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

[madhair60]

dm5 has the most punitive approach to building style of any entry in the series—if you're not doing well enough, you will not be able to hear the theme song vocalist when she sings "bang, bang, bang—pull my devil trigger"

it's cruel not to let me hear it, imho

 

[estragon]

wow, that's exactly how i feel playing nero missions in the game

absolutely needed to buy all those different sword moves to help keep my style up

 

[air_show]

I've played a good deal more of 5 now and coming at it from my weird angle has given me a lot of complicated feelings about the audio visual presentation that I feel like I owe it a full playthrough before I begin unpacking. I will say that I switched to japanese after the first mission or so, then back to english again after several levels.

Mechanically however it's been very interesting. My arbitrary decision to play half of 4 before going to 5 ended up being a super useful thing to do because I got to spend a lot of time playing a more or less fully powered Nero and really get used to his moveset. Made going into 5 weirdly smooth despite all the interesting twists. I have not even begun to properly grok this robot hand situation. I can't figure out if there's even a way to switch which one I'm using without having to deliberately destroy the current one.

Then I play as V and it's like, absolute chaos. I have almost no idea what I'm doing, I often feel like I'm helplessly mashing most of the time and having very little clue if what I'm doing is useful at all. I do seem to get relatively decent scores though, so I guess my mad flailing is good enough.

And like, sometimes there's notifications of some kind of online activity with other players? And I'm supposed to rate their performance even though I never see them on screen at any point. It's very weird.

I've been making it a point to try and spend all my red orbs whenever possible, just to avoid the risk of spending them on continues, though to date I have only done so once and it was because the boss I was up against had a sliver of health left. Otherwise Gold Orbs have been plentiful enough to make up for my mistakes.

Still so far it's way harder than 4 was for what I played of it. I think I'm about to play as Dante when I load the game again so we'll see how this goes.

 

[estragon]

Okay, it's hilarious that Dante in DMC5 maintains immediate access to 4 styles from DMC4, plus now just the gauntlets also on their own have two distinct styles themselves that are activated by a very common move combination that you could reasonably input on accident and also have a kind of weapon specific heat up meter building mechanic that transforms what moves are available to you, which also interacts with Swordmaster style.

I like it, but there's a lot going on there!

Also enjoying that they maintained the feeling from DMC4 that Dante can just brute force his way through a lot of things that required more finesse for Nero.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I was dragging my feet on picking up DMC3, and it’s a good thing I did, since the the first three games were on sale on the PSN store for ten dollars. I may not get the QoL style switching upgrade from the Switch version of DMC3, but I can also play the first game and give the second a quick peek. DMC4 Special Edition is also on sale, so maybe I should give that game another chance?

 

[estragon]

And like, sometimes there's notifications of some kind of online activity with other players? And I'm supposed to rate their performance even though I never see them on screen at any point. It's very weird.

There are times when you can see them and even fight with them, but only on certain stages and I'd guess not very often because the game is a few years old now. It really surprised me when it happened. I was replaying Mission 13 once with each character and on my final run as Nero I wound up with a full trio and it was a nice little climax. Mostly though you can only see them incidentally in the background, if you're lucky and timing works out. In that case, the thumbs up to them is more like, "Thank you for giving me a personalized, living version of this level, instead of the standard canned animation."

Honestly it's too bad there's not more co-op Missions, because the proof of concept Mission works.

 

[madhair60]

I started Devil May Cry 3 because of this thread and I have to say it is very good.

However I cannot do the Secret Mission where you have to stop the reaper demon things from getting on the elevator.

um... I can come back and do those Secret Missions later right? There's no reason I need to do them all first run?

 

[Peklo]

Yes, several of them are only realistically doable with foresight of the demands/being properly equipped for them. They're puzzles you might not always have the solutions at hand for, with that one in particular being close to impossible the first time you get to it outside of downright glitch abuse. There's no deadline or punishment for retrying them as many times as you want, or even replaying them once you've completed them--the blue orb reward will simply be replaced by a red surplus.

 

[madhair60]

Thank you. I will return!

