“Sumptuously-coated platinum-haired man raises hell at local castle”
“STYLISH!” exclaims the blood-red, graffiti-like “Style” counter on the top right of the screen as I stab a lizard monster in the face from 20 feet with a sword crackling with lightning. As I continue to pound the attack button, more lizard monsters jump onto the scene; I pummel the attack button further, hit a shoulder button which engulfs my avatar, Dante, in a Purple Haze and continue slicing and stabbing, stabbing and slicing, sometimes quickly bringing out a well-hidden shotgun from the ether of Dante’s pants to shoot a lizard point-blank in the face, producing a satisfying glass-breaking crunching sound effect.
“STYLISH!” the game continues to declare in the top right hand of the screen.
But then…a lull in the combat; the weak-hearted enemies have now scampered too far out of the reach of further pummeling. “STYLISH!” slowly fades into the background, only to be replaced a second later with a blue-fonted, “AWESOME!”, and a further split-second later this is replaced with a poisonous-green, “BRAVO!”
The sinking feeling in my stomach seems strange. “BRAVO!” is still good, right? I wish people in real life would shout “BRAVO!” at me in the streets, rather than “SNICKER!” (Yes, in my world, I register facial expressions and onomatopoeia as actual, physical words or letters; the worst kind of synesthesia I’ve ever…er… heard). But “BRAVO!” isn’t “STYLISH!”, the latter being the highest accolade given by ‘Devil May Cry’ based on how much punishment you can dole out to a demon in the shortest amount of time possible. With extreme prejudice.
Of course, later DMC games became a bit more nuanced with this Stylish counter system. The seminal DMC3 requires you to keep switching up combos and weapons, lest you be affronted with the Yellow Font Of Failure coupled with the greatest insult any “righteous gamer dude” could ever bear:
“DOPE!”
And no - not the ironic, “Wow, that combo was DOPE, bro!” But “Dope” as in dunce – as in, YOU FAILED in your moral duty to crush those demons with enough STYLE. Man, just give me a safe ‘Game Over’ instead to ease the crushing deflation of being addressed by such an odious adjective.
But this ranking system is fair enough in DMC3, where you constantly have “ripping” combos dripping out of your greasy gamer palms and you’re doing cool stuff like pirouetting around enemies with twin blades of wind and fire before jumping onto a slice-downed enemy, skating it like a demented Roomba around the arena, knocking THE ORBS out of several by-standing demons in the process, before front flipping off the unfortunate ride, switching to a pair of “light-gauntlets” and dive-kicking another gawping demon in the face so forcefully and with such finality that its body literally shatters out of existence with a satisfying, “Awoooh?!” of puzzlement and despondency.
However, in this first game, DMC1, where the combos (your ability to chain attacks one after the other in a fluent fashion by alternating button presses and the speed of said button presses – for any “noobs”, yes, that means MASHING with wild, rhythmic abandon) are far more limited, the word “DULL!” seems like a random criticism, especially during your first hour of play: Um...Video Game? I just rammed a lightning-veiled sword down the throat of a gigantic, demonic, fire-encrusted magma spider in the TWISTED HOUSE OF GOD, and all you can shrug at me is, “Meh…DULL!” That spider fight was atrociously awesome! Is this some attempt at goading me into further more furious button presses? If so, challenge accepted!
The ranking system extends to the end of each Mission. The ‘Mission Complete’ screen confronts you with a summary of how long it took to complete the Mission (note: taking your time and soaking in the atmosphere = not stylish, apparently) and how many Red Orbs you managed to milk out of the hapless demonic population of Mallet Island, like some crazed Bloody Baron putting the screws to his unfortunate serfs (if said serfs were horrific lizard monsters and scissor-wielding ghost people).
That’s right – time and orbs are the only two factors the game uses to produce your overall ‘rank’ for any given Mission.
However, this binary division of Stylishness is a little bit of a cheat. The game never explains the mechanics of this system. For example, how the on-screen ranks during battles eventually determines how many Red Orbs cough out of the enemies at the end of the battles. If the rank is ‘Stylish!’ towards the end of a battle, the larger number of Red Orbs gained. You could eventually deduce this by watching the ranks and the orbs, but in the heat of battle, it’s not easy to spot.
