Devil May Cry a Casual Retrospective Part DMC

Reboots are riskier than you might think. With the current obsession with rebooting everything that even remotely had a fan base that can be hard to believe, but it’s true. Reboots are a risk.

They’re a risk because they bank on attracting a new audience that might have never been interested in it to begin with. It’s a risk because if you change too much you can wind up getting backlash from the original fan base but change too little and it has no reason to exist.

And they’re a risk because you’re inherently relying on nostalgia for the original to drum up interest in the remake. Which may not exist depending on how soon a reboot happens, or at all given how fickle nostalgia can be.

There are examples of successful reboots. TMNT, Transformers and My Little Pony come to mind in that regard. And yes, there is a recurring theme with those examples. Because reboots work best when it comes to properties pertaining to children. Since there’s always going to be a new generation of kids to target.

But for every successful reboot, there’s at least 5 failed one. It’s rare outside of children’s media to see a reboot that’s good enough to stand alongside the original. Either due to it simply being released at the wrong time, being outright bad, or just being a bad idea from the start.

In some cases, a reboot can fail before release. Some end up being this perfect storm of bad PR that tanks its prospects right out of the gate.

Which brings me to DMC: Devil May Cry. The ill-fated reboot of Devil May Cry from 2013 that left everyone baffled and confused and confusingly baffled. Why did Capcom even do a reboot of Devil May Cry anyway?

Well, it largely came from two things. The first was the sales of Devil May Cry 4. While that game had done well, selling about 3 million copies by the end of its launch year. Which was the highest the series had seen, but also below what Capcom was hoping for.

After all, that game was meant to bring in a bunch of new players to the franchise and it only did slightly better than Devil May Cry 3, with that selling 2.3 million copies. And considering that, unlike 3, it was released on multiple platforms, it’s not hard to see why 3 million was seen as a disappointment.

The other reason was because of Capcom’s push to cater more to the west. I mentioned this briefly in my Castlevania Lords of Shadow review but the 2010’s was a period where a lot of Japanese studios were trying to attract a larger western audience. A move done in response to the booming western gaming market at the time, as well as the shrinking Japanese one.

Capcom were one of the first companies to recognise this and push to make their games more appealing to a western audience. It should be noted that many Capcom fans consider this the dark age of the company. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how badly this went down.

But we can talk about the particulars of this another day. Trust me, there is a lot to discuss about Capcom’s failed western push and the consequences it had for the company. Consequences they’re still recovering from. But for now, let’s just stick to how this affected Devil May Cry.

Since Capcom were all in on this new westward course, it was decided to have a western studio develop the game. Said studio wound up being Ninja Theory, who are known these days for the Hellblade series, but were known back then for Heavenly Sword and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

One thing you need to know about Ninja Theory is that they’re not a very gameplay focused developer. Their games have a larger focus on narrative and visual design than combat systems. So they’re hiring to work on Devil May Cry, a series that was renowned for its complex and intricate combat system, didn’t sit well with a lot of the fans.

Capcom also wanted this reboot to be a lot darker and serious than the previous games. Again, this was due to them trying to appeal to the west. Since in Capcom's eyes all we filthy round eyes wanted were hardcore, grungy, edgelord shit. Something which I’m sure had nothing to do with God of War 3 outselling their most recent Devil May Cry entry.

Point is, Capcom wanted to take Devil May Cry in a different direction to get that sweet Gaijin money, and Ninja Theory were more than willing to oblige. The hope was that this would be the game that finally pushed Devil May Cry over and make it the blockbuster Capcom wanted. And then the teaser trailer dropped.

I remember when this trailer came out. I wasn’t a fan at the time so I wasn’t paying much attention to the series, but I sure paid attention to this. I had never seen such an overwhelmingly negative reaction to a trailer up to that point. People didn’t just dislike it, they fucking hated it.

They hated the look, they hated the tone, but they especially hated the depiction of Dante. They thought he looked too skinny and emo, far from the carefree fun-loving badass fans loved. Everything about this trailer just seemed to rub people the wrong way.

And some of things that came out of the behind the scenes didn’t help matters either. The games lead director said in interviews that he didn’t think Dante was cool, and there was a leaked slide from a private presentation where they equated Dante to a gay cowboy. All of which only furthered people’s anger and apathy for the title.

Looking back, it is funny how the reaction to DMC mirrors similar reactions we have today. Trailer gets released, people react negatively, discourse becomes toxic, developers speak out against it which only makes it worse, media jumps in to get some cheap clicks which only fans the flames. I guarantee if outrage culture had been more prevalent back then, this game would be the poster boy of it.

