Devil May Cry: A Wide Assortment Of Sad Denizens Of Hell

I'm planning on playing all the Devil May Cry games in a row - DMC1, skipping SMT3 because I did it recently, DMC3, DMC4, and finally DMC5.

Here are two facts about me:
I have beaten Bayonetta on the highest difficulty setting.
I consider myself "not quite good" at this genre.

I have already completed DMC1, which is a pretty fascinating game that could do with some rebalancing - everything in the game should hit for less damage on both sides, in my opinion. When DMC1 released, Phantom was a shocking difficulty spike. In 2020, you Devil Trigger and hit them like four times, maybe baseball a fireball back at them if you feel fancy. And everything about the game is like that. Just truly weird decisions throughout because no one knew how this genre would go on to be codified.

The biggest, series-defining decision in DMC1 is that you hold lock-on, and press jump while holding to Dante's left or right to dodge roll. There is a dedicated map button and two shoot buttons in DMC1, and no dodge button. This has a crucial knock-on effect present in every other DMC game - without using Trickster Style, Dante cannot adjust his distance from an enemy while also dodging (though not sure about 5, haven't played it yet). Dante can jump in or out, and those do have some i-frames, but there are crucial differences.

I say all this because I've started DMC3 and it's pretty incredible the effect all that grenade launcher cancelling in DMC1 has had on how I play DMC3 - I'm really comfortable with the dodge now! It's wild. It's to the point that if you're rusty, I recommend playing DMC1 before other DMC games as a refresher; it's fine, DMC1 is really short and easy.

Also, I can't live without taunt on a trigger now. Sure, I've used taunts in Bayonetta to generate meter when I needed it, but this DMC1 playthrough awoke something in me - I am constantly taunting now. Finish a combo and not in immediate danger? Taunt. Finish a combo in immediate danger? Start to taunt and dodge cancel. Get hit? Taunt. No enemies on screen? Shoot until that changes, then taunt. Start of a fight? Taunt. It's free Style gauge! Start a fight at C! Jump from A to SS! It's incredible. I get Bs, Cs, and Ds on Damage but my no items bonus and my A Style rank means I can still walk away from a mission with a B or A.

Other thoughts: Temen-Ni-Gru is just not as cool a place as Mallet Island. Also DMC3's archer enemies write checks the fixed camera angles can't cash. Tons of times I'll be in a room like "okay I know there's an enemy in this room, probably within 15 feet or so, but I have no clue where."

Lance Noble Aster said:

This has a crucial knock-on effect present in every other DMC game - without using Trickster Style, Dante cannot adjust his distance from an enemy while also dodging

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This is part of why I always unlock Stinger very early and its equivalent move if available on non-sword weapons. The best kind of movement is movement that does damage, and Dante gets a lot of it. IMO the value of Trickster is for offensively spot dodging (doing just a neutral Trick) and letting you dash in the air.

Ooof, I have a depressing PSA about DMC3 Switch's Free Style mode - The weapon swap buttons don't toggle between your current weapon and last weapon, they advance to the next weapon, which so far as I care, makes the game unplayable. Also, your save file is locked into Original or Free Style mode when you create it unlike, say, the difficulty.

Oh the note of moving while dealing damage, though, Agni and Rudra are great for this reason. Their equivalent doesn't do any knockback, so you can use it on single targets more easily. Stinger will require you to close the gap again and fill that time with bullets unless you're near a wall.

Uh, wow, so it's not just style switch but Everything Mode? Because in the older versions you can only equip two different weapons of each type at once anyway...still, the same thing happens in 4 iirc (though I think there are not quite as many individual weapons), it seems like a not very avoidable consequence of the character just having an incredibly ridiculous number of inputs

second one definitely seems jank, though i remember that being the way the continue mode select (yellow vs gold orbs) works as well? is that still a thing or does it just default to gold since there's no real point to yellow anyway?

It's Gold or Yellow and Original or Freestyle.

I have, at this point, gotten my Original mode Agni and Rudra kill. Even did it the right way where you don't let phase 2 happen.

Completed Devil May Cry 3!

This game is a land of contrasts for me, for two, technically three reasons.
Cerberus
Agni and Rudra

I SUCK at the Cerberus fight. Even when I have a kitted-out Dante, I struggle with it. I think it's because the fight feels so interminably long, and the heads stay vulnerable for so little time. A straightforward approach allows so little time between attacks that it feels wrong to do it that way, and even when I do, I constantly get knocked out of the air doing it. If Cerberus was nearer to the ground, if Cerberus didn't recharge his armor, if Cerberus got knocked down for longer - I think any of these would cure me of my desire to get that fight over with sometime this decade.

