"Devil May Cry 5" Review

Let’s not beat around the bush and get this out of the way: I believe Devil May Cry 5 is the strongest entry in the long running series. From its visuals to the sound, the gameplay mechanics and the characters, everything comes together to deliver a series highlight. But how so you may ask? Keep reading to find out!

Devil May Cry 5 is the first in the series to use Capcom’s new RE Engine, debuting with the recent Resident Evil 2 Remake and it looks fantastic. Everything from the colossal Qlifoth tree that towers over the characters for most of the game, down to the tiniest textures on Dante’s Ebony and Ivory (or the nearly microscopic stubble on Nero’s chin) is rendered beautifully. I had to catch myself several times as the reflection from Nero’s gunfire reflected on the rivers of blood I had just freed from another demon’s ventilated corpse and remind myself that I was in a fight for my life. Detail is the word I keep coming back to as I write this, which is mostly surprising to me because when people bring up detail in a video game, most people don’t say, “Hey buddy, I get that you love those real-time horse defecating physics in Red Dead Redemption 2, but have you seen those washed out gray corridors of Devil May Cry 3?” It’s just not what it’s known for. So when I find myself becoming enamored with the tiny flames that burst from the back cylinder of Nero’s Blue Rose or all the many particle effects I encountered on my fifteen+ hour journey to fight Urizen, I was pleasantly taken aback at Capcom’s second attempt at revitalizing a beloved franchise.

There is only one complaint I’d make about the visuals, and it’s more of a personal reason so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. The choice to switch to the RE Engine is clearly built for a more realistic style, which DMC 5 has adopted (albeit surprisingly well). One problem for this, however, is that sometimes faces can slip into the “uncanny valley” effect. This moment mostly happened when a character would smile wide or grimace in pain, basically anything that showed their teeth too much. Now I want to explain that it was a fairly rare occurrence and never ruined the experience for me, it was just something worth acknowledging. Overall, the game has fantastic graphics that are greatly in part to the inclusion of the new engine and modern technology, and out of my whole experience only three or four moments gave me the uncanny valley feeling, and three of those were from a specific character.

Devil May Cry has always been a series built around heavy guitar riffs and double bass. This series thrives off fiery beats even more than the snippy one-liners family drama, and Devil May Cry 5 brings the heat once again. Let me clarify, the music for two of the three characters are fantastic. During the E3 reveal when we got to hear the main battle theme and theme song of the game, I was actually pretty underwhelmed with it. However, the second I heard it blast through my TV as we watched Nero soar in slow motion around the mobile headquarters of the new Devil May Cry, coating everything in a thick shade of demonic blood, I was totally hooked on it and made it my goal to get as high of a rating as possible to get the bass to bump that much louder. And before I continue, I do want to mention the dynamic music in this game. See, while the reboot of the Devil May Cry series was derided by many, I had to admit I loved the combat of that series. And one thing that they added was this dynamic range of music that changed the better the player did. It began with mostly muted bass and bumped its way up to heavy drops and beat kicks all over the place once the S Rank popped up. DMC 5 took the notes from its mixed-received predecessor and capitalized on every misstep with a perfect upgrade of that system. The music will begin with some low beats of a modern rock song as Nero and bump even harder the better you do. With V, the music had more of a Pop/Electronica vibe (I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about music, don’t worry), and with Dante they break out the old school guitar and double bass. Since I was expecting and would have accepted just one or two battle tracks like in DMC 3 or 4, to see such care put into this project to match the very style and genre of music with the personality of the person we were following was completely unexpected for me and was an extremely well-received inclusion.

I wish I didn’t have to say anything negative, but I need to mention that I’m really not a fan of V’s battle music. It fits with his character with how he hangs back, and as such his music is far more reserved, but it didn’t give me that same battle excitement I got from Nero and Dante. I know it’s more of a personal statement, but like the above negative comment on some face model mishaps, I felt like it was worth it to at least state my opinion on it.