The publicity behind DMC was a disaster, and there have been numerous YouTube videos going over the whole thing in more detail than I ever could. But the point is that all the bad publicity ended up killing the game before it came out. Despite Ninja Theory making some changes to try to appease the fans in the final release, it was too little too late. People had already written the game off by then.

Strangely enough though, critically it did really well. Despite everything around the game being a trash fire, the actual game itself wound up being liked by most who played. Some didn’t due to not being fans of the overall direction it went in, but its reception was far more positive than you would think.

Although it was considered weaker than the previous entries, aside from 2 anyway. Some of the design decisions didn’t sit well with players, so Ninja Theory released an updated version in 2015 called DMC: Definitive Edition that sought to bring it more in line with the classics.

That version is widely considered to be the best and is also the one I’ll be looking at today. So, let’s take a look at DMC and see what went wrong, and what the reboot actually got right.

And I’m actually going to start with the presentation first. A lot of the acrimony the game got initially came from the visual presentation. Rather than lean into the gothic horror overtones the original games did, DMC instead opts for a darker, grungier, urban aesthetic. Sort of like what Devil May Cry 2 did, which is already a terrible sign.

This decision does make a bit more sense in context. DMC was, as we’ve been over, an attempt to appeal to western audiences, and this kind of art direction was the style at the time. This was the era where Call of Duty and Gears of War were all the rage.

Different games and genres I know, but those were what western gamers were playing and what Japanese developers thought we wanted. You saw this a lot back then with Japanese published, western developed games. I noticed it particularly in Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2, which did a similar thing to DMC by moving the series into a modern cityscape.

And much like that game, I can’t say I’m a fan of the game’s aesthetic choices here. On a technical level everything is fine, there’s a nice amount of detail to everything, the animations are well done, there’s nothing badly done in that respect.

But artistically everything is just too drab and grungy for my taste. It suffers a lot of the same problems most games had in the seventh generation of consoles, there’s too much brown and grey. Seriously why did that generation hate colour so much?

It just isn’t very pleasant to look at and a lot of the levels just end up blending together visually. Some levels do stand out with some even being very visually striking, but the more subdued colour palette and lack of environmental variety makes most levels forgettable from a visual perspective.

The enemy design suffers the most from this. The enemies in the previous games looked cool, they all looked like demons from an occult manuscript with a dash of anime thrown in. They were awesome looking.

But here they just look like generic, stock monster designs you’d see in a dozen other action games at the time. Honestly, they look like cheap knockoffs from Bayonetta than Devil May Cry.

It’s also missing a lot of the atmosphere that made the previous games so appealing. Instead of the strong gothic horror overtones, we get something that I can only describe as Hot Topic punk rock. You know the kind of shit all the posers are into.

Because that’s what this is. It’s just trying to follow a lot of the trends of the day without adding anything unique of its own. If you ever wanted a perfect encapsulation of how games looked in the 2010’s, this is the game you point to.

I just don’t like how the game looks and sound wise it doesn’t fare much better. It goes for a death metal style soundtrack, which fits the game fine, but none of the music stands out in any way. The battle tracks just don’t have the same kick they had in the previous games, and the rest of the music is the most ambient background noise I’ve ever heard.

The voice acting is well done at least. None of the previous actors return, but the new cast does a generally decent job with what they’re given. It’s a just a shame what they’re given isn’t very good.

Which leads us into the game’s story. Now this is the one area that Ninja Theory should thrive. After all their games are noted for their strong narratives and writing, they even had Alex Garland, who was responsible for writing 28 Days Later, on their writing staff at the time.

So it’s kind of a shame that the story here is the weakest part of the game. Granted that is nothing new for this series. I’ve said before that you don’t play Devil May Cry for the plot since the previous games didn't have much of one. It wasn’t a major focus.

But for DMC, it is a major focus. There’s a much greater emphasis put on the narrative here, with far more cutscenes and world building than the previous games. Which makes it worse that the story ends up falling flat.

The basic plot follows Dante as he gets roped in to a rebel organisation called The Order, which is just the most generic name you could come up with for a secret organisation. The Order is run by this games version of Vergil who seeks to reveal the demonic presence in society.

The demons, in this version, are hidden in a parallel dimension called Limbo and are secretly manipulating people with subliminal messaging to keep them compliant. With their leader, Mundus from the first Devil May Cry, trying to conquer the world through debt and rampant consumerism.

Think They Live but with demons instead of aliens, and about ten times less subtle. This is the biggest problem with DMC’s story, it tackles a lot of its themes with all the subtlety of a freight truck.

