this game tries so many things, and doesn't succeed at any of them particularly well. but there is potential there. the mismash of cover shooter and character action doesn't work as neither of them are super fleshed out, and they are largely segmented - most enemies are best sorted out with normal cover shooting, and most bosses are outright immune to bullets. you can see where a good character action game could exist in fights like saha - he has a lot of moves, he is fun to react to, but as a player your options are just not versatile enough nor is he consistent enough. i wish this game had a parry so goddamn bad.
i will say i laughed out loud about 10 times. this game really does try to do the tone and character stylings of metal gear and slap it onto guns and swords action, and if nothing else the characters are successfully very stupid.
BIG MOUSE
i will say i laughed out loud about 10 times. this game really does try to do the tone and character stylings of metal gear and slap it onto guns and swords action, and if nothing else the characters are successfully very stupid.
BIG MOUSE
"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity, a physicist tries to make it simple, for an idiot anything the more complicated it is the more he will admire it, if you make something so clusterfucked he can't understand it he's gonna think you're a god cause you made it so complicated nobody can understand it"
-Terry A. Davis, RIP.
People weren't ready for this game, it didn't deserve this much critical panning. Sure, it went through development hell, having to change multiple publishers to settle down for an exclusivity deal with Nintendo at the end, but i'd argue that it delivered. Tomonobu Itagaki's main purpose for this game was its multiplayer (which unfortunately is dead) it actually did very well in Japan, even having the multiplayer filled with people so much that they made a "Devil's Third Online" on PC that was JP-Exclusive. Itagaki notes on his FB Account that he wanted to get as many people in its multiplayer mode. He also noted many things like how he was done with Ninja Gaiden & DOA but he wanted to continue Devil's Third. Its almost been 9 years since this game's release and with Wanted: Dead coming out this year and his heir Yoshifuru Okamoto doing a great job overall, its safe to say Itagaki will make a comeback sooner or later.
The reviews that note it down as a poorly made game with poor mechanics are absolutely clueless on how to play this game. It literally is simple, you've got your shooting, sliding, blocking, parrying, dodging, jumping, quick attacks and heavy attacks. However, despite all of this, in every goddamn video I've seen that pans this game as the absolute worst or shrugs it off as a "so bad its good" title, they always end up hiding behind covers and shooting with the gun... Yeah, let us just ignore the fact that this is a literal Gun-Fu game, where you're literally encouraged to use the melee as much as you're encouraged to use the gun. The game even throws you in a lot of different enemy types and bosses for you to switch up your playstyle. But nope, everyone is going to approach the combat with as much disinterest and disaffection as possible. Then later complain how much it sucked. These are the same people that play games in so-called "Journo" baby mode.
"Itagaki professes a liking for simplicity of inputs, he states too many inputs would result in the loss of the gaming experience."
-From Tomonobu Itagaki's Wikipedia page
Itagaki doesn't care for complexity, it has been apparent ever since DOA & Ninja Gaiden and that's where the beauty of his game design kicks in, the simplicity. There's no need to memorize movesets because all of it naturally gets revealed to you, you know exactly how to approach a threat, and to eliminate it. In Devil's Third especially, one of my favorite combat strategies was to slide towards the enemy while hip-firing, then cancelling it with a slash and getting that sweet glory kill. Another great mechanic was the ability to leap kills and being able to throw your melee weapon at the enemy, I was just so hooked to the gameplay and the endless combat scenarios, I couldn't stop at all. All of these abilities are presented to you by the man himself so you can play experimenting with different approaches as it was intended. Not just sticking to one method of gameplay like an absolute cretin. It genuinely infuriates me to see people refer to this as a "Gears of War" clone or a "TPS COD", when it has absolutely nothing in common.
