Devil May Cry: Looking back with Wing of Faith

Wing of Faith

Sure, it's becoming an older game, but whenever I play it, it's as if it's a brand new experience each time.

The Graphics were beautiful for it's day, running at a constant smooth 60 frames per second in both gameplay and cutscenes; and detailed designs for Dante, Trish, Mundus, and the host of enemies filled out the world and made it immersing.

The music haunts me to this day, and I will never forget the on-edge feeling "Ancient Castle" filled me with and continues to fill me with; it instills in you a sense of genuine dread, and a hesitance to look around the corner or into a dark room. "Will there be an evil puppet there that will slice me to pieces?" you ask, your fear goaded on by the creepy vocals and ghost like SFX in the music, only to find that there is nothing around the corner after all, resulting in a sigh of relief, and then you're ambushed by enemies a few minutes later. "Psycho Siren", the mid-boss theme, is frantically paced, and lends a sense of urgency to the fights that feature it, which is just as well, because mid-bosses frequently are during a timed stage. "Ultra-Violet" and "Super Ultra-Violet", the boss themes to Nelo Angelo, are perfectly suited for the boss, with fast paced electronica beats mixed in with gothic pipe organs and heavy electric guitar riffs. "Karnival", which replaces "Ancient castle" after a certain point, almost induces sheer terror when it is combined with the changes in Mallet Island's castle that accompany the theme's introduction.

The areas are incredibly engaging, with each new area lasting just long enough to build suspense that is released like a coiled rubber band when you finally get to that stage's boss.

Which brings me to difficulty. I didn't find normal mode all that hard, and easy mode must actually be unlocked by dying a certain number of times on the first three stages, a method that encourages first time players to test out their skills before resorting to easy mode. If you beat normal mode, hard mode awaits you. The enemy set is strengthened, bosses do more damage, and the game gets harder in a way that makes you feel challenged rather than playing a steroid enhanced version of normal mode. The enemies actually get tougher and smarter as the difficulty modes go up, rather than what some games do to increase difficulty (by throwing more enemies at you at a time). By the time you beat Dante Must Die mode, you feel like you're on the top of the world.

The areas are splendidly designed, and while this game has a few badly decorated areas with bad layout, you won't be spending much time in these. The underwater stages where Dante must swim around with the needle gun as his only weapon are the most poorly designed areas, with identical looking rooms and chambers that seem to go on forever until you reach the end by dumb luck. Lighting is horrid in these areas, and the murkiness of the water, while a nice, realistic touch, proved to be a massive hindrance to me while I played, strengthening my hatred for these areas. An annoying feature of the underwater areas is the whole gameplay setup, where the game play switches from a third person perspective to a first person perspective. You cannot use items underwater, and most annoyingly of all, Dante somehow cannot use his sword underwater. I'd think that a metal blade would work just as well underwater as on land, but Capcom apparently disagrees.

The voice acting is terrific, and some of the best I've heard in a franchise up to that point. The only problem is that in some scenes, the music is so loud that it drowns out the VA, which annoys me because many of these scenes dialogue is some of the best in the game, and at this point, subtitles weren't really an option for some reason.

The plot is something that comines much from previous games from throughout history in a very original way, and excecuted an almost "Gothic Horror Soap-Opera" type plot towards the very end, which Castlevania's own Lament of Innocence would attempt to replicate, but fail to do as well a job with it as was done here.

Weapons are varied, with options such as swords, pistols, gauntlets, shotguns, demonic firearms, grenade launchers, etc. The addition of the Devil Trigger system was a MAJOR help as well.

Using red orbs, you can upgrade Dante's abilities and buy items, but that's pretty standard, and doesn't merit a in depth review. All I need to say is that the abilities are well thought out, and picking up all of them, while not required, is recommended simply for the novelty value.

Finally, there comes the small matter of Devil May Cry 1's frequent comparison to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. While I will not deny there are similarities between the two games, Devil May Cry is decidely more linear than SOTN. The gameplay is similar, but different. The music in Devil May Cry leans more towards an ambient gothic style, rather than SOTN's broad genres of music. The character designs are totally different, and the two plots can't really be compared. Transformations in Symphony are FAR more specialized than they are in DMC, as well. The games really are not as similar as they are sometimes made out to be.

All in all, Devil May Cry is a solid game, weak in few spots, though it is guilty of a few bad features, such as the needless inclusion of a few enemies that are difficulty level-specific, meaning if you want a full bestiary, you'll have to get 100% completion on each difficulty mode; and the horrid underwater stages. Outside of the occasional annoyance (and the underwater areas), the game is incredibly well built, with gameplay that requires a bit of mastery to get truly good at, but simple enough that mastery isn't truly required.

I give this game a 9 out of 10.

If you don't own this game, pick up a copy. It's worth every penny.
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Warrior of the Dark Moon · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:18 pm Post subject:

Nice review!

Devil May Cry remains one of my favorite games, and you pretty much explained why.

The underwater stages weren't truly bad, but they did pale in comparison to every other point in the game. The first person controls and lack of sword use is pretty annoying though.
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Alec · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:34 pm Post subject:

I find myself playing DMC often, but my disk keeps freezing, which annoys me.

Nice review Mary.

Master Hero · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:48 am Post subject:

Devil May Cry was an awesome game that's prctically forgotten these days, as it's been lost in the popularity of 3 and 4. I have to say thanks for making me dig this old gem out of my closet and play it through again; I'm gonna do a speed run of it this weekend!
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Wing of Faith · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:56 am Post subject:

Warrior of the Dark Moon · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:54 pm Post subject:

Esperenza Grace · Chieftain Joined: 10 Apr 2008 Posts: 166

Nice review!

I really am addicted to this game series. Now everyone can see why.
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Creeping shadow · Lair Staff/ Lookout Joined: 19 Mar 2008 Posts: 542

Another great review Mary, keep up the good work. 8)

MiyanFu848 · High Priest/Priestess Joined: 30 Apr 2008 Posts: 70

I

this game. Dante is teh sexy.