The sounds are also top notch. One thing I always felt DMC lacked was power with its firearms, both in use and sound. I was told that these weapons could dispatch demons in one or two shots through cutscenes, which I understand would break the game, but when they felt like nothing but peashooters in my hands I would often completely forget to use them in the past. Not so in Devil May Cry 5. Every gun has its own unique feel from the guttural Blue Rose’s Magnum .44 feel to the rapid-fire barks of Dante’s 1911-inspired Ebony and Ivory. I could really believe that these were some legendary weapons. The symphony of death doesn’t end at just projectile weapons, however. Each melee weapon has its own set of sounds it draws from to the extent that I never once said to myself, “Hey that was the same sound bite I heard three swings ago”.

Time to get to the voices. Now, I believe every actor and actress brought their A game, but I need to talk about Nico, the mechanic partner to Nero’s new Devil May Cry business and granddaughter to the creator of Dante’s guns. I don’t understand why the developers chose the actress they did, but her fake southern accent was just horrible. Normally I try to avoid overstepping myself, but seeing as I’m from and currently live in New Orleans, I imagine I have a fair grasp on what southern accents sound like. Now her delivery was done well enough and I understand it’s hard to stand out when beside other, far more recognizable characters, but it still remains a negative in my eyes at least.

Picture this. You have two vehicles next to one another. One is a massive diesel train engine, and the other is a small road bike. The train engine was clearly built to make it across the country and carry literal tons of weight. To drive it is a long undertaking that requires dedication and long hours and extensive training. Then we have this road bike that is skillfully created to go a much smaller distance by comparison. It’s only made to handle so much weight before it loses its advantage, which is speed. It is specifically designed to fill a purpose, and anyone that wants it to be able to hold the kind of weight and hours of the train is deluding themselves on what this creation before them is made for. Devil May Cry 5 is that bike. It isn’t there to get you some inordinate distance. It’s there so you can get on it and take an enjoyable ride, and then do the same thing again in a slightly different way.  Maybe you’ll change the gears to make it harder on yourself or maybe you want just a nice time through the park. With Devil May Cry 5 and its six+ difficulty settings, each offering delivers something different and you get what you want out of the experience whether you want to just feel like a badass or truly test your strength.

To give everyone an idea of how fun this amount of freedom is, I want to tell of just one experience I had that felt like a perfect coming together of everything great about how this game plays. I want to preface this by explaining that when you play through a level as one of the three characters, it saves your inputs and creates a uniquely-behaving AI. When someone else plays through that same level with another character, they have a chance of seeing your AI fighting demons elsewhere in the level. So I was playing as V and saw another player-based AI going through the level separately. I had done that portion of the level before because I was on my second playthrough already, but what I had forgotten was that near the end of the mission you come together and play the final fight side-by-side. We split off on the last fight with six or seven demonic knights that I don’t want to name for spoiler reasons and were doing our thing when something totally unexpected happened. I was finishing a combo with my demon panther Shadow when its tail swung around to finish the attack and knocked the demon knight behind me. I had barely enough time to turn the camera and watch this absolute madman of an AI snatch the enemy out of the air and deliver a suplex to finish it off for me. It was such a one in a million shot that it gave me a whole new appreciation for the developers because they had laid the foundations for creating an AI that was so good at supporting me that I legitimately started to think I was playing beside another person.

As stellar as the game is on its mechanics alone, the Devil May Cry series wouldn’t be what it is without its characters. For deeper talk on what some of the returning characters mean to me, I’m going to suggest my other article “Red Coats and Crying Devils: A Retrospective of Devil May Cry”. I just wanted to mention that for context on if I don’t go too deep on certain characters.

So the cast for Devil May Cry 5 is one of the strongest yet, choosing to only have a handful of characters rather than jumping from the heroes to the villains and trying to mold together all the many motivations and betrayals that comes with it (looking at you DMC 4). However, this is a new place for the series as it now has three playable characters to work with: Nero, Dante, and series newcomer V. 

