I'm torn about this game. I enjoyed it more than any beat em up I've played since Bayonetta 2 and its combat system is an absolute joy. Dante I'm torn about this game. I enjoyed it more than any beat em up I've played since Bayonetta 2 and its combat system is an absolute joy. Dante in particular is masterful - it's him at his most absurdly adaptable and powerful. He's the Swiss-army-knife of gaming fighters, capable of fistfighting, kickboxing, swordfighting, bo-staffing, nunchukking and...smashing people up with half a razor-sharp motorbike in each hand(don't bother quibbling with the logic). There are also his long-range attacks: pistols, shotgun...a dual-wielded rocket launcher(!)...there's even a weirdly camp cowboy hat/cape combo that allows you to sort of...'jazz-hands' your enemies to death.

Those are all the weapons I found on my first playthrough but there are probably more. Imagine that.



And then imagine being able to switch between four different fighting styles based around gunplay, fast dodges, swordplay and blocking/parrying enemy attacks...does that sound insanely intricate yet?



Okay, now bear in mind that Dante is only one of _three_ characters you'll play as. Neither of the other two are quite as complex or open-ended as Dante, but they all have their own idiosyncracies and different movesets.



And then, on top of _all of that,_ there are upgrades available for everyone.



It's slightly mindboggling.



Now one of those characters is, in my opinion, a write-off. V, the equivalent of a magic build in Dark Souls, is just not that much fun to play as. You feel little connection when you land a blow because it's all done by your proxies in battle, a trio of magical animals/monsters who do your fighting for you. I'm not going to go into him any further as he's just not worth writing about and thankfully he doesn't take up too much of the playtime. Later on you can choose to play as one of the other two(and you will) anyway.

The other character is Nero, and much of the complexity and variety in his moveset comes from the huge range of Devil Arms he has; they are artificial mechanical prosthetics that he can switch out, each of which has a unique set of attacks and special moves. He's only marginally less liberating to play as than Dante. His moveset is smaller, but not by that much, and he, just like Dante, is a glorious, swift, efficient wonder of a character to control.

I really can't praise the combat enough - if there is a flaw it's in the lack of humanoid enemies, as fighting giant beasts doesn't give you as much satisfaction as fighting something human that you can relate to. This was the case in Bayonetta 2 also, as well as in the God Of War reboot: the highlights of both those games were battles against other human characters, respectively Balder and The Stranger. There's nothing like a one-on-one against a humanoid enemy to get the blood pumping. The final boss in DMC 5 is an absolutely sublime battle for the same reason.

So I finished the game having enjoyed pretty much every single second of it, and knowing that I had not even begun to scratch the surface of either Nero's or Dante's(particularly) full combat abilities.



And there's the rub: the credits began to roll at what I'd assumed was about the halfway point. Perhaps I was expecting more than I should have been but when it happened I was absolutely gutted and really surprised. I felt that there should have been at least another seven or eight hours' worth of campaign left to play, and it's that that really remains the only major issue I have with the game: I wanted more, so much more, especially after the long wait since the last canon Devil May Cry game.



This is undoubtedly the most sophisticated and sublime combat system DMC has come up with: it shines, it glistens, it's been honed to perfection. It may well be the single greatest combat system ever developed for any beat-'em-up, and I'm a huge fan of the genre. Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, the first God Of War; these were all seminal games for me. Visually the game really is gorgeous; after a rather dull, slightly ugly start where you slog through a few too many dreary trainyards, the game's levels begin to flex their muscles and you see some gorgeous if rather generic fantasy environments. They're rarely more than simple arenas in which to beat up enemies, but sometimes you stop and linger on their graphical beauty nevertheless. And the character detail on the avatars...truly superb. The 60ps framerate makes the whole thing even more enjoyable, and just watching Dante respond to your every input within a nanosecond of pressing the button has a certain charm to it. It's just _cool._ Rockstar and the RDR2 team could really learn something about how much difference a _responsive_ avatar makes to gameplay. It's crucial.



So I leave you with this: this is a total blast of a beat-em-up, honed to perfection over the five entries, and it offers the most open-ended combat in any game. Ever.



If you can bear in mind that it's over way too soon you will love every second. … Expand