Devil May Cry 5: A Supercar Stuck in Low Gear

PSA: The author of this piece has never played a Devil May Cry game before. He jumped in assuming his experience in playing things like Kingdom Hearts, God of War, and all things Platinum Games would be enough. He also assumed that since he knew his anime bullshit, following the storyline would not be too difficult. All he knew is that there was a dude named Dante, he had an evil edgelord brother named Vergil, and hardcore fans of the series hated the Ninja Theory reboot. Also the author is adding that Ninja Theory reboot to his "to play" list.

Devil May Cry 5 is a gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting muscle car for an age where everybody has switched to hybrid engines and fuel economy. It wants to be indulgent and spectacular and something that will look great on a teenage boy's wall. I won't deny that it looks the part. The heroes are full of adolescent cool, the women have a funny habit of losing all their clothes, and the graphics are amazing. It even comes with a buttrock soundtrack. The valves and pistons in this big 12-cylinder engine of combat options are expertly engineered. However, Devil May Cry 5 is also an impracticable beast. It should be a joy ride but instead I found it very frustrating.

Last month I praised Kingdom Hearts III for being a PlayStation 2 throwback in the PlayStation 4 era. However, if Kingdom Hearts III is gaming's Amish Country, then Devil May Cry 5 is a Renaissance Fair. Capcom's devs act so behind the times they think "open world" means Grand Theft Auto III, that "Soulsborne" is a Metal band, and that "shlooter" is some kind of weird sex position. Devil May Cry 5 is a linear level-based game that is almost entirely single-player. You can use the word "arcade-y" when describing it. This was retro in 2009, and is outright transgressive in 2019. Devil May Cry 5 just wants to be a game, nothing more, god bless it. It has no deep ideas on its mind and has nothing to say about anything.

And sure, I love this kind of high-calorie fattening video game, but why am I still hungry after this meal?

Devil May Cry 5 has about sixteen full levels, with a few extra boss fight chapters added in. The whole experience is only about twelve hours from beginning to end, including cutscenes. This short structure is further broken up by splitting the game between three characters. You can either play as the classic hero Dante, his moody edgier nephew Nero (who is basically Raiden from Metal Gear only less likable), or a mysterious newcomer named V with strange powers. V looks like an emo Max Landis and carries around a copy of a book called "V", which I assume isn't the Thomas Pynchon novel. Pynchon is way too brainy for this game. The trio team up to beat some demon named Urizen, whose true identity should be a spoiler. But you've probably guessed who he really is already.

What's impressive for Devil May Cry 5 is that all three characters have enough depth and complexity in their movesets to fill up their own game. Nero relies on big explosive attacks through his various robot arms called "Devil Breakers", which come with a grappling hook to knock enemies around. V doesn't really fight at all, instead his demonic summons do all the work for him while you just manage their health bars. He prefers to read poetry in the background rather than mess with his perfect hair. The star though is an older Dante with a five o'clock shadow and a Dad Body.

Those other characters have decent gameplay, but Dante is where this all goes into top gear. He has four melee weapons, as many guns, and four different "stances" depending on whether you want to fight aggressively, defensively, or at a distance. Dante has endless options between his combos, counters, dodges, and combos that bleed into other combos. It's an infinite all-you-can-kill buffet of B-movie titillation, and it's hard not to love. I barely scratched the surface of what he could do, and only found out he had a parry mechanic after I beat the game. You could spend hours learning every single detail of how to best maximize Dante's gameplay.

However, you don't have those hours in Devil May Cry 5.

The key with Devil May Cry 5 though is that the game, like a any sports car, looks good. The gameplay is only half the experience. It needs to be stupidly stylish. Luckily Devil May Cry 5 is shiny and chrome with curves in all the right places. The graphics are gorgeous in the cutscenes with the best facial animation in any game I've ever played. Take Nico (see above), who is a side character that builds Nero's Devil Breakers. Her smile might be the single greatest graphical achievement of this generation. It's stunning to watch in action, and actually (confession time) that smile was half the reason I played this game. Admittedly a lot of the levels are bland corridors or the same gross bug-hive area repeated again and again. But as a backdrop for Dante's brand of trashy fun, it works fine.

Sadly while Devil May Cry 5 has the right engine and the right bodywork, it is too small a game to fit three characters into one playthrough. Dante alone probably has enough depth in his combat to fill up two different hack and slash games - plus change. That he only gets a third of this game means you'll barely get time to get to know his nunchuks, which the game dumps at you right before the final boss. Nero also just isn't that much fun to play as in comparison. His Devil Breaker weapons are cool in theory, but they're expendable items which cost money to replace. They're often irritating because you can't switch them in combat. I wish Nero had been cut out of this game altogether, honestly. Dante is cocky swagger and Nero is just angst. Who needs it?

