"Hasn't aged the best" nigga you haven't aged the best
never trust blackloggd users, they will say a game that aged fine aged terrible.
A profoundly misunderstood classic that manages to impresses when stacked up against other games of the time, and effortlessly clears most modern attempts at being a satisfying action game. Even beyond the innovation on display (nobody was doing it like Capcom back in the late 90's/early 2000's) I'm consistently swept off my feet at how enjoyable this game is, even after around 8 personal playthroughs and 21(!) years of further innovation and inspiration in the medium. Dante may be a tad heftier than your modern action protag, but it has the side-effect of forcing you to constantly stay glued to encounters in a way I haven't really seen before. You must consider every step you take and every action you make, it's electrifying. I don't have any ill will towards Itsuno for reinventing the series like he did --who wouldn't after being tasked with scraping together the scattered remains of the last title and still having it come out like crap-- but there's still something here that later entries still have yet to recapture for me. It may not have the glitz and glamor of it's many sequels, but what you get instead is one of the most well considered, tightly paced, and highly rewarding gaming experiences out there.
In one sentence: The Big Bang as recounted by a 14-year-old whose most anticipated movie is The Matrix Reloaded, and whose primary relationship with underwear is being forced to wear it like a monastic robe.
[Hey there. Despite being an action game fan, DMC as a franchise has been a massive blind spot in my backlog. I’m fixing that now, and I figured the insight of fresh(ish) eyes into a storied set of games like this would be interesting to work out with longer reviews. The reviews will be divided into multiple sections, each notated by difficulty and completionist goals set by myself for each playthrough. It’s long, so big thanks for reading!]
I. (Playthrough 1, Normal mode, Any%)
While Character Action (or Stylish Action, or Hack-and-Slash, or what the fuck ever) has the privilege of being a fusion of two genres that saw contemporary success and innovation in their primes, it would be underselling Team Little Devils to imply that anything in Devil May Cry would’ve been possible to achieve through mimicry. After all, the entire conceit of the genre was to, in this stage at least, shift the beat-em-up arcade design into a 3D space, using the only camera technique that unabashedly worked pre-millennium. Similar goals were set for games before this, but all of them that I’ve seen are... shackled, let’s say. While I would argue that a few games, Soul Reaver and Fighting Force as examples, are worthy of a seat at the table(a booster seat, maybe), to my knowledge, DMC is a first in that its action is coherent and stable enough to be the foundation with which the rest of the game rises up in expectation. The limitations set in by its history as a rogue Resident Evil sequel surely had a hand in this, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
There’s no denying that a game released in 2001 looks, talks, and behaves as expected, but the idea of a genre progenitor keeping some kind of pace with the contemporary is so outlandish in the medium of games that rewarding it on this basis alone is understandable. For reference, Yie Ar Kung-Fu had its 20th birthday the same year Tekken 5 released, and Battlezone shares its 20th with a Quake III expansion. With all this said, I’d like to keep the legacy talk at a minimum, as DMC is worth discussing on its own merits.
There’s an almost-cheap totality that this era of Capcom was capable of displaying in their pastiche-y level architecture. The castle is immediately established as an entity in and of itself, groaning out haunted songs and surrounding Dante with unreliable machinations before you even fight an enemy. It would all be exposed as arbitrary level design if it weren’t for 1. the aforementioned wholeness of it all, but much, much more importantly, 2. the pacing this game works in, which is close to perfection?
Granted, the beginning is helped by a string of cheekily short levels with quick capsules of “good job, bud” feedback, but the grip with which you are seeing new things and being given room to stretch your legs is shocking given the lack of trodden genre ground (though paradoxically familiar given the ResiEvil legacy). Not only does this game have good backtracking, it is a thesis on how to imbue familiar spaces with life to match, if not exceed The New (again, RE all day). That said, the last third of the game is lined with some fatiguing content, the height being a stack of sequential boss fights outlined by the one fool that overstays its welcome, Nightmare, totaling to a lot of repeated exposure that could’ve been truncated. Given how some of the early boss fights have outright skips and cheese strategies, it doesn’t seem absurd to imagine a world where Nightmare 1 or 2 is as skippable as Phantom 2 or Griffon 1. This could just be the me that has played this game four fuckin’ times in a month talking, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.
Fluidity is the name of the game in both pacing and combat itself, as Team Little Devils astutely recognized that giving a massive increase to space also meant an increase to potential aimlessness. The stylish rankings are an obvious solution to this, though I’d also include the soft lock-on (as obnoxious as it can be) and barrier-based level design as helping out too. The stylish ranking is really tight in this game - even my little knowledge of future entries knows that the one-and-a-half second window is minuscule by comparison. I thought this was limiting at first, thinking there was some absurdity in knowing that a near-perfect High Time was worthy of punishment despite it still working in the machinations of the game as effectively as one that did fit. And while this is still true, there’s a risk it runs in being too loose that future systems don’t (the game simply lacks the breadth to uphold the stylish combos we eventually see in DMC3 on); besides, with enough time and experience in the game, the system ends up serving its role as an incentive to forego safe spacing and work through mobs of enemies with a purpose, especially as devil trigger becomes a core part of your moveset. Maintaining Absolute! or Stylish! through a crowd is incredibly rewarding given the circumstances, so I’d say it equals out to “worth it” even if you do occasionally reset anticlimactically.
While on the topic, if there’s anything that a passer-by will inevitably call into question, it’s the pool of moves. While it is lighter than future titles in the genre, there’s an assumption that it’s lacking which I think is simply untrue. I mean, think about it: when embarking on a new frontier of design, the main mission is always one of self-contained purpose - you have to answer the questions yourself.
So, if the question is, “why is Dante’s moveset this way?”, the answer lies in the enemy design. As much as I imagine Team Little Devils mourns the lack of intermixed encounters due to technical limitations, they do about as well with single enemies as one could ask for. Each brand has strengths and weaknesses, especially with late-game mobs asking for their share of respect. Luckily, it is rarely a binary system, but instead a gradient of encouragement that, upon discovering either through experimentation or reading lines of enemy dossiers, becomes a reward in and of itself. You coooould fight a frost with Alastor, but busting out Ifrit to lay heavy, rubatoesque chains into an enemy designed around mobility and space control makes for arguably the best feeling moments of the entire game. There’s a call-and-response of sorts with correcting your playstyle for a given encounter that would be much tougher to juggle with a larger pool, so by the end of the game, you do end up using just about everything, minus one or two purchased techniques which feel stubborn in their applications; but hell, even then you could still justify their inclusion with that nebulous “style” you’re after. All this is, besides the pacing, the crowning achievement of the game, so I’m really curious to see if/how future entries continue this alongside the added weapon / character variety and mechanical ornamentation.
II. (Playthrough 2, Normal Mode, S-rank Only, All Blue Orbs & All Secret Missions (I missed one...))
Lofty ambitions for a second playthrough, I know, but I’m no novice to the genre and I wasn’t shying away from external help at this point. Ultimately, the goal was to have a save file up to snuff for DMD Mode, which would be only a short Hard Mode playthrough away considering how the game unlocks difficulties. I had already been exposed to the bullshit-linchpins that are Grenade Rolling and Shotgun Hiking, so hitting par felt like it was more a matter of personal restraint to not hand the game its own ass. However, I immediately hit a blockade at Mission 2, getting A’s and B’s several times in a row despite clearing the requirements that the internet had told me. I did some further research, and discovered the true nature of this game’s ranking system, an act that felt like opening up the ark of the covenant.
I’ll try to keep the explanation simple: besides the obvious requirements of red orbs and time, there are several invisible markers which tally up to a final, also invisible score. Some of these extra conditions make sense even without them being explicitly referred to (damage taken), while others are less immediate in their clarity (entering rooms multiple times). Over the years, I’ve settled one definition of games as a space to take rules, things people usually dislike, and uphold them for their artistic sake. Well, here you go - here are those rules you ordered.
I mostly mean it as a joke, but ranking systems in games like this do hold the risk of backfiring, or at least becoming numbing attributes. Seasoned Character Action-ers already know that *A* playthrough is rarely enough, as the game’s early judgments are bound to be the equivalent of a teacher scolding you before you hand your homework in. And while DMC’s is far from bad, my read on it is one of a hungover teacher. I would get strange rankings both positive and negative, and even with an internalized knowledge of how it works, I’d still have to occasionally assume one to two things in order to justify the letter on the screen. If these Character Action grading systems are performance tests, then my performance had, at the final step, been rendered inert. While I have since gotten over these requirements, accepting their nature and even enjoying the trek to all S-ranks, I can’t help but think of the legacy of this game’s ranking system as being ineffably lenient, a sentiment that is briefly untrue until, well, it ends up being true again.
