Welcome to the fourth installment of my Devil May Cry retrospective! Haven't read the first three? Well, click the links below!
Part 4: Conflicted.
Originally released in 2008, but re-released with a Special Edition much later in 2015, Devil May Cry 4 is a bit of an odd one. The first “next gen” DMC after the PS2 era, it was also the first multiplatform release. The first (and only) in the series built on Capcom's then engine of choice, MT Framework, it was also (as one might guess) the one with the longest span between initial release and Special Edition. I know I was surprised when that happened, by 2015 DMC felt like it was dead and buried. And, frankly, it still felt like that, up until DMC 5's announcement.
Anyway, as was par for the course, I didn't play 4 right on release, I played it the year after. Why? Don't remember! This game wasn't exactly poorly received, but it didn't have the critical acclaim of 3, so that couldn't have helped. Could have been I was just waiting for a sale, or maybe I was too busy with school. I remember playing a demo, so maybe that didn't help?
I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, though. Let's go back to right after the release of DMC 3. That game's critical and financial success of course made Capcom want to keep that train rolling, but based on what little information I was able to find about 4's development, that sentiment wasn't exactly shared by the dev team. Not that they didn't want to make the game, it seems like they didn't really have many ideas for it. At least not initially, apparently introducing a new, younger protagonist is what energized the team into action.
I haven't exactly been doing extensive research on these games, but I wasn't able to find much about DMC 4's development. Basically just what I said above, and...that at least some of the people that worked on the game (if not most or all) consider it to be “unfinished.” Also, apparently the game's “scenario writer” (Bingo Morihashi again) left the studio midway into development, before being asked to return to help finish the game. Not...exactly great signs, especially when this is what I'm beginning this with, huh?
I did, however, find some interesting information about the Special Edition's development. Hideaki Itsuno, after directing DMC 4, took time away from the franchise to helm Dragon's Dogma (a “cult classic” I'm rather fond of), and instead Ninja Theory made the DmC reboot (more on that next time). So he viewed this Special Edition as a way to get back into the Devil May Cry swing of things, and to show people that the original series wasn't entirely dead. Other interesting tidbits are apparently DmC served as a bit of inspiration for some of the additions, like Vergil, to some extent. Also this was apparently the first time the series had Japanese language audio? I guess they'd just been getting English with subtitles previously.
I know it's a bit odd to be writing about stuff in this order, but I think it'd make less sense to include DMC 4 and DmC in the same thing (never mind how long that would be), and the Special Edition doesn't warrant a separate writeup. Though it seems to have earned its own page on Wikipedia, so I dunno!
Anyway, back to Devil May Cry 4 itself.
Here's the thing. I remember liking this game when I originally played it, but definitely not loving it. Revisiting it, this time via the Special Edition, I think that some of the issues I had back then I don't have any longer (or at least not to the same extent), but other issues I had forgotten, really annoyed me a lot more this time around. So, I'm a little torn on how I feel about DMC 4 as a whole.
Sounds like a good time to work my way through my thoughts, and see if laying it all out there helps me sort through it all. As I alluded to, Dante takes a step back as the main protagonist, giving that role to newcomer Nero. At first glance he's a lot like Dante, they both have similar silhouettes and personalities. Long coat, big sword, and a bigger mouth. But the more time spent with Nero (more so into DMC 5, but we're far from there still), the more he differentiates himself. He's definitely cocky too, but with Nero there's a bit more of a feeling that he's using that as a cover, unlike Dante who has been around long enough to earn that title of “Legendary Devil Hunter.”
That, and Nero's primary motivation is his beloved girlfriend Kyrie. A name seared into my brain because of the number of times he screams it across this game. I have to take a moment to give some props to Johnny Yong Bosch, one of my favorite game and anime dub voice actors, for immediately nailing Nero. Unlike Reuben Langdon, who didn't quite get Dante right until his third time with the character, Bosch got it in one. Elsewhere the game's acting is par for the course, everyone putting in good enough performances. Other game voice acting legend Liam O'Brien is here as the pope (more on that later), and other Capcom alumni TJ Rotolo (Credo), and TJ Storm (Agnus) are here, fresh off Dead Rising (Frank West and Brad Garrison, respectively). Funny they're both TJs, huh?
I'm not entirely sure who voiced Lady, though? I've seen contradictory information, some things claiming it was Laura Napoli (another Dead Rising alum), other sources saying she only did mocap (for both Lady and Kyrie). The game's credits (I think both original and SE) just list Napoli for Kyrie and Lady, but enough sources online disagree that I don't trust the game!
