Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace Board Game Review

Readers of this blog will remember I very much liked Steamforged Games’ Resident Evil 2 board game. I think it was very true to the license and I love all the little details it was crammed with while still being a fun board game in its own right. Since then I also got the Survival Horror Expansion, which adds even more detail and some PVP modes based on plot points only mentioned in files and flashbacks. Interestingly, those PVP modes play sort of like precursors to the multiplayer game Resident Evil: Resistance over a year before that game was made. I regretted missing its Kickstarter by a mere week.

I did not make that mistake again with their Devil May Cry board game, nor their RE3 one, for that matter. After several delays due to the pandemic, Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace and all its expansions came into my possession. Unfortunately, also due to the pandemic, I couldn’t find people to play it with to write this review sooner. It has a solo mode, but I don’t consider it a thorough review without knowing how it plays with others. Having now played with some others and by myself, I can confidently give my full thoughts.

But does it feature Dante from the Devil May Cry series?

As the full title indicates, Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace is based on the Bloody Palace side game from the Devil May Cry series in which you try to get as many points as you can from a long gauntlet of enemies of increasing difficulty. Specifically, it’s based on Devil May Cry 5’s, which added a multiplayer feature. Just like in that game, there’s no narrative to be had and players beat up enemies to make sick combos and rack up points to try and get the most, albeit with only 4 floors/stages instead of the crazy number the games have.

Steamforged made a pretty ingenious combo system. By matching up the colors of literal chains that go in and out of the attack cards, players make combo chains by hitting enemies. However, the cards also have the secondary function of allowing a degree of extra mobility and a third function as the only means of defense, when not used as an attack.  This means a player that empties their hand during their turn is vulnerable to enemies, the attacks of which are controlled by the Steamforged tried and true behavior cards.

Added strategic elements like rainbow chains that can be followed up with any color, gray chains that can be used regardless of the chain color, ranged attacaks and upgrading decks each round with red orbs spice things up significantly, but what spices the game up more than anything else is the diverse characters.

DMC: The Bloody Palace features the three playable characters from DMC5 along with Trish and, if you get the Walking Arsenal expansion, Lady.  Trish and Lady are welcome inclusions as they aren’t playable in DMC5 and are instead based on their play style from DMC4’s special edition.  Each character has their own deck and their own purchasable cards they can add to said decks and they all play completely differently. Using a different character is always familiar enough to know how to use them, but vastly different in their execution and a lot of that is because of Steamforged once again putting loving detail into the design.

Dante is the closest thing to a straightforward character, having simple attack cards, but he also has his 4 styles he can switch between for different boosts to match a situation.  While he has an impressive arsenal in the game, Steamforged rightfully decided to keep it simple and only gave him Rebellion and Balrog for melee attacks and the Ebony and Ivory dual guns plus the Coyote shotgun for ranged attacks.

Nero has three copies of Color Up and Exceed in his deck, which lets him boost his ranged and melee attacks, respectively. In addition, while other characters have a set of 4 relatively weak basic cards they can always access, Nero can get a variety of stronger Devil Breaker cards he can use at any time once before they break and need to be replenished via another card.

V is particularly interesting because, just like the game, almost all his melee attacks need to be done by Shadow, which he controls with his cards as a separate piece on the field. Also like the game, Shadow can’t kill enemies and has to leave them with 1 hit point. V can only kill an enemy with his Checkmate attacks. Griffon acts as V’s ranged attacks as he’s perched on V’s shoulder because I guess they didn’t want to make the field any more crowded. V’s play style reminds me of Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers, where you strategically position yourself and your attack animal for optimal plays, which makes him my favorite.

Trish is a master of mobility, with a great many attacks that move her and/or the enemy, allowing her to get them into position for some amazing field control.

Lady is, predictably, a ranged attacker, being the only one with a colored ranged attack combo chain (everyone else’s is gray) and a grenade belt that accumulates ammo with each round until she unleashes every grenade in a spectacular smatter of spread damage. It helps her even further that she gets bonus points for hitting multiple enemies in one attack, which is especially good because one of her ranged attacks can potentially hit every single enemy on the field.