Agni and Rudra, on the other hand, come up in a mission that has already had a Jester fight, and I tend to get annoyed with them until I remember how to fight them.

After Agni and Rudra, the entire rest of the game is smooth sailing.

I went out of my way to spend a lot of time with a weapon I never touch this run - Nevan. So the trick to Nevan is to recognize that its default bat riff is a ranged attack and you're playing Devil May Cry 3 - non-Swordmaster ranged attacks suck. Bat Rift is fine, I guess. Since it's an actual attack that leads into the bats, it can be used after whipping Nevan out for a two-hit combo with a bat follow-up at point blank.

Now, Reverb Shock? Reverb Shock is dope. Not dope enough to justify using the weapon on it's own, but it's still great. It's the way to move with Nevan - not only does it not knockback like Stinger, it's an AoE that usually knocks enemies down.

Swordmaster is mandatory for Nevan, I think, because it gives the weapon two crucial tools: a regular-ass attack in Slash, and Feedback - aka the reason to use Nevan. Feedback is a huge multi-hit AoE that ends in an explosion. It has the same directional input as Reverb Shock, and, crucially, both attacks loop into each other, unlike some of Nevan's attack. In small rooms, cycling between Reverb Shock and Feedback will get you SSS Style. In Mission 19, using Feedback on the leech phase will give you SSS every time you do it. It's wild.

Yeah I recently completely DMC3 as well and I never did get the hang of Cerberus. What an odd choice for a first boss.

Current status of the Cry-a-thon: why vroom vroom sword so hard to time???

More seriously, DMC4's missions are much longer. At least, they feel much longer. They feel just long enough that hitting the mission start button is kind of daunting instead of DMC1/3's "sure I'll do one more" until the game ends. I like playing as Nero much more now that I'm not awful at Devil May Cry (I blame my improvement on Monster Hunter, Soulsborne, and Hades).

Nero's toolset is pretty much vanilla sword Dante but slightly different, with the obvious difference of my favorite-named thing in the series: DEVIL BRINGER. I think Nero's Exceed Actions are probably where he shines - I only assume because the skill ceiling seems so high on getting MAX-ACT or maintaining Red Queen's EX gauge otherwise. But Devil Bringer's grab attacks are a satisfying "big damage now please" option. Back when I played DMC4 last time, I was playing purely to get through the game, so I think I probably mashed Devil Bringer constantly. It feels really powerful and just completely shuts some enemy types down. But, of course, just spamming one move over and over again is gonna be awful for Style, which is a uniquely Devil May Cry way to balance a move.

Big cool thing I'm thrilled with: DMC4 doesn't give a single dang about damage taken. This is a massive improvement, in my opinion.

Oh yeah, "damage taken" as a score metric is pretty redundant... because your style rating already tanks pretty hard when you get hit!

As for Cerberus: I have not played DMC3 in a long time, but that was also my least favorite boss IIRC. The only "trick" I really know is that it's weak to Agni & Rudra, but fighting that thing without Swordmaster is frustrating because hitting its heads is soooo valuable.

i forget exactly how it works as it's been some time since i was playing the game seriously, but there's some mechanic about either hitting the heads or the legs a bunch making him fall over so you can cleave all of the heads for a ton of damage. it's very doable even from a fresh file (i.e. without coming back with later weapons and more upgrades) if you change to swordmaster (which also lets you rebellion cleave all the heads by jumping), since that's what i always did while speedrunning, but alas, the closest video i can find is a 2006 marty81 recording of him doing a cheese loop with vergil that basically causes the boss to permanently re-ice himself, lol


i think it's a good boss! it both rewards aggression (which is a huge lesson for the game) and to encourage coming back for a better grade (there's just no way you're gonna figure everything out on your first time, and it really does benefit you to have more stuff, especially a&r), but it's not clear about the fact that's what it's trying to teach you, unfortunately

I'm done with Nero times in DMC4 finally, and playing as Dante. DMC4 wears on me in ways I can't explain, but playing Dante again is like coming home. Dante is just DMC3 Dante, his full moveset is there. And, wisely, his missions hand you the fist weapon as quickly as possible. Its moveset is like a greatest hits of the DMC1 and 3 fist weapons - the normal moveset from DMC1, and the Swordmaster moveset from DMC3.

And having the Swordmaster moves for a fist weapon means access to an ascended glitch. Two words: Real. Impact.
If you don't know what that means, if you Devil Trigger as soon as the first hit of Real Impact hits, it deals a shit ton more damage and hits twice for some reason.

It's been years since I've played DMC4, but the timing windows on Exceed felt very catered to players at a much higher skill level than myself, to the point I mostly just ignored or got frustrated by the mechanic. After playing around with the much more lenient windows in DMC5, I don't know that it's even possible for me to go back.