Some say it was Kari Walhgren reprising her role from 3, but other sources disagree? Anyway, I'm fairly certain it's Kate Higgins as Lady in the Special Edition (and Stephanie Sheh as Kyrie for what it's worth (who most sources agree was also the original voice)). I spent more time looking into this than I should have, but evidently not enough to find a satisfactory answer. Both Higgins and Sheh (if the internet is to be believed!) returned for their roles in DMC 5, so there's that.
ANYWAY, as to why this is such a mess, and they apparently recast Lady for the Special Edition...I have no idea. There's more lines for Lady in the remaster, but I dunno why they got someone else. Maybe Walhgren was too busy? Okay, back on track now.
DMC 4's story feels fairly ambitious right out of the gate. The opening cuts between Kyrie giving a recital in church (as this game takes place in and around fake Vatican City), while Nero is held up by a bunch of demonic scarecrows, trying to get there in time for the performance. He misses the song, but finds an open seat in the audience in time for her to at least see he made the effort to show his face. Then she gets off the stage, and Pope Liam starts his sermon...
Dante suddenly crashes in through the stained glass ceiling and shoots him in the face.
Yup, before you even get control, Dante murders the pope with a shot to the face. Hell of a beginning! Again, new protagonist, and the one from the previous trilogy now positioned as the bad guy? Well, not for long, because the guards he kills have demonic faces, and anyone who actually played the previous games knows Dante well enough to know he wouldn't kill someone without a good reason, but Nero doesn't know that, so the tutorial is him fighting Dante. Again, hell of a way to start the game.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really go anywhere interesting. Nero is sent to track down Dante, and it becomes apparent quickly that the church is up to something. I'm still not entirely sure what their actual goal was, other than achieving power. Really seems to be the motivating force for all the villains in Devil May Cry, huh? Unlike DMC 3, where each antagonist had a family tie to one of the heroes, there's none of that here. Credo and Kyrie are siblings, but there's not really much to their relationship. Maybe in a different game that spent time to establish what this church is really about (other than just worshiping Sparda as their savior), and how Nero and Kyrie fit in with that, it could be something. Here though, Nero really doesn't care about the church from the get go, and Kyrie is just there to look pretty and be a damsel. Of the distressed sort, naturally.
Really the most interesting thing (knowing where the series goes in 5) is Nero's connection to Vergil's old sword, the Yamato (more on that later). Well, that, and the fact that Trish (making her first appearance in the story of one of these since the original)...spends most of this game in...I hesitate to use the “b word,” but let's just say she wears a magical disguise with a noticeably darker skin tone. I didn't really think anything of it at the time in 2009 (not that I remembered), and I'm sure I'm thinking about it more now than the devs did when they made the game, but... It's a bit odd, that's what I'll say.
The only other interesting thing about the story to me is where it fits in with the overall timeline. Originally, DMC 4 was set between 1 and 2. Why? No idea! DMC 2, frankly, contributes absolutely nothing of any value to the series' lore or story, so I guess maybe they wanted to distance themselves from it? It's definitely not like a Fast and Furious situation where they kept bringing back Han despite his dying in Tokyo Drift (which itself was later retconned to say he survived). I wouldn't mind if they tried to bring Lucia back and do literally anything with her, but I don't think anyone at Capcom is interested in that, or even remembers her (I guess she has a “cameo” in the Netflix animated series).
Anyway, the part that is really strange to me is that when DMC 5 released, they went through the trouble to retcon it so 4 is now set after 2. To recap, originally the timeline was 3, 1, 4, 2, and now it's 3, 1, 2, 4, 5. There's no getting around 3 being a prequel, but I think this makes more sense. Particularly given 4 and 5 are the two games focused on Nero.
So, that's the story set up, but we all know DMC is game play first, so how's that side of things? Well, my memory of the game is thinking Nero was too limited in his moveset, and weapons, and revisiting it...I think DMC 4 still makes kind of a bad first impression. Too many of Nero's moves and abilities need to be unlocked, and his gimmicks don't have enough depth to make up for that. His two weapons are his sword, Red Queen, and pistol, Blue Rose. Blue Rose's gimmick is it has two barrels and thus shoots two bullets at once, while Red Queen has a motorcycle rev-y up thingy on it. Rev it up between attacks to swing faster, harder, and do cooler moves.
