- [Nero ] Come on.
(rock music)
- [Mitch] The first Devil May Cry sparked my love
of action games in general, but as the series has gone on,
it's kept its place in my heart
because they aren't just about killing
every enemy in a room.
They're about how you kill every enemy in a room.
- [Nero] Run from this!
Let's play!
Oh, yeah.
Whoo!
- [Reviewer] Expressing yourself in almost artistic
and highly technical dance of swords, guns,
and lots of jump cancels.
Devil May Cry 5 is the new pinnacle of this particular
subset of the genre.
Thanks to a perfectly paced campaign that mixes in
three completely different play styles,
a fun and satisfying story, and quite simply
one of the best combat systems you'll find in video games.
(gritty techno music)
DMC 5's story is somewhat unconventional in that
it starts with events that would normally
feel like the climax.
You're thrown right into a fight that you're meant to lose.
After Dante stays behind to let Nero
and a new character named V
escape from a super powered demon king named Urizen,
the story jumps around the time period
of a couple of months.
Rotating through perspectives as it tells
the present day story of Dante, Nero, and V.
While also explaining the circumstances that led to
Urizen's rise to power and V's quest to take him down.
There's a great air of mystery to the unknown nature
of both Urizen and V.
Like Nero, I was never sure if I could trust V
and found myself formulating theory after theory
about his identity and motives with every new morsel
of information that was fed to me.
- [V] I have no name. I am but two days old.
Just kidding. You can call me V.
- [Reviewer] By the end of its ten to twelve hour campaign,
I still had some questions left over
but overall the plot kept me hooked
and everything looks and sounds stellar.
(swords clashing)
Devil May Cry 5's combat is absolutely sublime.
Its beauty is in the depth, creative freedom,
and variety its three sets of tools offer.
If you're playing as Nero, those tools are your
revvable Red Queen sword, chargeable Blue Rose handgun,
a grapple that can pull enemies toward you,
and an ever growing arsenal of Devil Breakers.
My favorite of these disposable mechanical arms,
Punchline, shoots out an arm that hones in on an enemy
and keeps them in place with quick rocket punches.
But the real fun starts when you hold down
the Devil Breaker button while Punchline is out,
allowing you to do crazy stuns like these.
- [Nero] Whoo!
Hell yeah!
Whoo!
Punchline!
Okay, okay. That's a good one!
- [Reviewer] Dante's gameplay is by far the most familiar
because he plays almost exactly the same
as his DMC 4 counterpart.
Which is to say that he's essentially a Swiss Army knife
with a few new tools.
He can swap between four distinct styles,
four melee weapons, and four ranged weapons all on the fly.
And then finally, there's V who plays completely
unlike any character in any DMC game due to the fact
that he barely does any of the fighting himself.
Instead, he summons three familiars to do battle for him.
Your familiars can't actually kill anything, though,
so he has to do some pretty cool teleporting around
and deliver the finishing blows.
Using V effectively has a pretty steep learning curve
even by DMC standards
due to the fact that you don't actually have
directional control over your minions.
However, you can use some of your Devil Trigger meter
to have them autonomously attack a target.
Allowing you to focus on dodging, reading a book,
or taunting.
- (sinister laughter)
[V] You make me laugh.
- [Reviewer] These missions are the weakest of the trio
mainly because V's movement feels so much more limited
compared to Dante and Nero.
But that's not to say that they're bad by any stretch.
Once you get a couple of upgrades under your belt
and get used to the flow of combat
V's unique game play becomes quite fun
and it's used sparingly enough to never outstay its welcome.
- [V] So it is written.
(engine revving)
- [Reviewer] Though the DMC games have a bit of a reputation
for being difficult, on its default settings
DMC 5 isn't terribly hard.
When you die you can use a gold orb to revive on the spot
with all your health and Devil Trigger meters refilled.
And those gold orbs?
They're not that hard to come by!
If you do run out, you can also revive with the
much more common red orbs.
Any lack of base difficulty, though, is made up for
with the challenge of getting SSS ranks.
To that end, I sprang at every opportunity
to buy new style building techniques.
Which is rewarding because DMC 5 is paced in such a way
that you are constantly getting new toys
at just about every turn.
By the end of the story, all three of my characters
felt like all powerful gods ready for the
New Game Plus Son of Sparda mode.
Finally, a great combat system isn't worth much
if the enemies aren't fun to fight.
But fortunately, DMC 5's enemies meet the high standards
set by previous games in the series.
There's a great mix of common fodder enemies
that allow you to do basically
whatever you want to them to build your combos;
Tanky enemies that require specific tactics
to bypass their defenses;
and powerful support baddies that can deal big damage
from afar and can be very threatening
if not brought down quickly.
The same goes for bosses with a few of the later fights
being among the strongest the series has ever seen.
(rocking guitar music)
The question of which Devil May Cry game is the best
has gotten much easier with Devil May Cry 5.
The combat is the strongest the series has seen to date.
With a story that does a great job of balancing
all three of its main characters
and doling out rewarding bits of its mysterious story
at an enticing pace.
And the unlockable difficulties, shared number of
techniques to earn, along with the upcoming three
Bloody Palace DLC will provide a ton of incentive
for re-playability.
It's good to have you back, Dante and Nero.
(jazzy dance music)
- [Dante] Yeah!
(explosion)
- [Nico] Whoa, yeah!
- [Reviewer] For more on Devil May Cry,
check out the first minutes of the game!
And for everything else, keep it here on IGN.
("Devil Trigger" by Casey Edwards feat. Ali Edwards)