Hack 'n' Slash Paradise.
This game is honestly pretty enjoyable but there are several things holding it back.

First let's get the story out of the way, well it's very straightforward and generic, it doesn't have many highlights nor interesting plot twists, but it's not a very important part of the game.

The gameplay is great and aged well, the different combos, variety of weapons, special techniques and guns all feel satisfying.

There's also a decent amount of exploration, the levels are open and there's a lot of back-tracking.

I liked some boss fights but most of them are annoying because of the infuriating gimmicks and the weird camera.
Also the puzzles can be frustrating sometimes.

Overall I enjoyed it, it's genuinely fun to play, despite the fact that it's outdated in some aspects, this is definitely one of the best games in the series and worth checking out.

Final Rating: "Good" ~ 7/10.

Alright, Devil May Cry. You got me. I'm all in.

And here I was thinking this series wasn't for me because I didn't love Devil May Cry 1. As it turns out this is very much my kind of franchise, I just wasn't able to see it because I started with the wrong game. Devil May Cry 3 is a great prequel - so much so that it does a better job at setting up the origin mythos of this franchise than the original game does. Not only that, but it's a giant improvement over the first game in almost every possible way. So in my opinion DMC 3 makes for a better starting point than DMC 1.

The story of DMC 3 has a simple premise: stop Vergil from opening the portal to the demon world. It's not particularly complex storytelling, but where the story shines is the sibling rivalry between Dante and Vergil. This rival dynamic elevates the story in a significant way. I cared about the events of the story because I knew it was all leading to an epic showdown between these two brothers. It does end up happening in an unexpected way though.

[Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled]

Dante and Vergil team up at the end to fight off a twist villain who's seemingly the final boss. This fight feels like conclusion to the story, but right afterward Dante and Vergil have the final confrontation with each other that the whole story was leading up to. I loved this because it took the story in an interesting new direction while also giving a satisfying conclusion to the initial premise. Speaking of satisfying conclusions, I really enjoyed Lady's story as well. She's on a quest to get revenge on her father, but in his final breath her father claims to have been controlled by Vergil. Lady confronts Vergil only to see the grand reveal that her father was still alive and in full control of himself the whole time. Her father becomes the twist villain and seemingly the final boss. When the father is defeated, Lady deals the final strike. I love how this story misdirects you into thinking that these characters won't get satisfying conclusions only to revert to the original course and give the story the resolution it was building toward from the beginning.

[End of Spoilers]

Let's talk about the combat. DMC includes a much larger array of weapons than DMC 1. This gives Dante plenty of creative freedom to handle different situations. During the course of the game I was able to find certain scenarios that favored each weapon I had. With all these weapons Dante's movepool is huge even under normal conditions. However, using the swordmaster style can expand the moveset even further, giving dante new moves for every weapon. I absolutely loved the expessiveness of DMC 3's combat that this giant movepool made possible. I was never bored by the combat or frustrated by losing to hard boss battles because I always felt like I could drastically change up my strategy and find new ways to enjoy the game. And this Switch exclusive version of DMC 3 allows for Style switching during combat, which expands Dante's moveset even further. Just like the weapons I was able to make great use of all the styles as well. All of this adds up to make DMC 3 one of the most fluid action combat systems I've ever seen.

My biggest critique with this game is that the camera isn't great. Don't get me wrong though, it's nowhere near DMC 1 levels of bad. There's still the occasional PS1 Resident Evil style camera in DMC 3 but it's usually reserved for non-combat sections. In DMC 1 the average combat arena would have the camera experimenting with "artistic" angles for every five steps you took, rendering the game extremely frustrating to play. DMC 3 has a free camera... in theory, anyway. It's extremely slow to control and it doesn't even work sometimes. Better to just rely on the auto camera which naturally turns to show the enemy you're fighting. ...Well...in theory. The camera has a mind of its own and frequently doesn't show the action you want to see. Locking on doesn't yield great results either. The camera doesn't snap to lock on targets like you would expect. Oh well. The camera may be bad, but on the bright side it doesn't ruin the game like the camera from DMC 1. We're making progress here.

Devil May Cry 3 is a fantastic game. I loved the whole experience from beginning to end. I am aware of some of the criticisms that DMC 1 fans have with it... But these don't bother me. Dante might not have the same personality he has in DMC 1 but he's a far more interesting and entertaining character here. Also I know there are people who prefer how the ranking system/harder difficulties were handled in DMC 1, but if I were to play that game at a high level then that game's flaws would become even more pronounced. DMC 3 is just a more enjoyable game in every possible way for me, so that would extend to higher difficulties as well.

If you're looking to start the Devil May Cry series then I recommend starting with Devil May Cry 3. It's easily one of the best games I've played all year, if not the best game flat out.