As for the rest of the conditions I set for myself, the secret missions vary in quality, though I did find some of them to be absurdly funny for a man like Dante to waste time doing (the sargasso staircase is an interesting way to teach enemy stepping, but also the image of 20+ skulls chattering their teeth at you when you fail is perfect video gaming). I always find some respect for something that’s earned the “Secret” title in a game, so needless to say these missions get some incredulous stares followed by a salute for the brave soldiers that rubbed up against everything Doomguy-style to find them. Lord knows I’m not in those ranks - I just read their memoirs.
III. (Playthroughs 3-4, Hard & Dante Must Die Mode, Any%)
After two playthroughs, one an attempt at genuine perfectionism, I had grown pretty resilient to the game’s standard set of challenges. Hard ended up feeling a little passé, in all honesty - once you learn the optimal strategy for every enemy type, they’ll very rarely cause problems. Another unfortunate side effect of the game’s single-enemy encounters is that the same schtick works regardless of the external pressures. Of course, not all was lost - this playthrough probably ended up being the most fun purely due to the range of options I had unlocked finally narrowing down into usable tools. It was here that the game became about mastery, and I like to think I- Oh fuck.
Hard is the setup, Dante Must Die is the punchline. Emphasis on “punch.”
Though the structure of DMD resembles Hard Mode, no-one can properly anticipate how the little changes end up feeling until the moment arrives and a single marionette becomes threatening. The DT timer is a genuine stroke of genius, as the tension missing from Hard for me had skidded into the driveway at the thought of a Blade becoming a mini-boss in its own right, super-armoring its way through every move as I struggle to conjure 3 blue runes into existence to stand a single chance. However, this was exciting, and in a strange way, felt like the final missing link between this game and the Survival Horror roots it was indebted to.
Of course, anyone familiar likely knows that the DT timer is a red herring. The true namesake of this difficulty lies in the newly bolstered boss fights, each of which is simply embarrassed with health. Nearly every fight, with the exception of Phantom 2, has transmogrified into an endurance run now, pinning the meter completely into defense. You simply cannot sustain offense perfect enough to deal any appreciable damage to them, so you’re left to resort to turtling. Give me the best pattern, as often as you can, while I thunk grenades for 3 and a half minutes. Please, God, do not do that move. I want to go to bed happy.
I’m on the other side of it now, so I can say with full-throated confidence that playing Devil May Cry 1 on DMD Mode this early on in my experience with the game was a flat-out terrible idea. It is clearly asking for absolute mastery of every move, pattern recognition that could only be gained through legitimate study, and, worst of all for me, a level of zen that rivals that of a monk. Nightmare 2, Nightmare 3, and Mundus are collectively some of the most excruciating experiences I’ve had in games, and barring the occasional bullshit pattern, it was self-inflicted. Kamiya played me, fair and square. Excuse me while I block myself.
[Hey there. Despite being an action game fan, DMC as a franchise has been a massive blind spot in my backlog. I’m fixing that now, and I figured the insight of fresh(ish) eyes into a storied set of games like this would be interesting to work out with longer reviews. The reviews will be divided into multiple sections, each notated by difficulty and completionist goals set by myself for each playthrough. It’s long, so big thanks for reading!]
I. (Playthrough 1, Normal mode, Any%)
While Character Action (or Stylish Action, or Hack-and-Slash, or what the fuck ever) has the privilege of being a fusion of two genres that saw contemporary success and innovation in their primes, it would be underselling Team Little Devils to imply that anything in Devil May Cry would’ve been possible to achieve through mimicry. After all, the entire conceit of the genre was to, in this stage at least, shift the beat-em-up arcade design into a 3D space, using the only camera technique that unabashedly worked pre-millennium. Similar goals were set for games before this, but all of them that I’ve seen are... shackled, let’s say. While I would argue that a few games, Soul Reaver and Fighting Force as examples, are worthy of a seat at the table
There’s no denying that a game released in 2001 looks, talks, and behaves as expected, but the idea of a genre progenitor keeping some kind of pace with the contemporary is so outlandish in the medium of games that rewarding it on this basis alone is understandable. For reference, Yie Ar Kung-Fu had its 20th birthday the same year Tekken 5 released, and Battlezone shares its 20th with a Quake III expansion. With all this said, I’d like to keep the legacy talk at a minimum, as DMC is worth discussing on its own merits.
There’s an almost-cheap totality that this era of Capcom was capable of displaying in their pastiche-y level architecture. The castle is immediately established as an entity in and of itself, groaning out haunted songs and surrounding Dante with unreliable machinations before you even fight an enemy. It would all be exposed as arbitrary level design if it weren’t for 1. the aforementioned wholeness of it all, but much, much more importantly, 2. the pacing this game works in, which is close to perfection?
Granted, the beginning is helped by a string of cheekily short levels with quick capsules of “good job, bud” feedback, but the grip with which you are seeing new things and being given room to stretch your legs is shocking given the lack of trodden genre ground (though paradoxically familiar given the ResiEvil legacy). Not only does this game have good backtracking, it is a thesis on how to imbue familiar spaces with life to match, if not exceed The New (again, RE all day). That said, the last third of the game is lined with some fatiguing content, the height being a stack of sequential boss fights outlined by the one fool that overstays its welcome, Nightmare, totaling to a lot of repeated exposure that could’ve been truncated. Given how some of the early boss fights have outright skips and cheese strategies, it doesn’t seem absurd to imagine a world where Nightmare 1 or 2 is as skippable as Phantom 2 or Griffon 1. This could just be the me that has played this game four fuckin’ times in a month talking, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.
Fluidity is the name of the game in both pacing and combat itself, as Team Little Devils astutely recognized that giving a massive increase to space also meant an increase to potential aimlessness. The stylish rankings are an obvious solution to this, though I’d also include the soft lock-on (as obnoxious as it can be) and barrier-based level design as helping out too. The stylish ranking is really tight in this game - even my little knowledge of future entries knows that the one-and-a-half second window is minuscule by comparison. I thought this was limiting at first, thinking there was some absurdity in knowing that a near-perfect High Time was worthy of punishment despite it still working in the machinations of the game as effectively as one that did fit. And while this is still true, there’s a risk it runs in being too loose that future systems don’t (the game simply lacks the breadth to uphold the stylish combos we eventually see in DMC3 on); besides, with enough time and experience in the game, the system ends up serving its role as an incentive to forego safe spacing and work through mobs of enemies with a purpose, especially as devil trigger becomes a core part of your moveset. Maintaining Absolute! or Stylish! through a crowd is incredibly rewarding given the circumstances, so I’d say it equals out to “worth it” even if you do occasionally reset anticlimactically.
While on the topic, if there’s anything that a passer-by will inevitably call into question, it’s the pool of moves. While it is lighter than future titles in the genre, there’s an assumption that it’s lacking which I think is simply untrue. I mean, think about it: when embarking on a new frontier of design, the main mission is always one of self-contained purpose - you have to answer the questions yourself.
So, if the question is, “why is Dante’s moveset this way?”, the answer lies in the enemy design. As much as I imagine Team Little Devils mourns the lack of intermixed encounters due to technical limitations, they do about as well with single enemies as one could ask for. Each brand has strengths and weaknesses, especially with late-game mobs asking for their share of respect. Luckily, it is rarely a binary system, but instead a gradient of encouragement that, upon discovering either through experimentation or reading lines of enemy dossiers, becomes a reward in and of itself. You coooould fight a frost with Alastor, but busting out Ifrit to lay heavy, rubatoesque chains into an enemy designed around mobility and space control makes for arguably the best feeling moments of the entire game. There’s a call-and-response of sorts with correcting your playstyle for a given encounter that would be much tougher to juggle with a larger pool, so by the end of the game, you do end up using just about everything, minus one or two purchased techniques which feel stubborn in their applications; but hell, even then you could still justify their inclusion with that nebulous “style” you’re after. All this is, besides the pacing, the crowning achievement of the game, so I’m really curious to see if/how future entries continue this alongside the added weapon / character variety and mechanical ornamentation.
II. (Playthrough 2, Normal Mode, S-rank Only, All Blue Orbs & All Secret Missions (I missed one...))
Lofty ambitions for a second playthrough, I know, but I’m no novice to the genre and I wasn’t shying away from external help at this point. Ultimately, the goal was to have a save file up to snuff for DMD Mode, which would be only a short Hard Mode playthrough away considering how the game unlocks difficulties. I had already been exposed to the bullshit-linchpins that are Grenade Rolling and Shotgun Hiking, so hitting par felt like it was more a matter of personal restraint to not hand the game its own ass. However, I immediately hit a blockade at Mission 2, getting A’s and B’s several times in a row despite clearing the requirements that the internet had told me. I did some further research, and discovered the true nature of this game’s ranking system, an act that felt like opening up the ark of the covenant.
