Devil May Cry V - The time finally came and so have I

The time has come...


Oh boy Devil May Cry V. I never really thought it would be here after all of these years but it is and I've got the game completion progress to prove it.

My love for DMC goes all the way back to the release of DMC4, or, rather, right before it came out. Everyone was talking about how excited they were for 4, and I had never played any of the other ones aside from the first one years ago, so I made sure to get the DMC Collection on PS2. I had already completed the first one with my uncle when it first came out, so I was cool skipping that, and everyone told me that DMC2 was hot garbage and to avoid that too, so I did. So I dove right into DMC3 and fell in love right away.

It's campy, it's got rocking tunes, and the gameplay is so far over the top it's a little hard to comprehend at times. But I quite enjoyed my time with DMC3. And not long after I finished it and became an official fan of the franchise, DMC4 was about to release.

I still remember going into a Gamestop about 20 miles away from my house because no one else had the Collector's Edition. I show up, it turns out it's a used copy, but that's okay because the person who owned it previously had only played it for a few hours and immediately returned it. So I walked out of the store with an essentially brand new copy of DMC4 and all of the Collector's Edition content still in the box for about $50, which not only was cheaper than the price they were selling the Collector's Edition but was even cheaper than the standard edition. So, I was happy.

And then I got home and booted up the PS3, waited 12 million hours for the game to install because that's what life was like back in the old days, and booted it up. They pulled a fucking MGS2 on me and I had to play as this Nero kid when I wanted to play as good old uncle Dante, but you know what, the Devil Bringer is actually pretty fucking awesome so I didn't end up minding as much.

I liked Nero, I liked seeing Dante again. There was intrigue, mystery, and so many questions. Is Nero related to Vergil? What does his arm have to do with anything? Us fans were so excited to see where the franchise would go and what kind of answers we would get. And, wow, look at that, DMC4 sold very strongly, so that's good news for us. Oh, wait, 4 million sales was considered a disappointment by Capcom? They didn't think it sold enough? They think a niche title like DMC is going to sell like Call of Duty? A reboot? What are you talking about? We're about to get the answers we've been waiting for, wait what the fuck is DmC: Devil May Cry. Why are they antagonizing the fanbase? Why does Dante look like the game's director? Squrriel semen? Unreal Engine!? Is that supposed to be Bill O'Reilly!? What the fuck is going on!?

11 fucking years - the death of my father - severe depression - one failed reboot of the series - and two seasons of FX's hit show Legion later which you can watch right now on Hulu Prime, we finally got those fucking answers.

And it was worth the wait.

These demon trees have simply got to go.

STORY


I think? I played the whole game and paid attention to it but these things just sorta run together and become incomprehensible. So the story is that our boy Dante has accepted a job to go kill this really powerful demon because he's growing all these fucking trees everywhere and the Home Owner's Association have declared that shit bull.

Simple premise and easy to understand. It only gets complicated a bit later on but I'll go into that, but before I do, spoiler warning.

i wish dande was my unkle


There are three main characters of the game that you play as, Nero, Dante, and series newcomer V, or as I like to call him, "The Devil May Cry equivalent to the Arkham Knight" because this shit is not surprising. Seriously, they announced three main characters and everyone was like "Oh I bet one is Vergil!" and then they name this guy fucking V of all thing and they're all like "LOL NOPE IT'S A NEW GUY" but it's not, it's just Human Vergil because apparently, you can do that if you fill a half-demon's dark soul with liiiiiight.

I want to be clear here this is exactly the kind of shit I come to Devil May Cry for. It's a series that takes itself seriously in that it presents a story, conflict, drama, tension, etc, etc, and plays on that to build a fantastic climax. But it's all just fucking chaos and great.

So Dante and Nero are trying to fight this big fuck-off demon and I won't lie it's kind of an annoying fight because you have to do it like 6 times in the game. And I don't just mean that you fight the same boss, I mean it's the same boss battle. You play it from the Dante perspective, you play it from the Nero perspective, and then you do it again and again later on.

Everyone is like "Hey yo this guy is too strong we have to leave" and Dante's like "lol I'm the protagonist wut r u talkin about?????" and tries to wax on this dude but he gets put into a fucking 2-month long coma apparently.