I know Devil May Cry isn’t known for its subtlety. I mean just watch any cutscene for Devil May Cry 3, it’s about as bombastic and over the top as they get. So, complaining about DMC not being subtle is like complaining the sky is blue.

Here’s the thing though, those older Devil May Cry games weren’t trying to say something. They were just dumb flashy fun and didn’t try to be anything more. DMC isn’t trying to just be dumb fun. It’s trying to make a point.

I’ve said this in the past but when you try to have any kind of message in a narrative you need to exercise subtlety. Otherwise the audience is going to reject the message even if they agree with it because people don’t like being preached too.

The fact that the message in DMC is so basic doesn’t help matters either. I compared this to They Live earlier, and much like that DMC wants to be a critique on consumerism. But They Live worked because its critique was focused on the Regan era economic policies of the 80’s.

DMC doesn’t work because its critique is too broad, trying to tackle everything from junk food manufacturing, plastic surgery, and conservative news outlets. It’s firing in too many different directions and doesn’t hit any targets as a result.

It also doesn’t work for how derivative it is. I already made the They Live comparison but that isn’t all it reminded me of. There’s a section very early on where Dante infiltrates a soft drink company to take out its supply. It turns out the soft drink is actually vomit from a slug like succubus that is addictive as all hell for anyone who drinks it.

If this sounds familiar, congratulations, you are a Futurama fan and have awesome taste. No really, this entire plot point is stolen almost wholesale from an episode of Futurama. Except Futurama handled it way better.

It’s hard to take the message seriously because you’re constantly reminding me of other things that did the subject better. Well, that and the fact that the satire is so cartoonish and played out.

There’s a news station in this that is such a blatant jab at Fox News you could have called the anchor Bucker Marlstone and it would be more subtle. It doesn’t even say anything about them other than they’re liars and hypocrites. No shit Sherlock, they’re journalists it’s what they do.

This is why the game tackling a bunch of different subjects ends up being a detriment. Because it doesn’t have a core focus for its satire, it can’t say anything profound. Red Letter Media had more to say on the topic on consumerism and the behaviour it creates in this 5 second clip than this 10-hour video game.

The social commentary just doesn’t work. It’s too on the nose and all over the place to be effective. I’ve seen worse in this regard; I’ve seen the new Black Mirror seasons so I know how bad it can be. At the end of the day, it’s just a lame attempt at commentary that doesn’t say anything new.

But here’s the thing, disregarding the commentary, the basic story isn’t that bad. At its core it’s a story of a troubled teenager who doesn’t care about anything due to the world kicking him down constantly, finding something to fight for and believe in again.

It’s a good foundation for a story. But a good foundation doesn’t mean much if you don’t build on top of it, which DMC does do to a certain extent. Dante’s arc is a good one and it’s developed well over the course of the game. The problem is Dante himself.

This version of Dante has a nickname among Devil May Cry fans, a few actually but they all mean the same thing. The most common is Don’te, but another I’ve hear is DINO or Dante In Name Only. The latter of which is the most telling of the characters reception in the fan base.

This version of Dante doesn’t feel like Dante. While classic Dante is a fun-loving goofball who handled any situation with a confident smile, this Dante is an angsty teenager who handles everything in a super serious way to show how edgy and cool he is. He feels more like Nero than he does Dante.

And remember what I said about Nero? About how that kind of rebellious teenage archetype can too easily become obnoxious and irritating. Well folks, Don’te here is what happens when you do exactly that.

This Dante is the dictionary definition of an edgelord. Nero worked because there was a campiness to what he did. He was a bit obnoxious at times, but you got the feeling he wasn’t taking things that serious unless he absolutely needed to.

Don’te takes everything seriously. Everything he does has to be in your face and super badass and kewl. He’s the kind of guy that is desperately trying to look cool but only ends up looking like a massive tool.

Old Dante was cool because he wasn’t trying to be cool. He was just being silly with confidence and swagger. He didn’t care if you thought he was cool, he was just having fun, and that’s what made him cool.

This Dante is the opposite of that. It’s no wonder fans didn’t gravitate to him because he’s the antithesis to everything they loved about the original series, and his angsty nature doesn’t mike him endearing or likable. But that might be the point.

Dante’s entire arc in this game is going from an angsty teenager who only fights for himself, to a genuine hero. The whole idea is that he starts as an unlikable prick but then gets better as the game progresses. Which he does, he is a much more likable character by the end of the game.

But that edginess never really goes away, and a lot of that is because of the dialogue. This is one of those scripts that drops a ton of f-bombs and sexual innuendos to look more mature but just ends up looking more childish. And I’m not lacking in self-awareness. I swear all the time, I’ve swore a few times in this review as a matter a fact.