I just did a disgusting mission where I kept climbing through intestines infested with giant flying millipedes.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I’ve played the first four missions of DMC1. This game is “Early PS2 Game” rough. It’s also much simpler than I was expecting, but still pretty tough when bosses come around. I lost all the yellow orbs I had fighting Big Spider and Neo Angelo, so now when I die I have to start the whole level again, I suppose? Harsh if true.

My main take away from the hour and a half with DMC1 is how much Castlevania: Lament of Innocence ripped it off. Same control scheme, similar camera, Red Guy, etc. I guess it‘s fair after Dante stole his Devil Trigger from Cornell in Legacy of Darkness.

 

[Peklo]

I doubt any such deliberate lifting occurred and have typically seen such comparisons over the years as an association created by the audience whole cloth; on debut DMC1 was subjected to endless "now this is the 3D Castlevania I envisioned" commentary, which some years later was replaced by FromSoft games. Combo-heavy 3D action games were as much part of the video game zeitgeist of the time as anything, and contemporary presentational conventions similarly would have most games adopt pre-defined camera angles as a rule. Igarashi's 3D games both ascribed to a pretty direct conceptual basis in that their primary inspiration was always themselves, in trying to adapt and translate the formula set down by Symphony into a new dimension mostly as is, accounting for their idiosyncracies and foibles in just how literally that goal was reached for. Does God of War being a Greek mythology-themed 3D brawler arming you with a long-range chain weapon make it a Rygar: The Legendary Adventure clone? The same argument could easily be made there, but the developers themselves cite... Devil May Cry as one of the listed inspirations and models, showcasing how creative influence doesn't necessarily always run on such literal lines. Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness later on both feel equally the concoctions of extant wide-scale trends and their own internal creative legacies.

Dante also is a white-haired dude who wears red, while Leon is a blond in white with red trimmings. It again feels more like Kojima sticking to her personal style of protagonist and following basic colour theory in creating contrast in visual design--Juste the year before was nominally closer to Dante's palette, with his white locks and long red coat, but the characters still read differently and of having differing creative origins.

 

[air_show]

I’ve played the first four missions of DMC1. This game is “Early PS2 Game” rough. It’s also much simpler than I was expecting, but still pretty tough when bosses come around. I lost all the yellow orbs I had fighting Big Spider and Neo Angelo, so now when I die I have to start the whole level again, I suppose? Harsh if true.

Yeah DMC1 is oldschool. There are a few things that when known, help offset that harshness:

1. You can save your game at any time. What's important about this is that when you do this, your progress as far as orbs and items collected will be saved even though loading that save will reset you back to the start of the mission. You can use this to resource-manage somewhat as well as farm red souls if you deem it necessary to make progress. This also means you can checkpoint yourself with a lot of yellow orbs and decide whether or not saving after using some of them to overcome a challenge is worth it.

2. Missions are usually a lot shorter than you think and you can often run past a lot of things if you know where the goal is. Using this in conjunction with saving regularly whenever you collect a useful upgrade or come into a lot of rorbs will make it easier to return to whatever fight got you as quickly as possible.

3. You're still early in the game but when the game starts throwing more options at you, don't be afraid to use them. If you feel like an enemy isn't responding much to the weapons you're using, switch to different ones and see what a difference it makes. When I rage quit the game as a teen I stuck with a very limited selection of moves, and when I completed the game relatively painlessly a few years ago I made sure to use everything I had at some point or another.

4. Spend orbs freely. Don't save up for anything imo. The rising expense of items will prevent you from neglecting your skills, and don't forget to use those items you buy and collect to get you through tough spots. You're expected to get everything over the course of many playthroughs (remember, the game is quite short when you know what you're doing) if you want to unlock and upgrade everything, and from my own experience at least I can say spending freely throughout a first playthrough is enough to get you through it.

 

[air_show]

Ooof, not a fan of going back to Nero after playing the other two guys and having my muscle memory forget that the Devil Trigger button is now the Explode Hand button.

 

[estragon]

Finished DMC5 and then did a quick second runthrough as Vergil (he's extremely overpowered).