Devil's Third's story felt like a riff on Metal Gear, which seemed to be the case for any Japanese game releasing during that era. It involves heavy on the nose Buddhist themes, as if the Sanskrit tattoos written all over our main protagonist, Ivan, wasn't an indication already. You have loading screens filled with Buddha statues, and not to mention a Buddhist take on a "revenge" story, with the main antagonist's ultimate masterplan literally being the concept of Nirvana in itself, is nothing short but one hell of a ride. The boss encounters are especially to live for, your final stand-off with Isaac Kumano is genuinely breathtaking sequence, that I feel a certain game company for sure took some artistic liberties in putting it in their own title. :)
Tomonobu Itagaki to this very day is still proud of what he's done. When asked about the hysterical criticism, his answer was: "The fans loved it." And that's what Itagaki truly cares for. As if these Metacritic obsessing, ratingheads would understand.
"To all my fellow gamers. No matter how the world changes or times pass, our love for games and our passion will never die. Thank you all for waiting so long for this moment."
-Tomonobu Itagaki, End Credits of Devil's Third.
-Terry A. Davis, RIP.
People weren't ready for this game, it didn't deserve this much critical panning. Sure, it went through development hell, having to change multiple publishers to settle down for an exclusivity deal with Nintendo at the end, but i'd argue that it delivered. Tomonobu Itagaki's main purpose for this game was its multiplayer (which unfortunately is dead) it actually did very well in Japan, even having the multiplayer filled with people so much that they made a "Devil's Third Online" on PC that was JP-Exclusive. Itagaki notes on his FB Account that he wanted to get as many people in its multiplayer mode. He also noted many things like how he was done with Ninja Gaiden & DOA but he wanted to continue Devil's Third. Its almost been 9 years since this game's release and with Wanted: Dead coming out this year and his heir Yoshifuru Okamoto doing a great job overall, its safe to say Itagaki will make a comeback sooner or later.
The reviews that note it down as a poorly made game with poor mechanics are absolutely clueless on how to play this game. It literally is simple, you've got your shooting, sliding, blocking, parrying, dodging, jumping, quick attacks and heavy attacks. However, despite all of this, in every goddamn video I've seen that pans this game as the absolute worst or shrugs it off as a "so bad its good" title, they always end up hiding behind covers and shooting with the gun... Yeah, let us just ignore the fact that this is a literal Gun-Fu game, where you're literally encouraged to use the melee as much as you're encouraged to use the gun. The game even throws you in a lot of different enemy types and bosses for you to switch up your playstyle. But nope, everyone is going to approach the combat with as much disinterest and disaffection as possible. Then later complain how much it sucked. These are the same people that play games in so-called "Journo" baby mode.
"Itagaki professes a liking for simplicity of inputs, he states too many inputs would result in the loss of the gaming experience."
-From Tomonobu Itagaki's Wikipedia page
Itagaki doesn't care for complexity, it has been apparent ever since DOA & Ninja Gaiden and that's where the beauty of his game design kicks in, the simplicity. There's no need to memorize movesets because all of it naturally gets revealed to you, you know exactly how to approach a threat, and to eliminate it. In Devil's Third especially, one of my favorite combat strategies was to slide towards the enemy while hip-firing, then cancelling it with a slash and getting that sweet glory kill. Another great mechanic was the ability to leap kills and being able to throw your melee weapon at the enemy, I was just so hooked to the gameplay and the endless combat scenarios, I couldn't stop at all. All of these abilities are presented to you by the man himself so you can play experimenting with different approaches as it was intended. Not just sticking to one method of gameplay like an absolute cretin. It genuinely infuriates me to see people refer to this as a "Gears of War" clone or a "TPS COD", when it has absolutely nothing in common.
Devil's Third's story felt like a riff on Metal Gear, which seemed to be the case for any Japanese game releasing during that era. It involves heavy on the nose Buddhist themes, as if the Sanskrit tattoos written all over our main protagonist, Ivan, wasn't an indication already. You have loading screens filled with Buddha statues, and not to mention a Buddhist take on a "revenge" story, with the main antagonist's ultimate masterplan literally being the concept of Nirvana in itself, is nothing short but one hell of a ride. The boss encounters are especially to live for, your final stand-off with Isaac Kumano is genuinely breathtaking sequence, that I feel a certain game company for sure took some artistic liberties in putting it in their own title. :)
Tomonobu Itagaki to this very day is still proud of what he's done. When asked about the hysterical criticism, his answer was: "The fans loved it." And that's what Itagaki truly cares for. As if these Metacritic obsessing, ratingheads would understand.