I don't know what it is about DMC4, but it just cratered all my enthusiasm. I didn't even bother finishing it. It's not often I play a video game and am unable to articulate why I like or dislike it, but here we are.

It has sparse, boringly-themed environmental design; the worst narrative in the series; a too-single-minded set of mechanics in Nero and a too-everything-at-once collection in Dante; the complete irrelevance of red orbs thanks to the debut of the Proud Soul system; the most misogynistic treatment of women in the (main) series give or take a 5; the ills of the level design are exacerbated by having to run through most of the game again, in reverse; probably also the weakest soundtrack too. There are individual mechanics and inspired moments in it and I guess for some the additions of the Special Edition go towards redeeming it, but it's never something I want to revisit in full, or take in as a whole.

I'd still rather play 4 over 2, but yeah it's pretty bottom barrel for me otherwise, even with the Special Edition additions.

I had fun playing as Lady in the special edition, at least.

Trying out Devil May Cry for the first time after being somewhat disappointed with a replay of the first Bayonetta.

Even after hearing many people talk about how obviously this was a Resident Evil game early in its development, I was still surprised by how obviously this was a Resident Evil game early in its development. There's a definite, "well, we've got to do something with these assets!" feeling to it. Laughed out loud that the first thing you do in one of the pillars of the 3D character-action game genre is get locked in a room with zero enemies and you're not let out until you find 45 Red Orbs. Also, I was stuck on 42/45 Orbs for a long time until I jumped on a statue that just gave 100 orbs??? Solved the problem but definitely was left wondering if there was a legitimate way to find the last 3. I'm assuming there is, but I'm not sure where I wasn't looking...

It's a pretty multi-layered, dense hall so missing some can happen. I believe there are exactly 45, absent of that bonus surplus you discovered. There are many such secrets in the game, where just standing in a conspicuous space can net you such rewards. It goes really well with the game's level design ethos that likes to present a cogent environmental narrative between mission transitions and on a room to room basis instead of individual setpieces. The uncodified nature of the genre it was creating has left the game unchallenged in some areas that later entries chose to divert themselves from, so there's never an argument to be made that the first Devil May Cry has been rendered superfluous or obsolete by any followup, always making it interesting to return to or newly discover.

I'm only two missions in, but I definitely agree with your assessment from the Bayonetta thread that the exploration feels like it fits much better here. Bayonetta's level design feels to me like it often embodies some of the worst ideas of PS3/360 era games, where it suggests a degree of expansiveness that is beyond the capabilities of the hardware and never really present, but does frequently leave me confused about the boundaries of the environment. After that, there's something nice about a PS2 game in narrow corridors so that the play area is very clearly defined.

Also, reading trough this thread, I'm glad to see that DMC4 has a kind of mixed at best reputation. One reason I never really tried this series was that I downloaded the demo for DMC4 as my first experience and it didn't click with me at all (don't remember the details), but the first game feels not like that at all.

Also also (and I'm sure this is a tired observation by now), it's extremely Kamiya that the game opens with the badass protagonist getting relentlessly dommed.

Okay, the first Devil May Cry was fantastic. Level design is very strong within the short, self-contained missions, and across those missions the game does a great job giving you a greater sense of place. The castle's gradual shifting toward the demon realm is an effective way to make use of what were presumably time/budgetary limitations that makes the game feel alive instead of just a retread.

Similarly, major bosses repeating generally works, creating a sense of being pursued by a series of nemeses as you try to complete your mission. Nightmare (the goo machine) was particularly cool, although weirdly I thought its encounters were in reverse difficulty order (hardest-->easiest), if only because the first area has really bad pre-set camera angles and the second two arenas keep you close to the boss. Presumably this was designed to make it harder to avoid, but in practice being able to always see the boss' tells for attacks and whether or not its weak point is popping out is a much bigger advantage than having less room to dodge is a hinderance. All types of ranged and melee weapons feel very distinct, giving you a wide range of choices to deal with a difficult encounter.

This genre is known for difficulty, but I found that this at least was pretty forgiving. Red Orbs you pick up are saved even if you save in a mission you fail, so on a level with a number of enemies between yourself and the boss you're basically grinding for currency as long as you save before the boss, so either by learning an encounter or by brute force you should eventually be able to get through anything. In practice I did not learn the hardest phase of the final boss at all, because I had been hoarding items in case it ever got difficult so I just used a bunch of health and devil trigger refills instead of figuring it out.

I'm not sure I want to replay this on Hard, but I could see coming back to it as a New Game for sure.

