The white-haired, trenchcoat-wearing devil-killer Dante is back in action in 'please forget about Devil May Cry 2' prequel to Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening.
I am quietly confident that I owned DMC3 way back when but absolutely confident that I didn't do a whole lot with it. I liked the idea of the DMC games more than I liked actually trying to play them. I wasn't very good, and if my recent(ish) time with Devil May Cry has shown me, I sure haven't gotten any better over the years.
As I've not gotten better, and therefore not finished DMC, and as DMC3 is an origin story, of sorts, there's no reason to put off playing this any longer. Let's don the jacket we probably don't deserve to wear and get to sleighing some nasties.
Oh, and once again:
Lovely.
Fun Times
On an incredibly moonlit night in the rain, a woman recalls the stories of her past, concerning a rebellious demon willing to separate his body from his powers to protect the human race.
Oooh, Dante, you need to brush up on your swordsmanship, mate. Can't be getting stabbed in the stomach like that every day, can you? The video ends, leaving more questions than answers. For newcomers, who are they? For fans, when? Dante looks an awful lot younger than I'm used to, I know that for sure.
Dante is in the devil-hunting business, which is apparently a legitimate business in this world, in case you were thinking of moving into the area any time soon. Demons are real, the supernatural is super normal for these folks, and someone is adamant on giving us a message.
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time, thinks Dante. His identity as the son of the legendary Sparda isn't exactly common knowledge. Who could this be? Turns out that this guy is delivering an invitation from our brother. And then he kicks the desk over and disappears, and shit is about to go down.
"These screenshots don't do it justice" might as well be the tagline to this blog, but on this occasion, even with me explaining them, you'd be better off watching - and enjoying - these scenes in motion. Let's begin.
Out of nowhere, ghoulish scythe-wielding spirits stab Dante from every possible angle. He is unphased. He does some Matrix-inspired kung fu to one of them, sending him flying into a wall, and then poses with a tribal mask or statue or something, spinning it like a basketball on his finger, scythes sticking out of his body.
He starts to walk off, dragging the helpless ghouls behind him - they're still clinging to their scythe handles, and the blades are still sticking out of Dante. But he's not quite in the right mood yet. Something is missing.
Some banging tunes, as they say. The jukebox is smashed into action as music that can only be described as 'Very Devil May Cry-y' starts to rock on. Dante is feeling it now. It's time.
Using the very blades wedged into his limbs against the ghouls, he shows them who the boss is around here. He is the dictionary definition of style, swagger, uhm... dunking... you know, I don't know how to describe his degree of showing off. He's Dante-ing all over the place. Yeah, we'll go with that.
Nobody does it like Dante, as I now get to demonstrate.
The basic controls for DMC3 are the triangle button for melee attacks and the square button to fire your pistols. There's a lock-on button and a jump, and you'll be using them all in various combos to try and look stylish. The more damage you cause and keep causing, the better your rank will increase. Get too boring and repetitive and it'll decrease.
The camera isn't perfect but seems to capture most of the action. Locking on always helped if the need arose. The melee attacks supposedly change depending on the timing of your button presses, but for the life of me, I couldn't get anything other than a basic slash to come out of Dante's repertoire.
As ever, perhaps weirdly, the story is broken up into missions that end with rankings and scores. B for 'Not Bad, could do Better'. Quite generous, but I'll take it.
Kicking open our own front door, the ruined city outside starts to fill with more ghouls. I guess we know what we'll be doing for a while.
After stylishly slipping into our iconic trenchcoat (is there any other way for Dante to put on a coat?) the action continues. A new enemy is introduced to us, a big, explodey fella, and a new move allows us to launch our target up into the air, where we can follow him before sending him crashing back down to earth.
Frustrations
That may have been when my problems began. This launcher required you to target an enemy with the R1 button, stand within melee range of them, then hold triangle and back on the left stick, where 'back' is 'away from the target'. By the time I'd mentally figured that out - hopefully not encouraging the five other enemies to float over and attack me in the meantime - I found myself not only in the air but already on the way down, after having slammed the enemy back to Earth.
The controls, as I mentioned with DMC feel a little like a fighter, rather than an action title. You need to know Dante's moveset to get the most out of it. In the likes of God of War, for example, knowing Kratos' moves will put you in good stead, but you could spam the easy things over and over and get somewhere. Slower and inefficiently, but progress is progress.