But I don’t try to do it all the time. I always try to use it to show how angry something made me or how messed up something is. If I did it all the time it would just read as base and vulgar. In short, if you’re going to swear you need to make sure it’s effective.

DMC doesn’t understand this. It swears so often it loses all impact. And it isn’t just Dante who does it. This game has a similar problem to Netflix’s Castlevania series where everyone speaks in the same manner to the point where every character feels the same. No one has a unique voice which makes every exchange boring to watch.

Which is a shame because I actually like a lot of the side characters. The villains not so much. Mundus does have more presence than in Devil May Cry 1 but he’s still a pretty bland antagonist. They try to play him off as more of a corrupt businessman but it’s not that interesting a take on it. Lex Luthor he most certainly is not.

The other villains are also not that memorable. The news anchor could have been decent as an ongoing presence talking shit about you through the game, but they kill him off too early for that to happen. And the rest are just there. Merely an enemy for you to take down and nothing more.

The other characters are done better though. Trish and Lady aren’t here, but we have a new female character in Kat. A psychic witch who helps Dante and Vergil on their missions, albeit in more of a support role than in active combat.

I like Kat. She had a good backstory and acts as a good moral compass for Dante. She may not be as strong as other Devil May Cry ladies, but she does have her moments where she shows how capable she can be.

And then there’s Vergil. Like with Dante, this is a very different take on the character. He still has a cool demeanour, but he’s portrayed as more of a cunning strategist and leader than the calm collected sword fighting badass he was in the other games.

I don’t hate this take. He starts out as a friendly side character too rather than a rival, and as the game progresses you see more of his extreme views that wind up tearing the two brothers apart.

Yeah spoilers, Vergil turns evil, although I think everyone was expecting that. Vergil is one of the big gaming rival characters, it would be stupid for him not to be that here. I don’t think his fall was handled the best, his full heel turn happens a bit too quickly at the end, but you can at least see why he did it and why Dante would go against him.

And at the risk of angering the wider Devil May Cry fanbase, I actually like Dante and Vergil’s relationship in this more than I did in the classic games. Before you kill me, just hear me out.

While I saw Dante and Vergil as rivals, I never got them as brothers. Part of that was because we only ever saw them after they had already drifted apart and become enemies and nothing from when they were growing up.

But here we do see glimpses of that, and a good chunk of the story shows the two of them try to reconnect. Which makes it more tragic seeing them torn apart by different ideals. It’s a more interesting dynamic that could have been expanded on more if this reboot had been allowed to continue.

Which is the saddest thing about DMC’s story. There is a lot of good foundational work here they could have done more with in subsequent sequels. For example, Dante and Vergil aren’t part human in this. They’re Nephilim which could have introduced a conflict with angels in future games.

Granted that’s more of a Bayonetta thing, but it could have worked, and it’s not like it doesn’t borrow from Bayonetta anyway. The whole Limbo dimension here is basically just Purgatorio from Bayonetta, yet another thing borrowed from something else. Though I do find it funny that a Devil May Cry game borrows from Bayonetta considering that game was created by the guy who created Devil May Cry.

But sadly, it never continued. The reboot ended after this game and Capcom went back to the original series, leaving DMC as a standalone story. And as a standalone story it’s not great. I appreciate the attempt at making a richer narrative, but the obnoxious main character and blunt social commentary left a sour taste in my mouth.

What didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth was the gameplay. This is where DMC really shines. While I’ve been hard on the game so far, the actual gameplay manages to pick up the slack.

A lot of that is because it doesn’t break what wasn’t broken. At its core it’s the same deep, fast, skill based engaging combat you’re used to with this series. It isn’t 100% the same, there are some differences I’ll get to shortly, but it has all the things that made the combat in previous games so compelling.

You still have a wide variety of combo moves done with mostly the same inputs, you still have a variety of weapons both with guns and melee, and you still have a style meter that rewards you for killing enemies as stylistically as possible.

This is Devil May Cry gameplay in all its glory, but as I said there are some differences. The biggest one being the camera. DMC ditches the fixed camera angles of the older games in favour of a manually controlled camera.

Devil May Cry 4 had this in certain sections, but DMC has gone all in on it. Making it the first game in the series that doesn’t use fixed camera angles.

I’m mixed on this. I’ve said in the past that I prefer fixed camera angles for action games since the one thing I don’t want when dealing with a group of enemies is struggling to see the bastards.

DMC does run into this issue. There were times when I got struck by an enemy that I couldn’t see which screwed up my combo. It was quite frustrating, but it wasn’t so frequent that it ruined the combat.

