LTTP Devil May Cry Series |LTTP| Let's Rock! (Open Spoilers)

[MissingNo.]

Started playing DMC5 (up until the end of Chapter 6), and apart from it looking absolutely stunning and playing super smoothly on Series S, it is seemingly taking some design inspiration from DMC1 and, to a lesser extent (so far?), 3.

First of all, the scissor sisters made their comeback, but now take somewhat more effort to deal with due to the absence of the shotgun. Curious to see if their scythe-weilding counterpart will also make a return.

Then, there is V's summon, Shadow. More on V later, but Shadow's moveset is oddly reminiscent of this repeated miniboss encounter in DMC1 with the ghostly, shapeshifting cat beast. So I booted up DMC1 again, took a closer look at the in-game enemy compendium, and as it turns out the name of that beast was… Shadow. How curious.

That got me thinking. Griffon, the bird summon, is named after another DMC1 boss, and some of its abilities are somewhat reminiscent of the encounters with said boss as well. While those two resemble their DMC1 counterparts in terms of appearance and moveset fairly well, V's DT summon, Nightmare, only takes its name from yet another DMC1 boss. Those Nightmares look nothing alike, and from what I can tell don't have any obvious shared abilities, either.

But then there is also DMC3 stuff. Geryon is back, without its chariot, but with a rider instead. The time bending mechanic returned alongside the steed.

There might be more callbacks that flew over my head, but I like the way they implemented them so far. As much as I typically like to see such callbacks, I do hope they do not become too prevalent.

Oh yeah, about V. The concept for this character's gameplay is absolutely bonkers. A summoner is not something I would have expected to work well in a character action game, and yet here we are. I am also glad that I never really followed anything DMC5 when the game released, and went into this basically blind. I have seen V before, but I did not know he was playable, let alone what his moveset looked like. So when the game let me take command, I was pretty much floored at what they were attempting to do, and the fact that they managed to pull it off.

 

[MissingNo.]

My initial impressions are still valid after completing the game. It is the best in the series in terms of gameplay. They brought a lot of new stuff to the table here with Devil Breaker, Devil Sword, SDT, V, and I honestly have a difficult time imagining how they want to top that.

It is not without fault, though. Yeah, I made fun of the ball puzzles in DMC3 and was not overly fond of them. But 5 cutting puzzle elements altogether, aside from the occasional secret blue orb fragment you get when meeting certain conditions on the map, feels kind of odd. On top of that, I feel like environments could have been more varied.

Other than that, I welcomed all the callbacks to 1 and 3, and feel like the game ties the series nicely together in the most batshit crazy way imaginable. Combined with the amazing gameplay, this makes 5 my favourite. 1, 3, and 4 are each great in their own way, and looking back at it, it is difficult for me to say which of them I prefer over the others.

Playing the entire series back to back on a whim was fun, but at the same time I definitely had my fill for now. I will probably replay the series with Vergil where possible once the itch hits.