Eventually Dante is found, but his sword, Rebellion, is broken, so he has to figure out something new, which involves him filling his dark soul with swooooord and forging Rebellion into a new kind of sword, the Devil Sword Dante which is sick as fuck and mega cool and it's even named after Dante so you know it'll get some pussy. V ends up having a heart-to-heart with Trish and explains that he's really the human side of Vergil and the devil side is a huge asshole, and Trish quite literally tells him to get gud and fucking leaves. Also V is slowly dying due to being separated from his devil form for so long, so he's running out of time and has to work on some kind of plan to not die, meanwhile no one even really knows who this sandal wearing, poetry reading lunatic even is, and they keep asking "CAN WE TRUST HIM?" to each other instead of just talking to the guy, which I found strange but who cares Dante's going to go fuck shit up now.


So Vergil is fighting this same fucking Urzien boss fight again and he's about to die before Dante comes in in Super Devil Mode and fucking bitchslaps Urzien and is like "no don't kill him he's my friend" and saves Nero.

They all regroup and some other shit happens and Lady and Trish are naked at one point but Sony's a fucking idiot and they censored my one shot at seeing bare ass because I don't have the internet to look that shit up in my own free time. Thanks, Sony. I was almost a sinner. Back to endlessly slaughtering demons in pools of blood and guts!

The trees that this Urzien demon guy is growing are killing people and sucking their blood and condensing it into a super fruit that, once eaten, will make you super powerful or something. But then he eats it and it was one of the easiest boss battles in the game. Like it wasn't even hard.

Then V shows up and is all like "let me talk to this big demon guy don't worry about it" and they decide to not worry about it, but then V is like "being a human sucks and even in your full demon form you can't do anything right so let's just fuse back together" and so they fuse back together and go full Vergil... and you never go full Vergil.

So we've got our cast of characters again. Dante, Nero, Vergil. It's only at the end of the game that any real plot happens because the majority of the game is just grinding through levels and fucking shit up. This isn't exactly a problem, but with the 11 years in between seeing these guys again, I felt nostalgic to see more edgelord drama between them all.

So Vergil's back and goes to the top of this super big tower and Dante goes off to fight him, to finish this "once and for all" because their mom died before she could teach them to not be emotionally stunted manchildren, but before Dante can race after Vergil, he shares the news with Nero that Vergil is really his dad, which he figured out due to Nero's reaction to being around Yamato, and also the fact that it was his arm for, like, a long time.

Smoking killed my dad don't do that shit

Dante beats Vergil, they keep referring to each other as "older brother" and "younger brother" but they used to be twins so I'm not sure if this is a retcon or not. But it doesn't really matter. Dante is about to kill Vergil but Nero finally put on song lyrics and realized he could bang bang bang pull his Devil Trigger. Then he shows up and is like nah fuck that this Vergil guy is my dad and that makes you my uncle and this family relationship is so fucked up" and Nero has a new super Devil Trigger which is fucking insane and he beats the shit out of his dad and then tells him that he needs to be a good guy now.

Vergil agrees and everyone immediately forgets that it was Vergil who destroyed this city, killed thousands of people, and feasted off of their blood to become super powerful. So he's not a bad guy anymore and he and Dante are like "okay bro let's go finish all of these rampant demons in the city" and so they end up going to hell, and leave behind Nero so that he can protect the world above while Dante and Vergil are down in hell trying to chop down this super demon tree that Vergil planted but apparently doesn't know the fucking way to remove because this guy really is an idiot.

And then it cuts to a scene where Dante and Vergil are in hell fighting each other for fun before demons break it up and they have playful banter back and forth because everyone really did just forget that Vergil is an evil murderous prick. Oh and Dante finally says Jackpot.

Credits.

All in all the plot wasn't that interesting until the end of the game because that's pretty much the only time it starts to pick up and go somewhere. I found it very interesting that they retconned the original order of the series as well. It used to be DMC3-1-4-2, but 2 ended with Dante in hell and everyone wondering what would happen when he got out, but everyone hated that game so they made the right call in retconning the new series order to e DMC4-1-2-4, that way we can immediately just jump back in with the characters we know and love and leave 2 behind where it belongs, in hell.

