It's been 11 long years since Devil May Cry 4 and ever since the early days there's been speculations and rummors about how the DMC series would evolve and what Capcom and Hideaki Itsuno would bring to the table with their long anticipated sequel.
Here we are almost 1 month and a half since Devil May Cry 5 was released and the game has been really well received by fans and critics while also becoming the fastest selling DMC game to date at 2 mil copies sold in the first 10 days.
I'm in somewhat in a love-hate relationship with the game. I've been a DMC fan since the early PS2 days with the first game and DMC sits only behind Prince of Persia as my favorite game franchise. I can't feel but feel dissapointed with some of the things they decided do with Devil May Cry 5.
In thread I'd like to discuss the flaws and shortcomings of Devil May Cry 5 and see what and how it went wrong.
I think the biggest criticism and one that everyone seems to notice is the Level Design,
- Ever since the original game back on the PS2, the Devil May Cry series used a structural level design. There were no ''levels'' per say but a big interconnected map that's been separted by the actual missions themselves. That was your ''playground'' for the most part.
DMC3's Temen-ni-gru and it's layout serves the best examples on how the series actually had it's peak level design in terms of both player progession and the levels themselfs.
DMC5 is that it throws all that out the window and instead replaces this with a mission based that is it's own level. Where's the problem with that you ask? The level themselves are small, shallow and very uninspired and short.
It starts off pretty okay with some decent examples would be Mission 2, Mission 4, Mission 7 and Mission 9. Everything beyond that point just takes a nose dive, and one example of this would be Mission 13 where you're dropping down in 3 diffrent circle rooms via holes and fight mobs in each of them and that's the mission.
They're sugar coated hallways served up as level design per mission. It blows my mind that a game that was actually build for this generation of consoles has such poor level design and many would say that it's straight up of a PS2 game, but I'd say they're wrong and that would be an insult to the actual level designs of PS2's era.
Hell PS3 too, DMC4's Fortuna is a bit more diffrent in this regard given that there's some questionable things about it like one minute you're fighting in snow and the next 2 missions you're out in a sunny jungle, and the fact that it's pretty much half a game. It's still the same interconnected mini world that still respects the same rules that they've previously enstablished. You can always go back from the Fortuna Castle all the way to the church where you start the game.
Which brings me to my next point, The Loading Sreens,
- This is one of the worst offenders that I have to give DMC5. Again, I just find it unbelivable a game in 2019 has a loading screen for every single little thing possible. You boot up the game > Loading Screen> Title Logo > Press Mission Select > Loading Screen> Select Mission 06> Loading Screen> Cutscene Plays > Loading Screen> Mission Start Up and Customize Menu> Start> LOADING SCREEN > We're finanlly in the game itself.
Not to mention that while you're in the actual game too if you call up Nico's Van, Going in or out of it will result in ...you've gussed it another loading screen!
How is this possible? Specially since RE2's only major loading screen was during the first boot up after the menu. Even DmC's with it's original UE3 had nothing like this.
Now that we have some of the tehnical aspects out of the way let's talk about the Story, ( spoilers obviously)
- Oh boy, this might be some of the worst excuted and poorly written story in a char action game ( that's saying something ) in recent memory. DMC5's story is just terrible fanservice with no real execution or legs behind it. Everything about this relies heavily on concepts and themes that have been used in the past games except done ten times worse. ( A general problem of DMC5 really).
Yet another demoic giant thing raised in the middle of the city by none other then Vergil ofcourse, and at the base of this very reason is ...you've gussed it power once again so he can finally beat his little brother!
It's never exaplained to us what Vergil did in those 20 years post Nelo Angelo and the Mallet Island incident. He just shows up one day, steal Nero's arm and Yamato and splits himself in two trying to get get rid of his human side(V) thinking that's what's holding him back and we're back at square 1.
The whole's game plot is just a setup to shove Vergil back with no real build up or reason behind it other then ''oh my god it's VERGIL!''. It's just done for the sake of being done.
Which is also wierd because Vergil in DMC5 has some some wierd mood swings from his fight with Dante all the way to the game's ending where they're being cool with eachother. I won't go in depth about everything since the story in those games isn't a key selling point but it's still something to be talked about, which brings me to my next topic.
- V
- Ever since they revealed him as the third playble MC I always wondered how will he fit in with the rest of the series being a new addition. Sadly V is one of the biggest missed opportuities of the game.
The only reason he exists is to serve as a lame story asspull. That's it. He's not even his own person, being the human side of Vergil. They also decided to make him playable even tho I would have been fine with him just being a new character given that he had so little actual in-game story time and we won't see him ever again.
His kit and mechanics are pretty much at odd with the game itself and what Devil May Cry is about. It's very shallow and button-mashing. In fact the game actually knows this and rewards you S ranks like candy for button-mashing like a madman.