I’ll be the first to admit I thought I was going to hate V and the way he played, and for the first mission or two that I had control of him, I was bored to be honest. See, I’m very much an “in your face” kind of player. Give me a choice and I’ll pick whoever has the biggest weapon and heaviest hits almost every time. It worked for Monster Hunter, Assassin’s Creed, For Honor, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and I’ll break out the claymores and Greatswords with glee. So when I was forced to change my thought process up with V I understandably struggled. However, I’m overjoyed that my fears were unfounded. V is so fun to use with a little bit of patience. See, V doesn’t have the same unholy strength as his partners and so he must rely on the bird Griffon, his panther Shadow, and living oil monster Nightmare. So he’s basically something between a character from Persona and a Pokémon trainer. Outside of combat, V acts like the average fifteen year old kid that saw Nightmare Before Christmas one too many times as a kid or like that one friend that always thought he was the coolest by wearing black and try selling overpriced Yu-Gi-Oh cards to anyone that would stand a little too close.

This brings me into my next segment, the dialogue. The dialogue feels like it was written by the same edgy teenager I used to be, which should be par for the course but just kinda fell flat after a while. Nero complains about not being strong enough for most of the game, V spouts nonsensical poetry at people, Nico is like a living garbage fire, Trish basically only gives exposition for everyone, and Lady has like three lines. The one saving grace is Dante, who is just so absurd with everything he does that I was always breathing a sigh of relief whenever he was on screen.

Speaking of Nico. Ignoring her bad accent for a bit, it feels like they had an extremely specific idea for her character, which I can respect. But every time she opens her mouth it’s like I’m back in junior high. I kid you not there was a joke where Nico picks up a broken demon horn and sniffs it. Nero asks if she knows where that’s been to which she responds, “Up your butt” with all the self-satisfaction of an immature kid that was wholly convinced they’d just said the most destructive and hilarious statement in history. She’s always rude to everyone for seemingly no reason, and I get that she’s supposed to have that love/hate relationship with Nero as his partner, but in order to have that kind of a scenario play out properly there needs to be a clear difference in personality and values to create that moment. Know what does that amazingly? Cowboy Bebop. Each of the characters on the Bebop from Spike’s loner and “go with the flow” attitude, to Jet’s doting parental, and sometimes stringent, atmosphere create genuine moments where they bicker like an old married couple. It’s far more difficult to do that when both characters fit the same archetype of fast-talking, foul mouthed maverick, even if one is the mechanic and one is the fighter. But I digress. Suffice to say most of the new characters struggle to find their own light amidst a crowd of characters that were already made to be the sarcastic, confident demon hunter character.

So I’ve said pretty much everything I need to say. Let’s break it down. Graphics are amazing and any mistakes that show up are so few that anyone playing will hardly notice. The sounds are fantastic, music is great except for some choices I considered not to be the greatest. Voice acting is great, but the script is pretty boring and predictable, but we’re here to fight demons in cool ways, not have an existential crisis. Gameplay and Mechanics are the best the series has offered so far and is easily the strongest feature of the game. And for Characters, those that return are good enough to get by, the newcomers needed a little work, but Dante will always be the greatest of all time.

92%

★★★★☆

4.5/5 

Highly Recommended

Written by Paul Edwards.

Devil May Cry 5 was reviewed on a PlayStation 4 Pro with 

the Physical Deluxe Edition bought by the reviewer.

All pictures used were acquired through Google search.

Game Scoring rubric:

★ : 1 point  ☆ : 0.5 points

★★★★★: Essential. Excellent games. Close to flawless. Transcends any minor flaws it may have. 

   ★★★★: Great/Highly recommended. Great games. Some flaws worth mentioning, but nothing to worry about.

      ★★★: Okay/Recommended. Good games. Contains things worth playing & experiencing, but flaws can hinder the experience.

         ★★: Caution/Questionable. Mediocre games. The flaws start to significantly hinder anything good the game has.

             ★: Avoid. Bad games with terrible design decisions and flaws. No fun to be had. Don't waste your time.