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Having just completed"DmC: Devil May Cry", I felt it would be best to review the DMC series. I understand this is technically the start of a new series, as opposed to a new installment of a previously existing one. However, it is the same franchise, and therefore a review would benefit from comparison to the previous, different entries rather than an entirely isolated review.
So let's get rockin'!
Game: Devil May Cry
System: Playstation 2
I actually put off playing the game that started pretty much an entire genre, simply because at the time I wasn't interested in survival horror style games, and everything I had seen and heard of this game (and it being Capcom) led me to believe it was going to be a great deal like Resident Evil. While I have become an avid RE fan over the years, by the time I finally decided to give DMC a try I was still under poor impressions of that genre, and only rented this as a desperate choice since there really wasn't anything that looked better which I hadn't played.
And I cannot believe what I was putting off for so long. But it was hard to believe, wasn't it? For anyone who played the original Devil May Cry when it was released, this game felt like it came from another dimension. No game I, or anyone I knew, had played to that point was anything like it. The action was intense, smooth, and extremely elaborate, not to mention fast paced. Enemies were everywhere in large, lush environments (namely a Gothic castle), there were items to collect, abilities to purchase, and new weapons to obtain. Previous games had given us many combinations of these traits, but nothing had combined it like this before, and nothing played anything like it.
Immediately, I was addicted. Devil May Cry was the end-all-be-all action game, and it would have been an absurd thought for anyone to even mention the idea of something equaling or topping it, but nobody else was thinking something that ridiculous at the time.
For its time, Devil May Cry was not only an incredibly innovative and revolutionary title, but it was immensely fun and maintained a very old-school level of challenge to it. Always mean, often unfair, but never unbeatable to those determined enough to keep going. With every struggle there was finally a massive pay-off, and you were that much closer to getting the next awesome weapon that would give you an entire new set of abilities... and a new transformation. As if the game hadn't done enough to impress us, DMC gave us Devil Trigger. The game had already done so much with the melee combat to prove that unlimited ammunition for guns was not only not overpowered, but still left them pretty weak... and now you could unleash your inner demon and rip enemies apart with all new powers... but the enemies just kept coming, getting bigger, stronger, and growing in numbers.
This game kept many gamers absolutely hooked from beginning to end, and proved that you don't need a good, or even coherent story in a PS2 title to be absolutely outstanding... Sadly, that didn't last.
I may be in the minority on this, but I feel Devil May Cry has aged horrendously. The game is amazing for its time, yet every few minutes reveals a new bug, or an incredibly dated moment that will end up frustrating you far quicker than addicting you. What once was so easy to overlook due to the game being so new and original... now feels like a primitive chore that can't even entertain you long enough to make it through the incredibly short length of the adventure. It doesn't help that the game has very little to offer in replay value outside of higher difficulties.
Even so, this isn't me saying the game is terrible. The game is incredible for its time, and started an incredible trend. The problem is... the trend caught on so well that it evolved almost overnight, and left this father of the genre feeling a lot more like a grand-father.
Still, the game kept me incredibly entertained. So when I heard there was going to be a Devil May Cry 2... to say I was excited would be a gross understatement.
Game: Devil May Cry 2
System: Playstation 2
I had adored DMC1 immensely. It was a short game, but it left a massive and everlasting impact on me. So hearing about a sequel had me incredibly excited, and it's no surprise I grabbed this one as soon as I could. I wasn't going to let myself miss out for as long as I had passed up on the original. So what did I find when I finally sat down with my long awaited sequel to what had easily become the greatest thing the action genre ever offered for me?
A very similar outcome to the Star Wars prequels. Something incredibly massive was released that captured countless fans by surprise and adopted a cult following, only to build up an immensely hyped up follow up... and when it finally came out, absolutely everybody hated it.
...Except me. Much like the Star Wars prequels, I seem to be the only person who liked DMC2. And I didn't just like it... I absolutely loved every single second of it, and almost immediately considered it superior to the original in every single way. It offered every bit of the same intense action of the original, an extremely elaborate combat system with continually learned new abilities, and a plethora of new weaponry. That's just what it repeated. But one thing I felt DMC2 did far better than the original were the controls. The original's one big flaw, even for its time, was the control scheme. I didn't mind so much because it was such a new style I figured it was necessary, but DMC2 proved otherwise. The sequel took the same combat and just tweaked the controls. No longer did it feel sloppy and awkward. It felt tight and responsive, everything felt natural.
