Devil May Cry Review

Well, its time for a new review, well of sorts as this one is of a post I did AGES back on this blog and the subject of the post is the classic action game, Devil May Cry. So, this post will be another rehash of the original with extra stuff added in.

And its amazing to think this game is now almost 20 years old, so after all this time, let's take another look at it and see how it fairs...

And the usual warning is coming up...

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

STORY

So, the game begins with demon hunter, Dante, who receives a visit from a strange lady called Trish, who attacks him with magic and stabs Dante with his own sword but he manages to fight her off, and he tells Trish that he hunts demons, who were responsible for the deaths of his mother and his brother.  Trish tells Dante that the demon emperor Mundus, is planning to make a return, who was responsible for the deaths of Dante's family. Dante then makes a trip to a castle with Trish, who vanishes over the castle walls, leaving Dante to explore the castle, and inside he faces a variety of demons, including marionettes, a big hybrid spider/scorpion, a bizarre shape shifting cat, called shadow. 

Later Dante is attacked by a demon Nelo Angelo, who later on turns out to be his identical twin, and long lost brother, and after Vergil eventually dies, Dante takes Nelo's half amulet, which turns out to be identical to the one Dante has.  On forming the two halves of the amulet, which transforms Dante's sword into the legendary Sparda sword, that once belonged to his father (also called Sparda funnily enough).  Sparda was once a legendary demon fighter, but after time he settled down with a wife and two children, one being Dante and the other Vergil. 

As the story progresses it is revealed that Trish also works for Mundus and betrays Dante to him, however Dante chooses to save Trish when her life is in danger, and soon after, Dante does battle with Mundus to determine his fate and the fate of the world...

THOUGHTS

Devil May Cry was for its time was quite ground breaking with its innovations in its control system, action scenes and gothic visuals and for me is still the best game in the series and its great to see it remastered again this time for the PS4, which I've been playing it on lately. Devil May Cry also has its fair share of tongue in cheek with Dante being a charismatic hero, who quips with his enemies and he is ultimately quite a likeable character. Dante's representation in the series however would go on with mixed success as the sequels continued.

The game is also known for its challenging gameplay and it certainly raised the bar at the time of its release but in comparison to other titles such as Dark Souls or Hollow Knight, DMC 1's difficulty overall isn't too bad. Having said that, back in the day I really did struggle with this game in terms of getting to grips with its tough enemies and bosses.  

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay itself is very solid for its time even if it is now almost a 20 year old game it still holds up well control and combat wise and below I will go into more detail on the gameplay aspects.  

MOVEMENT

The game deploys a 3D/2D approach in that the environments are 3D like but Dante runs along a somewhat fixed path at times as the camera controls the view of Dante's movement and the game of course uses third person perspective with the camera changing view behind and infront of Dante. Dante's moves however are primarily just running, jumping and attacking with not a great deal in between in terms of other controls. Dante's running pace is a bit sluggish in comparison to the later games but his movement is still fairly fluid.

COMBAT & WEAPONS

As for the combat system, Dante will use a melee weapon and a firearm for general fighting against his enemies and he can select from different ones that he can access as the game progresses. Dante's primary sword (or great sword even!) Alistore, is his main weapon and he can perform lightning attacks with it but later in the game, Dante can gain another weapon known as Ifrit, which are a pair of gauntlets that deal fire damage. 

Another aspect of the combat system is the rating scale as the game will rate your performance throughout the game and each level on how you perform in combat and the rating scale from a low D (for Dull) up to S (for Stylish). In order to be successful in your combat, you will need to perform a successive series of attacks without interruption. These ratings are important towards your overall final score for the game but they also allow to gain bonus points based on how well you perform in each level.

As for firearms, Dante has a small selection available to him such as his main pistols called Ebony & Ivory but as he progresses, he can also pick up a shotgun and a grenade launcher. Dante will also gain other weapons, which he can only use in specific places such as a needlegun for underwater areas and a weapon for using in the underworld later in the game.

ORBS & UPGRADES

One of the main features of the game is of course the orbs, which Dante collects from enemies he has killed but some can also be found strewn throughout the game. The orbs are also available in different colours with red orbs being a form of currency that Dante can use to pay for upgrading his combat arts or obtaining additional items. Other colour orbs have different charactersitics such as green orbs, which restore Dante's health, purple orbs will restore Dante's devil trigger status, yellow orbs can bring Dante back to life after death and blue orbs are used to boost Dante's health. 

As for other upgrades, Dante can upgrade his weapons to include new moves, such as with his main sword, Alistore, he can perform a series of lightning aerial attacks, a thrust attack known as stinger and air hike, which allows Dante to perform a double jump. As for Dante's Ifrit gauntlets, he can gain a number of pyromancy attacks to boost thier power in combat that include powerful kicks and fireballs. As for Dante's health again he can upgrade this on finding blue orbs but he will need to find 4 in order to boost his health incrementally. 

DEVIL TRIGGER

Another key aspect of the game is to do with Dante's ability to use a technique known as devil trigger, where Dante can unleash his demonic power and use it against his enemies and it also makes him move much faster and it slowly regens his health too. Dante can trigger these either by destroying enemies or by the use of an item called a devil star that refills Dante's trigger gauge. Dante can also use another star called the vitality star that also restores his health but he can only use one of them at a time.