I’ll try to keep the explanation simple: besides the obvious requirements of red orbs and time, there are several invisible markers which tally up to a final, also invisible score. Some of these extra conditions make sense even without them being explicitly referred to (damage taken), while others are less immediate in their clarity (entering rooms multiple times). Over the years, I’ve settled one definition of games as a space to take rules, things people usually dislike, and uphold them for their artistic sake. Well, here you go - here are those rules you ordered.
I mostly mean it as a joke, but ranking systems in games like this do hold the risk of backfiring, or at least becoming numbing attributes. Seasoned Character Action-ers already know that *A* playthrough is rarely enough, as the game’s early judgments are bound to be the equivalent of a teacher scolding you before you hand your homework in. And while DMC’s is far from bad, my read on it is one of a hungover teacher. I would get strange rankings both positive and negative, and even with an internalized knowledge of how it works, I’d still have to occasionally assume one to two things in order to justify the letter on the screen. If these Character Action grading systems are performance tests, then my performance had, at the final step, been rendered inert. While I have since gotten over these requirements, accepting their nature and even enjoying the trek to all S-ranks, I can’t help but think of the legacy of this game’s ranking system as being ineffably lenient, a sentiment that is briefly untrue until, well, it ends up being true again.
As for the rest of the conditions I set for myself, the secret missions vary in quality, though I did find some of them to be absurdly funny for a man like Dante to waste time doing (the sargasso staircase is an interesting way to teach enemy stepping, but also the image of 20+ skulls chattering their teeth at you when you fail is perfect video gaming). I always find some respect for something that’s earned the “Secret” title in a game, so needless to say these missions get some incredulous stares followed by a salute for the brave soldiers that rubbed up against everything Doomguy-style to find them. Lord knows I’m not in those ranks - I just read their memoirs.
III. (Playthroughs 3-4, Hard & Dante Must Die Mode, Any%)
After two playthroughs, one an attempt at genuine perfectionism, I had grown pretty resilient to the game’s standard set of challenges. Hard ended up feeling a little passé, in all honesty - once you learn the optimal strategy for every enemy type, they’ll very rarely cause problems. Another unfortunate side effect of the game’s single-enemy encounters is that the same schtick works regardless of the external pressures. Of course, not all was lost - this playthrough probably ended up being the most fun purely due to the range of options I had unlocked finally narrowing down into usable tools. It was here that the game became about mastery, and I like to think I- Oh fuck.
Hard is the setup, Dante Must Die is the punchline. Emphasis on “punch.”
Though the structure of DMD resembles Hard Mode, no-one can properly anticipate how the little changes end up feeling until the moment arrives and a single marionette becomes threatening. The DT timer is a genuine stroke of genius, as the tension missing from Hard for me had skidded into the driveway at the thought of a Blade becoming a mini-boss in its own right, super-armoring its way through every move as I struggle to conjure 3 blue runes into existence to stand a single chance. However, this was exciting, and in a strange way, felt like the final missing link between this game and the Survival Horror roots it was indebted to.
Of course, anyone familiar likely knows that the DT timer is a red herring. The true namesake of this difficulty lies in the newly bolstered boss fights, each of which is simply embarrassed with health. Nearly every fight, with the exception of Phantom 2, has transmogrified into an endurance run now, pinning the meter completely into defense. You simply cannot sustain offense perfect enough to deal any appreciable damage to them, so you’re left to resort to turtling. Give me the best pattern, as often as you can, while I thunk grenades for 3 and a half minutes. Please, God, do not do that move. I want to go to bed happy.
I’m on the other side of it now, so I can say with full-throated confidence that playing Devil May Cry 1 on DMD Mode this early on in my experience with the game was a flat-out terrible idea. It is clearly asking for absolute mastery of every move, pattern recognition that could only be gained through legitimate study, and, worst of all for me, a level of zen that rivals that of a monk. Nightmare 2, Nightmare 3, and Mundus are collectively some of the most excruciating experiences I’ve had in games, and barring the occasional bullshit pattern, it was self-inflicted. Kamiya played me, fair and square. Excuse me while I block myself.
Devil May Cry is a series I knew virtually nothing about before I played this, but if the rest of the series is like this game I can see why people like it so much. The Basic gameplay loop of fighting enemies by executing different moves and combos and collecting the red orbs they drop to get upgrades was pretty satisfying and addictive and the mission level structure felt pretty good and made sure no section outstayed it's welcome. The game's setting and atmosphere reminded me a lot of Resident Evil in ways, a secluded island with a large manor and evil creatures dwelling within it made for a really interesting place to explore and I was always wondering where the game would take me next. Probably my favorite thing about the game was just how damn goofy it was in the best way possible. Though he didn't get many lines seeing as the gameplay was clearly the main focus here, almost every word out of Dante's mouth was a riot, combine that with incredible early 2000s voice overacting, and I can see why people love this silly character so much. Apart from just Dante though, the story, dialogue, and overall vibe of the game felt cheesy in a way that felt endearing and I absolutely loved it. My only real complaint with the game were it's boss fights, some of them were ridiculously easy while others were punishingly difficult and there really was no in between. On top of that the game reused the same four bosses over and over and it just didn't feel that fun to fight the same thing over and over again as opposed to something original. Apart from that the game only allowed you to save at the end of levels (at least as far as I could find) meaning if you died in a level and didn't have any yellow orbs left to revive you then you had to restart the whole level over again which just took me out of the game a few times during difficult missions, overall this is more of a symptom of being an older video game rather than a problem with DMC specifically, but it still wasn't great. On the whole though, I really enjoyed Devil May Cry and look forward to playing more of this series.
Man, there's something about the Capcom games of this era. The early Monster Hunters, Resident Evil 4, and now Devil May Cry, they have an ambience that just feels like home to me.
Revolutionary when it came out, and honestly it hasn’t aged the worst. Combat still holds up fairly well, and while simple compared to character action games even just a couple years down the line, there wouldn't be character action games down the line if not for this. It does come with drawbacks however. You can definitely tell this was a repurposed Resident Evil game. The slower pace, the lock and key style progression, the annoying fixed camera angles, not to mention the game has a very economical feel to it with a lot of reused enemies and boss encounters. The platforming segments as well really annoyed me, demanding precision of you that the game isn’t reliably capable of. And lastly I found there was some pretty wild variance in how long and how difficult some missions were compared to others. Some only ask something trivial of you, like “leave this room,” then you’ll have others like “find this mcguffin, carry it all the way across the map, figure out this obtuse puzzle, navigate this horseshit invisible platforming course, then beat this boss who has a move that sends you to fight a whole ass other boss among those you’ve already faced EVERY single time it hits you, and if you use up all your lives you gotta do the whole thing all over again. Good luck dick face.”
Hiccups aside though, there’s a very solid foundation here and it definitely raises my expectations of what’s to come.
Revolutionary when it came out, and honestly it hasn’t aged the worst. Combat still holds up fairly well, and while simple compared to character action games even just a couple years down the line, there wouldn't be character action games down the line if not for this. It does come with drawbacks however. You can definitely tell this was a repurposed Resident Evil game. The slower pace, the lock and key style progression, the annoying fixed camera angles, not to mention the game has a very economical feel to it with a lot of reused enemies and boss encounters. The platforming segments as well really annoyed me, demanding precision of you that the game isn’t reliably capable of. And lastly I found there was some pretty wild variance in how long and how difficult some missions were compared to others. Some only ask something trivial of you, like “leave this room,” then you’ll have others like “find this mcguffin, carry it all the way across the map, figure out this obtuse puzzle, navigate this horseshit invisible platforming course, then beat this boss who has a move that sends you to fight a whole ass other boss among those you’ve already faced EVERY single time it hits you, and if you use up all your lives you gotta do the whole thing all over again. Good luck dick face.”
Hiccups aside though, there’s a very solid foundation here and it definitely raises my expectations of what’s to come.
An excellent first title to a fantastic game series. Combat is a bit more simple compared to future DMC titles but this game is a good predecessor to those, has a pretty fair level of difficulty, and has a unique charm of its own that later games in the series were never able to recapture. Some bosses can be annoying. Nightmare can go to Hell.
the definition of “FUCK THIS GAME continues to play it”
I am completly baffeld. This is what started the character action genre ? Its been a while since I playd a game that activly fights you having fun with every mechanic it has. My previous experience with the franchise was only DMC 3 aswell as the Reboot and I liked them quit a bit. So I thought I should play the other DMC games largely considerd "the good ones". Guess I was wrong, this sucked.