And the combat itself? Far more satisfying. Enemies felt like they put up more of a resistance, and while the original game felt like you were a buzzsaw ripping through hordes of enemies, DMC2 felt like a classic hack n' slash. Enemies took effort to kill, they had their own life bars, and you constantly had to stay vigilant of your surroundings. Any given strategy would work on any group of enemies in the original, outside of bosses and elite-class foes. But this... even the earliest, lowliest skeletons offered a variety in their styles and made you examine them and plan a strategy for how to fight. Running in head-long would only serve to get you a bladed disc in the back from a skeleton off to the side you carelessly overlooked.
And that's where I immediately understand why so many people disliked DMC2. In the end, it's very different. I will fight tooth and nail against anyone that DMC2 is a GREAT game that is disturbingly underrated, but I entirely admit that it is ANYTHING but a proper follow up to DMC. For me? It was the change I wanted, the improvement I needed to keep what had impressed me so much continuing to impress me. But a lot of people wanted more of the same, and DMC2 definitely doesn't provide this.
But for someone like me, who learned to appreciate and love the combat, in spite of the game's sometimes tedious challenges and admittedly lacking difficulty in its bosses, DMC2 was a massive improvement on its origins, and lucky me... you get two games in one. I think what set my preference of DMC2 in stone was simply that the game gave you two playable characters from the start, both of which who have an entire game (with many different missions) and completely unique weapons and abilities. You complete the game, and you just start again with the other character. Both characters' adventures were easily longer than the original game, and that along provided an unheard of improvement on replay value. But then they added in a third playable character; Trish. She didn't have her own storyline and missions, and she wasn't able to switch between a massive variety of weapons... but she did have a suped-up version of Ebony & Ivory, as well as the massively enjoyable (and completely over the top) sword of Sparda. That's one hell of an extra.
DMC2 will always be seen by me as one of the most unfortunate oversights in gaming history. But I know one person's opinion isn't strong enough to give it the affection it deserves. I do insist, though... give that game another chance, thinking of it not as DMC but as its own game. If you go in with the right mindset, I think you'll be surprised by what you find.
Game: Devil May Cry 3
System: Playstation 2
Of every game in history, DMC3 may very well be within the top three most highly anticipated releases I've ever had to endure. After loving the original DMC in the way I did, only to be in every way thoroughly blown away by the sequel left me desperate to get my hands on this, what must assuredly be a masterpiece.
The moment the game was released, I took every game I no longer played (and a few I still sort of played) and traded them in to the only place that would take them (EB Games). It was just barely enough, joined with the cash I already had, to walk out of the story with my brand new copy of DMC3. It's hard to say there's been a game I was more excited to start up the moment I got it home, and so it began...
...and shortly after ended. I started Devil May Cry 3 on the standard difficulty setting, as I had done with the previous titles. I handled the original pretty well given the challenge it provided, especially for being such a new thing, and DMC2 being probably set my expectations of difficulty a bit lower... but by the time I had fallen to the FIRST BOSS (who is actually more of a sub-boss) approximately twenty times I was all but ready to give up on the game. But, I had wanted this game too desperately to give up on it just because of a challenge. I carried on, and eventually I finally beat what, to that point I had decided, was unkillable. I was finally graduating onward.
...and that's when I stopped. It wasn't long at all before a massive, ice-armored, three headed Cerberus put me in my place. And by put me in my place... I mean caused me to retire from the game for good. That was the last I played DMC3, and to this day I've never gone back.
But just a few months later, DMC3: Special Edition was announced! New bosses, new areas, and the incredibly epic Vergil as a playable character. I didn't care how hard the game was, I was GOING to get this version, and I was going to beat it...
Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition
...especially considering DMC3: Special Edition's difficulty was IMMENSELY reduced. Apparently I wasn't the only one who struggled, because just a short time after the original version's release we got a far more advanced, much easier edition. And I have to say... this game very, very quickly became my absolute favorite in the series.
I decided to find a difficulty that was as close to the original's as I could find, and what I experienced was nothing short of a masterpiece. Bringing back a style that felt a bit more like the original, while maintaining the superior programming of the second, I immediately felt right at home. Everything about the game felt like it was just repeating all the best things about the previous entries, and on top of that it gave us a great deal of improvements.
More weapons, all of which were incredibly unique and extremely fun to use. You spend the entire game hunting down bigger and badder fiends, only to slay them and steal their soul in the form of some new elemental weapon. This meant more bosses, and I don't just mean repeating the same few enemies over and over like the original, or a mixture of epic and rather minor foes like the second. Each and every boss feels like an epic clash of titans, and when they finally fall you know you've done something to be happy about. Not every boss is immensely enjoyable to fight, but they're all worth the effort.