Like Arena of the Planeswalkers, DMC: The Bloody Palace subscribes to the balance philosophy that if you can use them right, every character is astoundingly overpowered and since everyone is overpowered, no one is. That can lead to games where every other round someone pulls off something to leave other players smacking their forehead in disbelief as they shoot themselves into the lead, but it’s never unfair because every character can do something to match it.

Although the game revolves around beating up enemies for points, the enemies are still a threat to the players and if you have the expansions, there’s an impressive variety of them. I’d say roughly 70% of the normal enemies from DMC 5 are present in this board game and each have their own behavior deck, which dictates their action each round, to consider.  For example, Empusas are weak, but can overwhelm in large numbers while enemies like the Proto and Scudo Angelos can put their guards up for frontal attacks, requiring some thought into positioning. Players can never attack each other, but they can manipulate enemies in such a way to put them at a disadvantage, such as when the rotating first player is given some freedom on what an enemy does for their movement.

That goes triple for the bosses, which are one of my favorite aspects. For practical reasons, the only bosses are the humanoid ones: The Elder Geryon Knight, Cavaliere Angelo (which is the same guy, just dismounted), Urizen (final form) and Vergil. Each one is wholly unique and have their own gimmicks, although the Elder Geryon Knight and Urizen aren’t as gimmicky as the other two.

Bosses can be a riot when playing in a group because they hit so hard that they’re bound to take players down a peg and possibly swing the game in someone’s favor. They do anywhere from 5 to 8 damage in a game where you have 6-8 health and sometimes it hits multiple players at once. Since there’s no permanent death in the game (just a massive point penalty), the game keeps going no matter how many players die.

In its core game design Steamforged once again knocked it out of the park. It’s immersive, strategic and filled with lots of little details from the game that takes full advantage of the license.  In fact, that attention to detail may be its biggest shortcoming.

Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace may be too detail-oriented for its own good.  In a complete inversion of the RE2 board game, the setup is relatively quick, but the game is extremely long.  This game can take upwards to 3-5 hours to complete and 80% of the players I’ve ever played it with quit or we run out of time to finish it in some way or another.  This is largely because each round requires every player to get their turn to do crazy plays, then the enemies all have to move and attack.  That's obviously how most games of this type go, but the difference is that as all that is happening, players are having to place the collectible orbs on the field for when enemies die, mark enemy damage with damage tokens on the field, drag the damage tokens as the enemies move and not lose track of which tokens are assigned to what enemy when it gets crowded.  In a 3-4 player game it can turn into a big mess and even though I like the chaos of battle, I feel there were aspects of tracking enemy conditions that could have been better.  Unless there’s only one of a certain enemy present, you need to track damage on the field by putting tokens next to the damaged enemies. When there are 10+ Empusas swarming in one area and taking area of effect damage it’s a major pain.  Other games like the Doom board game use the same method of tracking damage, but in that game the number of enemies on the field at once is generally kept under control and the player controlling the invaders is more encouraged to spread them out, while in the Devil May Cry board game enemies generally close in on players.

This setup with all the Empuses sometimes makes me do the Peter Parker "no" meme.

Compounding the problem with the excessive length is that it must be played in one session, unless you’re somewhere where you can leave the game out. There is no campaign system like the RE2 board game.  There’s simply too much to track.  When a floor of the Bloody Palace is cleared out, every single player and orb stays right where it is on the field and combo chains stay out. Trying to track how everything was for a second session is a nightmare and clearly not what the game was designed for.

Nobody can quit either.  The game is balanced and set up for the number of players at the start of the game, so having the player number change ruins that.  If you are playing you’d better be playing to the end.  I recommend investing in an explosive collar before attempting to play with others so you know they'll stay.