"To all my fellow gamers. No matter how the world changes or times pass, our love for games and our passion will never die. Thank you all for waiting so long for this moment."
-Tomonobu Itagaki, End Credits of Devil's Third.
Decided to rewrite this review since I've beat the game. Mad underrated actually. I like the action movie-like story and the gameplay. It's simple and short, but that's the beautiful thing. It's still fun and entertaining. REALLY like the mix of melee and shooting. But if you emulate it keep in mind that the game works only on opengl and and textures get corrupted when you play for long so when that happens you need to reboot the emulator. Otherwise the game works pretty smoothly
This game was so ass
It tried to be like Metal Gear Rising Revengeance while trying to combine hack n slash, shooter and beat em up genres and looking like a dollar tree Agent 47
It tried to be like Metal Gear Rising Revengeance while trying to combine hack n slash, shooter and beat em up genres and looking like a dollar tree Agent 47
fucking peak, I simultaneously can and can't believe this game was ravished so critically in its time. Like, did we even play the same game???? I honestly booted this game up as a joke since my Wii U was plugged in for shovel knight, and ended up getting really invested to the point of playing through the whole thing.
The narrative is pretty much a bonafide example of a japanese developer making a western-leaning action plot, and I mean that in only the best ways. There's tons of political jargon and inter-continental relation talk that borders that fine line between advancing the plot in a sensible way while still sounding complicated and serious. The cast of characters all have their own exaggerated morals and views of the world alongside their borderline tangential relationship to our protagonist where things feel personal between them but never really established nor developed any further. There's all the action setpieces you'd expect like puching through a jail full of cartoonishly insane tenants, blasting helicopters singlehandedly in your generic western battlefield, going through a house-of-the-dead-ass hospital filled with zombies, going through the cool japan castle level filled with cyborg ninjas, snowy mountains complete with a crazy vehicle segment, this game has it ALL. Instead of having anything tongue-in-cheek about how absurd that some shirtless dude with a gun and a sword and his crew of generic mechanically-enhanced supersoldiers can make it through all this insanity, the game plays everything dead fucking straight. There's not a hint of irony going on about this overly complex and flashy plot that mostly amounts to the same generic action movie tropes, and I ate up every goddamn second of it and lost my shit at every crazy moment the game threw at me. If you are a fan of like the Metal Gear series, the Ace Combat series, Resident Evils 4-6 in particular, or pretty much any Clover/Platinum game or Suda51 action title, you probably already know exactly what kind of vibe this games going for and will likely hella fuck with it just as much as I did.
If this game was just a goofy stupid setpiecy title that'd be one thing, but the actual gameplay is really fucking solid too! Yeah, the game definitely looks and runs more like an xbox 360 game from 2008 than a AAA Wii U title from 2015 (not really like there's much of a difference between the two in the first place), but honestly I do not give a singular shit about graphics and even found plenty of parts to look really nice regardless. The game is directed by our boy Tomonobu Itagaki, and while that sounds like a pretty red flag for me personally given how much Ninja Gaiden Sigma PTSD I still suffer from, in this game he was able to adapt his Itagaki-isms to a way where it's not total cock and ball torture to push through. In this game you have a gun to shoot things and play like a cover shooter, a sword to combo people in melee combat, and extra moves like grenade throwing and dash sliding for extra options for mobility and offense. I noticed while playing that I was doing everything I could to get from one battle sequence to the other because I found the combat that engaging, which isn't even something I do for some fully-blown character action games. The game and its levels are definitely designed in a way where while you CAN just focus on one over the other and either play the game entirely like Gears of War or like Ninja Gaiden, it's at its peak when you stay on your toes and utilize each weapon equally. I found the most fun in focusing on melee for primarily killing people and using the guns only for particularly long-distance targets that I'd die trying to run to, or to occasionally use in order to thin out crowded rooms a bit before running in like a lunatic with a knife. Hitting and killing people with melee in particular earns you meter which can be spent on activating a super mode that makes you mostly invulnerable while active and gives a heavy melee buff, and you can even activate it during scripted enemy attack sequences which means at any time you can have a panic button if things start going south. The bosses are also really fun and each one serves as a pretty different test of each of your different skills (even if some of the later game bosses get pretty cheap with instant kill attacks). It's basically 3D Ninja Gaiden but with high-speed third person shooting thrown in and not ludicrously difficult. What the fuck isn't there to like about that???
