Devil May Cry 5 Review

After Capcom released Ninja Theory’s Devil May Cry reboot, I don’t think anyone was expecting a sequel to Devil May Cry 4.  I think Ninja Theory’s game gets way too much flak because of its title, but regardless of the merits of the game itself, fans wanted a Devil May Cry 5.  However, in the intervening years Capcom came out with Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, which became a monster hit despite no advertising or promotion whatsoever, and then later followed it up with Sengoku Basara 4 in Japan.  Over the years Sengoku Basara 4 built itself up as the most hyped English version of a game in the history of the human race to the point that everyone forgot about wanting a Devil May Cry game.  Something very strange happened though.  Instead of releasing Sengoku Basara 4 in English and bringing about world peace and a panacea for all diseases, Capcom not only made Devil May Cry 5, but fully dubbed it and released it in English.

I am at least a moderate fan of the Devil May Cry franchise.  Devil May Cry 3 is one of my favorite action games of all time and of course you know Devil May Cry 4 is good because it has the same producer as Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes.

That said, it’s curious that instead of translating and dubbing a fully released, content-rich game being exalted as one of the masterpieces of the gaming world that everyone and their dog wants, just like they had already done for the previous game in its franchise, Capcom instead made a new game from scratch with an English version.  That would have to mean that Devil May Cry 5 is practically godlike and I had to take a look to see for myself if it truly lives up to that hype.

The location in which Devil May Cry 5’s plot revolves is the Qliphoth, a giant demon-spawning blood-filled tree inside which a new demon, Urizen, takes in the power it sucks out of the populace.  I thought the Qliphoth was a cavernous poison swamp beneath the earth, but I guess not.  Nero, Dante and a mysterious new guy named V work together to deal with this new demon threat while what has been going on prior to the game is slowly revealed in that in-medias-res style I’m not a fan of.

V brings a whole new spin on the story and combat.

It’s a nice story.  It continues off of the loose plot threads of Devil May Cry 4 and brings back plot points from across the series except Devil May Cry 2.  That game gets no love.  It’s brought to life by a solid voice cast with master actors like Johnny Bosch, Reuben Langdon and Patrick Seitz from Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes and is overall an entertaining time.  Cutscenes look like amateurish shit though, like they were made in some guy’s garage.

The biggest problem I have with Devil May Cry 5’s story is that there’s only one.  In Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi there are 40 stories and even if you consider the length of Devil May Cry 5’s is about as long as 3 stories in Sengoku Basara 4, but Sengoku Basara 4 still has more story content by several magnitudes.  Devil May Cry 5 has 20 missions and Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi has well over 45 different stages to play on.  That pathetic number carried over into the character count.

The three heroes of Devil May Cry 5 are all unique from each other.  Dante dons a new set of Devil Arms, Nero’s arm was stolen so he has a diverse selection of mechanical ones and V is a puppet fighter who uses familiars to fight, but has to finish off any enemies himself using his magic cane.  The combat flows extremely nicely, just like the previous games, with V in particular easily able to rack up enormous combos by not letting enemies die.  However, those characters are the only three unless you count each of Dante’s Devil Arms as their own separate character, since they have their own movesets.  Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi has 40 characters, literally over 10 times the number Devil May Cry 5 has, and they’re also all wholly unique to play.  Some of them even look straight out of Devil May Cry by design, making the ones in Devil May Cry 5 feel redundant.

As if less story and less characters weren’t bad enough, Devil May Cry 5 doesn’t have a lot of enemies to fight.  It does have variety in the enemies themselves and there can be a good dozen enemies to take on at once (particularly if they’re Empusas), but that’s not a lot when you look at Sengoku Basara 4, a game that renders as many enemies onscreen as Dead Rising does zombies.  By the end of one Sengoku Basara stage you can rack up a kill count in the hundreds.  In Devil May Cry 5 you can get a few dozen, which just doesn’t compare.

At least Devil May Cry makes fighting the enemies that are present a spectacle.  Models are super detailed and particle effects from every smash and slash practically burst off the screen with a soundtrack accompanied by a heavier emphasis on grunge rock, I find.  Too bad there’s not a lot you can do with that soundtrack.  In Sengoku Basara 4 you can make a play list of any 3 character themes or vocal songs to play during a stage.  Sengoku Basara 4 also has more music than Devil May Cry 5 overall and with DLC you can get music from the previous games for an even bigger soundtrack selection.

Devil May Cry 5’s replay value after completion of the story returns in the form of Bloody Palace mode, the gauntlet challenge against swarms of enemies.  It’s a fun mode, but there’s a little game called Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den and that game has a mode just like it except with even more characters than Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi does and Sengoku Basara 4 already had a big challenge stage to use the massive character selection on as well, to a smaller degree.  It makes the Bloody Palace of Devil May Cry 5 downright inferior.

In fact, everything is inferior about Devil May Cry 5.  Inferior character count, inferior story content, inferior music options, inferior replay value and just about everything in Devil May Cry 5 is inferior.  It just sucks.  I give Devil May Cry 5 a 4 out of 10.