Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Windows) Review

Seven years after the original Devil May Cry 4 and two years after the Devil May Cry series reboot, DmC: Devil May Cry, Capcom released Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition. It features the full original Devil May Cry 4 and adds features exclusive to the Windows version of the game to console as well as some completely original new features to both Windows and console. This review will judge Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition on its own merits.

In Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition the player has the choice of taking on the Nero/Dante, Vergil, and Lady/Trish campaigns. The Vergil and Lady/Trish campaigns are slightly tweaked versions of the original Nero/Dante campaign that was present in the original Devil May Cry 4. Every character controls somewhat similarly to and builds off of the mechanics of Nero. Nero can jump, shoot, swing his sword, and use his Buster Arm (which is replaced with other characters’ special moves when playing as them). All of these function well enough, though the jump function can often be frustrating to control due to how specifically and quickly characters jump and fall. Every character can also lock-on to enemies, which points the camera and playable character at them at all times when the lock on button is held and allows the player to use moves that are executed by pushing in a specific direction and clicking in a button. Using these abilities players will take on rooms with platforming and puzzle challenges, rooms that won’t let the player leave unless they defeat every enemy, and boss fights. Players can also gain new abilities by collecting Proud Souls, which are gained through preforming well on the ranking system, which gives the player a letter score at the end of every mission for their performance and also provides more replay-ability for players who want to get the best score. There are also different colored orbs hidden in destroyable parts of levels and also gained by defeating enemies. Some of these heal the player’s magic or health meter, and another variety, the Red Orbs, allow the player to make the game easier by either permanently increasing health or magic or by buying one-time use items that give effects not possible to achieve through normal gameplay. In terms of level design the game is rather average, with the levels essentially just serving as backgrounds for the action in most cases. Enemy designs are better, with enemies that have to be taken on in a variety of different ways, though some enemies are more just annoying because of the controls of the game rather than their design being difficult. Boss battles are surprisingly well executed, with contextual events being implemented into them cleverly without the use of button prompts through Nero’s Buster Arm, though some mandatory contextual events can be frustrating to figure out because of this lack of button prompts. The player has a lot of moves at their disposal which makes fighting many of the same enemies not feel overly repetitive most of the time. Dante, Vergil, Lady, and Trish all provide interesting takes on Nero’s move-set, making playing the game as them as well feel worth the time.

The lock-on feature, while useful, can be problematic. Moves that ask for specific directions always look for directions relative to where the character is standing (right, forward, ect.). This becomes a problem because enemies frequently make large and sudden movements when preparing to attack, which results in the direction needed to input a command (most notably rolling) changing and punishing the player quickly (especially on Turbo Mode, which increases the speed of the entire game outside of cutscenes). Some enemies also like to spin around the playable character, which makes inputting a directional command while locked on to them extremely difficult. Another annoying aspect of the game’s design is the platforming and controlling the playable character in the air as a whole. The game features a lot of platforming sections that are frustrating due to the slow base movement speed as well as extremely limited aerial control for every playable character, as well as due to how they feel rather unnecessary and are almost never fun. Attacking enemies that are in the air with some characters is also often frustrating because some abilities that bring the player directly to the enemy frequently send them to a position a bit above or beyond where the player wanted to be. There are also some purchase-able abilities that really should have been unlocked by default, such as running faster after walking for a few seconds and collecting orbs from a greater distance. Another problem is how the game is played the same way basically the entire way through, with almost no variety in gameplay. This is not helped by how many levels are repeated with slightly different objectives to make the campaign feel longer. The new characters are also rather over-powered which makes the difficulty curve of the game overall feel off when switching to them. Overall the gameplay of Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is rather interesting and engaging, but through some more consideration on level design, movement, balance, and some more development time to create additional content it could be so much greater.

Capcom’s MT Framework engine shines in this game. While the geometry quality is frequently rather low and environments are often flat, the textures in this game are surprising high quality for an updated version of an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game. Many of the textures hold up well up close and look better than the textures in many actual Xbox One and PlayStation 4 games. The game also runs at 1080p and 60 FPS, though that performance does have one large problem, on Xbox One at least. Frequently, and especially in Turbo Mode, the game will freeze for a couple of seconds and then continue again at a much higher speed for a couple of seconds, as if the game is trying to catch up with the lost frames. This can be rather frustrating because basically anything that happens during those couple of seconds is almost completely out of the player’s control because of how fast it goes by. Loading times are rather impressive too, likely due to the games impressive use of essentially completely in-game graphics at all times, even in cutscenes. Overall the game looks rather good, with the exception of some menus looking like they are from a much lower budget game.

In terms of music Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is slightly above average. Most songs aren’t particularly notable, besides some of the boss battle themes. The music is also rather difficult to hear over the sound effects that are playing constantly as a result of the games fast nature. There is also voice acting present with good performances all around and mostly good voice direction.

The plot of Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is nothing special. The story is rather basic with few twists that are often just confusing because of how they are presented. The dialogue is written rather well, at least.

In terms of value Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is somewhat difficult to judge. While the amount of game the player gets just from playing the base Nero/Dante campaign is sufficient for the low asking price of this remaster, the additional content doesn’t add much in terms of value. The game, which already has a lot of recycled content in its base campaign, only provides more characters to take on that same content countless times with all of the increasing difficulty levels and the ranking system. For this reason it is hard to justify buying this game for owners of the original, but for new player it is absolutely worth its price. The downloadable content, however, is not in most cases, as it can all be unlocked by just playing the game with few exceptions.

Overall the reviewer would give the game an 8 out of 10.

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