It's a banger fucking video game, shoutouts to Nintendo of all fucking people for actually being the guys to see the worth in something like this enough to publish it. It makes sense why this game reviewed so low because like in 2015 people were more wanting to see what the PS4/Xbone generation had to offer and didn't really have the time or energy to give a late wii U Unreal Engine 3 game much the light of day at all, and I lowkey get that. Nowadays though, where I feel like people are more willing to look past that kind of thing, I think it makes sense why this game has such a devoted cult fanbase. I wish I was able to try out the online mode when it was alive because of what I've heard from secondhand accounts it was apparently fun as FUCK and after playing through the singleplayer I can very much believe it. You goddamn KNOW if some fan servers pop up for this game, I'm there day one. The game is insanely difficult to get nowadays because Nintendo of America apparently lost faith in the title near the end of its development similarly to Disaster Day of Crisis (which honestly this game shares a lot in common with in terms of camp, guess Nintendo of America has horrible taste but at least they released this game here in SOME capacity vs just outright not for that game), and as such combined with the fact that the Wii U eshop is rip in kill, this game is a fuckpile of money to buy physically. I had my chance to get this game physically for 40 bucks back in its time but decided against it because I was a broke-ass high schooler and now its like 10 times that price and I have every US first party Wii U game physically except this and fuckin Mario Tennis Ultra Smash. Considering that it's extremely unlikely this game will ever get a rerelease, I'd def suggest giving this game a go under any means necessary without having to sell your liver. This game deserves to be played by more people that can appreciate what it does instead of being known as "that shitty expensive wii U game".
The narrative is pretty much a bonafide example of a japanese developer making a western-leaning action plot, and I mean that in only the best ways. There's tons of political jargon and inter-continental relation talk that borders that fine line between advancing the plot in a sensible way while still sounding complicated and serious. The cast of characters all have their own exaggerated morals and views of the world alongside their borderline tangential relationship to our protagonist where things feel personal between them but never really established nor developed any further. There's all the action setpieces you'd expect like puching through a jail full of cartoonishly insane tenants, blasting helicopters singlehandedly in your generic western battlefield, going through a house-of-the-dead-ass hospital filled with zombies, going through the cool japan castle level filled with cyborg ninjas, snowy mountains complete with a crazy vehicle segment, this game has it ALL. Instead of having anything tongue-in-cheek about how absurd that some shirtless dude with a gun and a sword and his crew of generic mechanically-enhanced supersoldiers can make it through all this insanity, the game plays everything dead fucking straight. There's not a hint of irony going on about this overly complex and flashy plot that mostly amounts to the same generic action movie tropes, and I ate up every goddamn second of it and lost my shit at every crazy moment the game threw at me. If you are a fan of like the Metal Gear series, the Ace Combat series, Resident Evils 4-6 in particular, or pretty much any Clover/Platinum game or Suda51 action title, you probably already know exactly what kind of vibe this games going for and will likely hella fuck with it just as much as I did.
