A review of Devil May Cry 5, Capcom’s new action-adventure hack and slash title, is now live on YouTube. Absolutely phenomenal and its on my early list as a Game of the Year contender.
Below is a transcript of the Devil May Cry 5 video review.
Devil May Cry 5 is absurdly phenomenal. I don’t have any other way to say it. It’s probably one of the best games I’ve played this year, for sure, even though it’s early, and I think everybody else is gonna like it too. But let’s get right into it.
Story
So, Capcom just came off the Resident Evil 2 Remake. That was obviously a huge deal for them. It was a great game, one I reviewed and loved. And now we got this Devil May Cry 5, which is now the – what would this be? The sixth in the series, basically, because the last one was a prologue.
And you can play as three main protagonists. You have Dante, of course, Nero, who was in Devil May Cry 4, and a new addition of this mysterious character named V.
Controls and Elements
And all three characters have radically different playstyles. Nero, for example, has this EX gauge that you can manually power up. It gives your abilities this epic boost. And he also has these attachments known as Devil Breakers, which go on his arm and they grant him different abilities to use in battle. For example, one lets you burst through all the enemies whenever you use it. It’s linked to your B button and it will stagger the enemies you’re fighting against.
So, it’s very much varied and I don’t want to spoil it for you guys because there’s so many different variants to use and they’re exciting and fun and unique. And you equip them between each individual level or sometimes within the mission itself, because they do break on you, so you have to replenish them. That’s the only bad part about it. But, it just gives a lot of varied gameplay and I think people will enjoy experimenting.
Dante is phenomenal in this game. He is so fun to use. He has all the old weapons that you would expect, Ebony & Ivory, his sword, num-chuks. He even has – it’s insane, but he actually has a motorcycle to fight with. And I don’t mean like he’s completely just riding around, running over enemies. He literally uses it, breaks it in two, and beats the bejesus out of people with it. And it’s just – it’s epic and fun.
Also linked with Dante’s motorcycle and different skills he uses, he uses different stances, which you can change on the fly using your directional pad. And they allow you to have different abilities where maybe you’re a sword master, for example, or trickster, which allows you to move around the battlefield much quicker. There’s a guardsman one and also a gunner stance that obviously lets you gun from afar more efficiently.
So, it gives a lot of varied playstyles and you do it on the fly, so you’re creating a combo, which we’ll get into the combo system here in a minute, but you’ll switch to different ones within the combo itself. So, you have to do it quick and you gotta get used to it and it’s a lot to take in at first, but when you understand it, it’s buttery smooth and very satisfying to use.
And lastly, we have V, which I think is gonna be a shocker to a lot of people in the Devil May Cry series because he plays so different from everybody else. He is – I would almost liken him to a mage because he’s very weak and it’s best to keep him outside of the battle. In other words, what you do with him is you control demons to fight on your behalf. And you don’t really control their movement as much, per se, but what you do is you tell like a raven, for example, that flies around for you to shoot projectiles and lightning bolts and things like that. And then he also controls a panther, who is more of your strong attack. And he runs around the ground, of course, and can help initiate combos in correspondence with the raven himself.
And then he also has this super move, we’ll call it, where this giant Golem-type creature comes down named Nightmare and just smokes everybody on the screen. And you use all of them in conjunction with one another. And I will say, too, you can actually jump on Nightmare’s back and control him a little bit, so there is some control there, but for the most part, you’re staying outside of the battle and then just coming in at the very end when you need to finish off enemies because they deemed, for some reason, the raven and the panther and Nightmare, they can’t actually kill enemies. They can just get them down to 1 health or what have you and then V comes in and finishes them off.
But honestly, I think V is one of the standouts just because he’s so unique and different. So, I think a lot of people are gonna get enjoyment no matter which character they’re using.
Upgrades
As far as upgrades, if you’ve played Devil May Cry before, you know what you’re gonna get. You basically have to collect the main currency for the game, which is known as red orbs. And these red orbs let you buy additional skills and moves, upgrade your vitality meter and your devil trigger, which is basically your special move.
And the best way to collect orbs is to do very well in battle. And so that’s where we gotta get into the combo system a little bit here, where you have to not only chain your hits one after another, but you have to change your playstyle while you do it in order to be awarded higher-tier levels. I think it starts at D and then it goes all the way up ‘til triple S. And triple S is very difficult to get because you have to keep the combo going, you can’t get hit. You also have to use a varied playstyle.
But, man, when you get it, it is an epic feeling and just enemies are going everywhere. It’s complete chaos. But it is so buttery smooth, though, where you feel like – well, if you don’t get a higher rank, you feel like it’s your fault, like maybe I made a mistake, I need to find a better way to attack these enemies. Because you can – frankly, you can go through the game and not get high combos and eventually win, most likely, but the game is just so much better when you’re focusing on these combos and you get the added benefit of getting additional upgrades.