I honestly am am a huge fan of the way DMC4 and then especially DMC5 play with muscle memory to give each character a unique identity. It's even more pronounced here, with the introduction of V and then not just the contrast between Nero and Dante but also the evolutions in Dante's own playstyle that happen across the narrative. And if I'm understanding right, I think don't even get full access to Nero's full control layout until a New Game+, which is kind of hilarious, because a New Game's Mission 20 appears to be a unique full event battle with a unique control scheme, but if you replay Mission 20 it seems to instead be in Nero's post-game controls. Then you get yet another approach with Vergil, which has more variation than Nero but not quite as much as Dante. It's kind of funny that there are three distinct Devil Trigger systems, instead of a copy-paste of how it's always worked for Dante in the past games.

I really liked the use of non-chronological storytelling here. Everything is extremely foreshadowed, but they very effectively turned this into a kind of serial with compelling cliffhangers as it cuts between stories and timelines. I think they're also striking a good balance between the dumb action movie tone of DMC1 and 3 and the more anime direction of DMC4. I am honesty surprised at how strong the character arcs are for the characters who get them. I wish that Lady and Trish were given more to do than be nude and tentacled, though. It's sad that there's even a little epilogue for them teasing what seems like potential DLC that never happened, especially considering what a strong foundation they laid to give them their own unique playstyles in DMC4SE.

It's also kind of sad that there are basically no traditional DMC exploration type stages anymore (maybe just Mission 12?), but I can accept this as a direction for the series if it's this well executed.

I think that I got my fill of this series for now, but I could see coming back to try Son of Sparda on this one to play more with the new post-game tools and get a little more tension in the encounters. I did immediately do the obvious thing of using Devil Trigger Nero to beat the prologue, of course, but then stopped).

I have a pretty flat series ranking after playing through all of them, probably something like:

1=3=5>4>>>>>2

DMC1, 3, and 5 are all incredibly strong in their own way and for their respective eras. I'm most likely to come back to these. As I wrote here I like DMC4 a lot and it appears to still be the favorite of many for its technical combat, but in practice I feel like most of what it does, other games do better. It's something of an awkward middle point between 3 and 5. DMC2 is boring and mostly a dead end narratively and in terms of mechanics, but at least it's short and easy. I wouldn't recommend DmC to anyone for any reason except to understand the debate around it.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Thanks for the tips, air_show. I’m doing my best here, which is almost halfway through the whole game! That one skull faced guy with the scissors in the sewer took me a long time to beat, but everything else went okay. The grenade launcher is pulling it’s weight.

 

[madhair60]

I doubt any such deliberate lifting occurred and have typically seen such comparisons over the years as an association created by the audience whole cloth; on debut DMC1 was subjected to endless "now this is the 3D Castlevania I envisioned" commentary

Is this a US media thing, because I never saw that and I was already in too deep back then.

 

[Peklo]

It has floated about in discourse both on the audience and professional writer end for as long as DMC has existed, but was more prevalent when DMC1 was all that there was and hadn't beget a genre unto itself yet; you wouldn't necessarily connect "stylish action" to Castlevania's usual tenets but DMC1 was a highly liminal game that could be interpreted in a multitude of ways as opposed to the hyperspecific self-definition later entries created for themselves. People were hungry for a Castlevania in 3D, and Konami's own offerings were widely seen as lackluster--Dante sweeping onto the scene and fighting vaguely mythologically themed monsters in an occult castle environment was seen as a natural extrapolation of what the series could be like in different hands, so many were satisfied with this permutation of the shared elements and left it at that. I brought up From's catalogue because the same pattern repeated once Souls got rolling, with people latching onto comparative game design concepts and aesthetic signifiers to declare that if Castlevania proper wasn't up to the task, at least someone else was arguably carrying on the spirit, despite yet again From's own history being the larger influence and blueprint in shaping what they went on to do from that point forward.