The ranking system is what personally keeps me interested during multiple playthroughs. The little skip of the heart when you gain your first ‘S’ rank for completing a Mission; the bitter taste of disappointment when presented with just a ‘C’ – it’s just a little extra incentive for wanting to do well, which translates into tenser battles and more frantic exploration in the downtime between battles. It’s a pretty short game when viewed as a whole – I completed it in about 6 hours the first time through, and then around 3 hours the second time around (on Hard mode). I’m now in the middle of a third playthrough on ‘Dante Must Die!’ mode (AKA: Very Hard). But this is also a blessing. It doesn’t feel bloated or padded – it’s quite a slim, snappy experience overall.
And this snappiness becomes more evident on repeated playthroughs, where you can zoom past all the Resident Evil “spot the antiques” puzzles which have been shoe-horned into the game (or kept in after the switch from RE4 to DMC).
Ah, the puzzles. If you’ve ever played a Resident Evil game in the past, you’ll know what I mean. If not, then imagine the whole world as a puzzle box, wherein strange relics, symbols and antiques are needed in order to progress. So instead of breaking down the (mostly flimsy, antique, wooden) doors which block his routes, Dante opts to shrug his shoulders instead, “Ah, well, better go and hunt for the Destroyer of Ardor in order to open this Wooden Door of Demoniac.” Why can’t I switch into Devil Trigger mode and just sneeze the door open? Because Game Design Reasons, that’s why. Because Unnecessary Padding reasons, that’s why. Part of me thinks that Capcom should have dispensed with The Antiques Roadshow altogether and went all in with the fighting. I mean, this battle system is pretty darn amazing (for 2001!!) so why not lean more into it with confidence? Why not make a cleaner break from its RE4 beginnings?
Traversal in this game would be fun without all the trinket hunting. I mean, Resident Evil 4 almost did this. Yes, there were curios to collect in that game, but they were placed on the critical path and required little to no actual hunting and rooting. Yes, there were a few odd time-waster puzzles for shiny baubles even then (does anyone else remember the weirdly simple-hard rotating puzzle in the graveyard in RE4? Who even builds stuff like that in rural Spain?) but they were few and far between and never interrupted the tense gunplay.
Some of the Item Questing is interesting. The flavor text on the keys and items can be quite evocative, although most of the subtext boils down to “This opens the door to HELL!! Everything in this game has to do with HELL! Demons!! Mwahaha!” I’m overstating this a little bit, but the main point remains: why not have more confidence in your fights and battle system? It’s pretty darn cool as is, man!
Perhaps one reason for the trinket hunts was a lack of confidence in the volume of content in this game. As stated, I finished the game, and most Secret Missions, in around 6 hours the first time through. And you tend to notice, around halfway through, that enemy variety is somewhat lacking.
The puppet enemies, which work well as introductory enemies in the first mission, keep popping up in unrelated locations later. They work well as enemies in the opening castle sections of the game but hearing the clank of wood feet tapping on the floor as you walk into a later greenhouse area seems out of place. Overall, there are only 5 different main enemy types: puppets, lizard-monsters, ghosts with a variety of scythes, Nobodies (the freakiest, flayed-monkey-est demons you will ever see) and those big rock spitting spiders which only pop up once or twice in the whole game. Oh yes, and later the lizard-monsters are replaced by ice-clad lizard monsters (quaintly called ‘Frosts’) in a half-hearted attempt at a pallet swap.
But the biggest disappointment are the boss battles. It’s my sincere belief that a short, mission-based game like this should bookmark each mission with a stylish Boss Battle. However, in line with the enemy variety, the boss battles leave more to be desired…
The Phantom is a recurring boss you must fight at least twice. Nelo Angelo, a cool, but somewhat underwhelming fight, pops up three different times. Griffon, the large bird-owl-lightning monster, also pops up for you to wallop at least three different times. And who can forget: Nightmare; a demonic puddle of slime, bone and robotic exoskeleton, one of the most challenging fights in the game. It turns up three times like the others. The last boss is against Mundus…the less said about that abomination of a fight, which includes an out of place bullet-hell section which seems to randomize whether or not you take damage from the various projectiles thrown at you; a fight in a lava lake with moving platforms; and a token fight at the end of the game where you mash the button repeatedly before Mundus is finally sent packing BACK TO THE PIT; the better.
