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Devil May Cry Discussion Thread

There is an appeal in DMC being not only combat-driven but also resource-driven games at times, with those first runs or certain challenge runs entailing the strategy of what moves to get to help carry you through before you have the skill and kit to truly embody the coolness of the characters.

That said, anyone wanting to just jump back into high-level play -- having to always start from scratch on a fresh install is an annoying oversight -- should go with the Crimson mod on PC, yeah. Even if 3 isn't quite balanced around Style Switching, it's hard-as-nails enough to not feel too OP, anyway.
 
The DMC novels ain't Robert E. Howard in terms of fantasy pulp, but there's some novelty in having the aesthetic of the setting described in prose and occasionally viewed from more quotidian eyes marveling at the lofty horrors and heroism. And the fine DMC anime -- the real one, by Madhouse -- didn't move things forward or even have much in terms of kinetics (which is preferable to incoherent sweatshop mishmash animation), but it did have strong atmosphere in its gothic visuals and a Dante whose kewl-factor is complicated a little by wistfulness.

This reminds me, TheGamingBritShow recently ungated his previously-gated Patreon article comparing the two DMC shows: a good writeup.

 
Follow_Doctor_Freeman said:
The DMC novels ain't Robert E. Howard in terms of fantasy pulp, but there's some novelty in having the aesthetic of the setting described in prose and occasionally viewed from more quotidian eyes marveling at the lofty horrors and heroism. And the fine DMC anime -- the real one, by Madhouse -- didn't move things forward or even have much in terms of kinetics (which is preferable to incoherent sweatshop mishmash animation), but it did have strong atmosphere in its gothic visuals and a Dante whose kewl-factor is complicated a little by wistfulness.

This reminds me, TheGamingBritShow recently ungated his previously-gated Patreon article comparing the two DMC shows: a good writeup.

Click to expand...
The setting of Devil May Cry is too weak, flimsy, and inconsistent to be a real focal point for anything. It's too much of a mishmash gish gallop to the point that even the "fans" don't want to know or care if DMC games takes place in a pseudo USA or pseudo UK. This guy certainly doesn't seem to know that based on his paragraph denigrating the Netflix show for taking place in America even though the first game did.

The atmosphere and art of the show is also too boring, it's an odd thing people don't point out, but it was emblematic of a bunch of the generic late 2000s anime of more muted colors all around. Even Texhnolyze had this back in the day, though that was a much better show. But Black Lagoon, and other Madhouse shows carry the same aesthetic.

I also didn't see much gothic in the show except perhaps the last episode of it. If it was such, we'd be reading examples of it in his article, though, I doubt he knew much because he didn't even remember the Devil Trigger at the end of the madhouse anime either. Split second showing. Not like being Gothic is truly Devil May Cry, it's the legacy of Resident Evil that they happily ditched with 2, 4, & 5 and only had sprinklings in 3..

This is somewhat what I mean that the games barely used their setting for anything. After 5 games, I can't start pretending it is all that important now, or because some books were written where he fought Mafia goons in a no name city.
 
Why should I care about the geopolitics or even country of setting in my lite-gothic family-drama shonen? It's all about other realms and creatures and the protag family line, not "I wonder what Dick [pause] Cheney or New York City is like in this setting." You have some bizarre points of focus, this is like rolling into a Kirby thread complaining that we don't know much about King Dedede's royal ancestors or department-of-education policy or whatever. And no, the main games aren't incoherent in aesthetic, it's a good combination with a distinct result. (Also "first game set in the US," what, you mean like the two minutes of cutscene before you're at Mallet Island playing the game?)

I don't care if points in the aesthetic were part of a "trend," I care that it had a fine result. And the article & my post weren't exalting the Madhouse show as some high achievement, either, just saying that having some texture even in filler is better than being smug and incoherent and loud about it. Nitpicking about DT ackshually being present for five seconds at the end is missing the point. Nor was the goal some exhaustive comparison anyway, anyone with a modicum of taste can tell which looks better as a direction worth exploring, don't @ me about subjectivity.

