Gamespot score:7.1(good)
my score:8.0
(+)Pros:-Solid combat that is fast paced and extremely fluid,-challenging difficulty makes the game interesting,- lots of different weapons and skills,-2 playable characters will add more replayability,- excellent boss fights,-soundtrack is pretty damn good.
(-)Cons:-Visually inferior to the PS2 version,-controls kinda suck on the keyboard.
gameplay time:20 hours+
Devil may cry 3's story may not be its best point, but its certainly pretty good, far better than the monstrosity that was known as DMC 2 (yeah, I have done research). You star as dante in his younger years, who starts the game off shirtless fighting off a bunch of demons who suddenly raid his shop, as well as eating pizza. After which, he is called to the demon tower to face off against his brother, vergil. While ascending the tower, he is confronted by many demons, as well as running into the mysterious girl known as lady, who is serving an unknown purpose. While the story does not have many characters and only focuses on the main few of them,
it weaves a good tale of the 2 brothers, and the relationship between arkham and lady.
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| The combat is, as expected, top notch. |
Devil may cry 3's gameplay mechanics are rather simple. There are 20 levels in the game, and you advance through all of them using dante. Each level is packed with demons, and most of them end with boss fights. The levels are well made, while most of the game is spend navigating through the tower, the scenery changes well. And while there are repeat levels, the changes in platforms and enemy spawns prevent them from being repititive. During these levels you are faced with different demon types, most of which are fairly interesting. You are faced by enemies named after the seven sins, and many more of course. Most of these enemies are really powerful and can easily kick your ass, they either do crazy damage, take tons of punishment, or have other weird ass ability, such as blocking your attacks or spawning other enemies.
While the enemies in the game are punishing, dante has a kick ass set of weapons and attack styles, so it sort of evens it out. Before you begin each level, you can pick what "style" you are entering the stage with. You have 4 styles, trickster, swordmaster, royal guard and gunslinger. Each style has its own unique way to play, giving the game some variety. To add on, each style can be further improved upon using the souls earned during levels, making them even more badass and powerful than they already are. Trickster is the most basic and probably the most effective among the four. Trickster gives you more survivability, since it gives dante dashes. The enemies and bosses of devil may cry 3 can be pretty punishing, so trickster helps dante survive. By dashing around, you can avoid attacks last minute, and you are every bit more mobile than the other styles. While lacking in combat ability, trickster makes up for it in speed, making enemies have a hard time even touching you.
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| Tons of demons stand in dante's way, its up to him to slice them all up. |
The other 3 styles play just as much of a part as trickster does. Swordmaster allows dantes to perform combos he usually camt, with a sword of course. You unlock many other melee weapons in the game, of course, all of these are affected by the swordmaster style. With your normal rebellion, you get to do 3 hit combos and air raves. With agni and rudra, you get to rush around and perform the insanely cool air dance. With cerebus, you get to swing the nunchucks like a professional martial artist. Theres more, but its too much to mention. Gunslinger acts like the swordsmaster, but with guns. You can perform special combos with guns, such as allowing continous strafes or swinging a shotgun to hit all around. Finally the royal guard gives you extra defense. You get to block attacks which are otherwise very difficult to avoid. This is more of a expert style, since blocking requires a lot of eifficient timing.
There are more styles other than the basic 4, but they are only earned after beating serveral bosses, which are great to fight, may I add. Most of the game's bosses are hard. Screw that, you will die at least once in every boss, unless you somehow got a hold on tons of vital stars. And heres the thing, while the stages and bosses themselves are hard seperately, you get no checkpoints at all. Yep , zitch, zero, no checkpoints at all. When you clear a freakishly long and difficult level and finally make it to the boss and die....you have to start over. Harsh stuff, but luckily there are gold orbs which are buyable, they let you restart from the room in which you just died. These are good, but you have to waste a good bunch of souls to buy them. The challenging difficulty will make you curse and swear, but will also make you keep coming back for more, until you beat the level.
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| Not the best place to fight demons, but it'll do. |
Devil may cry 3 SE is good stuff, but as gamespot has mentioned, it is far inferior to the PS2 version. Well its not like I played the PS2 version, but its obvious. The framerate and visuals for the PC are choppy, even when set to the highest resolution. The controls however, suffer the most. On the keyboard, its kinda hard to play, controls are stiff and rigid. Moving the camera is an absolute pain, and fighting with stiff controls isnt exactly the best of experiences (luckily the controls are more fluid in DMC 4).
Devil may cry 3 SE is a good port of the PS2 counterpart, but the PS2 version is still superior. Still my 1st experience with devil may cry 3, was great. The levels and gameplay mechanics were what made me fall in love. The combat is great, and the enemies and atmosphere made the game feel complete, its as though you really are ascending a demonic tower. Combined with the fact that you can play as vergil when you clear the game and that the soundtrack is pretty damn good for killing demons, you got one pretty solid game.