I think what won me over the most with DMC3:SE, though, was the style system. New to this entry, you were able to alter how Dante battled by switching between various styles of combat. You could choose to specialize in sword combat, gun-slinging, agility based trickery, and a few other... more unique ones. These days they really feel like rather minor changes to the gameplay, as what most boil down to is an alteration of the effect the "O" button has and very little else, but for what a small change it is... it works. Between the massive arsenal of unique weaponry and the various styles, the combat never gets boring, and you never feel like things need to change up.
And even if you did start to find it just a tiny bit stale? You always have Vergil to fall back on. Playing through the entire game as Dante's twin brother, free of cutscenes and with added (albeit a tad lazy) battles with Dante, you still had a very unique character to play as, with an incredibly fun weapon (the Yamato) and a few other weapons to choose from. This game was by far the heaviest on content of any in the series, and it could keep you addicted for a very, very long time.
DMC3 isn't perfect, though. While it did many things exceptionally well, I always felt that the game felt a tad messy and lacking in polish. It often feels like it had a few ideas of what it wanted to be, but rather than deciding on a final choice it mixed in several traits of all its ideals, and ended up sort of... chaotic. The game often suffered for this more than it should have due to inconsistency in its challenge and gameplay, and the game being easily the longest of any thus far didn't help. Still, the game was a hell of a lot of fun, and in the end? That's what anybody wants in a Devil May Cry. On that end, it didn't disappoint.
Game: Devil May Cry 4
System: XBox 360
I put off DMC4 for such a long time that I almost forgot it was out there. I was excited when I heard it announced, but I knew it was going to be a very long time before I was able to get a next generation console. By the time I finally did (2011), I had heard so many horridly bad reviews of the game that I continually put it off longer and longer for other games I had far more interest in. You let a system go four years without getting to try it, and your list of priority titles gets pretty long. No matter how much you like the series, you don't go for the entry that nobody seems to like.
I only finally picked it up because I found it used for $5, and it's not that I had written it out as a guaranteed bomb or anything... I just wasn't expecting much.
So what did I find when I finally played it? I'll be honest. By roughly a third of the way into the game, I was ready to crown DMC4 the absolute best the series has ever offered. The combat felt the same, but more refined and polished. The introduction of the Devil Bringer made the combo system impossibly fun and fixed that little issue of enemies flying just out of your reach and breaking your chain, not to mention allowed you to be the most unforgivingly sadistic p***k in the universe. Still, I was only playing as Nero (Dante but... with a different name) and by the time I got the Yamato only to find out that you can't actually use ANY new weapons as Nero and instead just get a couple new moves while in Devil Trigger (which, in this entry, feels completely underpowered and useless) I started to second guess my praise.
And that's DMC4's biggest flaw. It's not that the game's bad, it's that it finds a great way to give you a wonderful first impression, and fails to keep it up. After the initial high washes away, you're left with a game that really feels more like a reasonably well done DMC clone than an actual sequel. Still, Nero felt like a pretty decent character (very similar to Dante in the original game, but a little more likable,) the Devil Bringer offered variety and sadism to the gameplay, and it was nice to finally see a DMC that didn't have "I didn't even try" graphics. The combat was fun, the bosses were cool and original, not to mention colossal and epic, and nothing was really broken (other than Gyro Blades, that is.... hate those things.)
And that's when the game changes. Half way in, and you no longer control Nero, but instead you get your classic red-coat wearing badass. Immediately you'll notice that, where Nero's gun felt useless, Dante's feel (yes feel, you get alternate guns finally!) like they serve a purpose. You'll also notice that Dante is a great deal of fun to play as, and he's continued DMC3's wonderful "Styles" system. So at this point you may feel revitalized. Your hope might be on the rise again for this title, and you might be polishing that crown... but you haven't gotten to the disappointment yet.
Within just a few missions, Dante is greeted by one of the biggest insults any game in the series has ever offered... repetition. The original made us fight each boss three times, but at the time it felt epic and each round they fought just a little different. You had new toys to rip into them with, you were more powerful, and they had to raise their skills. In DMC4... every single boss Dante faces (bar the last two) is a very lazy repeat of the bosses Nero fought. Do they fight differently? Not remotely. Are they in a new location? Nope, you just had to backtrack the places you had already been as Nero. Are they at least more challenging? Well, if maintaining the -exact- same stats as when you fought them much, much earlier in the game, but this time giving you a great deal more variety in your weapons and a lot more life and devil trigger gauge is more challenging... sure. Otherwise, they're easier than they've ever been.
But hey, at least you only have to fight them TWICE EACH as Dante, never changing their style or becoming remotely harder.