Blue Rose feels useless. It's better with the charge up ability unlocked, but the unlocking moves “economy” is such that I didn't actually get this until after finishing the game, when I spent a few hours in the Bloody Palace. Now, I know most of the ranged weapons in this series aren't there for doing damage (aside from the explosives), but at least they can be useful for crowd control, or air juggling (which is cool). I mean you can still air juggle with this thing, but otherwise...I dunno, it felt like a waste of a button to me.
Red Queen is better, but the gimmick takes too long to charge to really be viable in most fights. There is a mechanic where perfect timing after a swing can recharge it instantly, but I can't time that well enough to do it reliably. Also, you need to unlock it! Same with most of the sword's combos and other moves, which isn't the end of the world, but what he has to start with is too little, and too repetitive. Once I unlocked all the moves, Nero is a lot of fun to play, certainly more so than I remembered. It just takes too long to get there on a first playthrough, and that's frustrating.
Then there's Nero's main gimmick, his Devil Bringer arm. His right arm is demonic, with black and red chitin around a glowing blue core. It looks cool! Except the game never really like, explains it? Nero starts the game with his arm in a sling, and he very conspicuously tries to hide it, which feels like it's new, but later in the game he has a line of dialog that makes it sound like it's been demonic for a long time? Just one of a lot of things here that feel half-baked, I guess. Knowing where the series goes I can make an assumption about the origin of the arm coming from his demonic ancestor...though there's never been any indication that his other part demon relatives have any obviously demonic body parts, so I dunno. Maybe Dante's got a demonic d-
Anyway, rather than Dante's Styles, Nero has this arm on Circle button. It has two main functions, depending on if he's locked on or not. Locked on it works like a grappling hook, pulling the enemy close (unless it's a boss, then it pulls Nero over). Unlocked, it's a grab and throw, with a different animation for every enemy type. Some are pretty simple, others more elaborate (using the enemy as a weapon against others), and some are full on wrestling moves! My favorite is a suplex followed with a dropkick to the face. Unfortunately, this game has so much motion blur that I wasn't really able to get any good screenshots of these grabs. At least it looks good in motion!
Certain enemies are built around this mechanic, for better or worse. With this game's version of the “scissor reapers,” if Nero swipes at them enough with Devil Bringer, eventually their dark cloaks are torn away. Their sad little bug form now revealed, there's an opportunity to wail on them. Possessed suits of angelic armor block all attacks from the front, but can be grabbed from the rear. Those are the two big ones, and it's fine, just tedious and gets old after a few of them. Where it's really annoying is playing as characters that don't have grab moves, and thus all they can really do is whittle the enemies down.
Later, Nero gets the ability to hold and use enemies as a shield, but since that requires holding the Circle button, it's too awkward to be useful. I think I could remap the controls and maybe put it on R2 or something, but then I'd be holding both R1 and R2 if I was locking on to other enemies, which isn't much better. Well, it would be, because trying to do combos with Triangle while holding Circle is a recipe for accidentally dropping that enemy.
I think the Devil Bringer is cool, but it's not enough. Each of Dante's styles has more depth than this, and he has five of them in this game, all mapped to that same Circle button. This is the crux of the problem I had with Nero way back in the day, and while I like playing as him more nowadays, I think it's still a problem. The core is solid but there's not enough outside that core. Remember Red Queen and Blue Rose? Those are his only weapons. That's it.
Remember when I said Nero has a connection to the Yamato? At first the sword is broken, but when Nero gets his demonic hand on it (after beating this game's most fearsome boss, a window (not a joke, there's a boss fight where he throws demon swords into a window)), it fixes itself. But he doesn't actually use the sword, it's just the Trigger to unleash his Devil power. I mean, I guess technically he uses it with his Devil Trigger, but that's just his JoJo's Stand swinging it alongside Red Queen during his regular combos. It changes the animations, and powers him up, but doesn't change what the player does.
I will say, Devil Trigger does make the grab and throw animations cooler, so I'm not complaining too much. I just think it's a really big missed opportunity to give some more variety to Nero, especially when he's the character you play as through the bulk of the game. The issue isn't that Nero is bad to play, it's that he's too repetitive. Especially when, as I said earlier, it takes too long to unlock all his moves.