Later DMC games rectify this by adding more boss battles (although still cling to the keys and locks hunts) which creates a much-needed variety, especially for repeated playthroughs.
Speaking of variety, check out the complete opposite of variety: THIS GAME! With tongue firmly pressed into the nether reasons of a cheek, I now proudly declare that Devil May Cry 1’s combat is almost the complete opposite of variety. In total there are 4 different DEVIL ARMS (as the game calls them) to be wielded and hefted around in pursuit of the complete genocide of the demonic population. These arms are (arms are): Force Edge, the starter sword – it slices, it dices, it….doesn’t do much else; Alastor, the second sword, wreathed in lightning, possessed with demonic intent bent to your anti-demonic will, this sword also slices and dices, but this time with lightning crackle aplenty. The world’s stylishest taser. Then there’s IFRIT, the flame gauntlets! Boots and greaves which you use to PUNCH OUT and KARATE KID opponents to smithereens. It is a most lugubrious inducing weapon to thine enemies.
“FLAME GAUNTLETS, DUDE!!”! Is what my 13 year old self would have said after the revelatory cutscene in Mission 9 (“NEW STRENGTH”) where the GAUNTLETS SPEAK WITH YOU before rocketing around the semi-circular area you happen to be in and latching themselves onto your arms and legs in a seemingly Darth Vaderesque ecstasy of pain after which Dante, staring dumbfoundedly at his decidedly not burned-to-cinders arms and legs, begins Rocky-jabbing and jogging on the spot, producing wreaths of flames with every stab and prod. Man, they even look cool in the EQUIP MENU! They look like spiky bear claws, dude! Oh, yeah, check out ALL your stuff in the EQUIP MENU – everything’s rendered to Stylish Gothic perfection over there.
And then there’s the last melee weapon – The ‘Sparda’ Sword. It’s the strongest in the game, kind of like a sword-scythe combo (Bloodborne, anyone?) and is so strong is completely deletes your Devil Trigger gauge as you wield it; as in, you CANNOT use your Devil Trigger AT ALL while wielding The Sparda – some sort of a handicap on its already ridiculous DPS potential. Me? I prefer Alastor and Ifrit personally. The Sparda always seems a little cumbersome to me – it’s just DemonicSword.txt. Alastor has lightning and is also a COOL NAME (as is Ifrit, as any Final Fantasy aficionado can gleefully attest).
Dante, the main character of this “Stylish Action” game, trashes vaguely demonic enemies with Big Sword and Big Glove. He wears a blood red leather jacket with multiple fasteners dangling rather like those of a good old-fashioned straitjacket. He “runs” (irony imminent) with legs and fists pumping artfully, and yet it’s like he runs in slow motion – a kind of comedic, fake, running-through-treacle type motion, which means he always gets where you want him to go slightly slower than you would believe him capable. He can also jump. Lord, the jumping…
While he runs like a man in a slow-motion reel, the jumping, on the other hand, is weirdly bouncy and cricket-like: sudden, sharp, violent little hops. He does a little forward roll in the air if you jump while tilting forward on the analogue stick. If you don’t tilt the stick at all, he merely does a shorter vertical hop, with arms slightly raised. If you jump against a wall, Dante will sometimes, and somewhat glitchingly, do a kick-off into a backflip, which gives him an extra height boost; the kind of movement trick which always seems like a fluke and which you can never adequately repeat. Some of the game’s secrets are hidden behind these calculated abominations of platforming. Coupled with a capricious camera which may keep flashing back and forth between two different, tilted, angles of the same hallway, jumping with any finesse turns into a weirdly frustrating and unfun process.
Still, I adore this game. It contains an abundance of macabre charm – that effervescent quality which is difficult to pin down. The upgrade systems are a thumbs up, always, the sense that you’re progressing between each Mission (the game is split up into several of these “Mission” which serve as Checkpoints between chunks of the game, really), upgrading your fighting capabilities, unlocking cool new tricks with your sword (not that many of them, which is refreshing!) and buying health and magic upgrades with the game’s currency (which turn out to be “Red Orbs” – the BLOOD OF THE DEMONS WHICH YOU HARVEST WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE DURING THE GAME. The orbs have screaming faces on them because it’s DEMONIC BLOOD!).
