By 
The first Devil May Cry was created by Hideki Kamiya at Capcom. While Capcom is still making Devil May Crys, and they are getting better as the number gets higher. Hideki Kamiya founded Platinum Games, which makes action games in the same vein as Devil May Cry. The games that Platinum Games make, and Devil May Cry can be described as a “Character Action” game. The main difference between “Character Action” and “Action” game boils down to what your character can do. In CA games, the character you control has an expanded set of abilities, all for dealing damage and manipulating the state of the enemy. The Devil May Cry series is famous for awarding letter ratings (up to SSS) for the player’s performance. Players earn a better score by using more of the character’s abilities, switching styles and weapons, and just being as stylish as possible. You have an expanded set of moves, as well as all the enemy fodder you could ever want; wailing on them as stylishly as possible is the name of the game.
Capcom has 18 years of Devil May Cry experience. 18 years! This series is older than Billie Eilish! When a game has that many sequels you can infer 2 things:
- There has been a demand for every sequel, it is very popular.
- The game has to be changed so that it is new and fresh and exciting while still remaining true to its name.
Video games are an expensive product to make. A game most likely will not get made based on “cult” status, a small and passionate fanbase. It has to sell enough copies to make some money. Nowdays, players are able to vote with their dollars, like the recent kickstarter for The Wonderful 101: Remastered. Devil May Cry came from a time before kickstarter (sans the 5th one). An interesting thing to note, there was an 11 year gap between Devil May Cry 4 and Devil May Cry 5! In between there was a soft reboot/prequel by Ninja Theory, DmC: Devil May Cry. The team at Capcom was working on other games, that’s why there’s a gap.
Let’s not speak of the quality of Devil May Cry 2 compared to Devil May Cry. It is widely accepted that Devil May Cry 2 brought nothing to the franchise. The only thing I remember 2 doing is that you collected some gems that would provide passive buffs, like pseudo-RPG build variety.
Devil May Cry 3 was probably the breakthrough for the series. It added the ability to swap weapons instantly as well as the Style system. No, not the Stylish Rank. At the start of the mission the player would pick between 6 styles (4 to start with, 2 unlocked) and activated dedicated button ( ◯ ). Swordmaster would do a sword move, Gunslinger would do a gun move, Trickster performs a dash, Royal Guard does a block, Doppelganger makes a copy of the player character, Dante, Quicksilver stops time for a bit. Of course, more moves can be unlocked and used with directional inputs and the ◯ button, like other default moves. Having more moves and more options makes it easier to climb up the Style Rankings as well as giving the player more tools to manipulate enemies. Is the game changed? Yes. Is this change new and exciting? Yes. Is it still very much a Devil May Cry game? Yes. After awhile a Special Edition of Devil May Cry 3 came out which lets the player play as the antagonist and Dante’s brother, Vergil. He has his own style, Dark Slayer, which is just like Trickster.
Building up off the systems that 3 introduced, perhaps Devil May Cry 4 is the real breakthrough design-wise. You could change styles at any time with a directional button press. Start your combo off with a Swordmaster move, teleport with Trickster, block with Royal Guard, all in the same combo! Giving the player yet more options to raise their Style Gauge and mess with their foes. Manipulating enemies is a good way to avoid damage (and save your ranking), if you juggle an enemy in the air, enemies on the ground can’t hurt the player character unless they are ranged. The player is in complete control during combat. In addition to that, there is a second playable character from the start of the game! Nero plays differently to Dante. He has 1 set of gear, 1 sword & 1 gun, so no swapping weapons. His sword has a Rev mechanic where pressing the R2 (Right Trigger) button will Rev the sword kind of like a motorcycle. After attacks there is a few frames where pressing the button will rev instantly, adding additional damage to the next attack. Otherwise, while idle, a player has to keep pressing the button to get it to the rev-d state. Press R2 at the right time, do more damage. It’s a way to add additional damage without mentally overloading the player, because Dante has so many moves that are available that are available at any one time, Nero is relatively simpler. His style button ( ◯ ) instead activates his Devil Bringer, which is kind of like a grab attack; Use it on an enemy performs an enemy-specific move that instantly kills fodder enemies. It can also be used to pull enemies closer or pull Nero closer to enemies, small and light enemies will be pulled towards Nero, or Nero will fly towards big and heavy enemies. It’s quite intuitive to know what will happen, especially since they are the same input. The grab attack can even be performed against bosses at certain times. I have a friend who doesn’t like Nero for this exact reason, that the optimal damage he can perform is in one button press, whereas Dante requires the player to first think of the optimal damaging combo, then have the dexterity to execute it. They’re simply different ways to play, no one way is better than the other. If anything, Dante has more options but if the player cannot make use of those options, they are wasted. Dante does not have a grab, Nero has a grab. Nero can pull enemies, Dante cannot. Dante has an overall more “full” moveset as he can block and dash with his differnt styles. Nero is perfectly viable though. The player actually plays as Nero for the first half of the game, before playing as Dante. This was a good way to introduce players to the base systems of as Nero is simpler, then eventually playing as Dante with his full arsenal. Dante even gets more moves as he eventually unlocks Vergil’s Dark Slayer style, which now lets him use some moves that Vergil did in 3.