And I should mention too, there are blue orbs and purple orbs around the – each mission itself and those also allow you to upgrade your vitality and devil trigger gauge as you get four pieces at a time. I think it’s four pieces and then you’ll get one new bar. So, something else to be aware of. There’s also these secret missions and those missions will give you blue fragments to upgrade your vitality or maybe purple fragments to upgrade your devil trigger or just red orbs to upgrade your character.
And once you collect those orbs, you can either go to one of these hourglass figures in each stage and you can upgrade there or, my personal favorite, is Nico, who drives around in this van, and she drives like a bat out of hell by the way, and will come into the stage, bash through some walls, and then you jump on the van and you can make some purchases from her. Usually, it’s associated with Nero, but it’s just such a cool addition. It’s fun and I just can’t imagine people aren’t gonna smile the first time they experience it because it’s just great.
Co-op
One thing I want to mention here real quick is the idea of co-op in Devil May Cry. And, I think a lot of people were excited about this because maybe we thought it was real-time co-op, playing through the same mission, but it doesn’t appear to be that way. It looks like you can see people jump into your game and see how they’re fighting out in a corner. I do think it’s real time, though, so that’s kind of interesting. Like you’ll see here, I’m staring at this player as they fight.
There is a boss battle somewhere along the line too where I think I might have been paired up with somebody, but I’m not really sure. Keep in mind, too, I’m also playing the game where there’s not a lot of people online because it’s still during the review embargo. So that might have something to do with it too. But, if they ever do full-on co-op for Devil May Cry, Capcom, do it, I will be a happy person and it will make the game even more exceptional.
Pacing
As far as pacing, I honestly can’t think of a game in recent history that has made me want to get through the main story just to see what was gonna happen next. And that includes Resident Evil 2, which I love the Resident Evil series too. The Remake just, it was great, but didn’t drive me forward the way this game does. I mean the boss fights are epic. It’s such a quick moving game, that you just feel like you’re not burning a lot of time doing frivolous tasks. You just keep going, keep going, keep going, and you fight all these enemies on the screen and you move on. And if you want to explore, you can, but that’s necessary.
And I would say it probably took me about 12 hours, maybe, to complete everything. I did explore a little bit, messed around with some different things, like secret missions and stuff like that. But, all in all, it’s just so cohesive that I just, honestly, I can’t think of another game that has better flow than this. It’s totally true, which is funny, because it mirrors the combat. The combat has great flow to it too, so it’s only right that the storyline itself would also have that flow. So, I don’t think you’re not gonna be entertained from this game.
Conclusion
So what’s the conclusion here? I mean this is a must buy for me. I don’t know that I’ve ever told anybody that this is a must buy. Usually, I can say this game is only for certain type of people, but I just think this game is so well laid out that you really shouldn’t miss out on it. I mean even if you gotta rent it, go ahead and rent it, whatever, but I think you buy it.
And as far as the deluxe edition DLC, you’re gonna get Dante’s motorcycle variant; I think it upgrades some of the damage. You get four Devil Breakers, which I believe I mentioned earlier, I think I was talking about a Devil Breaker that burst through some of the enemies and stopped their attack. I think that might actually be a DLC Devil Breaker, now that I think about it. But you get four of those. One of those is actually the Mega Buster from Mega Man. It’s a kind of cool callback right there. You get an alternative style rank announcer and title call voices. You also get music tracks, the battle music tracks for Devil May Cry 1, 2, 3, and 4.
And then lastly you get these live action cut scenes, which are cool to watch because it’s basically motion cap or mocap of what was going on behind the scenes for these various cutscenes. But you can actually play through the game and have those mocap scenes interact or intersect, I should say, with the cutscene you’re watching at the time. So, just kind of cool to see something going on behind the scenes and how they did it. It might be something you might want to take a look at. $10, not too bad for 10 bones, but I’ll leave that up to you.
I know with post-launch content there’s gonna be The Bloody Palace mode, which is basically – I think it’s 101 levels of different enemies that you have to get through. I think that was in the last one, so they’re bringing that back, but that’s not coming until April. And hopefully there will be some great DLC for it too. I honestly wouldn’t be mad at ‘em if they brought something out.
But this for me right now, quite frankly, is one of my games of the year. I feel that passionate about it. I just think it’s exceptional. It really is. And I’ll be interested to see when the embargo lifts what other people are saying about it, but I just think it’s on another level. I think it’s a can’t miss game, you should go out and get it. And if some other reviewers out there say they don’t feel the same, well, guess what, they don’t know what they’re talking about and I do, so go out and get it.
All right, that’s all I got for everybody today. I appreciate you taking the time to watch. Please like, comment, subscribe. Let me know what you think about Devil May Cry 5. I’d be interested to see what other people are thinking. Thanks for watching. Have a good one.
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