This was what really hurt the game the most for me. You get an incredibly short adventure that feels more like a DMC clone than anything as Nero, then you get to play as a cheaply copy-and-pasted DMC3 Dante in a "Back tracking with almost nothing new" adventure. Sure, you obtain new weapons as Dante... but you get almost no time to use any of them due to the game's ridiculous tendency to rush itself (since it's so short that even three new weapons feels like they almost have no time.) The time you do get to use them is mostly disappointing, too. You get three new weapons as Dante (technically four, but the Yamato is only used for a single mission and it's really only two attacks in a 'new style'.) One of these new weapons is an underwhelming copy of DMC3's least interesting weapon, one of them is absurdly overpowered and sucks the fun out of the combat while making all the other weapons useless, and the third is SO overpowered that it makes the previously overpowered weapon look like garbage, while at the same time being incredibly awkward to use.
Ultimately, I wanted to love DMC4, and it definitely does a few things right. Sadly, it ends up feeling like an incredibly short (though good) DMC clone, adheved to an insulting brief DMC4 'demo' as Dante. It provides virtually no replay value, either, outside of new difficulty settings, and due to the necessity of the Devil Bringer you cannot use Dante for Nero's missions, or Nero for Dante's missions. This, married to the game's shocking lack of DLC, brings the already very short game to a screeching halt in a pile of wet cement. By the time it hardens, it's firmly set itself in stone as nothing more than a rental. It's sad, too... because it had a lot going for it, and even had my favorite boss fight in the entire franchise (which, strangely, is one of the FEW fights in the game you only get to fight ONCE.)
I know this has gone on for a long time, but we're finally at the last entry...
Game: DmC - Devil May Cry
System: XBox 360
DmC is a game that had so many problems starting out that it's a shock to me I played it within the first three years of its release, much less the first month. It was a reboot, so everything was immediately intended to be different. Instead of the classic red-coat wearings, white haired Dante we had a kid that looked like Edward Cullen's tougher older brother after he just got out of the mosh pit at a Green Day concert. Upon observation of an encounter with a boss in the game, the smartest conversation I had been able to see in the game went something like "F--ck you!" "F--CK YOOOOOOOOU!" Demons were no longer dark, brooding monstrosities from the netherworld... but... idiots. Oh, and did I mention the game had the single dumbest title I have ever had to witness? The ridiculously inconvenient and confusing 'renaming your new game after the original game with absolutely no change' trend was NOT best fixed by just REPEATING THE TITLE. This is like when people say RPG Game, only where that's a simple oversight in casual conversation this is the title of a major game that already has to prove itself against a very, very testy fanbase, from a company that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY LIKES RIGHT NOW.
Still, I wanted a new game, and I absolutely adored three out of four games in the series. Even the fourth wasn't bad, just nowhere near up to the quality of the originals, leaving me with a bad after-taste of 'meh'. I was curious what Ninja Theory could offer to the series, and I'm never somebody to judge a book by its cover... or a game by its stupid name.
So I rented Devil may Cry: Devil May Cry... and I began to play it.
...and received the single greatest thing the franchise has ever achieved, as well as one of the most brilliant achievements in Capcom history.
DmC is possibly the most piss-poorly handled game I have ever seen in terms of advertisement. It does everything in its power to show off how 'different' it is, but only uses the absolute worst traits it can find to do this. It completely neglects to tell the potential players that the core gameplay is still the same, very little internally has changed, and Dante isn't HALF as obnoxious, stupid, or unlikable as they seem to want us to think he is. I had every expectation that Dante would be, if anything, the thing to end the game for me. He had already annoyed me to insufferable levels in DMC3, and in this he was intended to be younger. And yes, he is different... but in the BEST way possible.
New Dante is extremely cocky, gutter-mouthed, and doesn't know how to stop speaking... but he also feels like a real person. Dante always felt like a very one-dimensional character to me, with absolutely no emotion outside of "annoy you, annoy you, annoy you some more, get stabbed, annoy you", and the only time in the series history I ever really LIKED him (DMC2) he was completely silent and barely sad a word. But none of those felt real. DmC's new version DOES feel like a real person, with emotion, depth, change, and likability. Is he somebody I like? Not at first, but he becomes someone I adored, and that is character development I never expected.
But it doesn't stop at Dante. EVERYBODY in this game feels like a real person. Everyone has depth and personality, everyone feels like they're really there and more than just an archetype. Even the villain (the MUCH more well handled reimagining of Mundus) feels like there's more to him than just "I'm evil, suffer and die!" And that, more than anything, helped a game that comes from a series with absolutely no story (other than bumbling incoherence and over-the-topness) provide a surprisingly engaging and enjoyable plot. In any other DMC (except ones with Trish in DMC4) I wanted to skip the cutscenes, but with DmC I found myself nervous of accidentally skipping something. I wanted to know what happened next, because I actually cared. Sure, it isn't the greatest plot in the world, but it's definitely worth sitting through and does an excellent job at connecting the missions.