You can actually see how broken he is (not in a good way) on higher difficulties where his kit and playstyle crumbles like a soggy biscuit under everything that's been thrown at him. Unlike Nero and Dante he's not properly designed to handle anything but the default encounter design and modifiers.
He just feels like an afterthought and not very enjoyable to play as.
- Relaying a bit too much on fanservice.
Devil May Cry 5 is as safe as it can possibly get. It realies very heavily on it's predecessors on pretty much every level raging from names, plot, boss fights, enemies, items and various things.
In my opinion it's a bit too much. Almost half of the enemy variety is lifed from DMC1&3 with your Hell Cainas, Sin Sissors, Nobodies, Angelos, etc. There's Cerberus, Greyon, Vergil and Faimilars as actual bosses.
Artemis & Gilgamesh....
I'm not too fond of this and actually don't mind well done fan service. Having some never hurts, going overboard with it just shows that you lack the creativty to make new stuff.
- Boss Fights
This is probably the last major point I will talk about. I found the boss fights pretty lackluster and averege for the most part. Most of them are just worthless behemoths with no personality. I'd rank them as following,
Bad Tier:
Qliphoth Root, Gilgamesh
Averege Tier:
Nidhogg, Elder Geryon Knight, Urizen 2 & 3, Familiars
Good Tier:
Goliath, Artemis, Malphas, King C
Fantastic Tier:
Cavaliere Angelo, Vergil.
One problem is that the good majority of them have 0 personality nor any liners as opposed to DMC3. There's just so many average ones that have nothing intresting going for them except some pretty scenery. The tracks are also super hit or miss. King C has to be one of the most awful ones I've heard. Even the good ones like Artemis and Goliath are not really mechanically intresting nor engaging to fight. Vergil here despite being a fantastic fight, isn't as good as his DMC3 final counterpart.
With all that said, DMC5 is a pretty good game that relies a bit too heavy on things of the past but still manages to come out on top because of it's stellar combat and that was to be expected. It's the one thing that holds DMC as a whole together. However, the other areas are always 1 step foward and 2 steps back and that's a shame. Devil May Cry needs to evolve more then it's combat and actually try to strike a good balance between all of it's elements. I'm not one of those people that think that only doing ''BP: The Game'' is fine because ''that's what the people play DMC for''.
Legendary games like Devil May Cry 3 or NGB reamined fan favorites of the genre for so many years because almost all of their package were perfect.
What do you guys think?
Here we are almost 1 month and a half since Devil May Cry 5 was released and the game has been really well received by fans and critics while also becoming the fastest selling DMC game to date at 2 mil copies sold in the first 10 days.
I'm in somewhat in a love-hate relationship with the game. I've been a DMC fan since the early PS2 days with the first game and DMC sits only behind Prince of Persia as my favorite game franchise. I can't feel but feel dissapointed with some of the things they decided do with Devil May Cry 5.
In thread I'd like to discuss the flaws and shortcomings of Devil May Cry 5 and see what and how it went wrong.
I think the biggest criticism and one that everyone seems to notice is the Level Design,
- Ever since the original game back on the PS2, the Devil May Cry series used a structural level design. There were no ''levels'' per say but a big interconnected map that's been separted by the actual missions themselves. That was your ''playground'' for the most part.
DMC3's Temen-ni-gru and it's layout serves the best examples on how the series actually had it's peak level design in terms of both player progession and the levels themselfs.
DMC5 is that it throws all that out the window and instead replaces this with a mission based that is it's own level. Where's the problem with that you ask? The level themselves are small, shallow and very uninspired and short.
It starts off pretty okay with some decent examples would be Mission 2, Mission 4, Mission 7 and Mission 9. Everything beyond that point just takes a nose dive, and one example of this would be Mission 13 where you're dropping down in 3 diffrent circle rooms via holes and fight mobs in each of them and that's the mission.
They're sugar coated hallways served up as level design per mission. It blows my mind that a game that was actually build for this generation of consoles has such poor level design and many would say that it's straight up of a PS2 game, but I'd say they're wrong and that would be an insult to the actual level designs of PS2's era.
Hell PS3 too, DMC4's Fortuna is a bit more diffrent in this regard given that there's some questionable things about it like one minute you're fighting in snow and the next 2 missions you're out in a sunny jungle, and the fact that it's pretty much half a game. It's still the same interconnected mini world that still respects the same rules that they've previously enstablished. You can always go back from the Fortuna Castle all the way to the church where you start the game.
Which brings me to my next point, The Loading Sreens,
- This is one of the worst offenders that I have to give DMC5. Again, I just find it unbelivable a game in 2019 has a loading screen for every single little thing possible. You boot up the game > Loading Screen> Title Logo > Press Mission Select > Loading Screen> Select Mission 06> Loading Screen> Cutscene Plays > Loading Screen> Mission Start Up and Customize Menu> Start> LOADING SCREEN > We're finanlly in the game itself.