In conclusion, I think this is a pretty neat game.
“STYLISH!” exclaims the blood-red, graffiti-like “Style” counter on the top right of the screen as I stab a lizard monster in the face from 20 feet with a sword crackling with lightning. As I continue to pound the attack button, more lizard monsters jump onto the scene; I pummel the attack button further, hit a shoulder button which engulfs my avatar, Dante, in a Purple Haze and continue slicing and stabbing, stabbing and slicing, sometimes quickly bringing out a well-hidden shotgun from the ether of Dante’s pants to shoot a lizard point-blank in the face, producing a satisfying glass-breaking crunching sound effect.
“STYLISH!” the game continues to declare in the top right hand of the screen.
But then…a lull in the combat; the weak-hearted enemies have now scampered too far out of the reach of further pummeling. “STYLISH!” slowly fades into the background, only to be replaced a second later with a blue-fonted, “AWESOME!”, and a further split-second later this is replaced with a poisonous-green, “BRAVO!”
The sinking feeling in my stomach seems strange. “BRAVO!” is still good, right? I wish people in real life would shout “BRAVO!” at me in the streets, rather than “SNICKER!” (Yes, in my world, I register facial expressions and onomatopoeia as actual, physical words or letters; the worst kind of synesthesia I’ve ever…er… heard). But “BRAVO!” isn’t “STYLISH!”, the latter being the highest accolade given by ‘Devil May Cry’ based on how much punishment you can dole out to a demon in the shortest amount of time possible. With extreme prejudice.
Of course, later DMC games became a bit more nuanced with this Stylish counter system. The seminal DMC3 requires you to keep switching up combos and weapons, lest you be affronted with the Yellow Font Of Failure coupled with the greatest insult any “righteous gamer dude” could ever bear:
“DOPE!”
And no - not the ironic, “Wow, that combo was DOPE, bro!” But “Dope” as in dunce – as in, YOU FAILED in your moral duty to crush those demons with enough STYLE. Man, just give me a safe ‘Game Over’ instead to ease the crushing deflation of being addressed by such an odious adjective.
But this ranking system is fair enough in DMC3, where you constantly have “ripping” combos dripping out of your greasy gamer palms and you’re doing cool stuff like pirouetting around enemies with twin blades of wind and fire before jumping onto a slice-downed enemy, skating it like a demented Roomba around the arena, knocking THE ORBS out of several by-standing demons in the process, before front flipping off the unfortunate ride, switching to a pair of “light-gauntlets” and dive-kicking another gawping demon in the face so forcefully and with such finality that its body literally shatters out of existence with a satisfying, “Awoooh?!” of puzzlement and despondency.
However, in this first game, DMC1, where the combos (your ability to chain attacks one after the other in a fluent fashion by alternating button presses and the speed of said button presses – for any “noobs”, yes, that means MASHING with wild, rhythmic abandon) are far more limited, the word “DULL!” seems like a random criticism, especially during your first hour of play: Um...Video Game? I just rammed a lightning-veiled sword down the throat of a gigantic, demonic, fire-encrusted magma spider in the TWISTED HOUSE OF GOD, and all you can shrug at me is, “Meh…DULL!” That spider fight was atrociously awesome! Is this some attempt at goading me into further more furious button presses? If so, challenge accepted!
The ranking system extends to the end of each Mission. The ‘Mission Complete’ screen confronts you with a summary of how long it took to complete the Mission (note: taking your time and soaking in the atmosphere = not stylish, apparently) and how many Red Orbs you managed to milk out of the hapless demonic population of Mallet Island, like some crazed Bloody Baron putting the screws to his unfortunate serfs (if said serfs were horrific lizard monsters and scissor-wielding ghost people).
That’s right – time and orbs are the only two factors the game uses to produce your overall ‘rank’ for any given Mission.
However, this binary division of Stylishness is a little bit of a cheat. The game never explains the mechanics of this system. For example, how the on-screen ranks during battles eventually determines how many Red Orbs cough out of the enemies at the end of the battles. If the rank is ‘Stylish!’ towards the end of a battle, the larger number of Red Orbs gained. You could eventually deduce this by watching the ranks and the orbs, but in the heat of battle, it’s not easy to spot.