 

[air_show]

So I'm up to mission 16, I think, in DMC 5. Dante is still overwhelming to play most of the time. I felt overwhelmed by V during his little vison quest but stepped up my panicked mashing game and ended up wrecking the last fight with a big sloppy S. I have elected to play Nero whenever the game gives me the choice because I felt like I had the best handle on him, but then after a few missions as the other two I was rusty as fuck and barely stumbled my way through. My capacity to somehow forget every combo in the middle of combat and foolishly spam hand attacks until I break two in quick succession knows no bounds. Keeps me on my toes though. The game's generosity with yellow orbs is appreciated at these times. I have yet to run out despite this game giving it to me real good at times.

Story-wise, again only really remembering story beats from 1 and 4 consistently Vergil is back and V is his expelled human traits or something. This is all weird to me because from the amount of 4 that I played I had the impression that Vergil was well and truly dead and gone but by carrying his sword Nero is able to call upon him as a Stand.

And Dante is his gay uncle.

 

[air_show]

In regards to Dante being an angel/demon hybrid in DmC again:

It boringly literalizes the internal conflict present in Dante from previously contrasting his human and demonic aspects into making it about an angel and devil on one's shoulders kind of set-up... which both completely uproots the character from his supposedly mundane human traits and connections (which are still emphasized anyway) and removes the personal relevance that dynamism has been used to fuel. I don't buy DmC's Dante as a character within his own story, in all its hokey "social commentary" (lol) on our common reality, because the element of heritage and identity is just nowhere in it to be seen. Dante claiming his mother's identity isn't something that ever comes up because the angelic theming is nothing but lip service, seemingly only present to facilitate the game's weapon and enemy design baselines in the stock elemental opposites and weaknesses framing. There is also definitely an aspect of increasingly gendered writing in the reframing, where you have Good Woman Angel and Bad Devil Man in what Eva and Sparda's union represents.

Oh man, first of all, I totally agree with all that.

But also I've been thinking about it still and I think my objection is even more mundane and world-building focused. My objection is because, based on what I've seen so far of the series: Angels just straight up don't exist in the DMC universe. There is just Earth and Hell. And every time something looks angelic in the series there's actually a particularly gross hell monster hiding underneath. That's interesting to me.

Also the fact that the fact that the villain's plan in 4 at least by the end of Nero's storyline is to use exactly that worldbuilding detail to pull a Syndrome is fucking delightful to me.

 

[air_show]

Ok, tonight I got up to the human Vergil fight and he proceeded to absolutely plow through my supply of yellow orbs and destroyed what little red orbs I had left and I game-overed for the first time. That's fine I guess, it's expected to be a hard fight.

Discovering that running out of red orbs has the game offer the option to buy more with real money is actually kind of disgusting and I don't like that at all. I also did some poking around in the menus and saw that there seem to be classic music options that are behind a paywall rather than unlockable. Also a dick move imo. Alas, such are games these days it seems.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

DMC1 has gotten a lot more fun since I’ve gotten the Ifrit Fire Fists, a.k.a, the only other melee weapon in the game so far at Stage 15! Lack of different weapons and fighting the same three bosses are the only major gripes I have at this point. I’m anxious to try DMC3 to see how much things evolve, since I’ve heard DMC2 makes things even simpler than they were in 1.

 

[air_show]

So I decided that since Vergil wrecks me so profoundly that I can't even begin to figure out how to fight back I oughta just go and replay through some older levels and improve my game. First off this has already been fruitful because it turns out I missed a bunch of easy blorb shards apparently and I finally found another secret mission and was even able to complete it.

Then I log on today and get 10 mf gold orbs from stylish rankings! I could probably use those to brute force Vergil at this point.

I feel like I should probably replay some Dante stages before trying that though because I saw a video that showed me just how profoundly I had no idea what Dante can even do.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Mission 17, the one with the final fight against Nelo Angelo, took me an hour and a half. This is the only thing in the game that has taken me more than ten minutes to overcome. I had to buy a bunch of blue orbs to increase my life bar, which I probably should have been doing already. Felt like I was playing a different game. What a difficulty spike this late in!

 

[air_show]

FUCK. I just KNOW I'm missing something in Mission 3 and I just can't find it. The first time I went through the level I blazed through it but the second two times now I've scoured the mf and every time come to realize I've passed one of the points of no return without getting all the secrets.