I've also dipped into Devil May Cry 2. I'm so used to Gamer complaints about sequels being overblown that I was honestly kind of surprised by how not exaggerated at all the complaints about this one are. Dante feels really bad to control, and enemies seem to either just stand around waiting to die or they fly around outside of the pre-set camera range and you auto-lock-on and shoot until the life bar of this unseen flying enemy depletes so that the encounter music will end. In theory, I don't mind the level design shift from cool environment to funnel that takes you to the next combat encounter, but the combat encounters themselves are very tedious so basically everything interesting about the first game is gone.

Glad you enjoyed the original.

The iterative bosses are in my opinion crucial to the game's effectiveness, and something you wish subsequent follow-ups and imitators did half as well. It's not only that in effect you have a game-long string of legitimate "rivals" as the genre often aspires to, but the way those multiple encounters intertwine with the game's also-exemplary bestiary notes--see an enemy behaviour/attack; have it jotted down for later perusal--in how the tactics and nuances shift over time is a really great reflection of the weird relationship of jovial competition and grudging respect Dante in this incarnation forms with his adversaries. It's even used as good punctuation in storytelling when the entire rest of the enemy cast receives meticulous and detailed paragraphs of tactical notes over time, but Mundus as Dante's true nemesis simply has a short description compelling you to finish him for good, absent of any other advice or nuance.

The odd-numbered games are good and the even-numbered games are not.

Adrenaline said:

the even-numbered games are not.

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Ehhhhhhhh... 2 is just bad all around for a lot of reasons. 4 at least ended up still having an improved combat experience and coherent visual design. At least I don't remember 2 having much in the way of an aesthetic identity, but I haven't touched it since beating it when it was new.

2 is definitely worse but I found 4 dull and easily the next from the bottom.

Playing DMC2 more, Lucia doesn't quite make the game good, but she feels a lot better than Dante. The way enemies no-sell being hit by her attacks feels more natural given the relative lack heft to her animations as the character who hits fast with daggers instead of a huge sword, and it's also less of a problem when they no-sell her because she can weave in and out without having to commit to big movements. It almost feels like enemy behaviors were designed around Lucia and Dante was a rushed addition to retroactively make an unrelated Lucia game a sequel to Devil May Cry, because it's just so unnatural how little many enemies react to Dante's big, heavy swings. (I'm not saying this was actually the case, that's just how bad it feels to control Dante in the game.)

Allegedly DMC2 had a pretty high level shakeup to try to rescue the project which had been shifted to a part of Capcom more familiar with arcade games to give them something to do as that business withered on the vine. Hideaki Itsuno, its only credited director, seems to have been brought in within the game's last 6 months and described the project as having been run in a way that made it essentially directorless prior to that point, which all come together to explain some things.

Funniest thing about 2 is it shipping on two discs, one each for Dante and Lucia. The differences would amount to the related player character data and their respective story cinematics, but not really anything else (and maybe both discs still house the entirety of the game data anyway). It may have been corroborated to have been such at some point, but certainly seemed like a marketing ploy to prop up the game's "value" when a single disc would have more than sufficed for storage needs.

I was ready to find the good in it but no the consensus take on DMC2 is 100% correct. A half-baked game, slightly more fun with Lucia, but either way totally misses what was great about its predecessor and doesn't figure out anything interesting to do instead.
At least it's short?

Excited to try DMC3, but I want to finish a Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song remake playthrough first!

I started DM3, and now I'm a little past Agni and Rudra. Now this feels like a sequel to Devil May Cry. Genre conventions are forming and there's definitely more of a focus on action, but especially once you get to the tower the mission structure at least has some traces of the mansion exploration of the first game, while returning Dante to being fun to control and making the enemies responsive again.

The bosses in particular are extremely varied and well thought out, with what seem to be some good reoccurring ideas like armor that breaks away when attacked repeatedly and regenerates when you let up, creating good risk/reward temptation. Agni and Rudra was also a very smart approach to a 2 on 1 boss, giving you the option to either try to deplete their health bars at a relatively equal pace (keeping them from entering the powered up solo phase for very long, but nearly always having two to deal with) or to kill one ASAP (giving you only one thing to focus on, but something more difficult). I went for the former approach so I didn't have to really learn the new phase. There's also some pretty good responsivity with temporarily knocking their weapons out of their heads with a well timed attack.

Based on how people talk about this game I thought that maybe it might have something like Bayonetta level fluidity, but for the so far it seems to more or less keep the more deliberate rhythms of the first game (but not the languid feel of the second), just more refined and with more diverse and interesting enemy patterns.

I don't think any of the DMC games ever feel as "fluid" as Bayonetta, and the closest they probably get is when you're playing with a maxed-out Trickster style.