Welcome back to another retrospective review. This week I’ll be discussing the first entry in Capcom’s hack-and-slash action series, Devil May Cry. I’ve been looking forward to getting into this series. I was first introduced to the characters through the Marvel vs Capcom series and loved the sense of style presented by each character.

First released in 2001 on the PlayStation 2 the series follows Dante, the half-demon son of the legendary Dark Knight Sparda. Dante makes his living as a demon hunter for hire and his agency is known as Devil May Cry. I played on PC as the first three games in the Devil May Cry series were re-released in an HD collection that was then made available for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4  in 2018.

The story of this game is relatively bare bones. Dante is visited by a mysterious girl named Trish who hires him to stop Mundus, the king of the underworld from invading Earth. Dante travels to a castle located on Mallet Island and then makes his way through hordes of monstrous creatures on his way to kill Mundus.

This game has easily some of the worst-written characters I’ve ever seen in a game. They all act like cartoon caricatures of classical action and fantasy tropes and make choices that have virtually no motivation behind them. Dante hates Mundus for reasons unknown, Mundus is evil for the sake of being evil, and Trish has a romance that feels incredibly forced. The dialogue is cheesy and delivered so awkwardly that you can’t even laugh at it most of the time.

Unfortunately, the gameplay that accompanies this narrative isn’t much better. The controls feel incredibly clunky and limited in overall scope. For melee combat, you have a three-hit sword combo, an unlockable stab attack and a jump attack. For ranged options, you have various firearms that can be found throughout the game but start off with Dante’s twin pistols.

That’s about it in terms of regular combat options. Also, good luck figuring out how to even use certain attacks as the game doesn’t give the slightest indication of the basic controls without forcing you to search for answers amongst the menus. I didn’t even know how to fire my guns or if I needed ammo until the first boss. Dante also has the ability to transform into his demon form for a limited time frame by activating his Devil Trigger. The Devil Trigger can be upgraded with a few different special attacks but because of the limited time frame, I didn’t often find myself using them.

The biggest hindrance to combat is the abysmal camera. Every area has multiple different fixed perspectives that swap the moment you step into a certain part of the map. This not only had me losing track of my character on screen but also created many scenarios where I was not able to even see what was happening on screen. I would say about 60 percent of my deaths in this game were due to the camera alone as I often couldn’t even see where attacks were coming from in order to dodge.

Boss battles only serve to further exacerbate the issues with mobility and camera as they often take place in rooms that are much too small for the boss itself. Combine this with the fact that a majority of bosses have extremely limited hitboxes and you have easily some of the most frustrating gameplay experiences I’ve ever had.

Every enemy encounter soon devolves into the ultimate test of your patience, as many normal enemies can take obscene amounts of punishment. I was often machine gun mashing just to get past even lower power level enemies in a timely manner. For an action game, you would expect to be rewarded with combos but because there are barely any combat options to begin with, so you can’t really chain different attacks effectively. This might have been alleviated if I had turned on the “easy mode” that was added to this collection in order to streamline combat. However, I wanted to experience this game how it was originally intended to be played.

Furthermore, the overall lack of enemy variety causes even more gameplay fatigue. If you ever find yourself having trouble with a specific foe and think to yourself, “well at least that’s over with” be prepared to face that same enemy at least four more times. Every boss is similarly reused at least three times with no differentiation. Although this does allow for some feelings of satisfying skill progression as you dispatch each successive encounter more efficiently, by the final fight you’ll be begging for something new.

This game also suffers from a lack of cohesive identity throughout as there are certain missions where the gameplay completely shifts from the standard hack and slash formula. There is a water level that turns gameplay into that of an extremely awkward FPS game, as well as a boss encounter that contains an arcade shooter section with similarly terrible controls. Platforming elements are also present here but are likewise brought down by camera angles that make traversal nightmarish.

By far the best aspects of the game come from the soundtrack and pre-rendered backgrounds. The spooky gothic castle that comprises Mallet island provides a fun backdrop with many picturesque horror scenes. The sound design is also solid. Every gun is very satisfying to fire and the hits always feel impactful. The battle songs complement the theme of stylish, bloody violence with pounding synths and heavy guitar riffs. You can definitely see The Matrix influence but it still manages to set itself apart with the horror aesthetic.

While Devil May Cry was certainly an ambitious achievement for 2001, I feel it fails to hold up today. It tries to do a lot but succeeds in nothing particularly well. I can see the vision the developers were going for but the actual product feels as though the technology wasn’t advanced enough at this point to allow for the truest execution of the original concept. Ultimately, Devil May Cry is a disappointing initial release that delivers an awkward experience with a lack of cohesive identity amongst other games in the same genre.

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Devil May Cry HD Collection

29.99

3

Score

3.0/10

Pros

• Good Music and Backgrounds

Cons

• Terrible writing and story
• Clunky controls
• Bad Camera
• Boring, repetitive combat
• Irritating, uncreative boss battles