Also I did beat Vergil. Had to burn like, 4 or 5 yellow orbs to do it but so be it. That fight is ridiculous. So I'm on SoS difficulty now.

The whole music encouragement thing really does make it satisfying to perform well in fights. If only I could do it consistently. It often feels like a coin toss if I'm going to do well on a fight or not.

I've deliberately avoided changing button maps so far because I just kind of hate doing that, I feel like I should be able to play a game the way the developers considered ideal but there are a few baffling decisions in there. I mean Nero gets his very own super fuckin ugly Devil Trigger and it's STILL a different button than the other two guys and I STILL unintentionally explode my hand all the time because of that? Seems like the sensible thing to do would be to just change that so there's a little more uniformity between how the dudes control, but then I wonder if there was a deliberate reason they did things that way and if I just haven't learned it yet.

Though I can't think of any reasonable justification for Griffon and Shadow both to be on thumb buttons.

Also I think I'm ready to talk about my discomforts with the game's visual presentation. First off the game looks fucking incredible during fights and everything's pitch perfect there as far as I'm concerned. But the characters being so realistic looking and losing that gentle hint of anime bums me out. Everyone feels very rotoscoped during cutscenes. And I had just gotten done getting warm fuzzy feelings for how classically DMC 4 was in tone, only to jump into this game with a grittier aesthetic that reminds me of DmC.

Storywise though I rather like it. I've grown to accept that Nico sounds like an australian doing an Elvis impersonation. I almost wish Dante's story role were maintained but his playable status would be reduced to bonus character status ala Vergil(though he should ALWAYS be unlockable and never DLC). I know that probably would be sacrilege to a lot of people but they've been pushing for Nero to inherit the main character status since his introduction and I would have liked to have more levels dedicated to playing as him and V rather than giving a third of them to Dante. Ended up feeling like I never really got a complete game's worth of play for any of them.

I was particularly surprised when there was a flat out "He's your father!" scene. I was starting to wonder if it was the policy of the writers to coyly dance around it forever, or if they had already acknowledged it before the end of 4 and I just hadn't seen it yet.

I actually rather like V's role in the story too. More than I expected. I figured he was just gothboy eye candy which obviously he still is but also being basically Vergil's human self is an interesting insight into his character. And I enjoy the ambiguity about his motivations. Up to the end I wasn't sure if he wanted to merge with his demon self again because he regretted casting half of his identity out like that, or because it was all one big resurrection scam the whole time. Either way it was fun to see him and Dante bro it up in Hell together.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I completed DMC1 tonight! The last few levels are a bit of a mess, in my opinion. Full of new ideas that come out of nowhere, and then vanish before they can be ironed out to be, you know, fun. I had to use a vital star during the strange lava fight with Mundus, despite getting fairly good at the surprise Space Harrier segment. Is that part really just hammering the fireball at his weak point for two or three minutes? I kept trying to get in close, only to die over and over.


Is there a level select, or New Game + that lets you still play on Normal? I’d like to go back and find some Secret Missions, but I don’t want to do them on Hard.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

It would seem there is no level select, so I started a new game. This time I used a guide to find blue orbs and secret missions, spent my red orbs (rorbs) more wisely, and got through the whole game without using any items. I missed two blorbs and three secret missions in the early game. Hoping that progress will carry over to Hard mode!

 

[air_show]

Yeah, hard modes in DMC games basically exist as an excuse to play through again with all your powered up skills while keeping pace with the challenge.

 

[air_show]

Ok, I'll bite. Every game I play in the series is like "Death Scissors are really easy if you wait for just the right moment to strike" and every single game in the series involves me just spamming attacks that clang of their scissors until sometimes they suddenly die.

I'm never going to figure it out on my own. What's the trick to fighting Death Scissors?

 

[R.R. Bigman]

For DMC1, I think if you hit their scissors and get them to stagger, you can then shoot them in the head and kill them instantly. I can sometimes get it to work, but not often. The very first Secret Mission requires you to do it, which was a bad time for me.

 

[estragon]

The trick is this:

Hit them specifically once when their scissors are fully open. That's what staggers them. Then, shoot them once and they die.