That's another annoying part of this game. Unlike every previous entry in the series, you don't spend Red Orbs on new moves (well, I guess you didn't in 2, but that was because there weren't new moves to unlock). Instead there's a new currency: Proud Souls. You get them when finishing a mission, based on your rank (or maybe some other metric I didn't notice?). And sometimes I got them if I died to a boss and hit continue, I guess to help? Anyway, this part of it is fine, and it does have the benefit of every character getting the same number of Proud Souls. Meaning when I reached the Dante portion of the game, I had enough to fully upgrade several of his Styles, start with Air Hike, get some moves unlocked, etc. Good for making him feel powerful out of the gate, and letting me explore the other bonus Special Edition characters without needing to play through the whole game with them.
There's two issues. The first (smaller) issue, is that it means the only real use for Red Orbs is buying Blue and Purple Orbs (to upgrade max health and Devil Trigger meters). Yes, there's items to restore health and DT, and Gold Orbs (functionally extra lives), but the default difficulty isn't hard enough to really need any of them. I only used them on the final boss, and that's because it was a bad fight, and I just wanted the game to be over with in that moment. I was being too impatient to do the fight well.
The other issue with Proud Souls is that every time you unlock a new skill, every other skill for that character goes up in price. And how much they go up increases the more skills you get! It's annoying! The only saving grace is that you can refund skills to get the Proud Souls back, but I only did that when the price increase made me unable to get multiple things, and I had unlocked the less important thing first.
It's annoying, but the sort of thing that if I was going to be a real sicko for this game and keep playing on higher difficulties, eventually wouldn't be, because I'd just have everything unlocked and never think about it again. But I'm not going to do that because this game isn't good enough for me to want to.
I've spent all this talking about the core combat, and related systems, but I haven't gotten to the game you use them in yet. DMC 1, and less so 3 were built around a central, interconnected area. It stems from the series' origin as Resident Evil, but as someone who doesn't mind backtracking, I think it held up pretty well in the first game. A little less so in 3, but that's more because they make you spend a lot of time doing it right at the end of the game, as filler when it feels like the game should be reaching its climax. 2 was kind of a nonsense mess, mostly with linear levels but with some backtracking, and 4...is somewhere in the middle.
But definitely closer to linear levels. There's a couple areas, a castle and a jungle, that feel a bit more interconnected. The castle especially, but it's too small to really feel the same as that first game, or even 3's tower. Now, I don't mind the linear levels, if anything they fit the mission based structure better than the mansion/castle of the first game. My issue is more that they lean too heavily on gimmicks that range from okay (slamming gyros around that castle) to annoying (slow motion platforming), to downright tedious (The Board Game).
I get why the devs put gimmicks into a game like this. They want some more variety for what you're doing, keep things interesting, and to slow things down a little to stretch out the game without it being too obviously filler. At least ideally. I just, and granted I'm not a game developer, so what do I know? But I personally, think in a game where you're going to spend the bulk of it fighting enemies, in a franchise that redefined fighting enemies stylishly, that maybe they should have put more variety into the moves you can do, instead of dumb gimmicks to slow the level progression down.
All this stuff, especially individually, is really only mildly annoying at worst. By and large, I was having a pretty good time through most of DMC 4. Some frustrations, but more so at what I think are missed opportunities than anything else. It's when the game gets toward the end that it really falls apart. Like DMC 3, just as it feels like it's reaching the climax, that most dreaded of game foes, FILLER rears its head!
Nero gets captured, and it's up to Dante to save the day. And how does he do this? By running back through all of Nero's levels, just in reverse, and with more annoying gimmicks! Gotta get out before the self destruct timer hits zero! Keep running, now there's poison gas in the secret lab! Watch out for the stealth demon plants that appear out of nowhere to suck Dante into a different room for a fight for no reason.
Not every mission has an annoying gimmick like that, but it's enough to really drag down the experience. Especially when the second I got to control Dante, I was having a blast. I struggled through Nero's levels to get SS ranks, the only SSS I ever got with him (in the main story) was on one of those statues that stands still and doesn't fight back. Meanwhile I got a SS in literally the first fight as Dante, and I think I got hit in it. Would have gotten a SSS if it weren't for that!
Dante plays more or less the same as he did in DMC 3, but with one important change. The Style system is back, and now finally fully blossomed as Styles can be swapped with a tap of the d-pad. So seamless he can flip through them mid combo, and do things I can only dream of at the highest level. Needless to say, Dante is still tremendous fun, and felt like a breath of fresh air after so much Nero.
But then it's kind of ruined with these annoying gimmicks in these filler levels. Not only that, but Dante has to refight all the major (demon) bosses, only this time he actually kills them, and gets their weapons. The weapons are cool, but in keeping with this game feeling unfinished, they're all kind of random? In 3, each weapon felt related to the boss it came from. Ice nunchucks from the ice Cerberus, elemental swords from the elemental sword brothers, etc. Okay, the electric guitar from the vampire lady felt a little incongruous, but it summoned bats. Bats are a vampire thing.
