Gamespot Score: 7.5 (Good)
My Score: 7.5
(+)Pros: - Excellent new combat system that caters well towards beginners, - Innovative level design, - Tons of weapon variety gives you different ways to kill enemies, - Angelic and demonic enemies add depth and difficulty to battles, - Many hidden secrets and difficulty modes for the hardcore.
(-)Cons: - New rebooted characters that we all know and love have completely shitty characterization, - No lock on during battles can be pretty frustrating during higher difficulty levels, - Lack of style changes removes a lot of depth in the combat.
Gameplay time: About 10 hours for the first play-through.
First thing's first, the story. Since "DMC:Devil May Cry" is a complete reboot, the story in this game is NOT canon to the original universe of "Devil May Cry", so don't go shitting your pants just yet. Anyway, it talks about this world's Dante, a teenage, chaotic, meth loving punk that goes about his day raving around in strip clubs and having sex with its ladies. Dante is also aware of the existence of demons, that aren't visible to most humans. He is constantly dragged into limbo, a rift in the human world, where he does battle with these demons. One day, after having a crazy night with a couple of demon girls from a strip club, he wakes up the next morning when a girl knocks on his window, and is immediately dragged into limbo. The girl helps him out, and introduces herself as Kat, who is scouting Dante for this demon killing abilities to work for the anti government organization, "The Order".
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| Looks fancy, and it sure is. |
"DMC:Devil May Cry", no matter how dumb it sounds, may be a reboot, and everything looks SO WRONG for the universe, is STILL A "DEVIL MAY CRY" GAME. And because it IS one, it plays like one, though it is being developed by a different team. The combat system is revamped, and while its different, it definitely still works as a fun, flashy, beat-em-up game that impresses both visually and mentally. Dante is able to fight enemies using different varieties of weapons, ranging between ranged and melee ones. You can combo enemies on the ground, launch them up, combo them in the air, smack them back to the ground, lift them off the ground with another move, and continue combo-ing. If you were a sucker for previous games in the series because of the combat, you will be happy here.
And because there are such huge windows of opportunities between attacks, and that the style meter fills up so quickly when compared to previous games, this reboot is very well suited for beginners. There are 3 different dodge types, you can switch weapons on the fly easily, and most of the time, the screen will be filled with weak enemies on average difficulties, meaning that you can breeze through levels as long as you grasp the basic mechanics of the game. If you want to feel badass getting SSS ranks in style, you can even as a beginner, as long as you don't get hit. And without the style switching of past games (Sword master, Trickster etc), its easier to just bash through enemies with the weapons you have, instead of switching styles mid combat.
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| Cue fighting game announcer voice..."AIR COMBO" |
With all that you have you breeze through 20 levels of enemies and bosses, all of which aren't too special. The new demon designs look far less interesting than the ones in old games, but they aren't too bad, and bosses are alright. Not too easy, not too difficult, just alright overall, but they do bring variety in having ways to get killed. The levels, however, are some of the most innovative I have seen. Since the game takes place in a modern world, unlike the original games, we are brought to limbo versions of warehouses, buildings and prisons, which look really cool. With twisted paths, walls and distorted backgrounds, everything just looks really interesting. Also, while killing these enemies and bosses, you gain access to a shitload of weapons, even more so than previous games, actually. There are three types of weapons, angelic types, demonic types and firearms. Added together, there are a total of 8 weapons.....now THAT is variety.
Also, to switch things up, the games likes to toss you angel and demon enemies, which again, add more depth and variety to combat situations. You can only use angel weapons to defeat angel enemies, while demon weapons defeat the demonic ones. Since you can level up your weapons and skills, this actually forces the players to spend points into different weapons so you can actually deal with this complicated situations. It also makes the game slightly harder, which it should be (since it was pretty easy for my first run even on Nephilim). There are also a ton of secret challenges that are locked behind secret doors, which you need keys to open, these can be found throughout different levels of the games. These challenges are mostly just stuff like "Defeat enemies within the time limit", or "Defeat enemies without taking X amount of damage". What else? There are a ton of difficulty levels like before, for the hardcore, with a new "Hell and Hell" mode, where enemies are full health and Dante dies in one hit.
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| Kill shit, just keep killing shit. |
The biggest issue I have with this game, is the same as everyone else. The rebooted characters....more importantly Dante and Vergil...have been butchered. Yes, you heard me, not just their looks, their personalities have haven a complete turn for the worst. Think what you want, you may like them, but I'm sure most of the fans around the world HATE the new Dante and Vergil. I won't spoil how they're like, I'll leave that to you.
As for flaws in the ACTUAL game, its pretty easy to point out the biggest one. The lack of a lock on. On "Dante must die" and "Son of Sparda", this was a real killer. Without a lock on you cannot kill the enemies you actually want to kill first, like when there are TWO FREAKING NINJAS, I WANT TO KILL THE NINJA WITH LOWER HEALTH FIRST GOD DAMMIT. No! Stop hitting the other guy, STOP IT. You'll be screaming that out loud when it actually happens, trust me. Just try and imagine that situation in your head. Also, since they removed style switching completely, there is a lot less that Dante can actually do for you to experiment around with. This mostly hurts for the hardcore fans who played previous games.
Alright, lets conclude this review. The combat is f**king great and all, but I'll say it up straight. If it were any other action beat-em-up title, it would have gotten an easy 8/10 or more from me. But BECAUSE it carries the "Devil May Cry" name...it doesn't. The butchered characterization of the characters that I like really sucked. As a action game, its great, as a "DMC" game for a "DMC" fan though....you might be in for a bigger spin that you may think. Enjoy the combat system, but as for the rest..its up to you to decide.
Happy gaming.
