Review: Devil May Cry 3
Dante Awakens in this Classic Action Game
Note: This review originally appeared in the October 31st, 2019 installment of “The Load Screen”
I don’t remember why, but I needed to play Devil May Cry 3 on launch day. Maybe it was Tips and Tricks’ lavish praise, or maybe it was a friend in middle school, who knows. All I knew was that Dante was the baddest motherfucker to ever grace a video game, and all the crazy things he did in the cut scenes were actually possible in game as combos, which even now sounds absolutely ridiculous. So after weeks of convincing my Mom that the M rating was just for blood splatters and not gore or sex, I managed to rent it from Hollywood Video after school the first Friday of March, 2005. If you’ve ever seen the intro to this, you could probably guess how it hit my 12 year old brain-Dante, shirtless (this was very important for reasons I didn’t know at the time), cocky, and devilishly skilled, effortlessly surfing on a demon across his shop’s floor whilst firing two guns in the air before throwing a goddamn pool table into a crowd of baddies without so much as a hint of effort. The prologue mission started, I grabbed my controller and…
Immediately died. Try again. I swung my sword aimlessly as a bunch of grim reapers turned me into sashimi. One more time…dead. The game flashed a screen asking if I wanted to play on easy mode as I was clearly having a difficult time. The fuck was this?
~Steel a Soul for a Second Chance~
Hideaki Itsuno was in a bit of a bind in 2004-known mainly at Capcom as “the Power Stone guy”, he was brought in to help turn Devil May Cry 2 around 6 months prior to launch, which ended up being a catastrophic failure (a failure so great Capcom still, to this day, refuses to disclose who the original director was.) While the game ended up *running* well enough, the story was a dour slog featuring a depressed, down in the dumps Dante; a far cry from the wise cracking protagonist of Kamiya’s classic first game. Plus, in an attempt to reel in casual gamers, Capcom ordered the difficulty be lowered, which had the catastrophic effect of the game play being so stripped down and brain dead that you could use the un-upgraded starting pistols throughout the entire game and never once be hit. So Itsuno decided to take it back to Kamiya’s original design plan for Dante-how do you create a character for teens and adults that’s cool, but doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, isn’t sexual, and doesn’t swear? Well first, you go a little flexible on the no swearing, but other than that? First, you take the story so far back to the past you don’t need to even think about the dour sad boy at the heart of 2. Then, you create a Saturday Morning cartoon character.
~Bless me with your gift of light~
Now that sounds pretty easy, but honestly, creating a Saturday Morning Cartoon Character for adults that isn’t obviously a cartoon is pretty dang hard, so Itsuno and company gave him a few adult problems to balance out the wacky woohoo pizza-ness of his core character-he’s constantly broke, for one, but more importantly is his tortured past-one he doesn’t outwardly dwell on per say, but one that informs his moments of seriousness and gives his carefree nature a dark undercurrent of grief. His parents, a kind human woman and a demon father who shunned his heritage to free humanity, are dead, with the demon world wanting his head for his father’s “sins” and the human world blind to the sacrifices his father made after centuries of history turning to legend turning to etc etc. His ancestral home is a wreck, and his brother, another half demon named Virgil, desires nothing more than enough power to make a name for himself as a new demon king.
Oh right, Virgil! His very existence is key to making Dante a cool character-originally a tossed off character by Kamiya for a cheap emotional pull in the first game, Itsuno turned Virgil into a dark mirror of Dante for 3’s story-where Dante is brash and comical, Virgil is collected and deathly serious. Where Dante is broke, Virgil is rich. While Dante uses his father’s gigantic broadsword, Virgil uses his father’s slim katana. And where Dante prefers to embrace his humanity to the point of shunning his demon hood, Virgil’s very plot in the game hinges on his casting aside what little makes him a man.
