are just slightly altered reskins. They don’t mix and match either, you’ll always fight one type of enemy which makes encounters even more repetitive.

And this game loves repeating bosses. I’m pretty sure you fight every boss at least 2-3 times throughout the game with little to no variation between them. It’s not great, especially since the bosses weren’t that good to begin with.

You also need to keep opening the menu to switch between weapons which interrupts the flow of combat. But this was a standard design for this stuff back then. That’s one of the core issues I have with critiquing Devil May Cry. It’s clunky as hell and a lot of it feels dated compared to later entries, but it was also the first game of its type.

It's not like the developers had a firm grasp on the genre, they were in the middle of creating it. It would be a few more years before they figured everything out. Stuff like the limited move set, camera system and even stuff I haven’t covered like the poor platforming, the aiming system not always working when there are too many things going at once or the horrendous underwater sections owe more to its age than poor design choices.

So, the question I have to ask myself is, is Devil May Cry still worth playing today despite how clunky and dated it all is? And my answer to that is, not really.

It isn’t awful and I certainly had my fun, but with how newer character action games have improved and refined the formula, going back to the first Devil May Cry feels borderline archaic. It’s not like there’s much story and lore to go through. There really is no reason to go back to it when later games were so much more refined.

That said I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my time with it and it was a breezy playthrough. It only took me about 7 hours to beat so it wasn’t a huge time sink, and there is some replay value with end game secret missions and trying to improve your rank.

So it isn’t a bad jumping on point, but I have a feeling you’d be better off starting with one of the later games first. I liked Devil May Cry. I liked it way more than I thought I would, but I can’t fully recommend it either.

If you absolutely must play it, get the HD collection, because at least then you get Devil May Cry 2 and 3 as well. As a standalone release though, you can skip this one. You really aren’t missing much if you do.

Next time, we’re looking at Devil May Cry 2. The follow up that very nearly killed the series. Oh boy, this is going to get rough.