Mash With the Devil

A couple of things delayed our review of Devil May Cry 5 Devil Hunter Edition, the most important of which is my inexperience with the series. Nintendo support for the series has been patchy, as has my interest. Having now worked through this release on the Switch 2, I can say with certainty that the latter is no longer an issue.

I should’ve known I’d enjoy this game because Capcom has really been hitting it out of the park with their Switch 2 ports. Devil May Cry 5 is no exception. It looks amazing and plays beautifully on the Nintendo hardware. I stuck mostly with docked mode during my review time (the cinematic nature of the game begs to be seen on the largest screen possible), but handheld gamers are going to be thrilled by DMC’s performance (60 FPS both ways).

That doesn’t mean it’s easy going at the start, though. The problem with hopping into a series this late isn’t just that you have no idea what’s going on narratively, it’s more so that you’re behind with the approach to gameplay. Devil May Cry 5 rightly assumes players have general knowledge of the combat system, so you’re only given a cursory control overview. That’s fine at the onset when your character has only a few moves to execute. But that moveset grows quickly. And can be customized. And is spread out against multiple characters with radically different combos to perform. It quickly overwhelms, so expect to spend plenty of time coming up to speed on the combat mechanics.

The thing is, though, that learning the controls never feels like a chore. Yes, there’s a lot to assign to muscle memory, but doing so is pretty fun. This is because the action sequences are so wonderfully and slickly choreographed. And in a way that’s either rewarding or mocking, depending upon your performance, you’re graded in real time as you work through the fight.

In my first fight, my D ranking pretty much never left the screen. Soon thereafter, I’d see it morph into a C or B as I handled myself better. Seeing it bounce up to S the first couple of times made it clear I was being graded not just on my effectiveness, but on my style. Trouble is, I often had no idea what I’d done to make my rating jump. Figuring that out and making it happen at will is one of the joys of playing the game.

The other joy is coming to know the over-the-top characters as they fight their way through the bonkers world in which they live. I never really paid too much attention to the story details (playing this game is like listening to a great band whose lyrics just really don’t matter) but I was totally into the character interaction as they all tried to out-aura one another every step of the way. Even the NPCs. I’m sure I’d hate to hang out with all of them in real life (you’re supposed to be the generation that ends smoking, Nico), but video games, thankfully, are not real life.

You get Dante, of course, and his versatile style and weaponry set, but you don’t start with him. That distinction goes to Nero. This poor fellow recently lost an arm, and that leads to augmentations, including the Bust Canon (thanks for the loan, Megaman). The early sequence where Nico dumps all the Devil Hunter Edition DLC on him was the first indicator that I was in over my head. As such, Nero wasn’t my favorite character to control, but he was the most insane.

Then there’s V, whom I didn’t like from the get-go. His style of combat was more about avoiding hits by attacking from range, which didn’t gel with the others. If the developers’ aim was to change up gameplay, they did a better job with Dante’s brother, Vergil, who’s included here as part of the Devil Hunter Edition. His approach is more about patience than style, but it still fits within the game’s framework.

Cycling through these characters and their unique combat mechanisms certainly helps to keep things fresh throughout, but the game’s progression takes care of that, too. As enemies get tougher, so do the action segments, and they never fail to deliver grand visuals and insanely cinematic moments. Every time I figured a sequence couldn’t be topped, it would be. As mentioned, I haven’t played a previous Devil May Cry game, but I imagine this has to be the developers firing on all cylinders.

So, yes, I’m a DMC newbie, in this case talking to other DMC newbies. If you’ve never played a Devil May Cry game before, you’ve got to give this entry a go. Difficulty settings will help you find your way, and action gamers are going to have a great time figuring things out. There’s no demo, but the $40 asking price is well below market value in this case. Pick it up and make this the title you use to show off your Switch 2…

…until Capcom’s next release, anyway.