If this game was just a goofy stupid setpiecy title that'd be one thing, but the actual gameplay is really fucking solid too! Yeah, the game definitely looks and runs more like an xbox 360 game from 2008 than a AAA Wii U title from 2015 (not really like there's much of a difference between the two in the first place), but honestly I do not give a singular shit about graphics and even found plenty of parts to look really nice regardless. The game is directed by our boy Tomonobu Itagaki, and while that sounds like a pretty red flag for me personally given how much Ninja Gaiden Sigma PTSD I still suffer from, in this game he was able to adapt his Itagaki-isms to a way where it's not total cock and ball torture to push through. In this game you have a gun to shoot things and play like a cover shooter, a sword to combo people in melee combat, and extra moves like grenade throwing and dash sliding for extra options for mobility and offense. I noticed while playing that I was doing everything I could to get from one battle sequence to the other because I found the combat that engaging, which isn't even something I do for some fully-blown character action games. The game and its levels are definitely designed in a way where while you CAN just focus on one over the other and either play the game entirely like Gears of War or like Ninja Gaiden, it's at its peak when you stay on your toes and utilize each weapon equally. I found the most fun in focusing on melee for primarily killing people and using the guns only for particularly long-distance targets that I'd die trying to run to, or to occasionally use in order to thin out crowded rooms a bit before running in like a lunatic with a knife. Hitting and killing people with melee in particular earns you meter which can be spent on activating a super mode that makes you mostly invulnerable while active and gives a heavy melee buff, and you can even activate it during scripted enemy attack sequences which means at any time you can have a panic button if things start going south. The bosses are also really fun and each one serves as a pretty different test of each of your different skills (even if some of the later game bosses get pretty cheap with instant kill attacks). It's basically 3D Ninja Gaiden but with high-speed third person shooting thrown in and not ludicrously difficult. What the fuck isn't there to like about that???
It's a banger fucking video game, shoutouts to Nintendo of all fucking people for actually being the guys to see the worth in something like this enough to publish it. It makes sense why this game reviewed so low because like in 2015 people were more wanting to see what the PS4/Xbone generation had to offer and didn't really have the time or energy to give a late wii U Unreal Engine 3 game much the light of day at all, and I lowkey get that. Nowadays though, where I feel like people are more willing to look past that kind of thing, I think it makes sense why this game has such a devoted cult fanbase. I wish I was able to try out the online mode when it was alive because of what I've heard from secondhand accounts it was apparently fun as FUCK and after playing through the singleplayer I can very much believe it. You goddamn KNOW if some fan servers pop up for this game, I'm there day one. The game is insanely difficult to get nowadays because Nintendo of America apparently lost faith in the title near the end of its development similarly to Disaster Day of Crisis (which honestly this game shares a lot in common with in terms of camp, guess Nintendo of America has horrible taste but at least they released this game here in SOME capacity vs just outright not for that game), and as such combined with the fact that the Wii U eshop is rip in kill, this game is a fuckpile of money to buy physically. I had my chance to get this game physically for 40 bucks back in its time but decided against it because I was a broke-ass high schooler and now its like 10 times that price and I have every US first party Wii U game physically except this and fuckin Mario Tennis Ultra Smash. Considering that it's extremely unlikely this game will ever get a rerelease, I'd def suggest giving this game a go under any means necessary without having to sell your liver. This game deserves to be played by more people that can appreciate what it does instead of being known as "that shitty expensive wii U game".
honestly i could get into it, it felt kinda fun to play after the 3 hours i spent with it on a stream
this game being an official Nintendo game marketed towards the WII U really pushes me to enjoy it way more than I should otherwise. the story is all over the place but its presentation is very committed and outlandish so i enjoy the novelty of it. the gameplay itself is pretty fine, competent enough until you go against the later bosses in the story. they're all very tough and that's when it feels like the guarding and dodging isn't good enough in most situations where they kill you quickly. I only played the online once way back when this game was new and although I cant speak on that experience as a whole, I did end up playing the unofficial free to play online game from the same devs which i found very enjoyable when it was still around.
An awesome B-movie experience with a unique gameplay style, not the deepest or most polished game in the world but kept me hooked for it's duration enjoyed this more then Ninja Gaiden 3 for what it's worth
While not in depth at all, switching from 1st to 3rd person combat was a fun time and a surprising amount of variety with it's weapons, story is practically non-existent, equivalent to a straight to DVD movie but at least better then the Steven Segal variety
This bad boys probably stuck on the Wii U and honestly with it's price it's not worth running out and getting but I had a really good time with it
6.5/10
While not in depth at all, switching from 1st to 3rd person combat was a fun time and a surprising amount of variety with it's weapons, story is practically non-existent, equivalent to a straight to DVD movie but at least better then the Steven Segal variety
This bad boys probably stuck on the Wii U and honestly with it's price it's not worth running out and getting but I had a really good time with it
6.5/10
the best Nintendo exclusive ever made, no others can't cook hard like Itagaki did