In 4, the first boss Dante fights is a snake/plant lady. So the weapon he gets is...a set of gauntlets/boots for punching and kicking called...Gilgamesh? Okay, but what about the ice toad? Oh, Pandora's Box? Which is a transforming suitcase rocket launcher?? Surely the four legged fire demon gives him a fire related weapon, right? Right?? It's called Lucifer (not the boss' name), and it...sticks spikes in enemies, that Dante detonates by throwing a rose???
They're fun weapons, don't get me wrong, but they're just so random. And if they're going to be named after famous mythological things, it'd be nice if they had any relation at all to the boss. Gilgamesh and Lucifer would be fun bosses to fight! Or at least whatever the Devil May Cry equivalents of them would be. That, or make an attempttorelate the weapons to the bosses. Like, re-theme Lucifer to be plant based, and I could see that coming from the plant snake lady. She spends a lot of time sticking seeds onto things, and it's a rose that detonates them! I get doing the gauntlets as the first weapon unlock, and I'm glad from a mechanics point of view because I like those weapons across all these games, but I wish they'd found a better way to work them in.
So, Dante runs back through the levels, refighting almost every boss (not himself, or Credo (which is a shame because by being duels, these are the best two fights in the game)). Also annoying is that somehow this game is the most disorienting of the bunch with the camera? Plenty of times when there's player control (vertical set to “normal” is inverted, which I like, haha), but plenty when it snaps to set angles, and it's extremely jarring. It's not quite as bad with Nero, but Dante? So far as I can tell, the camera uses all the same cues when running back through the levels, so it loves to snap to pointing the opposite direction of where he's running.
One of the weirdest things is the difficulty through these missions. DMC 4 isn't that hard of a game, especially compared to 3, but there's certain parts, and bosses that provide a healthy challenge for Nero. But since so much of the game is clearly built around his abilities, his strengths and weaknesses, they aren't built for Dante. So, the aforementioned enemies you're supposed to grab, he can't and they're tedious to fight. Yet, the bosses meant for Nero's movement limitations are a cakewalk for Dante. He can effective teleport while in Trickster, which means he just runs circles around them. I wasn't even putting in my best effort, and I was stomping the bosses. Which was fun in its own way, but weird.
All this culminates in one of the best cutscenes in gaming history, where Dante and Agnus put on a stage play right in the room where the game began. Then you fight him (again) and the game moves to the giant statue boss. This fight is memorable in the sense that I remembered it. It's not good, but it stayed in my mind after all these years! It's awkward bouncing around the platforms, it's tedious, and worst of all it's boring. Shame this is how Dante's part of the story ends, and that it's the only time in the main game he has access to the Dark Slayer Style. Not that it's a game changer, or even plays like Vergil's Dark Slayer Style. It just gives him some of Vergil's old moves with the Yamato. Not really useful against the giant statue.
Then it switches back to Nero, and surely now, after these dalliances, all this time spent on this filler, it'll end well, right? DMC 3 also had its end game filler, but that climaxed in a final duel between brothers, Dante vs. Vergil. Both story and game play wise, it was a great ending! A genuinely difficult fight that put all my skills to the test, really made me work to get it done, and the story's conclusion felt like it was worth putting in that effort.
Well, the first thing you do when the game switches back to Nero is play Mario Party but instead of minigames, you fight those demon bosses A THIRD TIME. I'm not kidding, you roll a die, then a board game piece moves around, and when you reach the end you refight a boss. Except instead of fighting Credo again, you just fight some angelic armor enemies. I might have enjoyed refighting one of the best fights in the game, but no. You go through multiple boards too, each ending with a refight. There is some semblance of “strategy” to the board because some spaces are shortcuts, and some give bonus orbs, but it's...it's Mario Party!! At least the die's number always rotates in the same order so it's easy to pick how many spaces, but still.
IT'S MARIO PARTY.
By the time I got to the final boss (also a refight), I just wanted the game to be over with. Despite being on my list of games where the final boss is the pope (or a pope like figure, considering this is a fictional religion with obviously no similarities to real religions), it's not a good fight. I think I also made it harder on myself by not remembering I can't grab while locked on during one of the phases, but it's still not a good fight.
