GAME CLEAR No. 57 -- Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition

Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition (2020, PS5/XSX)

Special Edition Of: Devil May Cry 5 (2019, Multiplatform)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Clear Date: 10/29/2021
Clear Platform: PS5

My review of Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition was rushed and underwhelming because I finished it basically as a means to the end of playing this game.

While I mean no disrespect to the perfectly fine game that is Devil May Cry 4 nor the fine people that worked on it, I was right to make haste to Devil May Cry 5. It’s oustanding.

It’s right up there with Devil May Cry 3 and the Bayonetta games as the very best of the “character action” games, and frankly I think it’s the best of all of ’em. That, naturally, makes DMC now one of my very favorite series overall. But the gameplay of this fifth entry is simply sublime, putting it over the top.

Somewhat like Devil May Cry 3, the game revolves around a massive thing that has arisen in the home city of Dante and company. This time, it’s the Qliphoth tree, which bears a fruit of ultimate power. Dante is warned of all this by a mysterious man named V, who is also one of the game’s three playable characters (not counting Vergil, who was DLC for the original game and is included in the Special Edition). The game opens with Nero and V in pursuit of Dante, who is – along with fellow Demon Hunters Lady and Trish – already within the tree battling the mighty demon Urizen. The whole lot of them are defeated by Urizen’s overwhelming power. The game advances a month in time, and Dante’s whereabouts (and vital status) remain unknown. The player assumes control of DMC4’s hero Nero as he works with his own Devil May Cry demon hunting outfit to try to deal with the aftermath of the Qliphoth’s appearance and ultimately eliminate it. DMC at this point has been reduced to just Nero, V, and the new character Nico.

And that’s right where one of the great gameplay innovations of DMC5 enters. In DMC4, Nero had the arm of a demon, which granted him numerous magical powers. These were useful for both level traversal and offensive gameplay, but the arm had a fairly limited moveset. In one of the early scenes of DMC5, Nero loses this arm. To compensate, the weaponsmith Nico provides Nero with a variety of mechanical prosthetic arms with varying abilities. They all confer the basic utility of being able to pull enemies in from afar (like in DMC4), but their other moves vary wildly. To name a few examples: one does an AOE-style shockwave blast, one can be fired off to repeatedly wail on a single enemy, and one is simply the Mega Buster from Mega Man! Okay, the latter was original DLC, but it’s included immediately in the Special Edition, much to my delight. But I digress. The caveat here is that if you are actively using one of the arms’ unique abilities when you get hit, the arm will be broken. You can loadout with a set number at the start of each stage, but the only way to use another arm in your loadout is to manually destroy the one you’re currently wearing. Additionally, you can find arms scattered throughout Nero’s levels, but then you’re at the mercy of RNG. What all this means is that it’s helpful to know the ins and outs of each arm to make your Nero play as strong as possible. My lengthy description of this mechanic is mostly just to say that the variety introduced here really helps make Nero more interesting and is a highly welcome addition.

The rest of his gameplay is largely the same as before. He’s got a sword, a gun, and a grabby arm. Nothing wrong with that.

Next comes V, who has the weirdest fighting style of any DMC character to date. He’s a fairly feeble man himself, but he summons familiars to do his fighting for him. He’s got a panther and a bird that can attack from the ground and sky, and his Devil Trigger (super meter, basically) summons a big golem called Nightmare to really dish out the damage. The only thing stopping V from completely cheesing every encounter is that only he can actually finish off the demons he encounters. Using his cane, he can instantly kill any sufficiently-weakened enemy. V’s gameplay is definitely my least favorite, but it’s super novel, and I’m glad it’s in the game.

Finally, SPOILER ALERT, Dante does turn out to be alive and a playable character. I won’t spoil much about him, but I will say that while his kit is largely the same as it was in the third and fourth games, he, like Nero, does enjoy some nice new moves and features that make him the most fun he’s ever been to play. I really like that approach because it means skills picked up in the earlier games are still highly transferrable to this game but without being remotely boring. For me, it’s a tossup between Dante and Nero for the title of most fun. They’re both cool as hell, and getting those SSS combos is insanely satisfying with both.

As always, I will limit my commentary on the story, but I will say I like it easily the best of any of the games in the series. It’s full of throwbacks for longtime fans without being annoying about it, and it does a great job of ending things in such a manner that DMC5 could either set up a sequel or be a satisfying conclusion. The stories of Devil May Cry (especially since 3) are on the sillier end of things, but I still found myself attached to all these characters by the end of it, so I’m pleased with the direction things went in that regard too. I’ll leave it at that.

This game is an audiovisual treat as well. The graphics are excellent by my retro-biased standards, and really by any standard as far as I’m concerned. The music is the best it has ever been, with Nero’s battle theme and the game’s final boss theme being particularly good.

Like the other Special Editions, this game comes replete with extras. Loads of difficulty levels and modifiers, a Vergil mode, the Bloody Palace (a mode where you fight through countless rooms of enemies), etc. Most or all of these were DLC for the base game, though, and I think the only thing truly “special” about this edition is the slightly prettier graphics and the addition of Turbo mode (20% increase in gameplay speed). The latter’s no small thing, though, as it’s how I’ve played through 3-5 and I can’t imagine doing otherwise.

Despite the preceding 1100 words of this post being nothing but praise, I feel like I’m not gushing over this game perhaps quite as emphatically as I did Devil May Cry 3. But that’s not because I like it less. I think it’s because Devil May Cry 3 was the first one to truly draw me into the series. I’ll always love it for that, and I still consider it extremely good. But Devil May Cry 5 is the gold standard. It’s tough to imagine a better action game than this. Hopefully it’s not tough to imagine for Capcom and they’ll outdo themselves once again with an eventual Devil May Cry 6. Before then, I’ll be granting Devil May Cry 5 the rare privilege of a replay with near certainty.