Eventually a Special Edition for Devil May Cry 4 was also released. Players could now play as Vergil, Trish and Lady in addition to Nero and Dante. Trish has been around since the first game; Lady was introduced in 3, neither have been playable before 4’s Special Edition. I did not play Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition as it was close to Devil May Cry 5’s release but as I write about it I fear I may have missed out.
Now that we have recapped what was added before Devil May Cry 5, we can finally talk about it. As this game was built off of its predecessors, it is important to understand how it came to be and the decisions behind that.
Nero has some new toys to play with. He loses his Devil Bringer arm and has robotic arms called Devil Breakers. Granted, one of those arms mimics the Devil Bringer‘s grab move. Devil Breakers can do a few moves; A default attack with their dedicated button, a hold attack using that same button, the same pull the Devil Bringer had and the ability to Detonate the arm with some special effect. There are many arms that do different things. They’re just looking at the possibility space of what Nero can do and are trying to add more. Once an arm is destroyed (by detonating it or getting hit while the arm is in use), the next one is immediately equipped. This adds a tactical element as players can choose in what order to expend and utilise the various arms. Why not the ability to switch? There are a lot of arms that the player can obtain, and there is no real elegant way cycle through that many really quickly on the fly. Selecting with a weapon wheel might have been an option but the game might have to be slowed down, and I’m sure that’s the one thing they did not want to compromise on. The player can oly use the next arm in line by destructing the equipped one, so I suppose it works thematically, though in that same vein there’s no reason for having random arms throughout the level for Nero to pick up. You could reasonably map 8 inputs to the dpad through a combination of the 4 cardinal directions and their combined directions (Up-Left, Up-Right, Down-Left, Down-Right) but that puts him close to Dante’s difficulty. It struck me as odd in the beginning that I wasn’t able to switch and use arms when I wanted, but I accepted it after thinking about it. The way it currently works adds reactivity and planning while differentiating it from Dante’s on-demand moveset. At the end of the game Nero reaquires his Devil Bringer as well as his own Devil Trigger. After spending the entire game getting used to his new moveset, the player gets to also start incorporating what they’ve learned in 4. People that play this game for the combo and mastery of it will play it more than once no matter what. Players that are not or were not interested might be prompted to, wanting to explore this new addition and might have newfound appreciation for gaining mastery with the game.
What did Dante get this time? More weapons, up to 4 at a time! I will admit it is a bit clunky to cycle through more than 3 at a time. People that are into Devil May Cry will not think it is a problem but mechanically 3 swaps is probably pushing the limit. It depends on how much time a player has to swap weapons. Mid-air combo? Probably 3 swaps, which I’m sure they benchmarked and tested and made sure was the right number of swaps.
Each of Dante’s new weapons had its own… gimmick. Balrog can swap between slow, powerful kicks and rapid punches; and powers up after a hit counter is met. Cavalier is a motorcycle! You can ride around on it! As well as break it in two and swing both halves around like chainsaws. Holding the attack button down will spin the wheels while in contact with the enemy, doing additional damage; Then pressing the button again at a good time for a more powerful follow-up attack. Cerberus is back! Dante gets the transforming King Cerberus that can be nunchaku, a bō, or three-section staff depending on the input (press, hold or Swordmaster). Dante also gets a new sword that replaces Rebellion later on that functions like Dante’s previous one, only with different moves. Dante can equip 8(!) weapons at once, and swap between them as fast as the player can press the button. This expands his moveset exponentially, more ways to manipulate enemies, more ways to do damage, more ways to increase Style Rating.