The ranking system is what personally keeps me interested during multiple playthroughs. The little skip of the heart when you gain your first ‘S’ rank for completing a Mission; the bitter taste of disappointment when presented with just a ‘C’ – it’s just a little extra incentive for wanting to do well, which translates into tenser battles and more frantic exploration in the downtime between battles. It’s a pretty short game when viewed as a whole – I completed it in about 6 hours the first time through, and then around 3 hours the second time around (on Hard mode). I’m now in the middle of a third playthrough on ‘Dante Must Die!’ mode (AKA: Very Hard). But this is also a blessing. It doesn’t feel bloated or padded – it’s quite a slim, snappy experience overall.
And this snappiness becomes more evident on repeated playthroughs, where you can zoom past all the Resident Evil “spot the antiques” puzzles which have been shoe-horned into the game (or kept in after the switch from RE4 to DMC).
Ah, the puzzles. If you’ve ever played a Resident Evil game in the past, you’ll know what I mean. If not, then imagine the whole world as a puzzle box, wherein strange relics, symbols and antiques are needed in order to progress. So instead of breaking down the (mostly flimsy, antique, wooden) doors which block his routes, Dante opts to shrug his shoulders instead, “Ah, well, better go and hunt for the Destroyer of Ardor in order to open this Wooden Door of Demoniac.” Why can’t I switch into Devil Trigger mode and just sneeze the door open? Because Game Design Reasons, that’s why. Because Unnecessary Padding reasons, that’s why. Part of me thinks that Capcom should have dispensed with The Antiques Roadshow altogether and went all in with the fighting. I mean, this battle system is pretty darn amazing (for 2001!!) so why not lean more into it with confidence? Why not make a cleaner break from its RE4 beginnings?
Traversal in this game would be fun without all the trinket hunting. I mean, Resident Evil 4 almost did this. Yes, there were curios to collect in that game, but they were placed on the critical path and required little to no actual hunting and rooting. Yes, there were a few odd time-waster puzzles for shiny baubles even then (does anyone else remember the weirdly simple-hard rotating puzzle in the graveyard in RE4? Who even builds stuff like that in rural Spain?) but they were few and far between and never interrupted the tense gunplay.
Some of the Item Questing is interesting. The flavor text on the keys and items can be quite evocative, although most of the subtext boils down to “This opens the door to HELL!! Everything in this game has to do with HELL! Demons!! Mwahaha!” I’m overstating this a little bit, but the main point remains: why not have more confidence in your fights and battle system? It’s pretty darn cool as is, man!
Perhaps one reason for the trinket hunts was a lack of confidence in the volume of content in this game. As stated, I finished the game, and most Secret Missions, in around 6 hours the first time through. And you tend to notice, around halfway through, that enemy variety is somewhat lacking.
The puppet enemies, which work well as introductory enemies in the first mission, keep popping up in unrelated locations later. They work well as enemies in the opening castle sections of the game but hearing the clank of wood feet tapping on the floor as you walk into a later greenhouse area seems out of place. Overall, there are only 5 different main enemy types: puppets, lizard-monsters, ghosts with a variety of scythes, Nobodies (the freakiest, flayed-monkey-est demons you will ever see) and those big rock spitting spiders which only pop up once or twice in the whole game. Oh yes, and later the lizard-monsters are replaced by ice-clad lizard monsters (quaintly called ‘Frosts’) in a half-hearted attempt at a pallet swap.
But the biggest disappointment are the boss battles. It’s my sincere belief that a short, mission-based game like this should bookmark each mission with a stylish Boss Battle. However, in line with the enemy variety, the boss battles leave more to be desired…
The Phantom is a recurring boss you must fight at least twice. Nelo Angelo, a cool, but somewhat underwhelming fight, pops up three different times. Griffon, the large bird-owl-lightning monster, also pops up for you to wallop at least three different times. And who can forget: Nightmare; a demonic puddle of slime, bone and robotic exoskeleton, one of the most challenging fights in the game. It turns up three times like the others. The last boss is against Mundus…the less said about that abomination of a fight, which includes an out of place bullet-hell section which seems to randomize whether or not you take damage from the various projectiles thrown at you; a fight in a lava lake with moving platforms; and a token fight at the end of the game where you mash the button repeatedly before Mundus is finally sent packing BACK TO THE PIT; the better.
