Last year (that’s weird to say) Capcom graced us with 2 video games, Resident Evil 2 (the remake) and Devil May Cry 5. I’ve always wanted to get into the Devil May Cry series because I loved the 2013 remake, but anytime I would start the 1st game, life would happen and I would lose interest.

I discovered that the Xbox Game Pass has Devil May Cry 5 and that kinda pushed me to playing the series in its entirety. Plus I bought the games a couple of months ago on PS4 from a big summer sale. So I’m prepared for this hack ’n’ slash binge.

We start this journey with Devil May Cry 1. The plot of the game is pretty simple, we have Dante (the son of Sparda and his human mother Eva) and Trish, who visits his office because she knows that he hunts demons, etc. She tells him of the demon Mundus (who killed Dante’s family) and he’s coming back. So they make their trip to this castle, where the majority of the game takes place.

The rest plays very similar to Resident Evil, where you explore this gigantic mansion (with endless keys to find) but it’s split up into missions that can take anywhere between 5-20 minutes. So it’s the perfect game to pick up and play.

The gameplay holds up well, I love the combos and the fact that the combat isn’t mindless and you have to learn enemy moves and when to dodge, etc. The boss fights were also memorable as well. I loved the many battles with Nelo Angelo and Nightmare. Speaking of Nightmare, I got my only Game Over from the first encounter with Nightmare. I didn’t realize that you had to attack that little ball and came in TOTALLY unprepared. The second time I beat him in under 3 minutes.

The game does have a slight difficulty spike once you encounter the monsters that explode but it didn’t take away from the enjoyment that I had.

My one main gripe about the game was the underwater segments. They were a bad idea and whenever I got the little tutorial that warned me, I knew I was in for a bad time. Anytime you have to inverse the controls the game automatically becomes difficult for me. Plus I have memories from Sonic 2, where if you stay underwater for too long then you drown. But Dante’s half demon so I guess he’s immune to that. The pirate ship mission was cool though.

Another complaint is the platforming segments. You can’t do platforming and fixed camera angles and think it’s a great idea. There were countless times where I failed at jumping to the next platform and there are some instances where you think you’re close to a platform but then in the next screen it’s further away. But for some reason, I managed to beat the invisible platform sequence (towards the last part of the game) with ease.

The rest of the plot was bare, with focus being on action. At one point, you take a trip to The Underworld, come back, going through some paintings à la Super Mario 64 along the way.

Inverted controls came back during the final boss fight but I had enough of the devil trigger starts to beat him within a couple of minutes, and then more inverted gameplay with the surprise biplane.

So that’s Devil May Cry 1 in a nutshell. I’m really excited about this journey. The next game is (of course) Devil May Cry 2, which I heard is the black sheep of the DmC universe. From what I read, people don’t even consider it canon. Trish was an interesting character even though she was bad and then turned good. I can’t wait to see her return in the later games.

I have started Devil May Cry 2, I began with Lucia because why not? But I feel like I should have played as Dante first. I do see a noticeable change, the cool combos are gone and the combat feels sluggish. So we shall see how this goes. Maybe I’ll enjoy the rest of the game? I’m definitely looking forward to Devil May Cry 3 and 4 (with the introduction of Nero). I’m also excited about revisiting the DmC remake and of course, playing Devil May Cry 5.

Thanks for reading. See you all next time!