SECRET MISSIONS

The game also has plenty of other content than just the main game as you can also take on a series of secret missions that are located throughout the game where Dante will have to defeat various enemies in a given timeframe. And the reward for completing these missions can lead to Dante receiving permanent power-ups but there are many throughout and can be quite challenging.  

ENEMIES AND BOSSES

And last of all in the gameplay is of course the enemies and bosses and there are plenty here for you and Dante to fight that's for sure!

The standard enemies are a mixture of demonic creatures known as lesser demons, which Dante will fight throughout and there are different kinds to be found. As a few examples the most commonly found ones are the marionettes, the sin scissors, who are the creatures with the large scissors of course and later scythes! Kyklops, who are large spiders that are made of earth and rock and can do much damage if you are not careful! Plasmas are another enemy, which Dante will encounter that appear as bats but can also shape-shift into a copy of Dante and can also duplicate themselves when attacked! And last of all is of the Shadow, who appear as a sort of mini-boss in the game and are essentially large demonic cats that can be a real pain in the ass to deal with!

As for the bosses there are actually only five bosses in the game but you will certainly face them more than once that's for sure as the game will force you to have a rematch with them all at some point! The bosses however are very well done and quite creative in design and feature one such as the Griffith, which is a large demonic bird that has some pretty nasty lightning attacks.

Nightmare is another boss and quite an infamous one as it is given many a player a mighty headache as it basically a giant amorphous blob that can fire out some nasty projectile weapons at you and can even perform a grab attack that sucks you down inside it! I was stuck on this boss for ages back in the day when this game came out but of late I found him to be not too bad (maybe I've just finally got good!).

GRAPHICS

As for the graphics, even by 2001 standards, this game looks pretty awesome and in its HD remaster, it looks even better as the environments look stunning with some fine detail added to them and this is especially notable in the opening levels at the castle. The game also makes great use of its elemental effects of lightning and fire when Dante uses his attacks aswell as environmental effects. The character models are also still quite impressive looking for their time and with the remaster they look even better than they did before. So, overall DMC 1 looks pretty damn good even 19 years on.

MUSIC

As for the music score, its an excellent one for sure and it was composed by Masami Ueda, Masato Kohda and Misao Senbongi and its very memorable and atmospheric. The score itself features a great mix of gothic metal and some chilling piano pieces and the theme that features early on in the castle itself really stays with you as soon as you hear it. So, overall its a very impressive score and one that perfectly suits the tone of the game with its dark mix of all things gothic and metally!

FLAWS

As for flaws...yes it has some.

And for starters one of the things that bugged me is that you can't save your progress during a level, you have to wait until you have finished the level before you can save again.  This is especially frustrating when you are facing a tough battle against one of the many bosses in the game, of which there are many! 

The game also has some limited options, particularly when Dante is killed and you have to use special yellow orbs in order to bring him back to life, and you can only have so many, and it starts with three, and if you use them all up, you have to reload your saved game, and start all over again!  Its almost like the game designers deliberately don't want to make things easy for you, although if you do lose in a boss fight, if you do get brought back to life, you do at least start back at the checkpoint just before the battle. 

Another issue is the camera movement as Dante moves, which is undeniably annoying at times, as it feels pretty static as I already said, and it still has the feel of the early Resident Evil games, with the pre-rendered visuals, and it wasn't until Resident Evil 4, where they impressively brough the whole 3D interactive experince to life. And its the way in which the camera forcibly winds the player around corners and then changes to a different viewpoint and you have to change the direction of the gamepad stick in order to keep in the right direction and if you don't it breaks the flow of Dante's movement. Yeah, its stuff like this that can be a real pain in this game.

Mundus takes two forms (well actually three) throughout the battle and both those parts are pretty tough, particularly the first one, where you have to defeat Mundus in the skies, as he takes on a God like form, who hurls lightning bolts and fireballs at you from all directions, as well as powerful rays, and in the second you fight him on the ground, where he summons firey dragons out of volcanic lava.  And it has to be said I struggled with this big guy as I was shot down more than once by him, but eventually I managed to get past him, but it was pretty frustrating!  

I also found it a bit frustrating how you could only use one item at a time in certain cases and the most specific one is of course the vitality star, which fully restores Dante's health. Now, this is a major pain in the ass for sure and it particularly becomes a pest later on in the game when you fight the final boss, Mundus as I found it really difficult to get past him without using my one vitality star only to then take more damage and die and reload the fight again!

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So, to sum up, Devil May Cry is a very impressive game, and the creators deserve much credit for the game's stunning visual presentation, gameplay, story, voice acting, and its impressive ambient score, which as alot of today's games have the almost obligatory heavy metal guitar underlying it!  And yeah OK it does have some shortcomings to do with Dante's somewhat sluggish running movement, some inventory annoyances (why can you only use ONE vital star?!) and it is more than guilty of recycling the SAME bosses over and over again!

However if you can forgive this then the original Devil May Cry remains a must-play classic and its certainly worth revisiting 19 years on after its initial release.

Right, so that's it for now and I will be back soon with another review, which might possibly be a review of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening but we'll see.

So, its bye for now!