Another thing that can lead to problems, and a longer game, is the rulebook.  The rulebook seems like it was published too quickly.  It’s colorful and explains the base rules well enough, but it doesn’t have any section for occasionally unclear situations.  If you look at, for example, the Resident Evil Deck Building Game manual’s back, there’s an FAQ to clarify some specific circumstances.  I didn’t need that in the RE2 board game because the core gameplay was relatively simple and the detail was in what was built around it.  Here, there are tons of enemies, characters and variables that change things up immensely.

This creates a major issue with interpretation with regards to V.  His cards say attacking an enemy always leaves them with 1 HP.  You would think that, just like in the game, that means you can wale on enemies for easy combo points, but in actuality V and Shadow cannot attack enemies with 1 HP, barring V’s finisher attacks.  The ability to attack an enemy without killing it is something Nero gets in his Devil Trigger form as an exclusive one-of-a-kind card, which speaks to how absurd it would be if a player could do it whenever they wanted.  This is never clarified in the manual.  It’s only explained in an online FAQ published later that I doubt people will know exists because the manual doesn’t allude to it, which is pretty damn inexcusable.  If there are later printings of the game, they’d better include that FAQ.

I would have also liked some character profiles.  Obviously Devil May Cry fans are the primary audience, but newcomers are likely to ask what exactly Rebellion, Sparda and Kalina Ann are supposed to be because there’s no graphic to show them on the attack cards.

If none of those issues are a major concern, the core game is still great and has all the elements I love in a board game.  It’s fun scoring major points and maneuvering around opposition that vastly outnumbers you in a form utilizing tactics instead of reflexes.  The length and lack of clarity are some pretty big issues though as it can make playing the game in the first place a real hassle and even a chore at its worst.

At least the pricing fares better than the Resident Evil 2 board game. For $80, if you find a good deal, Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace offers a lot to play with, with 4 vastly different characters, 4 different regular enemies (not counting Red Empusas the Empusa figures play double duty for), 3 different larger, tougher enemies and one big boss.  The base game has enough content for a solid game on its own, helped by some fantastic figure quality all around for every figure from the smallest Empusa to the majestic beast that is the Elder Geryon Knight.  However, having only one boss takes away some of the excitement of not knowing what the next fight will bring at the end.

The red crystals for orbs are stock colored plastic ones many games use that were given to Kickstarter backers. They can add to the clusterfunks.

I got all the expansions when I backed this game on Kickstarter and out of all of them I recommend the Walking Arsenal expansion the most, as it adds 3 new regular enemy types, a new boss and Lady as a playable character, giving you a little bit of everything.  If you’re going to get one expansion, make it that one.

The Alpha and Omega expansion adds 2 new large enemies and 2 new bosses, but the game doesn’t get as much use out of them as the ones in the Walking Arsenal expansion because its large enemies only show up at the higher levels, which are dependent on the player count, and the bosses only show up once at the end unless you play the boss rush mode.

I would more recommend the Devil Trigger expansion, which gives everyone in the base game a super mode with a gauge they build up as they score points without getting hit. It’s astonishing how a game in which everyone is overpowered as all hell gets even more ridiculous by letting everyone get more powerful, albeit temporarily.  Dante gets his Sin Devil Trigger form, Nero gets his Devil Trigger from the end of the game and V gets the invincible giant devastator Nightmare as a third piece on the field. Trish switches to using the giant Sparda sword instead, while Lady is a bit of an odd case.  Her super mode, called focused mode, is an option she can buy with red orbs that, when triggered, lets her get more cards and grenades each turn until she takes damage.  This focus mode is included in her expansion too, so you don’t need the Devil Trigger expansion to use it.

I do think this board game and its expansions are solid investments, but to say Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace isn’t casual friendly is an understatement.  It helps a lot to have at least one player who knows how to keep track of things, but with the complexity of enemies, the different characters, inevitable clusterfunks and excessive game length, it can be overwhelming even to people who play board games like this.  Some areas of this game needed some more play testing.

That said, the core gameplay and Steamforged detail still make it wholly unique and it’s enough to recommend to anyone looking for an elaborate, wholly combat-based board game.  They won’t be disappointed in that regard and most certainly the Devil May Cry fans will have even more to love.  I give Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace a 7.5 out of 10.