DISCLAIMERS:
- the reviewer has not finished the game with 100% completion
- the game was played on the Xbox One S using the version of the game intended for United States audiences
11 years after Devil May Cry 4, an actual mainline sequel released in the form of Devil May Cry 5. Similar to Resident Evil 2 which released around the same time, Devil May Cry 5 was also in development on the RE Engine for a long time, just more secretly. This review will judge Devil May Cry 5 on its own merits.
The gameplay of Devil May Cry 5 is, of course, the gameplay. Although it seems somewhat different at first once you really get into the game it is more or less the same system as Devil May Cry 4. Read Gamelor’s review of that game for more details on how Devil May Cry games work. Many of the annoyances from that game have been fixed, though. The reviewer had significantly less trouble with the camera and the platforming issues from Devil May Cry 4 are more or less gone (as is platforming itself, pretty much, which is not a bad thing). As a whole the game is significantly less offensive to play, but this also strips it of a lot of the excitement the player would get when defying the annoying mechanics in Devil May Cry 4. Some might call this “quality of life” but like in Monster Hunter: World, these changes remove a lot of the excitement that mechanics that worked against the player provided in earlier games, despite how unfair some might consider them to be. Devil May Cry 5 is definitely a victim of the general casualization of games over the decade since its series’ last mainline game. It isn’t all bad, though. Devil May Cry 5 brings a lot of new concepts to the table that pretty much all do more good than bad. The character of V is a bit of a flop with how easily he can be played, basically only requiring managing holding down and mashing buttons in different orders to get the highest style ranking and as a result easily beating everything. Other than that though, everything was at least worth a shot and adds a bit to the game, even if nothing was particularly well developed. The lack of a turbo mode is a bit disappointing considering Devil May Cry players have had it in other Devil May Cry games for many years. This game could have used it more than previous games in the series, too, since there is an obvious toning down of the speed present, which doesn’t help with the monotony of fighting the same enemies hundreds of times. Still, Devil May Cry 5 does an actually rather good job at staying varied throughout the game compared to its contemporaries. The player is forced outside of their comfort zone in a lot of ways which can’t be said of a lot of games nowadays. Overall Devil May Cry 5 loses a lot of the series’ PS2 era charm, but makes up for it by being extremely competently made while retaining more of the spark from that era than pretty much all of its contemporaries.
Technically Devil May Cry 5 is amazing, as one would expect from a RE Engine game. Theres a huge variety of assets and they all look amazing. The game also runs about as smoothly as you could ask for considering the graphics on display. This is probably the best part of the game.
In terms of music Devil May Cry 5 doesn’t stand out much. There is pretty much only one memorable song in the game, though the others don’t stand out as being especially poor. The voice acting is consistently good, at least. Sound effects are about what one would expect. Overall Devil May Cry 5‘s sound doesn’t do much for or against it.
The plot of Devil May Cry 5 is more of the same from the Devil May Cry series. It could have gone any number of ways and the game would still be around the same in terms of quality, though. The dialogue is still well written, at least.
In terms of value Devil May Cry 5 is a bit better than most would probably expect. It is on the longer end for the Devil May Cry series and doesn’t achieve this by recycling most of its content like Devil May Cry 4 does. The replay value is obvious with the amount of difficulties, the scoring system, the unlockables, and the secrets present in the game. Still, most people probably won’t get their 60 dollars worth unless this game turns them into a Devil May Cry fan. This is more of a problem with the buyer than the game, though, so its hard to judge the game for this. Overall Devil May Cry 5 provides about as much content as you could possibly expect from a game of its genre.
Overall the reviewer would give the game an 8.5 out of 10.
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