And to be honest, it’s not like Devil May Cry has never had this issue. A lot of the camera angles in the previous game weren’t exactly conductive to the fast-paced action. Often resulting in a cramped view that led to you taking a hit from an off-screen enemy.

What I’m trying to say is that the series has always had trouble with the camera. It’s just something you have to get used to when you play through them. And like in previous games, there are workarounds to help you avoid cheap hits in DMC.

Being in the air can help avoid most enemies. So, using air combos is a good way to avoid getting cheap shot, or you could simply jump out of the way to give yourself some space and get your bearings straight. You even have extra mobility options to help with that like an air dash.

The game’s lock on is also much more valuable in getting your eyes on targets, and there’s even an option to have it as a toggle rather than having to hold it down to make it a little easier to do.

I kept it as it was though and didn’t have much issue with it. Honestly, I didn’t need the lock-on unless I was facing larger enemies or boss fights. I didn’t have too much of an issue adjusting the camera when I needed to.

I’d say the gameplay is adjusted to the new camera system rather well. While there are some issues here and there, it’s nothing that you can’t get used to. But this new system means that some changes have been made to accommodate it.

Certain moves that required locking on to an opponent and holding a direction have been given new inputs. While moves like the Stinger can be done the traditional way of locking on to an enemy and pressing forward and attack, they introduce a new method of tapping a direction twice and pressing attack that works just as well.

Launchers have also been given their own dedicated button. Making it a bit easier to get air combo’s going. Not that they were hard to do before, just that DMC simplifies the process.

But the biggest change is in the level design. Since the camera offers a lot more freedom in what they can show, the levels have been made bigger with a larger emphasis on platforming challenges.

In theory this should be a disaster since the platforming in the previous games was awful. But, thankfully, the platforming in DMC is pretty good. The jumping is much smoother, Dante’s air dash allows for better mobility, and they even give him two kinds of grappling hooks which are used far more frequently than Devil May Cry 4’s. And grappling hooks are always fun to play around with.

It’s good platforming. It isn’t too big a focus, the majority of the game is spent on combat, but there are a handful of platforming sections peppered between fights that add some nice variety to the game.

The larger levels also means there is a bigger emphasis on secrets and collectibles. Outside of finding Red Orb stashes, you can find Lost Souls which give you more Red Orbs, and Secret Missions which now not only require you to find the mission location, but also a key to unlock it since they’re now behind big golden doors that are far easier to spot.

The level design here is much better than last time. It isn’t nearly as repetitive, and the levels never felt as drawn out or as slow as before, mostly. There were certain sections that amounted to little more than walking forward while plot happens, and the pacing can be a bit all over the place.

Some levels are really long while others are so short they feel like they should have been set-pieces in other levels. The bosses for example are all in their own levels, rather than be at the end of other levels like they were in previous games.

Overall though I’d say the pacing is a lot better than last time. The slower story centric moments are few and far between anyway. In fact, there’s only one that I can think of, and it was the entry to the drink factory. So yeah, the game doesn’t have many moments where it wastes your time.

Plus, the added emphasis on platforming means, even in the slower moments without the combat, you’re still doing something interesting. I’m glad the game ditches the majority of the puzzle elements because they always felt undercooked and out of place.

But let’s get back to the combat since there’s more changes to discuss. The biggest change would be the removal of style switching. You only have the one fighting style throughout the game. While this might seem more limiting a lot of the utility that the different styles offered have been implemented into Dante’s base move set.

The dash you got from Trickster that better let you avoid damage is here, but is reworked as a dodge roll done vis the left bumper. You also have the air combo’s and gun tricks you got with Sword Master and Gunslinger. Not every move was added, but the more important ones were.

The only style that didn’t get anything was Royalguard. The block you got from it isn’t implemented at all, but honestly it isn’t missed considering the dodge is more than enough. Shame it isn’t here but no huge loss.

Even without the style switching you still have a decently robust move-set. But what we’ve discussed so far only covers Dante’s base move-set. DMC’s biggest addition to the formula is the ability to swap between Dante’s regular form and his Angel and Demon forms. Since, being a Nephilim he has access to both power sets.

Although you don’t actually turn into an angel or demon. Instead, you gain access to different weapons depending on the form. It’s similar to how the light and dark magic system from the Lords of Shadow games worked only a little more complex.

Both forms have 2 weapons each. They all have their unique traits, but the forms do have some commonality between the weapons. The Angel Form weapons tend to be faster and more useful for crowd control, while Demon weapons are slower but pack a serious punch.