I feel bad taking the position that Devil May Cry 5 is too short since games today are often far too long. It's nice to get something cozy and simple, that's focused on a single kind of experience. Capcom wanted to make something that was all about comically unrealistic action, and did it. There's a version of this where Capcom put in 600 hours of grind and sidequests to make Devil May Cry 5 as pointlessly long as any other gaming blockbuster. Do you really want to watch Dante go fishing or collect tokens? The alternative could be worse.

However, Devil May Cry 5, I kept wanting more game. It was like I had just got my new shiny Bugatti or Pagani supercar but after I got on the road, I hit rush hour traffic. The issue is that the game never really lets you feel all the horsepower in the combat engine. You can do everything the game asks of you in third gear. Why push it to the redline when basic combos are working? Devil May Cry 5 even gives you an automatic transmission option where the game completes your combos for you. I don't recommend that mode at all.

It all comes down to the difficulty. There's this wonderful arsenal of moves, cancels, and options to switch between. But you don't need any of it. 90% of Devil May Cry 5 can be beaten by playing as sloppily as a button-mashing Kingdom Hearts game. I found the optimal strategy didn't need switching stances or changing weapons. You could succeed just as easily by spamming the main attack button, and remembering to dodge enemy attacks. There was never a moment where you really needed to get deep into Dante's combos, or Nero's Devil Breakers, or V's anything. (You could beat V's levels blindfolded by hitting random buttons, which is kind of fun in a mindless way to be fair.) Then the game gives you half a dozen free resurrection items, meaning that there is no excuse to ever actually lose a boss fight.

So if I feel unsatisfied here, it is partially my own fault. I didn't get the full Devil May Cry 5 experience. Basically all I did with this game was drive the Practice Lap.

You actually can't pick a harder difficulty unless you've beaten the game already. This game includes six difficulty settings, and your defaults are "Easy" or "Devil Hunter" (meaning "Normal"). Frankly I found Normal to be too easy, that might be different for other players. It would have been nice to have the option to shift up to a higher gear from the beginning. However, the real meaty challenge is in the New Game Plus, when you play the game over and over, refining your skills and building your personal combo string. Then you can switch to another four difficulties, which probably get absurdly hard by the end. That first playthrough is just to learn the course and its curves. The later playthroughs are where Devil May Cry 5 pushes you and itself to the limit.

Sadly I never got to do that. I rented this game from Redbox and finished it in three days. Not a single boss really boss fight challenged me to get creative. I still have no idea what Dante's "Trickster" stance actually does. So I don't recommend Devil May Cry 5 if you're in any kind of hurry.

Do not think of Devil May Cry 5 as really a game of challenge. It just isn't. Sure it could be tricky if this is your first character action game. (Don't assume I'm some hack and slash god either, Sekiro is gonna beat my ass bloody.) The story is just a dumb excuse for beautiful characters to play superhero. So the levels themselves are an excuse as well. I thought of the enemies as threats. They're not. They're a canvas. They're here for you to explore your lethal creativity using every single bloody paintbrush the game offers you.

Think of a miss-timed combo as a happy little accident that will only increase the beauty of the finished product - which you are carving into a demon's face. This is the kind of game that gives you a letter grade not for efficient gaming but for really beating the shit out of a bad guy in a special and unique way. Devil May Cry 5 is candy for that lowest common denominator idiot inside all of us.

And yet, when you buy the ultimate driving machine, you expect to get the ultimate driving experience. Devil May Cry 5 is a sobering reminder that while torque ratios and carbon fiber are beautiful they are ultimately pointless. It's all totally impractical in the real world. You'll never use all 250 MPH the brochures promise. And in Devil May Cry 5, you'll never need to use Dante's motorcycle smash attack. It looks cool, it feels great, but in the end, Devil May Cry 5 doesn't need it. Games like Bayonetta use every bit of fuel in the tank. That's what makes them bonkers fun ,that feeling that you're pushing the engine to its breaking point. Devil May Cry 5 feels like it's holding back.

So really, it isn't the car that matters. It's how much of the car you get to drive. I got to feel maybe 10% of Devil May Cry 5. That's fine, it got me to my destination, and I looked cool while doing it. But I should never like I played out an adolescent fantasy the wrong way. Combat is useless if the game around it never needs it.