I have enjoyed most of the Devil May Cry games ever since the very first one came out on the PS2. The first one got me interested, I despised and avoided the second, I absolutely adored the third, and I was mildly entertained by the fourth. I even found a lot to enjoy about the “Americanized” one developed by Ninja Theory, even though most die-hard DMC fans hated it for no reason other than they didn’t like the character designs. Lucky for them, the Japanese developers at Capcom have returned to make Devil May Cry 5 and continue the story, more or less, where the fourth game left off. Is it a return to form?

The Short of It

What I’ve Played

• Completion of story campaign on the default difficulty and a few levels of hard difficulty

• 20 levels of the challenge mode

• PC version

Pros

• Controls great and just how like you’d expect a Devil May Cry to play

• Cool mechanics and abilities for each of the characters for some stylish action

• Music getting louder and more intense with a combo is a great subtle touch

• Cinematics and character interactions are just as over-the-top as you want out of Devil May Cry

• Details on characters look great in the game’s engine

Cons

• Probably the least interesting story since Devil May Cry 2; focuses on fan service instead

• The Tarintino-ing of the plot with bouncing around in the timeline is just bad and does not make it more interesting

• Level designs are too simple and feel like just one long hallway most of the time

• Combat arenas lack enough enemies to get a fun Devil May Cry S-tier combo going; need to play on harder difficulties for the game to reach the same satisfying level of fun as the old games

• Not many memorable/fun boss battles

• Some textures in the environment are just bad

• Inability to choose characters for most of the levels is kind of lame and outdated

The Rest of It

Story

Nero, the silver-haired protagonist from Devil May Cry 4 has joined up with Dante and is lending his hand (heh) at being a demon hunter himself. However, a mysterious figure steals Nero’s demonic arm which made him so special in 4, and suddenly a giant demon tree appears in the center of an unnamed city. The tree’s roots and parasitic inhabitants destroy the city and kill all the people, so it’s up to Dante, Nero, and the mysterious newcomer, V, to stop the demon responsible for it. As the game progresses, you jump back and forward in time like a Quentin Tarintino movie to different moments from different character perspectives. It actually makes the story a lot harder to follow because of the fact that it does this as many times as it possibly can. Personally, I think it’s intentional to cover up the fact that there’s barely a story here at all.

Let’s be real. The stories of the Devil May Cry games have never been the main reason you wanted to play them. The first game was an introduction with a very simple premise. The second one should not be played by anyone because it’s a bad game. The third one introduced Dante’s brother Vergil and an evil priest who was manipulating him so the priest could become a god. The fourth had a weird cult, introduced Nero and his love interest, and provided a serviceable premise about the usual angel and demon stuff. The spin-off DMC, probably had the most interesting story because it was a reimagining of the characters from the first three games and actually tried to have an involved story about propaganda, resistance, and demons taking over the world via corporate media. Regardless, none of them were so good that I would put any of them on my list of favorite stories in video games.

I feel the same way about Devil May Cry 5. In fact, I think the story of this game is pretty weak in comparison to the others, and it seems like they just want to recapture the feeling players got from Devil May Cry 3 with the sense of climbing a tower and fighting a cool boss at the end. It’s not the worst story, but it’s also not that interesting or told well enough to serve as any sort of motivation. Every twist to be revealed can be seen from a mile away and just comes across as the typical anime-style storytelling to get you to stay interested for just one more episode. And then, it just sort of ends. While I have no problem reliving some great moments in Devil May Cry 3, it’s still a pretty weak fan-service-style retelling of a better game—maybe they got JJ Abrams to help out with this one.

Gameplay/Mechanics

Devil May Cry has always been about playing as an incredibly powerful character and taking out groups of enemies with stylish combinations of attacks using badass weapons. Dodging, switching back and forth between big swords and guns, throwing out taunts, and powering up are all part of the process of each encounter. You are meant to feel powerful and look cool while you annihilate everyone around you. Devil May Cry 5 accomplishes that goal just fine. In fact, you might be a little too powerful.