You can swap between either form by holding down one of the trigger buttons, and you can swap between them whenever you want, even in the middle of a combo. This gives you a ton of freedom when it comes to crafting combos. For example, if you start a combo then delay slightly and switch forms, you’ll use the delayed attack for that forms weapon.

It can be a little tricky to get used to, especially when they introduce enemies that can only be stunned by certain forms. Speaking of, I should mention that one of the major changes the Definitive Edition made was being able to actually damage these enemies with any weapon.

In the original you had to use the right weapon otherwise you couldn’t do shit. I didn’t play the original release so I can’t comment on how that was but just from the sounds of it, it does not sound fun. I’m glad they made this change.

The Angel and Demon forms are also how you can access to the grappling hook. It replaces the guns whenever you’re in them, with the Angel form pulling you towards enemies and the Demon one pulling them towards you.

I will admit this did throw me off at times. There were moments where I wanted to fire my guns but forgot to switch to normal and wound up grappling the enemy instead. Suffice to say the switching has a learning curve to get the most out of it.

But when you combine the different forms, weapons, and movement options you have a complex combat system that’s easy to pick up and play but has plenty of depth to master. I will say though that it does feel different.

It’s hard to describe, but going from Devil May Cry 4 to this made the game feel off. The way the combat and control felt different than what I was used to. At first I didn’t really like it, but once I got used to it and the combat opened up more I started having fun.

It’s not like it controls or feels bad to play. Not at all, it’s just different. You can tell this was made by a different team because while a lot of the pieces are the same, but they don’t come together the same way.

Just look at the form switching. It’s similar to the style switching, but instead of having different fighting styles, it’s predominantly used to swap between your weapons. So it’s something familiar, but different at the same time.

The different weapons add decent variety to the combat. Even though the different forms do have similar properties between their weapons, the weapons are different enough to warrant experimenting with them.

For the guns you get the standard pistols and shotgun which work exactly as they did before, though strangely you get the shotgun super late in the game. It’s one of the first things you get usually, but here you don’t have it until the third act. That feels wrong to me.

You also have a third gun called, and I swear this is its real name, the Kablooey. That’s not a weapon name, that’s a 1960’s Batman sound effect. Its function is as weird as its name. It fires exploding shots that stick into enemies and can be detonated manually. I didn’t get much use out of this but it’s very effective against heavy enemies.

For melee weapons, your default weapon is always the Rebellion. You always have access to this when not in Angel or Demon mode and it’s just an effective weapon as always. Good range, good damage, access to Stinger, just a great neutral weapon for any situation.

For angel weapons you have the Osiris scythe and the Aquilla shuriken. Osiris is good for getting fast hits in and its launcher acts like a buzz saw that can shred enemies up. The Aquilla has a longer reach and is great for crowd control, especially if you combine its ability to pull enemies in and its charge move where you spin around like a cyclone. That combo decimates groups of weaker enemies, it’s awesome.

For the demon weapons you have the Arbiter axe, which is slow but has decent range, can break enemy guards and has a decent projectile attack, and the Eryx gauntlets. Yeah, they brought the gauntlets back again and they work exactly as you expect. They have short range, but good damage and you can charge them up. Not as flashy as other gauntlets but still a good weapon that gives solid results.

It’s a decent selection of weapons. I will say though that the Osiris and Arbiter are kind of outclassed by the others. Osiris not so much since it is a great fast weapon for bosses, while Aquilla is better for basic enemies.

Arbiter has it much worse. Once I got Eryx, I never needed to use Arbiter again unless I needed to break certain doors. Despite Arbiter having a good projectile, anything I needed it for Eryx did far better.

So overall it’s a great combat system. It’s similar enough to what came before it but adds its own things to help make it unique. Is it as good as before? I’m going to say no, but only slightly. I think the previous games had a better camera system and a more interesting set of weapons, but what’s here is still very good.

There are, however, some aspects of the combat I’m not a big fan of. One of which being that I wish was there was an option to have swapping between forms be a toggle.

Both the lock-on and the dodge roll are mapped to the bumpers so if I want to use the Angel Form and the dodge roll, I need to press the left trigger and bumper simultaneously and I don’t find that comfortable at all.

Admittedly this could just be a me problem.  You might find it easier than I did, but even if you struggle with it like I did there are some workarounds. I already mentioned that you can switch the lock-on to be a toggle which is one way to help, but you can also just edit the control scheme.

Yeah, you can finally edit the controls to your liking which is a great accessibility feature. So, if you struggle with the default controls, just change them to something more comfortable.

