Devil May Cry

Devil May Cry is a founding father of the hack and slash genre and precursor to today’s complex combat systems. Despite lingering issues with technology and presentation, it stands the test of time and remains a great example of action done right.

There is no denying that Devil May Cry is conspicuously light on story elements. Without much in the way of helpful or informative exposition, you are thrust into the guise of Dante, a half-demon devil hunter and descendant of the Dark Knight Sparda, who travels to an ancient island fortress with the hope of tracking down the demon responsible for the death of his family. Get used to that amount of plot, for you’ll be spending most of the game with it.

As expected from a milestone on which were built action games like God of War and Bayonetta, Devil May Cry’s cornerstone and primary gameplay innovation is its unique treatment of combat. Fans of the latter entries in the genre may be disappointed in its comparatively small repertoire of combos and possibilities, but the unique style system ensures that variety within that repertoire is always the player’s priority. In a mechanic made possible by the fluidity of its controls, the game rewards you with higher mission rankings based on the variety and pace of your attacks. Higher rewards are obtained by pushing the style meter higher and higher, whereas repeatedly spamming the same commands will not only make you look silly, but also reflect badly on your score.

Even without this novel check on variety and creativity, combat would be fast-paced and unrelentingly enjoyable; if fun is what you’re looking for in an action game, Devil May Cry delivers on the basis of its gameplay alone, and few games since it have been able to deliver to the same standard.

It’s not all guns and roses, though; while it goes without saying that “bad camera angles” are more often than not a scapegoat for poor skill in action games, there is something truly frustrating about how the camera in Devil May Cry swings around with reckless abandon. Focusing on the entirely wrong parts of the action, it often refuses to reorient without a fight, which is more time than most combat sections will allow you to waste wrestling with the camera. By Devil May Cry 3, Capcom got wise and implemented a “no-camera rule,” preventing enemies not in your line of sight from attacking you unless accompanied by obvious voice cues, but the first game is not as kind – especially on harder difficulties, expect to be one-shotted by baddies spewing fireballs from clear across the room when you never even saw them spawn.

Even absent the camera’s concerted attempts to sabotage otherwise excellent gameplay, Devil May Cry is hard, and knows it. In fact, it’s the first game I have known to actually condescend to people who play poorly, recording your failures and automatically scaling down its own difficulty (and being very vocal about it) to give you a fighting chance. Given that most newcomers to the game will find themselves downgraded to Easy Auto mode within the first two missions, it’s not surprising that the series has earned a reputation for alienating players by recklessly upscaling difficulty. 

Challenges are readily available to those that seek them: for that special brand of difficulty completionist that this type of game tends to attract, there is the infamous “Dante Must Die” mode, a setting of legendary difficulty where bosses are capable of ending your game in two hits and any enemies left standing at the end of an all-too-short battle timer activate their own stat-boosting Devil Trigger modes. Combined with a battle system emphasizing variation and reflexes, the slew of difficulties will either turn away casual gamers forever or provide a hefty replay incentive for those willing to develop their skills.

It’s obvious from the start that Devil May Cry’s visual gimmick relies on dark, gothic architectural splendor. Its art direction is seemingly drawn from the Dracula’s-castle imagination of cheesy monster movies and old horror flicks, which means that the early levels – taking place for the most part in a towering, dilapidated castle filled with various demonic paraphernalia – will look familiar and trite to many modern gamers.

This is not to say that hackneyed concepts can’t be beautiful; the quality and detail of Devil May Cry’s backgrounds have aged well, and always provide an interesting and colorful backdrop to the action. A particular highlight of environment construction appears towards the end of the game, dropping you inside a pulsating body cavity fighting tapeworm-like villi and platforming across the bloody meatscape of some giant creature’s innards, blowing away most level design in a display of true originality.

The ambient and battle music are equally niche, and create a dual atmosphere that has been mostly abandoned by today’s composers: a sort of old-school rock-and-techno headbanging sound mixed with pipe organs and the odd harpsichord riff. The game’s rich sound tapestry features ambient moodiness with splashes of electronica and floaty string quartets, punctuated with the vaguely musical marimba trills that play upon collecting red orbs (the spiritual precursor to halos, souls and God of War’s red orbs) which transition during battles into the screeching percussion of one of the most blood-pumping battle themes I’ve ever heard. Music goes a long way to setting the tone for a game, and whether it’s to your liking or not, Masami Ueda’s composition makes up much of Devil May Cry’s distinctive style.

Unfortunately, great sound does not ensure great voicework. Capcom has never been known for its first-class acting, and DMC is no exception; though it’s a grade above the earlier Resident Evil games, the writing and delivery of dialogue will either fill you with shame or have you in stitches, depending on whether or not you can have a sense of humor about it.

As mentioned, the barest minimum of story fills in the cracks between the ample combat sections, and characters with little emotional depth (and an oddly Freudian connection) leave the game largely dependent on mythology, visual appeal and flimsy plot devices to sustain interest. Combine that with a nonsensical deus ex machina towards the end and unforgivably cheesy finale, and story is far and away the last reason to give Devil May Cry your hard-earned dollars. 

However its flaws may stack up, it's hard to deny that the game has soul. As with many of Capcom’s earlier 3D outings, technical flaws sometimes cripple gameplay while translation issues make story and acting questionable at best, but its butter-smooth combat and expert treatment of the “cool” aesthetic is more than enough for some people to overlook its various shortcomings.

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