Not to mention that while you're in the actual game too if you call up Nico's Van, Going in or out of it will result in ...you've gussed it another loading screen!
How is this possible? Specially since RE2's only major loading screen was during the first boot up after the menu. Even DmC's with it's original UE3 had nothing like this.
Now that we have some of the tehnical aspects out of the way let's talk about the Story, ( spoilers obviously)
- Oh boy, this might be some of the worst excuted and poorly written story in a char action game ( that's saying something ) in recent memory. DMC5's story is just terrible fanservice with no real execution or legs behind it. Everything about this relies heavily on concepts and themes that have been used in the past games except done ten times worse. ( A general problem of DMC5 really).
Yet another demoic giant thing raised in the middle of the city by none other then Vergil ofcourse, and at the base of this very reason is ...you've gussed it power once again so he can finally beat his little brother!
It's never exaplained to us what Vergil did in those 20 years post Nelo Angelo and the Mallet Island incident. He just shows up one day, steal Nero's arm and Yamato and splits himself in two trying to get get rid of his human side(V) thinking that's what's holding him back and we're back at square 1.
The whole's game plot is just a setup to shove Vergil back with no real build up or reason behind it other then ''oh my god it's VERGIL!''. It's just done for the sake of being done.
Which is also wierd because Vergil in DMC5 has some some wierd mood swings from his fight with Dante all the way to the game's ending where they're being cool with eachother. I won't go in depth about everything since the story in those games isn't a key selling point but it's still something to be talked about, which brings me to my next topic.
- V
- Ever since they revealed him as the third playble MC I always wondered how will he fit in with the rest of the series being a new addition. Sadly V is one of the biggest missed opportuities of the game.
The only reason he exists is to serve as a lame story asspull. That's it. He's not even his own person, being the human side of Vergil. They also decided to make him playable even tho I would have been fine with him just being a new character given that he had so little actual in-game story time and we won't see him ever again.
His kit and mechanics are pretty much at odd with the game itself and what Devil May Cry is about. It's very shallow and button-mashing. In fact the game actually knows this and rewards you S ranks like candy for button-mashing like a madman.
You can actually see how broken he is (not in a good way) on higher difficulties where his kit and playstyle crumbles like a soggy biscuit under everything that's been thrown at him. Unlike Nero and Dante he's not properly designed to handle anything but the default encounter design and modifiers.
He just feels like an afterthought and not very enjoyable to play as.
- Relaying a bit too much on fanservice.
Devil May Cry 5 is as safe as it can possibly get. It realies very heavily on it's predecessors on pretty much every level raging from names, plot, boss fights, enemies, items and various things.
In my opinion it's a bit too much. Almost half of the enemy variety is lifed from DMC1&3 with your Hell Cainas, Sin Sissors, Nobodies, Angelos, etc. There's Cerberus, Greyon, Vergil and Faimilars as actual bosses.
Artemis & Gilgamesh....
I'm not too fond of this and actually don't mind well done fan service. Having some never hurts, going overboard with it just shows that you lack the creativty to make new stuff.
- Boss Fights
This is probably the last major point I will talk about. I found the boss fights pretty lackluster and averege for the most part. Most of them are just worthless behemoths with no personality. I'd rank them as following,
Bad Tier:
Qliphoth Root, Gilgamesh
Averege Tier:
Nidhogg, Elder Geryon Knight, Urizen 2 & 3, Familiars
Good Tier:
Goliath, Artemis, Malphas, King C
Fantastic Tier:
Cavaliere Angelo, Vergil.
One problem is that the good majority of them have 0 personality nor any liners as opposed to DMC3. There's just so many average ones that have nothing intresting going for them except some pretty scenery. The tracks are also super hit or miss. King C has to be one of the most awful ones I've heard. Even the good ones like Artemis and Goliath are not really mechanically intresting nor engaging to fight. Vergil here despite being a fantastic fight, isn't as good as his DMC3 final counterpart.
With all that said, DMC5 is a pretty good game that relies a bit too heavy on things of the past but still manages to come out on top because of it's stellar combat and that was to be expected. It's the one thing that holds DMC as a whole together. However, the other areas are always 1 step foward and 2 steps back and that's a shame. Devil May Cry needs to evolve more then it's combat and actually try to strike a good balance between all of it's elements. I'm not one of those people that think that only doing ''BP: The Game'' is fine because ''that's what the people play DMC for''.
Legendary games like Devil May Cry 3 or NGB reamined fan favorites of the genre for so many years because almost all of their package were perfect.
What do you guys think?