Aside from the final boss, I found Devil May Cry 5 to be barely a challenge on the default difficulty, with plenty of checkpoints and continues to help you in the rare event that you might find yourself in dire straights. It happened, but not very often. There were usually plenty of health items to pick up along the way. I normally don’t recommend playing games on a difficulty harder than the default setting, but this might be an exception, mainly because I often found the enemies in the groups dying before I could get to a really satisfying combo. There simply were not enough enemies in each encounter. I think that if the overall damage done to the heroes and enemies stayed the same, that the checkpoints and health items were just as plentiful, and if there were simply more enemies in each battle arena, I would have had double the amount of fun. From what I’ve played on Hard so far, it seems to be the case, with slightly fewer resources and harder enemies introduced earlier in the story. I still think it’s not nearly as difficult as the original Devil May Cry 3, but the difficulty has been much more satisfying so far. If you were already considering doing so before you read my review, don’t get too excited, because you still have to beat the game before you can even unlock a harder difficulty. The good news is: that you get to keep all the abilities you unlocked for the hard mode, making it not feel like you’re completely starting over.

Despite my gripes about the fact that I never really felt like I got to unleash hell on waves of demons, Devil May Cry 5 is still pretty damn fun. As you progress through the story, you get to play as the three main characters: Nero, Dante, and the new character, V. Nero plays extremely similar to how he did in 4, with a slight change to his character. He still has his big revolver. He still has his sword with an engine that lets him charge up attacks. He still has all the same combos as before that you can unlock as you progress through the game. The difference is that now his demon arm has been replaced by a robotic one. It can grapple him to enemies, moving him around the battlefield faster. What’s more, if you hold down the button for the arm attack, you can activate its special ability. This uses up an arm charge and you actually have to switch to another arm, like a piece of weaponry that has been used up. The arms are designed by a new character, Nico, who makes a variety of different ones throughout the game for you to try. You can buy some before each mission, or just run through a level and find them scattered throughout. Why are they everywhere? No reason other than convenience. He’s the first character you play and he’s pretty fun.

The second character you play is V. V does not play like any conventional Devil May Cry character in that he walks slowly, carries a cane, and can’t physically attack any of the enemies. Instead, he has a few familiars to do all the dirty work for him while he stands back and reads poetry. His bird familiar acts like his firearm with the ability to shoot from a distance or create defensive barriers around him, while his panther familiar does a lot of the heavy melee attacks. Once an enemy reaches a weakened state V can go in for the kill and finish them off. His familiars each have their own lifebar, so you should pay attention to the risk they’re in, but if they go down, you just have to stand next to them for a moment before they’ll be available again. As V reads poetry in the back, his devil meter charges up, which allows him to summon his third familiar, Nightmare. This giant golem shows up in entertaining fashion and is often an explosively unstoppable behemoth in every encounter that makes short work of every enemy. V was a blast to play in this game and probably my favorite of the three because of how unconventional he was. Plus, you could keep comboing enemies without killing them and making the fights last a little longer, which, as I mentioned, was something I desperately wanted.

Dante you get access to about halfway through the game. He plays very much like he did in part 4, with his main guns and melee attacks assigned to the face buttons of a controller, while his different stances were assigned to the d-pad. You can swap through any of his stances at any one time, as much as you want, which include: Trickster, Royal Guard, Gunslinger, and Swordmaster. The last two are pretty self-explanatory, with them serving as stances that allow you to do more with either your guns or your melee weapons. Royal Guard is a stance that allows him to parry any move without taking damage while building up a meter which you can release in an explosive punch. Trickster is his mobility stance that allows him to zip around a battlefield instantaneously. I made full use of all four stances in conjunction with the weapons he had or found along the way by the time I was done with the game. Dante is a lot of fun and only becomes more powerful by the game’s end, allowing you to unlock an even more powerful mode where he does ridiculously massive amounts of damage, but I won’t spoil anything beyond that.