~Righteous cause on Judgement Night~
If DMC3 has any sort of theme (which is tenuous, since when it came to writing Itsuno and co. clearly cared more about character interaction that anything resembling a plot) it’s the age old chestnut of “be yourself”, which really does drive home the “cartoon for adults” feel of the game. Dante, drawn to a demon tower grown by his brother for mysterious (read: power related) purposes, Dante must confront the sins of his past and learn to “awaken” to his long dormant demonic powers if he is to have any hope of defeating Virgil once and for all, and…that’s pretty much it. There’s a subplot involving (best character) Lady and her creep ass Dad Arkham, but it really just serves to drive home the central theme of embracing your singular identity. Sure, there’s some deeper stuff going on, like how Lady only taking the name “Lady” after Dante gives it to her or Dante not having a name for his shop until Lady makes a passing reference to devils crying could be making a statement about how we can cast aside our old identities all we want, but we are still defined by the reflections of ourselves we see in others, but honestly, it’s not that deep; it is, after all, a Saturday Morning Cartoon for Adults, and all the philosophical wanking in the world would just distract from the main point of the tale, which is to simply entertain.
~Feel the Freedom like No Tomorrow~
Game play is the central focus of DMC3, and it fires on all cylinders. I mentioned the difficulty up there to hammer home that the course correction was brutal-this game is TOUGH, no doubt about it, and unabashedly so. The enemies hit hard, but never unfairly, and the combo system is deep and nuanced, but requires training to unleash its full potential beyond your basic button mash->Stinger combo. DMC1 borrowed liberally from fighting games, and 3 continues that by stealing stance changes from Tekken and Soul Calibur-Dante’s got a new “style” button that, depending on what style he’s in from a selection of 4, completely changes how he plays. Trickster gives him a quick dodge, allowing the player even greater freedom of movement. Want more combo potential? Try Swordmaster, which gives every melee weapon in the game damn near double the amount of moves they normally have. Defensive? Royal Guard builds up kinetic energy from well timed blocks for counters. Keep away player? Gunslinger…lets you gun sling. I’ll link some combo videos at the bottom that show off more detailed mechanics like jump cancelling (a mechanic that has more in common with Street Fighter than any other action game at the time), but DMC3, in the words of fighting game YouTuber Maximillion Dood, “lets you do whatever the fuck you want.” That’s not even getting into the sheer amount of guns, from your basic handguns to a crossbow made of light, and melee weapons, such as an electric guitar/scythe combo that shoots electric bats or the gauntlets that let you do Street Fighter combos. DMC3 is nothing if not a fountain of variety.
~The Eye Can See~
DMC3’s influence cannot be understated; modern action gaming simply wouldn’t exist without it. Bayonetta, original director Kamiya’s spiritual sequel series, liberally borrows various improvements that 3 made to his own game, such as a second character who focuses on precision and style changes. Digital Trend once called the series “stupid Dark Souls”, which is honestly giving Dark Souls more credit than it deserves and DMC not nearly enough. DMC, and 3 in particular, is the Gold Standard third person action game, by which all other series are to be judged. Some may surpass it in some aspects, but none, not even any of the sequels, be they literal (4 and 5) or spiritual (Bayonetta 2, which comes mere inches away from taking 3’s spot at the top) have ever crafted as perfect a blend as Devil May Cry 3 did in March 2005.
~The Freedom Reign~
I eventually returned DMC3 to Hollywood Video and didn’t touch the series again until I took a job at GameStop out of high school and got the ability to check out any of the used games, one of which was the DMC HD collection. I figured, eh, why not try it again now that I’m old enough to smoke. Armed now with YouTube tutorials on how to actually “play” the game properly and a bit more patience than a tween, I booted the game back up again on March of 2013, and something kind of odd happened-I was a little bit better at the game, sure, but more importantly I was able to finally do a move that was in the cut scene-I surfed on an enemy whilst firing two guns in the air. I was supposed to return it the next day, but something about the game finally clicked, and I ended up having to profusely apologize to my manager when I returned the game a week later after playing through the game twice (once as Dante, the next as Virgil.) I think now I know why it took me so long to grok DMC, and this might be a bit of a stretch, but playing the series as a kid simply doesn’t make any sense-this is a series dedicated to making adults feel like overactive children without directly telling you that you’ll be a kid again. Since then, I’ve bought all of the mainline games (even the atrocious western reboot), beaten all of them (even…even 2), and could quote 3 damn near front to back. So this Halloween, maybe invest some spare change and pick up the HD collection on your console or PC and spend a few hours in the lab with Dante. He’s always down to get a little crazy.
Let’s Rock!
Combo videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scQ2KMC1dGE