In Devil May Cry, you need to know it all and be capable of pulling it off to get the better score. But if you ignore the score, you still need some degree of control over your moves because you can't rely on spamming an attack to defeat an enemy. Shooting some of these guys from a distance is painfully slow. Doable, if they're the only enemy left walking, but still not advised.
My lack of skill is on display at the end of the mission, with a boss fight against what looks like Death himself, though in this world, what doesn't? You can take just a few hits before dying, and I'd taken most of them before the boss fight even started. Time to try again.
I'm emulating DMC3 on the newly updated PCSX2 emulator, and the game itself, thankfully, has customizable controls, so I switch the lock-on button to R2 instead, seeing as I'm using an Xbox controller. The way I had to grip the damn thing was getting to me already, and I hoped the trigger would be easier for me.
There was no change in attempt number 2. I had learned precious little about this boss. It teleported, launched surprise attacks, and defeated me effortlessly. I just couldn't spot any openings. I could blame the darkness of the screen or the resolution I was running the game at, but both of those variables could be changed. I only have myself to blame.
Each failure restarts the mission from the beginning, so here we go again. More practice with the 'little' guys before round 3.
I just can't. I've unlocked Easy mode now, like I did in the original DMC if memory serves. I've gone through the game with auto-move selection on, and have actually seen new attack animations that I'd previously been unable to pull off, and technically still can't pull off, because it's the computer choosing them for me. I just can't make head nor tail of this first boss. Devil May Cry 3 is kicking my arse from the very beginning.
Final Word
I really like the series, but it is nigh on impenetrable to me. I'm old, I'm slow, I can't grasp what needs to be done to become Dante. I will never be stylish. This is my fate, and it is unfortunate.
I've watched better people than me play the Devil May Cry series, and gain comfort from knowing that I can always watch better players play it because that's surely the only way I'm going to be able to experience the game. I have the HD Collection, and I'm going to fire it up after this gets posted, just to see if a change of scenery or controller can help me out. I doubt it, but I did say that the HD Collection was well worth it for DMC, so here's hoping.
If you're a fan of the setting, the characters, the story of demons vs demons, then you know it's a return to form for the series, there's no point telling you to play it. If you're not a fan, perhaps DMC3 is an opportunity to get your foot in the door and see what it's all about. It's an origin story, it's as good a place as any to jump into the wacky world of devil hunting - and what better character to be your guide than Dante, for goodness sake.
He's an iconic video game character, and you owe it to yourself to play as him in some form. I don't know the best way to play, maybe Devil May Cry 5. I'm certainly no expert on the series to be able to say for sure.
FORGET ABOUT THAT
So, as I said, I headed to the HD Collection as a last attempt to make progress. I could see everything now! I could control Dante a little better and even defeated that boss... once it kicked my arse enough times to unlock easy mode. It's actually a simple boss, I'm a little annoyed at myself for struggling with it. You just have to dodge its attacks with the circle button before attacking it with your own basic combo - or fancy combo, if you're better than I am...
A massive, evil tower punches through the city, Virgil, Dante's brother, atop it. He's showing off. Two can play at that game. I finally see the cutscene for mission 3, where a female character on a motorcycle makes the barest appearance she could before racing off.
I remember that DMC games involve some amount of running around small rooms looking for orbs and puzzle-solving. A portal blocks my path to a shotgun until I find and pummel a lock, and a strip club cannot be exited until I use the strippers pole to my advantage in dealing with the devilish occupants who have ambushed me.
I remember that there is a taunt button to keep your style meter going in those moments between skirmishes when the enemies are a little too far away to attack, but in all honesty (on easy mode) I was actually getting some brief glimpses of an S rank here and there. Progress indeed!
And then I was introduced to an upgrade screen where I could spend red orbs to buy new moves (for the computer to automatically use on my behalf, as I was on Easy Auto). I bought one and upgraded my pistols... and then the game soft-locked.
That was that. A known problem, apparently, but one that I don't really want to have ruining my experience. I guess I'll be watching it after all.
Still, I do recommend the HD Collection for its visuals. The disc is more reliable than the download, I read - if that's of any help to anyone.
Fun Facts
Each mission features its number somewhere in the opening cutscene. A '1' on the pizza box, a '2' on a billboard, a '3'... well, I've not got that far to find the three yet spoilers...
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, developed by Capcom, first released in 2005.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2005, via emulation.