PEAK
This is one of the games people say it's a remake, alongside titles like Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and FF7 if that didn't already happen.
I'll skip to the chase, this game rocks and people who say it needs a remake should remake their own ugly ass. The combat while simple is still really enjoyable, due to the fact that the actual button to an attack is mapped onto one button and to actually pull off different moves you have press the attack button at different times to pull off different moves. You still get moves you have to move the left analogy stick a certain way to pull of an attack, like for example stinger and such.
The atmosphere is great as well, the colours and shadows give it a very unique feeling to the game along side it being set in a castle on a island. I'm sure if this was remade by it would be really lame and gay.
That being said, the camera fucking sucks dick, you can tell this was a RE game at some point with it having fixed camera angels. While it gives a lot cool shots for me to screenshot on my steam, it fucked me over a lot during my playthrough and just was a massive pain in the ass sometimes.
But overall, it's still a very fun game. I would play hard mode but since uni starts on Tuesday for me, I won't have as much time. Thanks to the Queen for dying tho and delaying me starting uni by a day tho, appreciate a lot.
I'll skip to the chase, this game rocks and people who say it needs a remake should remake their own ugly ass. The combat while simple is still really enjoyable, due to the fact that the actual button to an attack is mapped onto one button and to actually pull off different moves you have press the attack button at different times to pull off different moves. You still get moves you have to move the left analogy stick a certain way to pull of an attack, like for example stinger and such.
The atmosphere is great as well, the colours and shadows give it a very unique feeling to the game along side it being set in a castle on a island. I'm sure if this was remade by it would be really lame and gay.
That being said, the camera fucking sucks dick, you can tell this was a RE game at some point with it having fixed camera angels. While it gives a lot cool shots for me to screenshot on my steam, it fucked me over a lot during my playthrough and just was a massive pain in the ass sometimes.
But overall, it's still a very fun game. I would play hard mode but since uni starts on Tuesday for me, I won't have as much time. Thanks to the Queen for dying tho and delaying me starting uni by a day tho, appreciate a lot.
i played this game at least 5 times in these 2 years and thats because for one reason or the other between changing pc deleting my saves as a mistake or like corrupting everything or just forgetting to complete the game and putting it in the trash bin it's just my relationship with this game is so fucked up I swear to fucking god
im not gonna get into the aged or not aged debate because its a fine game and can be playable nowadays the end
this is a series so hyped that I was kind of let down at how messy this game can get sometimes but boy do I think this is great altogether
dmc has a story laughably simple and straightforward in my opinion and there's some weird bits and lines that were kind of out there I SHOULDVE BEEN THE ONE TO FEEL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIGHT but this is my opinion I think gay furry +18 sci-fi political visual novel adastra is peak fiction so I don't think I have any saying in this
arguably the earliest example of hack and slash I know of im probably wrong there's gonna be some other hack and slash out there before this one but yeah
so basically the entirety of the gameplay is you have dante you know dante the hot sexy hunk straight out of shin megami tensei 3 going around slashing demons while himself he's a demon BOMB hes swag hes cool he swings a big sword with no hands umh zzzzzzz dante is hella fine
you got a sword and later you can acquire some different weapons to switch up your arse anal a bit and just keep going bare fucking every marionette / demon / witch / big birds you have in your way my fav ones are the knuckles umh no what we're they boxing gloves ok whatever you know the ones
there's a demon form that gives you more damage and cooler moves and you can purchase some upgrades for the weapons upgrades for the health and demon form time and some other stuff its a great time
the ost blasting in my ears pouring heavy rock based honey in them is what kept me going to be honest because there's some stuff that I don't particularly enjoy and kind of frustrated me and the stuff is known as every boss in this game
I have no idea why if this is about a ps2 canon or they tried to make the bosses difficult by giving them the most senseless movements and movesets I've ever witnessed and to bring this issue even further youre going to battle each one of them at least like 5 times this game loves recycling bosses to hell and when my entire problem with this is the bosses it's not looking good for it
I honestly hate every boss battle in this game apart from like the last one which is v cool imo even if somehow clunky af too like the most enjoyable part of the game is definitely running through hordes of enemies punching their faces and thats it so its mind boggling to me why they needed to put these incredibly frustrating boss battles but its fine
all in all enjoyed it a bit too much for my own good even if as I said the game kind of wanted me to hate it but I just couldn't
idk if its the fact that it's so short (like 4 hours or something) or just the sheer joy of slashing demons while that ass shaking battle theme plays out I end up being a little bit biased towards it but yeah
umh maybe that's it ? as I said idk this is kind of a straightforward game all around there's not too much to say about it . it's definitely a classic for good reasons and I want dante to fist me so I can understand the sentiment of ever dmc fag around here
+trish is a girlboss but her characterisation is bad femme fatale and her motives are kind of poopy ass but she's hot af and I want her to spank me so I will say she's my second fav character (because I only know 2 characters in this series for now and dante takes the cake and I sure hope he takes my cake kiss)
ps I played the HD collection lalalalalala
im not gonna get into the aged or not aged debate because its a fine game and can be playable nowadays the end
this is a series so hyped that I was kind of let down at how messy this game can get sometimes but boy do I think this is great altogether
dmc has a story laughably simple and straightforward in my opinion and there's some weird bits and lines that were kind of out there I SHOULDVE BEEN THE ONE TO FEEL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIGHT but this is my opinion I think gay furry +18 sci-fi political visual novel adastra is peak fiction so I don't think I have any saying in this
arguably the earliest example of hack and slash I know of im probably wrong there's gonna be some other hack and slash out there before this one but yeah
so basically the entirety of the gameplay is you have dante you know dante the hot sexy hunk straight out of shin megami tensei 3 going around slashing demons while himself he's a demon BOMB hes swag hes cool he swings a big sword with no hands umh zzzzzzz dante is hella fine
you got a sword and later you can acquire some different weapons to switch up your arse anal a bit and just keep going bare fucking every marionette / demon / witch / big birds you have in your way my fav ones are the knuckles umh no what we're they boxing gloves ok whatever you know the ones
there's a demon form that gives you more damage and cooler moves and you can purchase some upgrades for the weapons upgrades for the health and demon form time and some other stuff its a great time
the ost blasting in my ears pouring heavy rock based honey in them is what kept me going to be honest because there's some stuff that I don't particularly enjoy and kind of frustrated me and the stuff is known as every boss in this game
I have no idea why if this is about a ps2 canon or they tried to make the bosses difficult by giving them the most senseless movements and movesets I've ever witnessed and to bring this issue even further youre going to battle each one of them at least like 5 times this game loves recycling bosses to hell and when my entire problem with this is the bosses it's not looking good for it
I honestly hate every boss battle in this game apart from like the last one which is v cool imo even if somehow clunky af too like the most enjoyable part of the game is definitely running through hordes of enemies punching their faces and thats it so its mind boggling to me why they needed to put these incredibly frustrating boss battles but its fine
all in all enjoyed it a bit too much for my own good even if as I said the game kind of wanted me to hate it but I just couldn't
idk if its the fact that it's so short (like 4 hours or something) or just the sheer joy of slashing demons while that ass shaking battle theme plays out I end up being a little bit biased towards it but yeah
umh maybe that's it ? as I said idk this is kind of a straightforward game all around there's not too much to say about it . it's definitely a classic for good reasons and I want dante to fist me so I can understand the sentiment of ever dmc fag around here
+trish is a girlboss but her characterisation is bad femme fatale and her motives are kind of poopy ass but she's hot af and I want her to spank me so I will say she's my second fav character (because I only know 2 characters in this series for now and dante takes the cake and I sure hope he takes my cake kiss)
ps I played the HD collection lalalalalala
why did they have a biplane sitting in the sewers
A true classic of a game. Devil May Cry is the foundation for the idea of every modern "character action" video game. A tight combat system that at surface level is basic, but still fun to interact with. But with advanced mechanics, the combat system opens up, allowing players to push the skill ceiling and take advantage of what the game can offer to the player in terms of movement and combos. The gothic setting is quite unsettling, there were parts of the game where I felt creeped out due to the dark surroundings, the classical music that plays while roaming around the castle brings an ambience that is unique to this game. The soundtrack is very solid, so many iconic tracks that make each battle feel unique and match the enemies you are fighting. It also can enhance the environment with the tracks that play while not fighting enemies. Everyone already knows this at this point, but due to the game being a scrapped version of Resident Evil 4, there are elements of the classic Resident Evil formula present throughout the game. That being said, it usually just entails picking up an item from one portion of the level and bringing it back to a location. Puzzles are very basic and only serve as minor obstacles to pad out mission time. The big flaws in this game stem from the camera. Due to this being a former version of Resident Evil 4, the set camera angles are present. But the game doesn't have the tank controls that Resident Evil has, so it makes running around the castle awkward and clunky, the camera doesn't want to behave properly in tighter areas and in boss fights. Jank? Absolutely. A loose lock on system in this game also makes fighting awkward at times, most notably during the Nightmare fights. The platforming is really bad and is the one thing in this game that can be thrown away and wouldn't negatively impact the game. That being said however, it is still a pretty good game and is a game that I recommend everyone tries at least once as a way to dive into the hack and slash genre.
Vídeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjTO1k1Q_8
Onde uma árvore cresce mais rápido: no campo ou no meio de uma grande cidade?
Existe um termo em Game design sobre o jogo se fazer por conta própria, geralmente atribuído a jogos que têm uma mecânica principal tão inventiva e robusta que se ramifica quase naturalmente em submecânicas e dinâmicas diferentes e igualmente inventivas. O resultado desse processo criativo geralmente são jogos que surpreendem do começo até o final e demonstram um domínio de seu núcleo de gameplay que torna o level design intuitivo e coeso. Seria o game design emergindo de forma quase espontânea.
Geralmente, esse fenômeno acontece em uma atmosfera saudável de desenvolvimento e cooperação, mas eu acredito na existência de outro tipo de game design emergente, um que, apesar de muitas falhas, suas exceções florescem em uma essência imponente e até criam raízes fortes dentro da cultura de jogos.
Apesar de uma árvore seguir o processo natural de vida em um campo ou floresta remota, um estudo publicado na Scientific Reports indica que árvores podem crescer mais rápido em certas cidades devido ao fenômeno da ilha de calor. Ilhas de calor são caracterizadas pelo aumento acentuado de temperatura em cidades grandes e estão diretamente ligadas à modificação do meio ambiente pelo ser humano, como o desmatamento, a drenagem de rios e lagos, e, claro, o concreto e a poluição, que criam um microclima que pode ser de 3 a 10 graus mais elevado do que o normal. Grosseiramente falando, o caos das cidades cria uma estufa acidental que favorece o crescimento das árvores. Quem diria, não é?
Portanto, vamos imaginar esse bravo jardineiro amador que se sente corajoso o suficiente para plantar uma árvore grande no quintal de sua casa e escolhe plantar um Plátano, uma árvore linda e muito simbólica, não apenas por sua representação no panteão grego (que falaremos logo mais), mas também por ser uma árvore que cresce muito e muito rapidamente, especialmente em ambientes extremamente urbanos. Apesar de nosso jardineiro estar cuidando muito bem dela, ela aos poucos cresce sem a necessidade de seu jardineiro e muito logo, é um ser que o jardineiro não consegue mais controlar. O Plátano se molda ao seu ambiente, com vida própria e com uma capacidade entrópica de crescimento. Devil May Cry é exatamente esse Plátano para mim.
Devil May Cry é uma obra anárquica em contexto, que surge como a prole de uma entropia que só pode ser cultivada em um ambiente caótico, incerto e poluído. Eu não conheço o desenvolvimento de Devil May Cry, mas sua história ecoa em substância, tornando-se, como todo jogo acidentalmente criativo e emergente, deslumbrante.
Esse jogo possui 3 camadas que expressam intensamente. A primeira delas é uma faceta rasa, mas criativamente competente, de survival horror. Uma gestão de recursos que, a princípio, parece até sem sentido, mas vai se moldando à medida que o jogo cresce, se mostrando parte vital não apenas de suas mecânicas, mas também de seu carisma e substância. Em survival horror, no geral, se espera fragilidade. Precisamos nos ater aos recursos, pois eles fazem parte da casca vulnerável e, até mesmo, incompetente. Fazer o que queremos muitas vezes não é intuitivo e, em grande parte, nos veremos em um labirinto de chaves e portões, estaremos presos com criaturas monstruosas ou ameaçadoras.
Essa primeira camada colide com outra camada relacionada a Hack n slash e character action. Nesses tipos de jogos, esperamos POWER CREEP e estaremos o tempo todo sujeitos a testes de habilidade com botões. Reflexos, timing e precisão fazem parte das exigências de gameplay de um jogo em que somos, geralmente, deuses ou criaturas extramundanas. Tal qual em God of War, Darksiders, El Shaddai, em Devil May Cry nos apoiamos em entidades mitológicas para desconectar a protagonista do mundo material e trazer ainda mais a ideia de um ser poderoso e destruidor. Hack and slash brinca com poder e a capacidade mecânica de fazer o que quiser em termos de golpes, geralmente, os monstros estão presos com essa entidade divina ameaçadora.
Essas duas camadas possuem contrastes claros em ideias e projeções. Poderíamos esperar que elas não funcionassem bem juntas, mas Devil May Cry tem uma terceira camada que une esses dois opostos em uma prole essencialmente completa.
Dante é a camada que emulsiona os contrastes criativos e filosóficos do design de Devil May Cry.
Se voltarmos ao nosso imaginário caso anterior, um grande Plátano no meio de uma cidade pode parecer contrastante, mas para o panteão grego, essa seria uma paisagem que simbolizaria a passagem de Teofrasto, em que Creta tinha uma cidade com um grande Plátano, a árvore de Helena e as Ninfas. Esse Plátano era especial, pois suas folhas nunca teriam caído, acredita-se que sob sua copa teria acontecido um casamento de deuses, tornando-a uma árvore santa e eterna. Esse contraste entre o natural e o não natural pode ser relacionado contextualmente com um simbolismo tão simples quanto a espécie de uma árvore protagonista.
Em Devil May Cry, iniciei um jogo edgy e impenetrável sobre poder. Um personagem que parecia uma carapaça adolescente e implacável, como esperado de um hack and slash de PS2. A minha surpresa foi terminar um jogo sensível e vulnerável sobre orfandade.
Dante é um personagem ríspido, mas que com o tempo se mostra cheio de ternura e simplicidade. Dante é amoroso, sensível e suas tristezas florescem como poder, mas também com fragilidade e vulnerabilidade. Isso se torna mais forte ao final do jogo quando percebemos que Devil May Cry é sobre família e sua falta na vida de Dante, um personagem que, sem pai e sem mãe, busca um significado em coisas simples como a espada de seu pai, o brasão de família e uma mulher que parece sua mãe. Na busca por vingança, Dante terá conflitos com esses símbolos familiares e até enfrentará e matará o próprio irmão, Dante chega a ser digno de pena. Ao final do jogo, Dante está derretido e sua faceta indestrutível dá espaço a uma ternura suculenta que se mistura perfeitamente às mecânicas vulneráveis e implacáveis de Devil May Cry.
Dante é maior do que Devil May Cry mecanicamente, mas também substancialmente. Essa receita caótica desabrocha em um enorme e lindo Plátano no meio de uma selva de pedra impossível.
Dante é, de fato, filho de duas entidades platonicamente opostas.
Onde uma árvore cresce mais rápido: no campo ou no meio de uma grande cidade?
Existe um termo em Game design sobre o jogo se fazer por conta própria, geralmente atribuído a jogos que têm uma mecânica principal tão inventiva e robusta que se ramifica quase naturalmente em submecânicas e dinâmicas diferentes e igualmente inventivas. O resultado desse processo criativo geralmente são jogos que surpreendem do começo até o final e demonstram um domínio de seu núcleo de gameplay que torna o level design intuitivo e coeso. Seria o game design emergindo de forma quase espontânea.
Geralmente, esse fenômeno acontece em uma atmosfera saudável de desenvolvimento e cooperação, mas eu acredito na existência de outro tipo de game design emergente, um que, apesar de muitas falhas, suas exceções florescem em uma essência imponente e até criam raízes fortes dentro da cultura de jogos.
Apesar de uma árvore seguir o processo natural de vida em um campo ou floresta remota, um estudo publicado na Scientific Reports indica que árvores podem crescer mais rápido em certas cidades devido ao fenômeno da ilha de calor. Ilhas de calor são caracterizadas pelo aumento acentuado de temperatura em cidades grandes e estão diretamente ligadas à modificação do meio ambiente pelo ser humano, como o desmatamento, a drenagem de rios e lagos, e, claro, o concreto e a poluição, que criam um microclima que pode ser de 3 a 10 graus mais elevado do que o normal. Grosseiramente falando, o caos das cidades cria uma estufa acidental que favorece o crescimento das árvores. Quem diria, não é?
