MadCap's Game Reviews - "Devil May Cry 5"

Okay, so first things first, Capcom!

Thank you.

No, that's not a joke. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and an infinite, ever-expanding plethora of gratitude from the dimension of gratitude going on forever and ever into the end of time itself.

If you can't tell, I'm really, really happy that this happened.
Ever since we had that steaming piece of edge-lord crap and it's stillborn attempt to get a sequel, I had feared (and hoped) that the Devil May Cry franchise would lay dormant. Sure, the reboot had completely destroyed it all...but there were at least three good games that had come out of it (those being 1, 3, and 4 for those who haven't been keeping up with my reviews). Ironically now, however, it seems that Capcom took up my idea proposed in my review of Vergil's Downfall, namely bringing back the original universe and continuing the story that people were actually enjoying.

Thus, we have Nero back, a mysterious new character named V (who I'll get into later), and of course the actual Dante. A Dante who didn't need to have a dirty mop that resembled black hair land on his head to remind us of the meth dealer garbage that Ninja Theory tried to replace him with.

Mostly because Donte was already a joke all on his own.

Also, Ninja Theory is nowhere to be found and all I can say about that is: "good".

No, we pick up some time after Devil May Cry 4 with nary a mention of what I presume was a nightmare that Dante had after some bad pizza. There's a nasty new demon named Urizen making his mark on the world. Nero's working alongside Dante, and they've been employed by a mysterious young man named V who has a grab bag variety of demonic abilities and some animal friends who pal around with him.

Early on, Dante gets taken down by Urizen and is presumed to be dead, Nero and V escaping to fight another day. The two make their way through a variety of levels, and it's a great mercy that you're only forced to play V for a handful of the levels. Alas, I can't really complain about V without getting into some major spoilers...which I will do when I get into the plot.

Love means never having to reload.

Mechanically, if you've played any Devil May Cry game thus far, you've played this. You hack, slash, and shoot your way through a variety of demons with a variety of combos. All characters eventually end up having a Devil Trigger if they don't already and you get a tasty variety of weaponry with Dante since that's what we've come to expect. For most of the game, Nero doesn't have a Devil Trigger, but instead has the Devil Breaker. The Devil Breaker is essentially a replacement for his formerly demonic arm and has a number of tasty varieties and uses that were whipped up by his master weaponsmith - Nico. Nico who is, incidentally, my newest waifu.

...don't look at me like that!

The only one with vastly different gameplay is V, who has his aforementioned animal friends who go out and do his dirty work for him instead of him fighting himself. There's also a golem called Nightmare that he can pull out but only in Devil Trigger mode and can even ride around with a special move. I know some have enjoyed his sections, but I honestly found them rather boring and I found myself rushing through his levels to get back to Dante and Nero and the more involving and fast-paced combat. The only section I enjoyed playing V was where he gets his familiars taken away and has to work through a section to get them all back, which actually involved some strategy as you had to work to get them all back one at a time. Apart from that, however, I spent V's sections feeling like a football coach. On the sidelines and doing nothing. Not a great feeling.

It's just not something that belongs in the rapid-paced Devil May Cry franchise.

So, plot-wise, we have your standard Devil May Cry fair - demons evil, whup they ass. This time, however, it seems that Urizen is after a magical fruit that only grows at the very tip top of a demonic tree in order to gain the ultimate power. As Nero, Dante, and V journey through the tree to get to him before he can, revelations are had about V's past and...yeah, if you haven't guessed by now, then I guess the spoiler tag is necessary. If you haven't played yet, this is your final jumping off point.

...caught up? Good.

V is Vergil, Dante's deceased brother...or, at least, an aspect of him. Through flashbacks, we learn that Vergil managed to reform in Hell (somehow, it's really not important) and got out in order to steal Nero's Devil Bringer...his arm that contained the power of Vergil's sword, Yamato. After doing this, Vergil splits himself into two halves - his human side in V and his demonic side in Urizen.

The familiars that V keeps with him - a raven, a panther, and the golem - are all parts of the personality of Nelo Angelo, who Vergil had been corrupted into being by Mundus back in the first game.

You can't defy physics with it, but...

It's a neat idea, really...which doesn't make dealing with V's entire edge-lord aesthetic any more tolerable. I get that he personifies, perhaps, Vergil's enjoyment of flowery verbiage and his robust vocabulary (in reality his humanity, but still). I also get that the guy looks like the forbidden love child of Kylo Ren and Criss Angel and his raspy voice irritates me right down to my grits. When he got reabsorbed into Vergil, I was absolutely cheering.

Honestly, it's not anything that he does...or says...just...aesthetically, he doesn't really fit. Nero can be broody, but nobody can really look at Dante and say that the Devil May Cry series has an uber-dark, broody tone...provided you ignore 2. Which I do.

And so does the recap of the series available on the main menu, which fills me with no small amount of joy.

Rather like the joy I felt when I saw that this game already trumped DmC in sales.

Absolutely delicious!

There are a few gripes, but not too many. Besides V, or rather the boringness of V's sections, I don't much care for the camera in a few places. Most of the time you have free reign unlike in the first game, but when combat gets insanely focused and you do a nice lock-on, the camera sometimes doesn't like to behave.

The combat is nice and fluid and Capcom clearly did actually at least learn some good mechanical things from DmC - some of which I did praise in that review to my horror. In particularly, the use of "the Void" to practice moves is drawn from that game and is actually a welcome edition to the game to make sure you get a move combo down pat and don't run into battle to go and make a fool of yourself.

The only thing I have to add onto this is that Dante gets a cowboy hat that turns him into Michael Jackson circa 1983. And shoots energy blasts. And he gets a motorcycle that he slams into demons. Because why the hell not? If you think you have an argument against this game after that, you're absolutely friggin' wrong.

I will also praise the game for, as I said before, doing exactly what I suggested in my review of Vergil's Downfall - bringing back the original universe and getting on with the story people were actually invested in. The whole story is Nero learning his heritage and embracing it, bringing and end to the rivalry of Dante and Vergil (only not really), and taking up the torch passed to him by Dante as the next defender of the world from the forces of Hell. And it's done really well. If we're stuck with Nero as the protagonist from here on out, then I'm okay with that. Johnny Young Bosch does an awesome job as Nero and it's nice to have a likeable protagonist in the series again.

Ah, nothing like a father-son squabble.
(Yes, they confirm it for sure in this one)

If you're a fan of the original series and you haven't played this yet, get it. You won't regret it. The combat is great, the plot...well, the plot is coconut and arsenic and bananas and balloons filled with pudding crazy, but that's par for the course with Capcom...and the story arc of Nero is actually fun to see played out. Go and have yourself a crazy party!

Devil May Cry 5 is brought to us by Capcom and is available on Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

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