DmC: Devil May Cry is a reboot of the famous Devil May Cry series. It stars Dante, son of Sparda, who is the son of a demonic father and an angelic mother. You will see how demons and angels merge as the story progresses. Dante’s lifestyle is that of a playboy, living a life of booze, parties, and sex. The story centers around two other characters: Kat, the psychic, and Vergil, Dante’s brother. The story truly evolves when Kat and Vergil meet up with Dante in place called Limbo.
The combat in the game is generally about the use of melee weapons and your ability to use combos against the various demons. The combat is entertaining enough that it makes DmC: Devil May Cry a fun reboot in the aggregate. You begin to learn the basics of melee combat with the Rebellion sword. Melee turns into learning so many different moves so that you can score style points under the game’s scoring system. Eventually, other melee weapons come into play and they are demon based as wells as angel based. This is when combat becomes even more important since some demons are vulnerable only to demonic weapons and other demons are vulnerable only to angelic weapons.
The story includes world domination, evil, love and conspiracy theories. The characters are pretty good because their voiceovers are excellent. The cutscenes display drama and the characters tend to walk a fine line between good and evil as the plot is well detailed.
The missions are quite linear, but they are never boring since they are diverse enough and lack tedium. In one mission you are fighting demon hordes in a city that appears to be crumbling. In another mission you are inside the offices of a TV network where you must face groups of demons as you go from one office to another. The melee weapons eventually include a Rebellion and Osiris. The Rebellion is a demonic axe with plenty of power, but at the expense of speed. The Osiris is an angelic weapon with plenty of speed. Both weapons can be used to lift demons in the air and you can jump into the air to score major chain combos for the most style points. The idea of the scoring system is to vary your attacks, chain your combos, and finish off the demons in short order. The style points are displayed on the screen while you are in the heat of battle with SSS being the highest possible grade for your combat performance. I used the mouse/keyboard controls throughout the game and they were smooth. I got used to the controls pretty quickly, but it takes time to master the moves, including platforming. There is a lot of jumping from platform to platform and that includes angel lifts and angel boosts. Angel lifting is the jumping from platform to platform using Dante’s grappling hook on blue circles. Angel boosting is jumping and flying/boosting above large gaps to reach a faraway platform. One interesting weapon that Dante acquires later in the game is the Aquila, an angelic weapon that can be used for melee and can be thrown to cut through vines.
Completionists will always find something to do in each mission. To complete 100% of each mission you will have to return to a mission to collect keys that will open doors to secret missions and free lost souls waiting to be liberated. The secret missions require keys that reflect the difficulty of each secret mission. Copper keys are keys that open doors to the easiest secret missions. Argent keys open doors to more challenging secret missions. Gold keys are for the hardest secret missions. The secret missions are short and can help you practice your moves. I learned from the secret missions that Dante’s combat moves are easy to learn, hard to master. Some challenges include killing all demons without taking a hit and scoring hits only by using demon evade, a well-timed way of evading demon attacks while armed only with a demonic weapon such as the Arbiter.
The boss fights are entertaining in their own right, although they are formulaic. You fight bosses while learning their moves so that you figure out how to defeat them. One boss near the end of the story, Mundus, is quite convincing as a mean monster since the voiceover is superb. The one minor problem with combat against either bosses or other demons is that sometimes the camera angles can get in the way, preventing you from seeing everything in the spur of the moment. However, this problem is so minor it doesn’t take much away from the entertainment value of the combat.
I think DmC: Devil May Cry is worth your time since the combat is well choreographed and the controls are excellent. If there are problems with combat it is usually because the timing of the combos is not right. It takes plenty of practice to master the different combos. The varied missions are entertaining and will never bore you. The game has more replay value if you decide to play Vergil’s Downfall DLC, which stars Dante’s brother Vergil.