Portanto, vamos imaginar esse bravo jardineiro amador que se sente corajoso o suficiente para plantar uma árvore grande no quintal de sua casa e escolhe plantar um Plátano, uma árvore linda e muito simbólica, não apenas por sua representação no panteão grego (que falaremos logo mais), mas também por ser uma árvore que cresce muito e muito rapidamente, especialmente em ambientes extremamente urbanos. Apesar de nosso jardineiro estar cuidando muito bem dela, ela aos poucos cresce sem a necessidade de seu jardineiro e muito logo, é um ser que o jardineiro não consegue mais controlar. O Plátano se molda ao seu ambiente, com vida própria e com uma capacidade entrópica de crescimento. Devil May Cry é exatamente esse Plátano para mim.
Devil May Cry é uma obra anárquica em contexto, que surge como a prole de uma entropia que só pode ser cultivada em um ambiente caótico, incerto e poluído. Eu não conheço o desenvolvimento de Devil May Cry, mas sua história ecoa em substância, tornando-se, como todo jogo acidentalmente criativo e emergente, deslumbrante.
Esse jogo possui 3 camadas que expressam intensamente. A primeira delas é uma faceta rasa, mas criativamente competente, de survival horror. Uma gestão de recursos que, a princípio, parece até sem sentido, mas vai se moldando à medida que o jogo cresce, se mostrando parte vital não apenas de suas mecânicas, mas também de seu carisma e substância. Em survival horror, no geral, se espera fragilidade. Precisamos nos ater aos recursos, pois eles fazem parte da casca vulnerável e, até mesmo, incompetente. Fazer o que queremos muitas vezes não é intuitivo e, em grande parte, nos veremos em um labirinto de chaves e portões, estaremos presos com criaturas monstruosas ou ameaçadoras.
Essa primeira camada colide com outra camada relacionada a Hack n slash e character action. Nesses tipos de jogos, esperamos POWER CREEP e estaremos o tempo todo sujeitos a testes de habilidade com botões. Reflexos, timing e precisão fazem parte das exigências de gameplay de um jogo em que somos, geralmente, deuses ou criaturas extramundanas. Tal qual em God of War, Darksiders, El Shaddai, em Devil May Cry nos apoiamos em entidades mitológicas para desconectar a protagonista do mundo material e trazer ainda mais a ideia de um ser poderoso e destruidor. Hack and slash brinca com poder e a capacidade mecânica de fazer o que quiser em termos de golpes, geralmente, os monstros estão presos com essa entidade divina ameaçadora.
Essas duas camadas possuem contrastes claros em ideias e projeções. Poderíamos esperar que elas não funcionassem bem juntas, mas Devil May Cry tem uma terceira camada que une esses dois opostos em uma prole essencialmente completa.
Dante é a camada que emulsiona os contrastes criativos e filosóficos do design de Devil May Cry.
Se voltarmos ao nosso imaginário caso anterior, um grande Plátano no meio de uma cidade pode parecer contrastante, mas para o panteão grego, essa seria uma paisagem que simbolizaria a passagem de Teofrasto, em que Creta tinha uma cidade com um grande Plátano, a árvore de Helena e as Ninfas. Esse Plátano era especial, pois suas folhas nunca teriam caído, acredita-se que sob sua copa teria acontecido um casamento de deuses, tornando-a uma árvore santa e eterna. Esse contraste entre o natural e o não natural pode ser relacionado contextualmente com um simbolismo tão simples quanto a espécie de uma árvore protagonista.
Em Devil May Cry, iniciei um jogo edgy e impenetrável sobre poder. Um personagem que parecia uma carapaça adolescente e implacável, como esperado de um hack and slash de PS2. A minha surpresa foi terminar um jogo sensível e vulnerável sobre orfandade.
Dante é um personagem ríspido, mas que com o tempo se mostra cheio de ternura e simplicidade. Dante é amoroso, sensível e suas tristezas florescem como poder, mas também com fragilidade e vulnerabilidade. Isso se torna mais forte ao final do jogo quando percebemos que Devil May Cry é sobre família e sua falta na vida de Dante, um personagem que, sem pai e sem mãe, busca um significado em coisas simples como a espada de seu pai, o brasão de família e uma mulher que parece sua mãe. Na busca por vingança, Dante terá conflitos com esses símbolos familiares e até enfrentará e matará o próprio irmão, Dante chega a ser digno de pena. Ao final do jogo, Dante está derretido e sua faceta indestrutível dá espaço a uma ternura suculenta que se mistura perfeitamente às mecânicas vulneráveis e implacáveis de Devil May Cry.
Dante é maior do que Devil May Cry mecanicamente, mas também substancialmente. Essa receita caótica desabrocha em um enorme e lindo Plátano no meio de uma selva de pedra impossível.
Dante é, de fato, filho de duas entidades platonicamente opostas.
"Devil May Cry's a Rockin, don't come a knockin baby yeah!"
So for a long time this was my favourite game ever and was the start of my solidification into a hardcore Capcom fan which has continued to this day. When this came out I was around 18 and a friend had bought it. We played it together and seeing a leather clad biker girl smash through a bar, a gothic castle and uppercutting a marionette with a sword then juggling it with dual wielding pistols was, at the time, the coolest thing ever. I knew this game inside and out speed running it, learning every move, or collecting over a million red orbs because I could. One weekend when I had the house to myself that same friend came and stayed over playing all night by setting up two PlayStation 2's next to two TVs so we could both play Devil May Cry on our own saves hunting S ranks until we had every one on every difficulty level including Dante Must Die. I loved it.
The thing is I'd never played a game like this before. It's roots starting as Resident Evil 4 before changing into it's own series are pretty evident in aspects of it's design. The gothic horror atmosphere slightly underlining it's occasionally camp and over the top exterior gelled for an extremely unique experience. I've seen a lot of reviews on here being pretty negative about it and you know what? I get it, I do. The static camera angle and controls built around it for people who having not played it during that era wouldn't care for or have the patience to learn would feel dated. The thing is though, the game is built around it fundamentally when you learn how to use it on it's terms. Enemies even off screen give audio attack cues, the controls are built around directions and angles in relation to the camera but are also designed for angle changes when you know how. It's a clever game for it's time and the mixture of basic exploration, puzzles and scattered battle arenas was just a fun mix as the game understands the importance of downtime.
It's also an impressive looking and sounding game. Remember this came out only a year after the PS2 launch and has these large levels, detailed character and enemy models and insane boss fights in which each feels like a real event to behold. I love the enemy designs such as shadow cats that launch spikes, incorporeal grim reapers and giant lava spiders. Though the boss fights do repeat they are such big spectacles and some of the hardest challenges in the game with some insane music. Speaking of which whilst the later soundtracks went a lot more metal with vocal tracks the original game has this mixture of gothic haunting melodies that could easily be in a horror game to sort of electronic rock tracks and just stands out a lot more from it's later sequels due to it.
Coming back to this in 2012 for the remaster and all the trophies then playing it again now and I still love it. Yes it's terribly cheesy with laughable lip synching, yes it's fixed camera can make the action feel unwieldly and yes it's probably one of those games you had to be there for....
....but it's the best Devil May Cry game though.
+ Horror and action roots mixed.
+ Combat and boss battles are exciting.
+ Great music and visuals.
+ Sometimes funny, sometimes intentionally.
- Fixed camera angle can take getting used to.
So for a long time this was my favourite game ever and was the start of my solidification into a hardcore Capcom fan which has continued to this day. When this came out I was around 18 and a friend had bought it. We played it together and seeing a leather clad biker girl smash through a bar, a gothic castle and uppercutting a marionette with a sword then juggling it with dual wielding pistols was, at the time, the coolest thing ever. I knew this game inside and out speed running it, learning every move, or collecting over a million red orbs because I could. One weekend when I had the house to myself that same friend came and stayed over playing all night by setting up two PlayStation 2's next to two TVs so we could both play Devil May Cry on our own saves hunting S ranks until we had every one on every difficulty level including Dante Must Die. I loved it.