First of all, I want to say that I'm surprised by the quality of Nintendo Switch's port of Devil May Cry 3, it's genuinely a great port with some cool minor additions.
Aside from that, I'm also surprised by how well the game aged for the most part, particularly its combat system. I wish the upgrade system was deeper and the weapons would have more skills to unlock, but it's not that big of a deal, there are many weapons to use and the combat system by itself is highly enjoyable and flashy nonetheless.
The story is nothing special or interesting but it's not an important part of the game. At least the characters are nice and they make up for the lack of engaging storytelling.
Also, the pacing is pretty good, and it's an important part of the game.
Unfortunately, the visuals and the audio haven't aged as well as the gameplay, but the music is quite okay actually.
What aged even worse though, is the absolutely horrible camera, boring level design and the repetitive looking areas.
Most of the boss fights are badly designed with either boring gimmicks, questionable hit boxes or unbalanced moves in some instances.
Lastly, there's a lot of unnecessary backtracking after a while, and the puzzles are all tedious, with some of them barely giving you any clues for some reason.

Pros:
+ Fun combat system that holds up very well
+ Serviceable characters
+ Consistent pacing
+ Decent music

Cons:
- Very bad camera
- Uninspired level design and environments
- Mostly annoying boss fights
- Frustrating backtracking and puzzles

Narrative: ?/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Content: ?/10
Characters: 5/10
Music: 6/10
Graphics/Audio: ?/10

Final Rating: 6/10
- Decent -
Devil May Cry 3 is a great game for the time it originally came out, but it didn't age well in most areas aside from the combat system.

Do I recommend it?:
Not really, unless you've already played Devil May Cry 5 before and you want to get deeper into the series, otherwise, there's no reason to bother with Devil May Cry 3 in my opinion.

How do you handle the act of course correcting not only a franchise, but an entire genre after a failed sequel, to the point of potentially leaving the industry if it doesn't turn out well?

That was the question asked to Hideaki Itsuno, following the release of Devil May Cry 2 in 2003. Having been brought on board for the last 4 months of development to get... something out before a deadline, Itsuno was pretty clearly unsatisfied with his debut to the directorial duties of DMC. Yet, he wasn't too phased by this. Rather, he came back with a want to right the wrongs of the prior entry and prove the series wasn't just a one hit wonder, one that would instead go on to rock the gaming landscape all over again and catapult the series back into the eyes of the mainstream. Serving as a prequel to bring a more hot-headed, confident Dante and detailing a story centring on him and his brother Vergil, DMC3's goal from moment 1 was to be an apology for DMC2.

But not only was this redemption for the series, but also for Itsuno as a director. The man knew not to throw the baby out with the bath water, and thus employed a lot that he'd met from his time on DMC2, and combining it with what worked so well in DMC1. Collecting a ragtag team of Capcom employees in order to give them a game they'd be proud to have their name on, bringing Bingo Morihashi to pen the game's scenario, who worked closely with DMC1 director Hideki Kamiya in regards to aspects of the game's story. Action movie director and fight choreographer Yuji Shimomura and mo-cap artist/actors Reuben Langdon and Dan Southworth were perhaps the most important new hires, however, with Shimomura providing the direction for the game's over the top action-packed cutscenes, while Langdon and Southworth would provide the voice and mocap of Dante and Vergil respectively. There's also this fun anecdote about Itsuno receiving a pep talk from a drunk Tomonobu Itagaki of Dead Or Alive and the then-recent Ninja Gaiden revival (No, seriously!), and while I doubt it did that much to boost Itsuno's confidence... I mean, it's fun to think about, isn't it?

This would probably be where I ask the hypothetical, "But did it actually turn out that good?", but like, come on. If you've played any action game released since 2005, you can practically feel the influence of Devil May Cry 3 oozing within. It's hard to understate that, especially after DMC2, it and Ninja Gaiden Black genuinely felt like the action genre's next leaps in the right direction. Things like the game's approaches to full on-the-fly weapon swapping, a focus on keeping yourself in the air with a more involved method of jumping off enemies in the air, the over-the-top, motion captured cutscenes that focus on over the top choreography, bolstered move counts, additional combat playstyles (and that you can similarly switch between on the fly in the Switch release!), most anything you've enjoyed about any action game from the mid-late 6th gen onwards, in some way or another, likely owes itself to Devil May Cry 3. From the moment the game starts with its high-octane intro and two straight levels of pure combat, all the way to the climax with what's still the rival that any action game worth its salt is trying to crib, it's a title unlike any other that was made from passion and an urge to do better. There's so much I could go into detail about, and that I'd one day love to were I better able to articulate it and put it all into a lengthy video essay, but alas I am merely a 24 year old who got a C in English. The long and short is, if Devil May Cry defined the genre, Devil May Cry 3 redefined it.

