Devil May Cry 5 | Making Accessible Hardcore Games
For a good bit of my free time this week, I've spent glued to my home computer playing a little game about an ass-kicking devil hunter named Dante. Loud, crude, and filled to the brim with gore-induced violence, Devil May Cry 5 is a game that I'd have to hide from my parents if I were still a child.
In a lot of ways, this game reminds me of being 12 years old and getting my first Grand Theft Auto game - Liberty City Stories for the PSP. I remember the story being just fodder I quickly mashed the X button through to get to the real meat of the game - the mayhem you could cause in the open world. It was my first time getting a taste of an experience made for "adults", or at least what I perceived that level of maturity to be like.
I remember putting in all the different cheat codes to have unlimited ammo, unlimited health, a behemoth tank, and an five star wanted level. To say some of my fondest memories of GTA were on that small 4.3 widescreen LCD would be an understatement.
Playing through Devil May Cry 5 has been like getting that same virgin sensation on a modern monitor at 60+FPS with a higher graphical fidelity.
And it was fucking glorious.
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Devil May Cry 5 rounds off the the long story littered throughout the first four games in the series. Dante has been tasked with a new assignment from a mysterious cane-wielding man named V to take down a extremely powerful demon named Urizen. Nero from Devil May Cry 4 is also prominently featured as a main protagonist, with V recruiting him as backup when Dante is unable to take down Urizen the first go-around.
The story of this game is nothing to write home about however. If you've never fully played any of the previous entries in the series (like me), there's a short video giving you a quick summary of the main events that have occurred in the series. Even if you weren't to watch that video though, I'd say you'd have a fine time grasping what was going on.
Really, the story is not what you come to this game for. It's not even really the characters (which I'll discuss more later on) that bring you into this world. No, it's the combat, and that's really where Devil May Cry 5 progresses the Character Action genre to cultivate an experience that welcomes new and old fans of it.
Accessibility Options
For me, Character Action is a weird genre, and it always has. While I've always been enamored with action adventures like Ratchet and Clank and Assassin's Creed and so on, having the "adventure" stripped away always put me off. I never found the combat to be my favorite aspects to these games; it was always the exploration and world design was what astounded me.
In the past, I've tried and failed to get past through the first few levels of any Character Action game. I own Bayonetta and several of the past Devil May Cry's, yet I've never played more than an hour of any of them. A mixture of the linearity and the difficulty have been the biggest causes of this, to the point where just hearing that a game is that genre has turned me off in the past. With all the hype surround the latest entry in the Devil May Cry franchise, I decided to give this classic genre another chance. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised for a myriad of reasons.
Before you even start the game, Devil May Cry 5 presents you with two different difficulties - Human and Devil Hunter. I have to emphasize this conscious decision to only provide two options upon start because I think that this is one of the best decisions Capcom made when creating this game.
As someone who hasn't really played these past games, I had no idea what either of these difficulties honestly meant. While I knew that "Human" was the easier difficulty of the two, I couldn't attribute it to "Easy" or "Normal" because its title is so vague. Because of that, I didn't feel talked down to for choosing to play on "Human", nor would I have felt any more special for choosing to play on "Devil Hunter".
Aside from difficulty, DMC 5 also allows you to fully customize your controller layout for each character. I wish this feature was standard across all video games, as it greatly increases the accessibility to play the game how you would feel most comfortable playing. For about five or six of the missions, I decided to just test out the normal layout. After feeling a little uncomfortable with the scheme, I went through and reconfigured the layout to feel more akin to a normal Action-Adventure game.
Increasing Character Complexity
DMC 5’s biggest strong-suit is it’s progression. Throughout the game, you’ll move forward with different characters that increase in complexity in a way that really eases newcomers in to the Character Action genre.
You start off playing as Nero, who controllers about how you'd expect. He has three main actions: melee, shooting, and a special attack. Along with those, the game introduces you to a mechanic related to his melee ability; if you press the Right Trigger, you'll rev up Nero's sword. This form of charging up allows you to pull off stronger melee attacks, and if you time it right you can increase your combo meter exponentially.
The game let’s you play as Nero for a few missions before gaining control of V. V controls wildly different from Nero, and provides a way to spice up the gameplay and introduce the player to more varied combat. When playing as him, you have access to three different creatures which each correlate to one of the three main actions. What further separates him from Nero is the need to lock onto an enemy and press your special attack button in order to actually eliminate them.
Because of the delay in V's actions and that final execution, I was forced to plan out my attacks more strategically than I had done when playing as Nero. This is perfect for newcomers to the genre as it allows them to learn that there's supposed to be more nuance to your actions aside from simply mashing a single button. It makes you think about the genre less like a Hack-n-Slash and more like a Strategy game.
Then, we finally make our way to Dante. Dante requires a ton more thinking on the player's part as he contains four different combat styles: Trickster, Swordmaster, Gunslinger, and Royal Guard. Each style focuses on one of Dante's main actions, using the special attack button as a sort of "ultimate" move based off of it. For example, Swordmaster's special attack creates a unique action for your melee weapon. To go along with these moves, Dante houses several weapons that greatly diversify his play style.
Throughout the game, your given different types of weapons like rocket launchers, shotguns, pistols, and even a hat that absorbs red orbs (your currency) to attack. You're also given melee weapons like swords, gauntlets, and a fucking motorcycle that splits in half. Each one of these has their own unique special attack when playing on their specified play style too.
What makes Dante so perfect a character for newcomers to end on though is that he is extremely powerful. I always felt more powerful as Dante, and it emboldened me to try out all of his different styles and weapons as a result. It was with him that I finally felt like I was understanding how to properly chain my combos, when to switch up my play style, and gain A-S ranks. The developers at Capcom really thought about DMC 5 and it's progression. They saw it as a good chance to gain new fans who once felt alienated, and they definitely succeeded.
The Flaws
Now, even though DMC 5 does do all of this awesome progression and combat building, it has some major flaws. The biggest issue I have with the game is its characters, particularly the women. While I feel like each one is designed well and contains interesting and unique backstory and personality, the writing that each of them are given are some of the weakest I've seen in a game as of late.
Nico, who could've been a truly great character, is hampered by her dialogue and her voice work. Trish and Lady - Dante's two partners - supposedly have a lot of interesting, pro-feminist backstory. Yet, they are barely utilized at all in the game. It's a real shame that all of the women are so underused in this game, and it's something that I hope Capcom addresses in a sequel.
The general overall tone of the story is also extremely weak. It tries to come off as an edgy action story hearkening back to the 90’s, but it just doesn’t really work in the present. Jokes consistently fall flat, and the dialogue just feels kind of rote and stale at this point.
Despite those two glaring issues with the game, Devil May Cry 5 is a solidly fun time to be had. There’s a lot to love simply in its gameplay and the variety of its combat that makes it stand out above the rest. If you’ve always been on the fence about Character Action games in the past, I think now is the perfect time to jump in and give the genre a try.