Devil Trigger adds extra damage, heals the character, and now: fills the SIN Devil Trigger gauge. By holding down the Devil Trigger button, the player can fill the SIN Devil Trigger gauge, and go into the SIN Devil Trigger state only when the bar is full, and cannot manually toggle it off. SIN Devil Trigger is more powerful than than the standard Devil Trigger, but without the healing. I suppose in some ways people who are terrific at this game never get it hit so having a on demand heal is no longer necessary. SIN Devil Trigger is so different from the regular Devil Trigger that makes it more inconvenient to do combos. Devil Trigger is powerful, can be toggled on and of, but it is designed to be used mid-combo, toggled, the size of the player is still the same. On the other hand, SIN Devil Trigger has an intro animation with a special camera, the character becomes significantly bigger, grows six wings, it really feels like more like Special Move than the Devil Trigger ever was, it is an event with all the spectacle and bombast. In this way, the SIN Devil Trigger is like a panic button for the player to just nuke everything. A way to for the player look and feel powerful. There is a move that the player can purchase: At SSS Rank and when the bar glows, going into SIN Devil Trigger has no animation and is free for a limited time. Activated this way, staying in SIN Devil Trigger for too long will lock Dante into the full duration like the normal activation. Using SIN Devil Trigger like this is a lot more like toggling the regular Devil Trigger, just with the additional requisite of having SSS Rank. It’s a lot more in line with the rest of the game as it is part of the normal flow of combat, rather than being a Super Move. This is also the first and only time that there is a mechanical reason to be stylish, it is normally just an arbitrary way to score the player.
The point of the game is to slay enemies stylishly. Naturally, we want to slay enemies to progress the game and not die. How would we encourage players to do so stylishly? With a ranking system! Of course, all the moves are useful and serve as ways to either manipulate the player character or the enemy. Some moves push enemies far away, some move the enemy up in the air, some push enemies away while also moving the player character, etc. We are now being encouraged to use all these different moves efficiently and effectively not just for the function of killing enemies but for the reward of the ranking as well as aesthetically stylish. The player is also given a currency reward in the form of Red Orbs, better rankings > more Red Orbs > able to buy more moves > able to more efficiently get better rankings; so there is a positive feedback loop to being stylish. SIN Devil Trigger is the first mechanical reward for being Stylish, as going to SSS Rank lets the player go into SIN Devil Trigger for free, albeit for a short time. I like that they reward extreme style wth extreme damage; And I’m looking forward to see what other mechanical rewards they can squeeze out of the style system. Locking certain moves behind style rankings sounds completely absurd. Having style rankings add a damage multiplier would make the game more difficult to balance, and would also be quite arbitrary like how Bayonetta 2 (noticeable damage only when expending Magic gauge) handled it. Maybe they won’t explore the concept further and that’s fine too.
A new playable character was also added! V! This is the 5th game, the roman numeral for 5 is V. Clever. Maybe. V actually plays much differently from everyone else to ever be playable in the series. He plays like a summoner from other games, if you will. The actual character does not have many options and zero attacks, so his best option is to keep far away from enemies. How he deals damage to enemies is he has these 2 demon pets that attack enemies for him. His control scheme is similar to the other characters, the ranged attack button makes his bird pet shoot at enemies, and the melee attack button makes his panther pet claw at enemies. In terms of controls, the player is used to the attack inputs. What the player is actually learning is where to position the character. Once an enemy is at 0 hp, his pets cannot actually kill them, he has to finish them off with his cane. One of his moves is to throw his cane and teleport to it and he is able to finish an enemy off that way. His Devil Trigger is him summoning a giant golem that fights by itself without any input, but V himself can directly control it with an unlockable skill; I honestly never used this because I would be giving up control of the other two pets and I didn’t see the use. He can also spend some Devil Trigger gauge to power up the bird and panther. Holding down his “Read Book” button also charges his Devil Trigger; And he even reads out loud! I think it is a clever solution to add different playstyles to the game and am really excited to see what other “archetypes” they introduce. The fact that the player is already familiar with the controls, they’re just using it in a different context is very intuitive. V gets a lot of flak for not being as polished as the other two, but their playstyles have been refined over 5 games! His first foray into the series is already very interesting because he shakes up the forumla and introduces us to the possibilities of other characters that might also play wildly different than the cast we are used to.
Overall, Devil May Cry 5 is one of the best sequels to a game. It adds to its existing cast and introduces new concepts; All the while keeping the spirit of the game. Another CAPCOM series that has a lot of sequels is Resident Evil. We can see the history of the game, the first 3 were survival horror, 4 to 6 were more action-oriented, each one more action packed than the last; And the most recent, the 7th installment is back to survival horror but more atmospheric. These genre shifts are definitely more extreme than those by Devil May Cry, so much so that if you just played the games without knowing anything and judged it purely by gameplay, the 1st game and the 6th game might seem like they are from totally different series altogether. I sincerely doubt that the Devil May Cry series will ever go through such drastic changes, though V does represent a suitable amount of change to the core gameplay.
Hopefully we won’t have to wait another 11 years for the next sequel.