But we need to get specific. What exactly were the ultimate goals of DMC3's gameplay over that of 2's, beyond that of taking DMC1's gameplay as the basis without throwing away the unique and interesting parts 2 offered? I'm not a fly on the wall from back in 2004, but if I had to guess, I'd assume Itsuno's ideas to bring the series back after 2 were by making enemies both worth fighting and fun to fight again, bringing back the closed environments to force the player into combat rather than encouraging them to lock on from the other side of the room and spam the guns, and in the case of the NTSC release after those pesky westerners complained about DMC2 being too easy (itself a result of the Japanese complaining about their easier version of 1 being too hard)… to make the game bust your balls hard enough that the game was seen necessary to get rereleased with a more rebalanced difficulty. This was a fate we Brits were spared from, thankfully.

Let's take it from the top. DMC3's got a pretty hefty list of mooks to do battle with, from the rank and file 7 Hells who all excel in showing off enemy hierarchy, to the elite Fallen and Abyss. While enemies aren't as fully featured in their moveset variety as DMC1's lineup, with some having as few as a single attack, the game now allows the inclusion of multiple types on screen at once, and I personally find the majority are generally a blast to fight. Even if the Dullahan are one of the worst enemy types in the series, and the Soul Eaters and Fallen can prove troublesome, you can be certain that a Hell Sloth is around the corner for you to vent that annoyance on, or maybe there's a stray Abyss for you to trade blows with.

The game's environments are both tightly enclosed to force encounters with the enemy roster, and rocking a lot more of the gothic vibes that made DMC1 so tense. While the overall art direction isn't quite as strong, there's still plenty of rooms throughout that I have a weird fondness for admiring whenever I'm strolling through them. Areas like the tip top of the Temen Ni-Gru, the wagon ride, and the entire Demon World sequence stuck with me from my first playthrough up until now.

And the last point... yeah, Devil May Cry 3 is often considered one of the toughest nuts to crack in the genre, right with Ninja Gaiden Black, NG2 and God Hand. Between enemies and bosses, the fact the game needed to get rereleased in the US to be more balanced should seriously tell you something about it. It's unlikely you'll be playing the original release nowadays, and it's fully replicatable in the Special Edition anyhow, but just about every review of the original release either opened with, or contained a paragraph or two about just how crushing DMC3 was. Certainly should've been careful what you wished for, but goddamn if it doesn't make for one of the most satisfying and rewarding gaming experiences when it all clicks. When you finally crush that boss you were getting walled by, or manage to hit that S rank on a tough mission, that's the moments that make the hardships worth putting up with. Dante Must Die mode goes a touch too far with the insane defenses DT'd enemies have, but Very Hard mode is an absolute delight to blast through again and again, and conquering that original difficulty is an experience I'll never forget.

There's so much more about DMC3 as a video game that just makes it a near flawless experience for me and so many others. Regardless of if you're playing the earlier releases, or the Nintendo Switch version that allows the game's initially limited style and weapon restrictions to be removed entirely, you're in for a combat system that allows a near limitless level of player expression, and a boss lineup that's damn solid barring the odd stinker like Gigapede or the unfortunate penultimate battle with Arkham. It's one of the most incredible experiences I've had playing a video game, and the one that truly made me love action games.

But "as a video game" is a key word there, because Devil May Cry 3, regardless of what journalists will tell you about it just being a stupid Japanese action game because they generally refuse to engage with Japanese titles in a sincere manner, has a story that you can only tell in a video game, and a fucking beautiful one at that. From its continued use of the franchise's themes of humanity and family, with an added dose of duality, to its incredibly heartfelt writing between such a tiny cast of fully realised characters, and the game's constant useage of Vergil as a means of both pushing the player to get better, and to develop Dante's character in the process as the game's 3-act structure is bookended with a duel against him, it all makes for one of the most criminally overlooked scenarios in any video game. Right down to Vergil stealing a weapon from a boss Dante fails to kill part way through the game, that's the kind of shit that makes a story in this medium thrive: DMC3, in spite of the insane choreography, wouldn't be as impactful as a film, or even as a game that put greater emphasis on its story. It's a case of the story and gameplay harmonising to deliver a genuinely enthralling experience that few titles can even come close to matching throughout all my years of gaming. Besides, if you wanna see what DMC3 would be like as a movie, just watch Ryuhei Kitamura's "Versus"; the action direction was done by Yuji Shimomura, and there are some points where you can genuinely see the seeds of DMC3's cutscene direction being planted, it's legitimately insane.

At the end of the day, Devil May Cry 3 is more than just another sequel. It's something genuinely special; a pure display of passion from a director who wanted to right the wrongs of a title that he could only have hoped to put a few bandaids on before it got kicked out the door for release. It not only got DMC back in the minds of gamers, but also showed the entire action genre that the series wasn't down and out yet. A pure masterpiece of gaming that anyone interested in action games owes it to themselves to play.

"It's only the rain..."

My New Year's Resolution is to become even more of a Devil May Cry hater because I have never liked these games and I'm tired of pretending they're good.

Shitty camera, shitty control scheme, and boring enemy design. I didn't like it at the time and I don't like it now. I truly don't get what people see in this game.

I'm giving it two stars though because I do like Dante's Bollywood energy in the cutscenes.