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First slash
DMC series is straight from my childhood. Fast paced hack ‘n’ slash of demons in hellish environments with cool cutscenes were something totally awesome back in 2001, when the first DMC game came out on PlayStation 2.
Fifth installment of the Devil May Cry series was announced back in E3 2018 and it got rather positive reception, even though the main protagonist from previous games, Dante, received a new look which caused controversy amongst the fans.
Seeing all the gameplay footage I was in love with Devil May Cry 5; it had gorgeous visuals and the familiar speedy ‘stylish action’ seemed very promising.
Dante’s inferno
Personally I would say the plot of Devil May Cry 5 is little tricky, as player needs to know 
backstory of many characters and how they are now. Thankfully, the developer provide a recap video of the events from previous games. I’m not going deeply into the plot since it would take forever to explain, but shortly; demon hunters Dante, Nero, Trish, Lady and peculiar man V goes after a powerful demon who kills people by planting ever growing bloodthirsty tree. Having personal issues involved with the demon throws fuel on the fire and the hunt is on.
The story is mostly told at intervals of the missions, through the eyes of the three characters Nero, Dante and V. It might be hard to keep up with the plot and feels like the game was meant only for the fans of the series, who are very familiar with the settings. It won’t take many years for newcomers to appear and that’s why the story in every game should be more individual. After catching up with the plot it went on very nicely and in the end I don’t have much to complain about its quality.
Gameplay & Controls
If you suffer a delay of 0.02 seconds; Devil May Cry 5 might not be your cup of tea. The game is very fast paced and the gameplay is not meant just to mass murder everything that moves, but to create combo moves in chain. The moves are pretty simple to memorize as all the playable characters uses the same control layout, but having different fighting style and weapons. By collecting red orbs the moves and weapons can be upgraded. Everything was kept simple, yet various, making it easier to overall control the characters’ development.
My favourite part in video games are the mini and main bosses, and DMC 5 was no exception. Sometimes they were tough, but practicing all your moves and learning bosses’ attack pattern was the key.
Technically the gameplay and controls were sound and I didn’t come across of any lagging, bugs or issues. DMC 5 indeed runs like a butter (played on PS4 Pro).
How does Hell look like?
There is no doubt that Devil May Cry 5 is a gorgeous game. Characters are very detail oriented and all the surroundings being goodish. HDR was present and looking game through it was beautiful with all colours looking natural. (I highly recommend to tweak the HDR settings in your TV individually for every game. Then the HDR usually looks noticeably better). As this is ‘stylish action’ game the fighting scenes had lot of visual effects. Sometimes they were overpowering and I couldn’t see my character and therefore I just haphazardly hit the buttons.
Devil May Cry 5 had countless of over–the–top slow–motion cutscenes whiches magic ran out quickly and they became rather dull. The photo mode was nice add as all the cool fight scenes could be paused and, not necessary snapshot, but inspected more closely.
No one can hear you scream in the underworld
I loved all the hard rock and heavy metal soundtracks in the background, as I slayed my way through, even though I don’t listen that kind of music at all. The tracks musically were superb, I even got keen to some of them. Devil May Cry 5 is—obviously—voice acted and it’s done jolly well with capturing all the individualistic personalities, but some characters and their lines were poorish. What got quickly old were all the one–liners and bad gags with camera angle showing player pointing a gun upwards diagonally.
I make this very easy; it’s difficulty
I could only choose between two options HUMAN and DEVIL HUNTER. I’m gonna admit that I made mistake in calculation by choosing HUMAN as my hardness. There being only two options and I thought HUMAN would be Easy/Normal and DEVIL HUNTER being Hard, so I chose HUMAN. (I later find out HUMAN is Easy and DH is Normal).
I realized the game was a bit too easy, but I already played couple of hours and I didn’t want to start all over, so after finishing the game, I played it through with DEVIL HUNTER difficulty with totally new save file, so I didn’t have anything extra earned to help me. My only advantage was knowledge and even with that I found the difficulty being more fair. Enemies were more tougher, but not impossible and some bosses took many tries. This is how Devil May Cry 5 is supposed to be played and I recommend you to choose that one right off the bat, if you’re ‘an average everyday player’ like me. DMC 5 has few more difficulties above DEVIL HUNTER which can be unlocked by beating the game on each hardness.
Exit stage left
I’m very impressed of DMC 5; all the aspects were almost perfectly done. The only thing that I’m bitching about is the number of short cutscenes at some points. It cuts the fast gameplay and sometimes the gameplay time was much shorter than cuscenes between them. Also the lame one–liners and acting toughie reminded me of some B–movie. Yet, this is only my personal taste, I know all of it in the game were intentional, because all the previous games had the same style. However, I would’ve liked slightly more serious take on this and dig deeper and go more darker. After beating the game, it made me feel like DMC 5 is just the same game as all the previous ones, but just with better graphics and new gimmicks. The other playable characters with additional moves does bring variation to the gameplay, which is good, since it would’ve been absolutely boring to use same character all the way.
Everything in this game is over the top and seems like it gonna stay that way, and in the end Devil May Cry 5 is well–done, nearly perfect. My young self somewhere inside me woke up and lived through good memories again.
Review copy provided by Pan Vision
RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2019
GENRE: Action-adventure, hack and slash
PUBLISHER: Capcom
DEVELOPER: Capcom
PLATFORMS: PlayStation 4
Xbox One
Microsoft Windows
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One More Level 