I do still wish there was a toggle option for form switching though. Having them be on the triggers was comfortable for me, and the rest of the controls are how I’m used to playing these games. I was fine with the rest of the controls, except the shoulder buttons, so I didn’t want to change too much. It’s funny that they gave you a toggle for the lock-on but not that.

The Devil Trigger sucks in this game. For one thing you don’t even turn into a devil, so the name is an outright lie. Second you don’t get to use it that often. Unless you use Hardcore mode where it’s adjusted to be more in line with the classic games, but that’s more for, well hardcore fans. Not a filthy casual like me.

It’s also not particularly fun to use. Previous Devil Triggers let you fly around and shoot energy blasts while upping the power of your attacks. In DMC it creates an anti-gravity effect for enemies and just lets you wail on them. It’s an effective screen clearer, and it keeps the healing effect, which is nice, but I much prefer how this mechanic was handled before.

Another problem I have is with the ranking system. The style meter works as it did before, you build it up by doing different combo’s and varying up your attacks. That all works fine, but where they screwed the ranking system up is changing to a point system.

The Style Meter now acts as a multiplier, with your different attacks adding points to your score. You get ranked at the end of the level by the score, with your level time and the completion rate of collectables adding an extra multiplier to it.

Sounds simple, but it overcomplicates the ranking system. I would sometimes do levels while consistently getting combat ranks of A or higher, but my final score only got me a B or a C, and I have no clue why. Am I not using attacks that give me more points? What attacks are they? I can’t tell because the score numbers are so small and I’m too busy focused on the enemies.

Before this made sense. Get high rankings in fights, get high rankings at the end of the level. It was simple and easy to understand. But now there are other factors that aren’t fully conveyed to the player.

And the thing is, it isn’t worth going for the higher rankings. Like previous games in the series, getting a higher rank rewards you with more Orbs that go towards your upgrades. In this case it’s White Orbs that act as experience points. Get enough of them and you earn a skill point which can be used to purchase a new combat upgrade.

It’s similar to how 4 handled things, having a separate currency for items and upgrades, but here’s why DMC doesn’t work as well. The way 4 handled things was that every time you got an upgrade it increased the cost of everything else, and by the end upgrades got very expensive.

This incentivised you to get the higher rankings so you could get more Proud Souls to afford the upgrades in the late game. It required some grinding, but Devil May Cry has always had a strong emphasis on replaying levels, so it wasn’t a huge deal.

But in DMC the cost of these upgrades is always a single skill point, and the amount of White Orbs needed for a skill point doesn’t increase either. It makes it extremely easy to rack these things up. Especially since, unlike in 4, enemies drop White Orbs as well. You’ll get a lot of Skill Points simply by beaten levels without needing the higher rankings.

This isn’t bad from a casual perspective. It means you’ll be able to get most of the upgrades on a single playthrough, but it also removes a lot of the replay value the previous games had. Since you get all the Skill Points you need from normal play, there’s no reason to get good enough at the combat to get the higher rankings.

Because of this I didn’t really feel the need to go back to the older levels. Both because I didn’t feel the desire to get the higher rankings, but also because I didn’t feel the incentive to get the missing collectibles. I mean all they did was add to the ranking, give me Red Orbs I barely used, and in the case of the Secret Missions give me health and magic upgrades I didn’t really need after a while.

And the latter being because DMC isn’t that difficult. It has its challenging moments, but compared to previous games it isn’t anywhere near as difficult.

This is especially true for the bosses. Previous Devil Mar Cry’s had fantastic bosses that really tested your skills. Especially the ones in 3, those guys were brutal. But DMC’s bosses are very uninspired.

They have very simple patterns that don’t take much to learn, and a lot of them involve trying to open them up to do any kind of damage which just makes them feel longer than they should. They’re not badly designed, they’re just boring.

I should mention that I played the game on Devil Hunter, which is the equivalent to Normal difficulty, and that there are higher difficulties to try out, on top of the Hardcore Mode I mentioned earlier. So if you find the game too easy you can just play those.

On Devil Hunter though, even the trickier parts of the game I was able to get through after 1 or 2 tries. This does help make the game more accessible, but also less memorable. Say what you want about the difficulty in the previous games, but it made sure that when you were finished with a level you remembered it. For better or worse.

Which is a weird thing to think about. We often rage against the most difficult moments in games, but when looking back at them it’s those moments we remember the most. But DMC doesn’t really have those moments. There aren’t particularly challenging moments and because of that nothing is all that memorable. Aside from a few set-pieces there’s nothing in the game that really stands out.

So while I find the gameplay to be overall good, I don’t find myself wanting to replay it because there’s nothing here I want to go back to. Even with Devil May Cry 4 I still wanted to back to the levels to get the things I missed, until the repetitiveness and poor level design wore me down.