But what would DMC be without great combat? The thing this game does best is maintain what made the previous games great in the combat and simply enhanced it. Everything feels more fluid and polished than ever. What at first felt like an awkward control set-up ended up being so revolutionary and natural that I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to go back to previous entries. Every weapon is so much easier to access now than ever before, and not only did the game maintain DMC4's one truly great contribution (the distance grab), but it separated it into two separated entities. You're given two chains very early in the game, one of which offers the ability to pull objects and enemies closer, while the other launches you towards them instead. This offers an incredible variety in the gameplay and gives you far more options than you'd ever expect.
And the new toys don't stop there. Almost immediately you get your first -two- alternate melee weapons (in the same mission.) This set the standard for the rest of the game, as they were both very different from one another with very different purposes, and unlike any other game in the franchise it gives you plenty of time to experience and really adapt to each weapon. And where previous entries often give you so many weapons you ignore a variety of them because "something else is definitely just better", every weapon in the game feels significant and fun. As soon as you get your first 'Demon' weapon, you'll encounter objects and enemies that can only be overcome with that weapon, as well as enemies that, while defeatable by various means, are significantly more vulnerable to a particular tool.
But like nearly any great thing, DmC has some flaws. Though a bit superficial and very personal, the soundtrack for this newest entry often felt very irritating to me and was in no way what I wanted for a DMC. A mixture of grindcore, screamo, and dub-step polluted my ears, but most of the time I was able to overlook it.
Another issue is the Devil Trigger. While it does restore your life at absurd rates, the incredibly slow rate at which the gauge builds during combat renders it almost unused most of the time, and when you finally do unleash it the gauge will empty itself so quickly you might not even hit anything. This is made worse by the fact that most enemies are sent high into the air, completely paralyzed, for the entire duration of Devil Trigger. This puts many foes out of your reach, and the lack of a lock-on system (yes, I said that) makes them difficult to reach with your chains sometimes. This can result in an entirely wasted Devil Trigger, and so by a certain point I just decided to act like it wasn't there, and only used it during moments where I absolutely needed to restore health, or wanted to finish off a particularly tedious boss before it got up with just a sliver of health and made me repeat a needlessly long pattern of combat just to end it.
Finally, the biggest flaw of all, is the enemy design. One thing I believe I neglected to mention about DMC4 was its incredible enemy design. It was full of incredibly unique and likable enemies, often varying things up and never leaving you sure what you're going to meet next. DmC, however, gives you a very small number of different enemies and absolutely whores them for the rest of the game's disappointingly short run. By half way through you've encountered almost every single type of enemy you're going to meet, and all the enemies after that point are simply new versions of old ones. Sadly, most of these repeated enemies aren't even particularly original or interesting, and while there are a few exceptions, I often found myself sorely let down. The bosses are hardly any better. By the end of the game, there were only two bosses that stood out to me at all, and only one of which I have any interest in ever fighting again. And that fight is a nearly exact duplication of a battle already faced in a previous DMC. Still, it was incredibly refreshing to end the game with such an epic and outstanding battle, and it was certainly the highlight the game needed to leave off on.
In the end, DmC is in every way the absolute best thing the franchise has offered us, and I would personally beg Capcom to completely rewrite the entire series in this new, immensely improved style if I could. What Capcom has done here is a very, very good thing, and I hope that people give it the chance I almost didn't. The game isn't perfect, but it more than makes up for its shortcomings in a way the other games all failed to.
But the big question would be... what's it worth? In truth, I would love to tell everybody to immediately go buy a copy at the full price to encourage Capcom and Ninja Theory into continuing what master work they've started... but that wouldn't be fair to the players. Sadly, the game's biggest shortcoming is, quite literally, its short length. DmC is easily the shortest of all the games in the franchise, and while it is one hell of a ride with some decent replay value and a lot more on the way in the form of DLC, I wouldn't give the game a higher price tag than $20. If you're like me, you're going to love every moment of this game... but those moments will be short-lived, and very quickly you'll be left with an outstanding experience that you've played to death, and if you bought it... it's going to take only a few days before it sets off on its long journey collecting dust.
Still, I've considering buying it at full retail just to keep the flame alive and do everything I can to get another game like this, but don't expect it to be worth that price tag. Rent it, and then buy it when you feel the price has dropped appropriately.
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