Devil May Cry 2 Review

Wing of Faith · Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:32 pm Post subject: Devil May Cry 2 Review

Every game series has to have a sequel somewhere. In the case of Devil May Cry 2, it came right off the bat, even before the first game was able to fully sink in.

Devil May Cry 2 is, bluntly, a miserable attempt by Capcom to steal as much of the almighty dollar as they could as quickly as they could. The fact that the quickly converted fans demanded a sequel merely served as an excuse to rush the game as fast as possible.

The result is a game that is not strictly horrible, but nowhere approaching good, either.

Devil May Cry 2 is set after a timeskip of indeterminate length following the events of Devil May Cry. Dante is hired by a group of Devil Hunters on another fictional island to deal with Arius, an evil businessman who uses “the DEMON POWER” (as TCA once said, “Not just any demon power; THE demon power!’). You can already tell by the presence of an EVIL BUSINESSMAN AS THE MAIN VILLAIN that this game is NOT going to score very well on anyone’s charts. Dante looks much older, and he must have gone through some sort of trauma, because he is as silent as Charlie Chaplin for most of the game, and when he does talk, he utters a few simple words and shuts up again for the next 3 hours. Also, the game added a second disc with basically the same missions in a slightly different order where you play as Lucia, a badly voiced female Hispanic Devil Hunter. As a matter of fact, the voicing acting all around is just plain horrible. Did Capcom hire voice actors, or just rip people off the street? These are just a few of the controversies that this game is comprised of.

The game controls exactly like the halfway point between the first and third games, just with less finesse. In all honesty, the issues with this game don’t lie in control schemes. If you’ve played the first game, controlling Dante and Lucia in this game will be a breeze, and you’ll easily slide into bashing demons over the head and blowing them away with floods of hot lead.

But maybe that’s the problem. Devil May Cry 2, in all that it is, is TOO EASY. The first game wasn’t exactly a Mensa mind puzzle, but it wasn’t that easy either. There are a few puzzles in the game, and each one will take all of five minutes to solve. The enemies are pathetically stupid, and so are most of the bosses. Fortunately, for the hardcore fans, Dante’s play mode includes a boss named Bolverk, who was obviously meant to be the second Nelo Angelo, and he is QUITE hard, requiring quick reflexes and excellent timing to conquer. But one hard boss doesn’t really do it. And on top of that, this is one Devil May Cry that should have had Dante get rid of his sword. His sword is only good if you want a FAR more challenging game, because it is slow and clunky, not to mention every single sword skill Dante had in the last game was totally ERASED from the game here. If you want to simply beat it, whip out good old Ebony and Ivory and just plug away. The game is more of a 3rd person shooter than anything else. Lucia has the same problems, only worse. Her swords (if you can call them that) are a 3rd the length of Dante’s, and her ranged weapons are USELESS. And yet… her game is often easier than Dante’s. The Graphics are about the only thing that has improved, and some of the detailing rivals the PS3, for instance, you can see the bumps and texturing on Dante’s coat. The animators did a decent job of aging Dante, and he has a more mature look. But all the other characters, especially Arius, look HORRIBLE, but aren’t they rendered so nicely?

The only other thing I can think of to review is the MASSIVE amounts of fanservice present in the game. A great deal of content from the first game has been cut and pasted here. You can unlock Dante’s Devil May Cry outfit, which replaces Rebellion with Force Edge, and also you can unlock Trish as a playable character. She wields Sparda’s handguns from the first game, as well as the blade Sparda. Both the blade and Trish’s 3D model were ripped straight out of the first game. Phantom and Griffin also reappear in a COMPLETELY non-canonical appearance as bosses for Dante and Lucia respectively. Interesting how these non-canonical appearances lie within canon storylines, and numerous enemies from DMC have also been copied. Capcom is weird, but that’s old news.

But the thing that’s the most infuriating about all this copypasta is that nothing was copied that should have been copied. Where are Dante’s Devil Arms from the first game? Why doesn’t Trish show up in the actual story mode? Gripes like these never cease when one plays Devil May Cry 2, which, in the end, is a mindless beat-‘em-up with a salad dressing of a storyline.

Devil May Cry 2 is enjoyable if you’re looking for a nice diversion from your hectic and cruel life, but it fails miserably as a sequel to such a classic game. It adds a number of moves that would be perfected in Devil May Cry 3, like multi-directional shooting, but the whole game feels like it was commissioned, produced, and put on store shelves within a two week timeframe. The control is decent, but it’s way too easy, and on top of that, the story sucks, the VA is horrible, the music isn’t even worth mentioning and as a whole the game is just poorly put together. Still, because of its FANTASTIC pick up and play qualities, it earns a FEW points.

Devil May Cry 2 earns (you guessed it) a 2 out of 10.
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Master Hero · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 6:51 am Post subject:

Devil May Cry 2 = The smashed hopes of thousands of fans.
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Xian83 · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:09 am Post subject:

Devil May Cry 2 was AWFUL. I rank it as one of the worst sequels ever made.

Lovely Mai · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:30 am Post subject:

DANTEEE!! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOOOOOOOU?!
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MiyanFu848 · High Priest/Priestess Joined: 30 Apr 2008 Posts: 60

Esperenza Grace · Chieftain Joined: 10 Apr 2008 Posts: 151

God I hate that game.
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