That being said, there is still plenty of content to sink your teeth into. The main game took me about 10 hours, and that was without me going for all the collectibles. There’s also the Bloody Palace which is still a great arcade style mode, and a short little DLC campaign where you play as Vergil which is available by default in the Special Edition.

Theres even some alternate skins, some of which are the classic Dante designs from 1 and 3, so if you don’t like the new Dante, you can at least make believe you’re playing the old one.

So there is still plenty here, though Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition did feel like it had more. Then again that was a more substantial update, and a lot of its content was re-used way too much, but it still had more.

Full disclosure, I didn’t try a lot of the alternate modes. I played through the campaign, and a little bit of Bloody Palace and that was about it. I had already had my fill at that point. Which might be another reason this reboot didn’t stick around, it doesn’t have the same staying power.

Devil May Cry 4 may have worn me down, but I still felt compelled to go back and complete Secret Missions and try out all the characters. Even if it was just for a little bit. But with DMC, I was done once the credits started rolling.

It’s not like I didn’t enjoy myself, I still think the gameplay is really good, but when the experience is so tied to the story, and I don’t find that engaging, I’m not going to back to it. Yes I can skip the cutscenes, but the story is intertwined with the games various set pieces.

It’s not something you can just ignore. And because I don’t find the story engaging it ends up dragging the game down with it. And when you add in the diminished replay value with the poorly implemented skill system and weak boss fights, DMC ends up being a one and done. You’ll play it once, have your fun, then probably never touch it again.

DMC: Devil May Cry is a weird game to discuss. It’s hard to talk about it without mentioning it’s tumultuous development history and poor initial impression from the fan base. It’s baked into the discourse surrounding the game and is largely responsible for the game failing the way it did.

Look, this whole reboot was a bad idea from the start. Devil May Cry didn’t need a reboot, it was doing perfectly fine for the kind of game it was. But Capcom wanted more and went about it in the worst way possible. They removed a lot of campiness people liked and replaced it with overly serious edginess because that was popular at the time.

It was never going to do what they wanted. It was too different for long-time fans, and it was too derivative and of the moment to stand out to new fans. It is the perfect example of how not to do a reboot.

And the truly sad thing is, the game isn’t even that bad. The story and presentation aren’t great, but the actual gameplay is pretty fun. It’s far from the best hack and slash I’ve played, but the combat is deep, the level design is decent, and it has plenty of content.

Honestly, if you were looking for something to get you into these kinds of action games, this isn’t a bad one to check out. But it’s lack of staying power makes this a game I can ony recommend if you find it on a sale. Which isn’t hard to find today.

So if you find it cheap I’d say go for it. Although I think Devil May Cry 4 is the better game if you want to jump into the series. Despite it’s flaws with the level design, it’s an overall more engaging experience with more staying power and replay value.

And because of how disconnected it is from the rest of the series, I wouldn’t blame you if you decide to skip this one. Though unlike 2 which you SHOULD skip because of how horrendous it is, this one is still worth playing even if it’s just for what a curiosity it is.

Ultimately, the reboot was a failure. It didn’t get the success Capcom wanted. It sold about 2.9 million units, which was just under what 4 wound up selling. It seams the new fans Capcom wanted didn’t show up.

Things only got worse when the Definitive Edition came out. That version barely sold over 1 million, and Capcom wound up releasing the Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition only 3 months later.

While Capcom insisted this was to show that both series would continue, I like to think this was a marketing test to see which series people really wanted. And the numbers showed them what that was, because Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition sold more than 2 million copies. Nearly double what DMC Definitive edition.

It was obvious where the money was, and it wasn’t in the reboot. Thus the entire reboot was scrapped, and Don’te and pals are now left as a forgotten relic of a time where Capcom were desperately trying to appeal to the west, and failing miserably at it.

Thankfully this story does have a happy ending. Ninja Theory would go back to the narratively focused games they were best at and found great success with Hellblade. Becoming a bit of an indie darling, albeit one owned by Microsoft. Do they even count as indie now? Whatever, they’re doing just fine, that’s the main thing.

Capcom meanwhile would eventually stop trying to appeal to the west and start making the great games they were known for. Resident Evil started being good again, Street Fighter eventually crawled out of the ditch, and Monster Hunter became a worldwide phenomenon after a decade of trying. And of course, they would make a proper fifth entry in the Devil May Cry series, going back to the world and characters fans knew and loved.

There’s one game left guys and it’s the one I’ve been looking forward to the most. Next time we’re looking at the fifth, and currently final entry of the series, Devil May Cry 5.