But, that's not why it's interesting. See, DMCV ends with Dante in hell once again, so even though we thought that DMCV was going to be a sequel to 2 and we'd get to see what happened when Dante came back, they retconned that out but in a sense we're still waiting for that followup because as of DMCV both Vergil and Dante are fighting demons and chopping down a huge ass demon tree in hell.

I'm pretty sure I saw a video that started like this once...


Gameplay


I'm not good at these games. I'll just admit that. I love them so much but I suck really bad. My instinct is to button mash and I'm not built to not do that. I remember being really good at DMC4, but that was 11 years ago and my old man brain could be misremembering things.

Each character plays differently to one another which is quite awesome. Nero plays just like Nero did in 4, with the small exception(Depending on who you are, personally I thought it was quite big) that at the beginning of the game, Vergil cuts off Nero's arm so he doesn't have the Devil Bringer anymore, instead he uses a prosthetic replacement created by an inventor friend of his named Nico. The thing about these arms though, is that they are expendable. They explode after too much use so even though they provide unique functions, use them too much and they explode, leaving you to have to find some throughout the level or just spend your Red Orbs to purchase more.

The Red Queen is back and oh boy revving that thing up is still just as fun back in the day as it is today. It's actually quite impeccable that DMCV managed to feel so much like Devil May Cry even after all of these years. Especially after that fucked up failed reboot. But nothing was compromised here. Unlike my issues where RE2 remake just felt like it didn't go far enough, DMCV felt in every possible way I could have imagined like "The Complete Package" that I waited 11 years for.

Dante is the jack of all trades and has a series of weapons he uses, including various firearms as well. Dante was probably one of my favorite characters to play as because of his different fighting styles and weapons. I'm still not great at this game, but I managed to get a couple of SSS's so I felt good about it. The biggest problem I faced with this game was seeing just how far you could take your skills, and how far away from that I was.

My biggest misconception about the game was thinking that you have to know it all. I thought in order to get good as Dante you have to know how to use every weapon, every firearm, every skill. But that's not true. You can reliably get SSS with just one weapon and firearm, it's all about using the different fighting styles to your advantage, since Dante can switch between Tricker for more maneuverability, Royal Guard to block attacks and deliver powerful counterattacks, Gunslinger to perform more powerful gun attacks, and Swordmaster which opens up your melee arsenal quite a bit.

Even though I wasn't the best at this game, using Dante and racking up the combos was incredible. I loved it.

he cool


Then there's V, who is fun to play as but quite simple. He's a weak human but he has the power to summon familiars, one being chicken who can fly around and shoot projectiles, and another one which is a panther who delivers your melee attacks. But they can't kill the targets, so V has to finish them off himself.

V has a Devil Trigger ability that summons a giant monster called Nightmare and he comes in breaking down walls, revealing secret areas, and fucking shit up. He's really fun to use, but the problem I had with V is that he's too easy. Nero and Dante make you work for your combos, but you can literally just spam the triangle button to get easy SSS's consistently. I was never sure if I was utilizing V correctly because it didn't "feel" right, but I wasn't getting hit, I was killing everything in my way, and I was achieving high combos. So I guess it if ain't broke...?

The gameplay in this game is stellar. The videos people make of incredible combos and their perfect gameplay, killing bosses like it's nothing even on the higher difficulties, this game has a high skill ceiling and with enough practice, you can break through it and show off your own incredible combos.

After 11 years they managed to bring back Devil May Cry and as a fan of this franchise who had to suffer through the dark times of no DMC for a long, long time, seeing it come back with such a vengeance, with Reuben Langdon, Johnny Yong Bosch, and Danny Southworth all back together again, well it brings a goddamn smile to my face to be sure.

I give Devil May Cry 5...

...and so have I

My name is Ryan. I like to play video games and Dungeons and Dragons and all kinds of other cool stuff. I also like to write. This is my website, it's nothing special, but I write about topics from time to time that probably make no sense. But if you think they do make sense, then hang around and check out some other articles. My friends call them "blogs" but goddamnit I've got a URL and everything, so they're "articles".

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