The thing is I'd never played a game like this before. It's roots starting as Resident Evil 4 before changing into it's own series are pretty evident in aspects of it's design. The gothic horror atmosphere slightly underlining it's occasionally camp and over the top exterior gelled for an extremely unique experience. I've seen a lot of reviews on here being pretty negative about it and you know what? I get it, I do. The static camera angle and controls built around it for people who having not played it during that era wouldn't care for or have the patience to learn would feel dated. The thing is though, the game is built around it fundamentally when you learn how to use it on it's terms. Enemies even off screen give audio attack cues, the controls are built around directions and angles in relation to the camera but are also designed for angle changes when you know how. It's a clever game for it's time and the mixture of basic exploration, puzzles and scattered battle arenas was just a fun mix as the game understands the importance of downtime.
It's also an impressive looking and sounding game. Remember this came out only a year after the PS2 launch and has these large levels, detailed character and enemy models and insane boss fights in which each feels like a real event to behold. I love the enemy designs such as shadow cats that launch spikes, incorporeal grim reapers and giant lava spiders. Though the boss fights do repeat they are such big spectacles and some of the hardest challenges in the game with some insane music. Speaking of which whilst the later soundtracks went a lot more metal with vocal tracks the original game has this mixture of gothic haunting melodies that could easily be in a horror game to sort of electronic rock tracks and just stands out a lot more from it's later sequels due to it.
Coming back to this in 2012 for the remaster and all the trophies then playing it again now and I still love it. Yes it's terribly cheesy with laughable lip synching, yes it's fixed camera can make the action feel unwieldly and yes it's probably one of those games you had to be there for....
....but it's the best Devil May Cry game though.
+ Horror and action roots mixed.
+ Combat and boss battles are exciting.
+ Great music and visuals.
+ Sometimes funny, sometimes intentionally.
- Fixed camera angle can take getting used to.
the wretched discussion of what is considered to have aged or not to have aged. devil may cry is a landmark example of a game that needs to be taken in from a perspective within itself. this is the game that both invented and defined the hack-n-slash genre. playing this i don’t put it comparatively next to any later game in the franchise or hell later games in general, as sure it can be seen as outdated and flat out worse, but that’s what makes this game great. the future games being so expansive and advanced is because of the fantastic foundation set here. now, this is not to excuse the game’s flaws, far from it. i just want to clear it up that games “aging” is a poor method of critiquing something of the past that has been done better in the future. aging is contextual and with games like this you have to view its aspects in the context of its release. there are still issues i have with the game that can be critiqued no matter when this game released.
miscommunication. that’s the feeling i get from some of these missions. the camera is weirdly but understandably disconnected from the action on-screen which is a remnant of its resident evil origins, but it doesn’t work as well here in combat specifically. you have odd top down angles that can switch to an uptight and claustrophobic wide shot from dante’s behind while trying to react accordingly to enemies. this becomes an issue in hallway sections and tight spaces, which honestly was a somewhat infrequently issue but when it did happen it was a bit frustrating. the first phantom battle is a key example of this with the camera constantly changing when moving while you’re trying to dodge lethal attacks safely. “why isn’t this a relic of its time to be viewed in its original context?” you may ask by now. the simple answer is that this seems a bit like an overlooked design flaw. not being able to dodge an attack due to the game’s incompetence is certainly not an intended feature for a game in any era. even then, some of the shots presented are very much fitting to the overall tone and atmosphere in each area. you’re in uncharted territory unaware of what lies ahead of you so naturally you’re as anxious as the camera angles convey.
combat depth is not something i had an issue with or was wanting more of, as the options you’re given are well suited for what’s brought to the table. fighting hoards of enemies makes you feel like the badass dante really is. the skill ceiling is undoubtedly very high but climbing up the ladder to reach that ceiling doesn’t feel unnatural. as missions progress, bosses become adapted to your skillset to keep you on your toes. nelo angelo specifically is memorable because of this and his kick ass design. all the bosses have pretty cool designs that speak for themselves.
back with another one of those BLOCK ROCKIN BEATS; the soundtrack is very late 90s to early 2000s influenced hard rock mixed with some electronica elements that could be compared to the prodigy or chemical brothers. psycho siren is a really good representation of this with its blaring siren sample that gets cut and looped while the most banging drumbeat backs it up. nelo angelo’s theme is another banger and is truly as memorable as his character.
speaking of character, to cap this off, dante’s character. he’s the cheesy edgy bastard we all know and love. he can kick some serious ass and drop some serious one liners.
overall this game just reeks of over-personified 2000s charm and cheesiness that defines a new genre and left a cultural impact.
devils never cry.
miscommunication. that’s the feeling i get from some of these missions. the camera is weirdly but understandably disconnected from the action on-screen which is a remnant of its resident evil origins, but it doesn’t work as well here in combat specifically. you have odd top down angles that can switch to an uptight and claustrophobic wide shot from dante’s behind while trying to react accordingly to enemies. this becomes an issue in hallway sections and tight spaces, which honestly was a somewhat infrequently issue but when it did happen it was a bit frustrating. the first phantom battle is a key example of this with the camera constantly changing when moving while you’re trying to dodge lethal attacks safely. “why isn’t this a relic of its time to be viewed in its original context?” you may ask by now. the simple answer is that this seems a bit like an overlooked design flaw. not being able to dodge an attack due to the game’s incompetence is certainly not an intended feature for a game in any era. even then, some of the shots presented are very much fitting to the overall tone and atmosphere in each area. you’re in uncharted territory unaware of what lies ahead of you so naturally you’re as anxious as the camera angles convey.
combat depth is not something i had an issue with or was wanting more of, as the options you’re given are well suited for what’s brought to the table. fighting hoards of enemies makes you feel like the badass dante really is. the skill ceiling is undoubtedly very high but climbing up the ladder to reach that ceiling doesn’t feel unnatural. as missions progress, bosses become adapted to your skillset to keep you on your toes. nelo angelo specifically is memorable because of this and his kick ass design. all the bosses have pretty cool designs that speak for themselves.
back with another one of those BLOCK ROCKIN BEATS; the soundtrack is very late 90s to early 2000s influenced hard rock mixed with some electronica elements that could be compared to the prodigy or chemical brothers. psycho siren is a really good representation of this with its blaring siren sample that gets cut and looped while the most banging drumbeat backs it up. nelo angelo’s theme is another banger and is truly as memorable as his character.
speaking of character, to cap this off, dante’s character. he’s the cheesy edgy bastard we all know and love. he can kick some serious ass and drop some serious one liners.
overall this game just reeks of over-personified 2000s charm and cheesiness that defines a new genre and left a cultural impact.
devils never cry.
Imagine thinking this aged poorly
Heh. Youtubers.
Heh. Youtubers.
Will always stand and say this game has the most cleverly designed Campaign in the series, given how interactable the environments or levels are. Their so much more complex than just 'verses'. Take the chase sequence from Phantom or Shadow in the hallways, the atmosphere links itself to the environment and gives you interesting interactions. Do you want to be rewarded, and kill the enemy there, or run away and not risk it? Or simple things, like ricocheting attacks from the dragon statue's beam. Alot of these gimmicks give this game an interesting legacy that is very much missing from the others.
I feel it has the perfect balance with its enemy/combat design by giving you freedom on how to play, but pushing you with the complex enemy behaviors too. The game's combat is more simplified compared to other later entries, yes, but each attack feels like it has more meaning, and weight to them. Take Roundtrip for example, in all the other entries you wouldn't really use it because its more for flashiness, here due to the more weight each and every attack has due to a more limited moveset, it feels more necessary. Alastor/Vortex itself as a technique gives you tons of mobility be it by air, or the ground and the guns have really interesting knockback quirks that it's enough to stand on its own. Other games in the series really aren't the same as it and I really appreciate it for that.
I feel it has the perfect balance with its enemy/combat design by giving you freedom on how to play, but pushing you with the complex enemy behaviors too. The game's combat is more simplified compared to other later entries, yes, but each attack feels like it has more meaning, and weight to them. Take Roundtrip for example, in all the other entries you wouldn't really use it because its more for flashiness, here due to the more weight each and every attack has due to a more limited moveset, it feels more necessary. Alastor/Vortex itself as a technique gives you tons of mobility be it by air, or the ground and the guns have really interesting knockback quirks that it's enough to stand on its own. Other games in the series really aren't the same as it and I really appreciate it for that.
The guy from SMT Nocturne has his own game now?
These MegaTen spin-offs are getting out of hand
These MegaTen spin-offs are getting out of hand
absolute pleb filter
You look like my mother
This is probably still my favorite game in the franchise. Might sound strange to some since the game's combat is a lot more limited when compared to later entries but that's part of why I love it. Every move in Dante's arsenal is worth using at some point or another and I do mean EVERY move. Charging Ebony and Ivory with DT to increase your style against Griffon. Locking Nobodies in place with Round Trip. Shotgun cancelling Bloody Maries. Vortexing Phantom to death during the chase scenes. Every move I ever doubted on my first playthrough back in 2012 have proven me wrong and become staples in my moveset in the years since. While it's an absolute blast experimenting with Dante's expanded kits in later titles, it's just as rewarding finding new uses for moves you once thought had been depleted of all their worth.