Later DMC games rectify this by adding more boss battles (although still cling to the keys and locks hunts) which creates a much-needed variety, especially for repeated playthroughs.
Speaking of variety, check out the complete opposite of variety: THIS GAME! With tongue firmly pressed into the nether reasons of a cheek, I now proudly declare that Devil May Cry 1’s combat is almost the complete opposite of variety. In total there are 4 different DEVIL ARMS (as the game calls them) to be wielded and hefted around in pursuit of the complete genocide of the demonic population. These arms are (arms are): Force Edge, the starter sword – it slices, it dices, it….doesn’t do much else; Alastor, the second sword, wreathed in lightning, possessed with demonic intent bent to your anti-demonic will, this sword also slices and dices, but this time with lightning crackle aplenty. The world’s stylishest taser. Then there’s IFRIT, the flame gauntlets! Boots and greaves which you use to PUNCH OUT and KARATE KID opponents to smithereens. It is a most lugubrious inducing weapon to thine enemies.
“FLAME GAUNTLETS, DUDE!!”! Is what my 13 year old self would have said after the revelatory cutscene in Mission 9 (“NEW STRENGTH”) where the GAUNTLETS SPEAK WITH YOU before rocketing around the semi-circular area you happen to be in and latching themselves onto your arms and legs in a seemingly Darth Vaderesque ecstasy of pain after which Dante, staring dumbfoundedly at his decidedly not burned-to-cinders arms and legs, begins Rocky-jabbing and jogging on the spot, producing wreaths of flames with every stab and prod. Man, they even look cool in the EQUIP MENU! They look like spiky bear claws, dude! Oh, yeah, check out ALL your stuff in the EQUIP MENU – everything’s rendered to Stylish Gothic perfection over there.
And then there’s the last melee weapon – The ‘Sparda’ Sword. It’s the strongest in the game, kind of like a sword-scythe combo (Bloodborne, anyone?) and is so strong is completely deletes your Devil Trigger gauge as you wield it; as in, you CANNOT use your Devil Trigger AT ALL while wielding The Sparda – some sort of a handicap on its already ridiculous DPS potential. Me? I prefer Alastor and Ifrit personally. The Sparda always seems a little cumbersome to me – it’s just DemonicSword.txt. Alastor has lightning and is also a COOL NAME (as is Ifrit, as any Final Fantasy aficionado can gleefully attest).
Dante, the main character of this “Stylish Action” game, trashes vaguely demonic enemies with Big Sword and Big Glove. He wears a blood red leather jacket with multiple fasteners dangling rather like those of a good old-fashioned straitjacket. He “runs” (irony imminent) with legs and fists pumping artfully, and yet it’s like he runs in slow motion – a kind of comedic, fake, running-through-treacle type motion, which means he always gets where you want him to go slightly slower than you would believe him capable. He can also jump. Lord, the jumping…
While he runs like a man in a slow-motion reel, the jumping, on the other hand, is weirdly bouncy and cricket-like: sudden, sharp, violent little hops. He does a little forward roll in the air if you jump while tilting forward on the analogue stick. If you don’t tilt the stick at all, he merely does a shorter vertical hop, with arms slightly raised. If you jump against a wall, Dante will sometimes, and somewhat glitchingly, do a kick-off into a backflip, which gives him an extra height boost; the kind of movement trick which always seems like a fluke and which you can never adequately repeat. Some of the game’s secrets are hidden behind these calculated abominations of platforming. Coupled with a capricious camera which may keep flashing back and forth between two different, tilted, angles of the same hallway, jumping with any finesse turns into a weirdly frustrating and unfun process.
Still, I adore this game. It contains an abundance of macabre charm – that effervescent quality which is difficult to pin down. The upgrade systems are a thumbs up, always, the sense that you’re progressing between each Mission (the game is split up into several of these “Mission” which serve as Checkpoints between chunks of the game, really), upgrading your fighting capabilities, unlocking cool new tricks with your sword (not that many of them, which is refreshing!) and buying health and magic upgrades with the game’s currency (which turn out to be “Red Orbs” – the BLOOD OF THE DEMONS WHICH YOU HARVEST WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE DURING THE GAME. The orbs have screaming faces on them because it’s DEMONIC BLOOD!).
In conclusion, I think this is a pretty neat game.