So, that's the main story mode of DMC 4. A game I mostly enjoyed, then it really just crashed headfirst into a wall in the final hours. A bummer, because I think the core is really solid! So solid I ended up having a lot more fun in the Bloody Palace afterward. Messing around with other characters and whatnot.
Which brings me to the main additions in Special Edition. Like 3, this adds a Vergil mode, and it is what I expected it to be. There's a new intro cutscene, then you play through the same game but with Vergil, who plays more or less the same as he always does (I'm not getting into the nitty gritty of specific moves and mechanics for him, but he does have a new meter at least). Or, I assume that's the case, I really only played the first mission or two. I did look up to see if there was an ending, which there is, but I'm pretty sure the rest is the same. At least here there's no fight against Vergil, so no weird mirror match. Since Nero fought Dante in the main story, I guess this was the first time we could have a proper duel between the bros from Vergil's perspective. Not the tutorial, that doesn't count (but I wasn't replaying all the way back to the real Dante boss here).
Then there's the Lady and Trish mode. Much like the main story, this switches between the two, with Lady filling in for Nero, and Trish for Dante. I was really worried I might have to replay the bulk of the game to get to Trish to try her out, but thankfully finishing the game with Nero/Dante unlocked Bloody Palace for everyone. So I instead tried these femme fatales there and looked up the “new” cutscenes online.
Trish has a really interesting moveset, with her main attacks being punch and kick based, and the Devil Sword Sparda is her “Style” button. She's fun! But not really anything out of the ordinary for this series, unlike the gun-toting Lady. I was really curious what she'd play like, and more importantly, if she'd be fun. While she's not entirely lacking in melee moves, she's definitely mostly ranged, but still a lot of fun. She's also the only character besides Nero with a grapple, meaning she's the only other one well equipped to fight those shrouded bug reapers.
Also, she shoots her rocket down at the ground to double jump, which is rad. I'm glad she's fun, but also bummed this is the only main game in the series where she's playable. Trish too. Technically she's unlockable in DMC 2, but I've heard she just has Dante's moveset from the first game. Also 2 is bad. I'm just saying, if we ever get a DMC 6, I think the ladies deserve to be main playable characters too!
The last special addition to this Special Edition is the Legendary Dark Knight mode. Play through all the same missions like normal, just with more enemies. I mean, way more enemies. I played (as Nero) up through the first boss, and let me tell you, they really cram the enemies in! It is honestly comical how many they jammed into these areas, literally cannot swing a sword without hitting a bunch at once. It's great for getting high ranks if you can avoid being hit, because there's so many of them. Now, do I want to play through the whole game like this? Not really, but it's a neat addition, and a fun way to use the extra horsepower from this being made for a generation after the original.
What else? I don't think I mentioned how this game looks? I know I was a little mixed on how the “remastered” PS2 games held up visually, and I'd say I'm less mixed here. All the environments still look pretty good, especially the ones with more going on with the lighting (like sunset time of day). The characters...well, their outfits mostly look good, but the faces are hit or miss. Weirdly I think Nero and Dante fair the worst? Not that they look bad, more lacking any sort of real detail. The ladies look good, and there's more going on in the bad guys' faces, so I dunno what happened with the main duo.
Oh, and the music. I joked last time about being haunted by “The time has come, and so have I,” but I'm relieved to say it's a lot better than the combat theme from 3. Still way too repetitive to hear it in basically every fight as Nero across the game, but not the end of the world. Dante's fight theme isn't as good, but it does have the weird like, rave siren from DMC 1, so I really appreciated that touch. Still better than the song from DMC 3, as much as I like that game, I really grew annoyed by that song. By default the music was overpowering the dialog at times, so I did have to turn it down a little, but I think that helped.
So, where does that leave me on Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition? On the whole, I think it's a good game, just a flawed one. It's got five playable characters, and once sufficiently upgraded, they're all fun in their own ways. A couple annoying enemies aside, the combat is a ton of fun, but there's a lot of annoyances in the game itself. Too many dumb gimmicks, and way too much filler in the back third.
Also the Mario Party.
As I alluded to earlier, between DMC 4 and its Special Edition, the series wasn't quite absent, even if the main timeline was. Outsourced to British studio Ninja Theory, it's the only Devil May Cry not made by an internal team in Japan at Capcom. So, look forward next time to the odd one out of the franchise, the “controversial” DmC: Devil May Cry. A game that I was very skeptical of prior to release, but stands at least in my memory, as one of my favorites. Will it hold up?
Find out next time!