A big contributing factor to all this is the stellar boss lineup. I don't know how Hideki Kamiya and his team did it, but Team Little Devils created one of the best rogues galleries in an action game all the way back in 2001. This game's roster of baddies will test you, and I mean fucking TEST you on all of your defensive options as well as your offensive ones. Even enemy attacks that you once thought you mastered your way around will turn out to have an even more efficient way of dealing with them as your skill and understanding of the mechanics increase. You're always learning new things against these foes and that goes doubly so for the bosses. Phantom, Griffon, Nero Angelo, even the dreaded Nightmare (ESPECIALLY Nightmare) all offer many lessons you'll take to heart. Some of these are exclusive for their respective fights, like learning how Nightmare's cores work. Others are multi-purpose, like figuring out double jumping before striking down on Phantom from above deals more damage. The game even uses its Secret Missions to teach some of these techniques and it does so with more elegance than the missions in later DMC games.
To top my love for this game off, I want to give a special mention to this game's wonderfully eerie atmosphere. Something later DMC games lost. Mundus' castle feels like a place lost to time. The world feels alive, not in a "Oh wow, there's so many moving objects and blah blah blah" sort of way but more in a "The castle is a liminal space that's trying to swallow you whole" kind of way. The early levels have music that sounds like the dead are having a ballroom dance in an adjacent room while later stages have music that feels utterly oppressive, like you pissed off the castle itself and now it's trapped you within its walls. I really wish the franchise would return to this kind of horror instead of the dull, lifeless environments found in later installments.
Then again, it's not so surprising DMC1 would have these horror elements, along with more focused gameplay. The title was going to be Resident Evil 4 at one point in development and it seems a bit of that classic RE game flavor found its way into the final product. When taking that factoid into account, it's a miracle DMC1 is not only a game so fantastic that it kickstarted a brand new franchise, but one to make such a strong impact on the future of high quality action games.
Devil May Cry's a rocking don't come a knocking baby, yeah!
A big contributing factor to all this is the stellar boss lineup. I don't know how Hideki Kamiya and his team did it, but Team Little Devils created one of the best rogues galleries in an action game all the way back in 2001. This game's roster of baddies will test you, and I mean fucking TEST you on all of your defensive options as well as your offensive ones. Even enemy attacks that you once thought you mastered your way around will turn out to have an even more efficient way of dealing with them as your skill and understanding of the mechanics increase. You're always learning new things against these foes and that goes doubly so for the bosses. Phantom, Griffon, Nero Angelo, even the dreaded Nightmare (ESPECIALLY Nightmare) all offer many lessons you'll take to heart. Some of these are exclusive for their respective fights, like learning how Nightmare's cores work. Others are multi-purpose, like figuring out double jumping before striking down on Phantom from above deals more damage. The game even uses its Secret Missions to teach some of these techniques and it does so with more elegance than the missions in later DMC games.
To top my love for this game off, I want to give a special mention to this game's wonderfully eerie atmosphere. Something later DMC games lost. Mundus' castle feels like a place lost to time. The world feels alive, not in a "Oh wow, there's so many moving objects and blah blah blah" sort of way but more in a "The castle is a liminal space that's trying to swallow you whole" kind of way. The early levels have music that sounds like the dead are having a ballroom dance in an adjacent room while later stages have music that feels utterly oppressive, like you pissed off the castle itself and now it's trapped you within its walls. I really wish the franchise would return to this kind of horror instead of the dull, lifeless environments found in later installments.
Then again, it's not so surprising DMC1 would have these horror elements, along with more focused gameplay. The title was going to be Resident Evil 4 at one point in development and it seems a bit of that classic RE game flavor found its way into the final product. When taking that factoid into account, it's a miracle DMC1 is not only a game so fantastic that it kickstarted a brand new franchise, but one to make such a strong impact on the future of high quality action games.
Devil May Cry's a rocking don't come a knocking baby, yeah!
hideki kamiya was the first man bold enough to ask, "what if the combat in a 3d game was good?"
DMC1 rips it's so clunky and weird, you can really feel them breaking into a new genre and also all these weird vestiges of resident evil. It's not what it's going to be but it's cool how well-formed it all is, like the game feels great to play and it feels great to get good at it. The checkpoint system is the worst thing I've ever experienced in my entire life but I love the game a lot, real good
"I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with LIIIIGHT!!"
Not the most mechanically impressive of the series, but by far the most soulful.
Made from the scraps of the ill-fated Resident Evil 4 prototype, Kamiya practically reinvented the wheel in this gothic horror action tale, with many titles after wearing its influence firmly on their sleeves.
A sure remnant from its days as a Resi title, the single castle setting helps create an incredibly strong mise-en-scène, demanding that you back track and familiarise yourself with your surroundings, finding key items and unlocking doors to progress deeper inside its walls. This sense of place was lacking in subsequent entries to the series, and they feel more like standard action games in contrast. Which is not inherently a bad thing, it just makes the original stand out as a slightly more unique experience. I simply love the atmosphere of the castle, with its winding staircases and gothic décor, antiquities and books lining the shelves, fireplaces and candles still alight, really making it feel like an inhabited and lived in space- yet strangely lost to time.
Due to this legacy, DMC feels like a curious hybrid of survival horror and action, with many signature Kamiya touches also on display (including first person underwater segments and an afterburner-esque mini game boss battle).
My personal favourite of the series, even if the combat has been outclassed by later entries. I just dig the vibe real hard.
Not the most mechanically impressive of the series, but by far the most soulful.
Made from the scraps of the ill-fated Resident Evil 4 prototype, Kamiya practically reinvented the wheel in this gothic horror action tale, with many titles after wearing its influence firmly on their sleeves.
A sure remnant from its days as a Resi title, the single castle setting helps create an incredibly strong mise-en-scène, demanding that you back track and familiarise yourself with your surroundings, finding key items and unlocking doors to progress deeper inside its walls. This sense of place was lacking in subsequent entries to the series, and they feel more like standard action games in contrast. Which is not inherently a bad thing, it just makes the original stand out as a slightly more unique experience. I simply love the atmosphere of the castle, with its winding staircases and gothic décor, antiquities and books lining the shelves, fireplaces and candles still alight, really making it feel like an inhabited and lived in space- yet strangely lost to time.
Due to this legacy, DMC feels like a curious hybrid of survival horror and action, with many signature Kamiya touches also on display (including first person underwater segments and an afterburner-esque mini game boss battle).
My personal favourite of the series, even if the combat has been outclassed by later entries. I just dig the vibe real hard.
The first Devil May Cry has simple but satisfying combat, a fun and overly edgy story, and really, really cool atmosphere. This is a good first entry to a series, it's rough around some edges in terms of game design and mechanics, but we can cut it some slack since it invented a genre. The world for this game is sick, I loved the atmosphere the entire way through. The music is awesome too. The only really big downside is that camera. It SUCKS. Very clearly was a reworked Resident Evil game. But, I got used to it, and when I did I was having a really fun time with this game.
I'm so excited to play the amazing future entries!!! Wait what? A really bad sequel? Oh yeahhhh, guess I gotta get through that first.
I'm so excited to play the amazing future entries!!! Wait what? A really bad sequel? Oh yeahhhh, guess I gotta get through that first.
An absolute masterpiece of an action game. The progression as you go through the difficulty levels is one of the most satisfying difficulty curves I have ever seen. The enemies are so well designed and versatile I didn't even notice that they can only load one type in at a time. The bosses' health being the only thing that becomes higher numbers-wise (aside from damage done to you I believe) was a very good move, because it makes the focus more on providing tougher challenges through the actual trickiness of the enemies rather than making them damage sponges. Additionally, while one might think that inflating boss health might make them feel too damage spongey, it actually makes them shine the most as you actually have to learn the intricacies of their move-sets and when to go in, manage Devil Trigger, etc. In the end, I could not put it down til I had all S-ranks in every difficulty and I still felt like I could play more after that.
The Battle Against a Camera
La primera entrega de Devil May Cry da las bases para lo que seria un nuevo genero, pero en este momento es una Increiblemente solida combinacion de elementos de Desafio y Exploracion en armonia que se resume en una carta de amor hacia los videojuegos en general.
Análisis completo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6RE50Z6W5k
Análisis completo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6RE50Z6W5k