In the end, each character played differently enough that they all had their benefits and were uniquely fun. Despite initially thinking I liked Nero more for his mobility, I ended up liking the other two a lot more than him. It was just a shame that the battles always felt a little too short and that the progression through the game was not the most satisfying.

There are a few reasons I feel this way. First of all, the character ability progression in the game was less than ideal. You have to spend a lot of the in-game currency (red orbs) to get abilities for each of the characters. Most of these abilities have multiple levels of strength and you only gain more as the story progresses, yet the prices for each of them seem astronomically high in particular cases. I think you simply start off with too few of the abilities you should have. Having played through the whole game and started over on the harder difficulty, the early levels have been a lot more fun, simply because of all the abilities I have immediately had access to the second time around. It felt like the game was gatekeeping a great deal of fun for the sake of creating an arbitrary progression system. Most games are more fun when there’s still something to earn and purchase with experience points, but this is an instance where I’d rather have everything unlocked so I can just start playing the game already. Considering the fact that you have to spend the same orbs for the moves for each character, grinding almost felt necessary to get Dante to a good enough level to be fun, since I had already spent them all on V and Nero.

I also wasn’t a fan of the overall level design. The progression of the game felt very similar to 4 in how the levels were laid out. It mostly felt like running down a corridor from one arena to another. Occasionally, there would be a moment that required some jumping around or hitting something to open up a path, but that was about it. While combat is the main focus of these sorts of games, I think the lack of platforming puzzles and exploration that was present in the first three games and even the spin-off helped break up the action in a way that was more engaging than 4 and 5, even if they weren’t the most fun. When you’re just running from one combat arena that ends sooner than it should to another, it’s not the most exciting or satisfying gameplay loop.

My last gripe I’ll mention is that it’s simply a shame that you cannot go back to previous levels and play through the stage with the different characters. I realize that each stage is designed with one character in mind, but it’s not like there weren’t simple platform changes that could be made to accommodate the different characters. Aside from a few exceptions, you just have to use the character that is assigned for that level. This is the way it’s always been in Devil May Cry, but it would be nice if, since there’s so much variety to the gameplay, to open up the ability to just play the game however you like with whomever you like.

Presentation

The character models, enemy designs, music, and cutscenes are all what you expect from a Devil May Cry game. The characters all look great in Capcom’s RE engine, with everyone’s facial features and expressions looking incredibly good. Likewise, the enemy designs look delightfully disgusting and creepy as you’d want from the series. Bugs are the theme with a lot of these enemies, but there are also plenty of familiar enemy types like specters with giant scissors, giant lizards, gouls with extra limbs, and angelic warriors. It all looks good and is what you want.

I can’t say the same for the various textures on the environment if you stand still long enough to look at the details. So long as you keep moving, and so long as you don’t mind seeing a lot of the same sort of environments, everything looks pretty good. As I said, the pacing of each level takes its toll and makes the environments feel less interesting, especially when you have to play through some environments that look very similar to other parts of the game. Gone are the days of exploring giant castles or towers with distinct areas like Devil May Cry 1 or 3.

Musically, it’s exactly what you want from a Devil May Cry game. The music is energetic and amps you up as the combat gets more involved. What makes it better is that the music actually gets more intense, the better and longer your combo is, giving you even more reason to try to get as stylish a rank as possible. I think it’s a great mechanic and hope it stays in future releases. Each character actually has their own combat song, but I found that Nero probably had the one that was the easiest to hear amidst the action. I found myself turning down the volume of everything else in the game just so the music would be slightly more pronounced. If you were concerned about the game’s style, you shouldn’t be. It’s here in full force.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Despite my various gripes with Devil May Cry 5, they’re mostly nitpicky issues. The somewhat uninteresting level design, needlessly grindy ability progression, and the story that goes nowhere new are all a bit of a bummer. However, the combat is the star of the show, as you might expect, and it’s a blast. Each character is unique, is fun to play, and feels powerful. While there may never be another Devil May Cry game as good as 3, if you have any affinity for the franchise, there’s no reason for you to pass on this one.