"Not like being Gothic is truly Devil May Cry, it's the legacy of Resident Evil that they happily ditched with 2, 4, & 5 and only had sprinklings in 3." -- do you mean RE or DMC "ditched"? False either way, but I'm going with the latter here. 2 had some great environments and music in that vein, elements of mad dark-magick power and eclipses and such. 4 was set in Not Vatican City with elements of occultism. Even 5 had plenty of parts with potent atmosphere in that vein (albeit more in the ambience than the soundtrack), a goth-dandy quoting William Blake from an ancient tome, Dante returning to a destroyed family home, various architecture, more royalty-adjacent blood-feuding, etc. 3 having "only sprinklings" of gothic -- absurd, absurd, absurd, did you not even make it into the Temen-Ni-Gru like three missions in, was that first boss too much for you? Was even just the intro cutscene "only a sprinkling" of gothic? No, this is a coherent aesthetic even with its variety. There's saying something isn't to your taste & then there's saying falsehood about its contents. I suppose Castlevania isn't gothic, either.

When you make these assertions without substantiating, how do you expect anyone to take your whining seriously? Why are you even whine-posting here to begin with? Goofy negativity is going to just get you negativity in return. I'm only doing this an excuse to talk about something I like, although I'll not bother much further since I don't like associating them with nonsense and negativity. (SMH at your evoking something as excellent as Texhnolyze in all that silliness, too, at least you like some good stuff with that.)
 
Follow_Doctor_Freeman said:
Why should I care about the geopolitics or even country of setting in my lite-gothic family-drama shonen? It's all about other realms and creatures and the protag family line, not "I wonder what Dick [pause] Cheney or New York City is like in this setting." You have some bizarre points of focus, this is like rolling into a Kirby thread complaining that we don't know much about King Dedede's royal ancestors or department-of-education policy or whatever. And no, the main games aren't incoherent in aesthetic, it's a good combination with a distinct result. (Also "first game set in the US," what, you mean like the two minutes of cutscene before you're at Mallet Island playing the game?)

I don't care if points in the aesthetic were part of a "trend," I care that it had a fine result. And the article & my post weren't exalting the Madhouse show as some high achievement, either, just saying that having some texture even in filler is better than being smug and incoherent and loud about it. Nitpicking about DT ackshually being present for five seconds at the end is missing the point. Nor was the goal some exhaustive comparison anyway, anyone with a modicum of taste can tell which looks better as a direction worth exploring, don't @ me about subjectivity.

"Not like being Gothic is truly Devil May Cry, it's the legacy of Resident Evil that they happily ditched with 2, 4, & 5 and only had sprinklings in 3." -- do you mean RE or DMC "ditched"? False either way, but I'm going with the latter here. 2 had some great environments and music in that vein, elements of mad dark-magick power and eclipses and such. 4 was set in Not Vatican City with elements of occultism. Even 5 had plenty of parts with potent atmosphere in that vein (albeit more in the ambience than the soundtrack), a goth-dandy quoting William Blake from an ancient tome, Dante returning to a destroyed family home, various architecture, more royalty-adjacent blood-feuding, etc. 3 having "only sprinklings" of gothic -- absurd, absurd, absurd, did you not even make it into the Temen-Ni-Gru like three missions in, was that first boss too much for you? Was even just the intro cutscene "only a sprinkling" of gothic? No, this is a coherent aesthetic even with its variety. There's saying something isn't to your taste & then there's saying falsehood about its contents. I suppose Castlevania isn't gothic, either.

When you make these assertions without substantiating, how do you expect anyone to take your whining seriously? Why are you even whine-posting here to begin with? Goofy negativity is going to just get you negativity in return. I'm only doing this an excuse to talk about something I like, although I'll not bother much further since I don't like associating them with nonsense and negativity. (SMH at your evoking something as excellent as Texhnolyze in all that silliness, too, at least you like some good stuff with that.)
Click to expand...
In a scale of game series that have stories that don't matter, kirby is like bottom tier like Mario, DMC is at least a few levels above that, with a Bioware/CDPR/Obsidian game being much higher. You are asking a rhetorical question. You should care about the setting because it's part of the story because the game chose to be set there. It's why DMC4 even spent a modicum of time showing just a bit of the hierarchy and machinations of the order and the society it built. It was incredibly basic, but the series already does some of this, even if it doesn't do it incredibly well.

No, I don't think the madhouse anime had a "fine" result. All the designs insofar as the demon world is considered kind of sucks already in them which is why the weaker demons don't look like anything from the actual games, even though it's supposed to be part of the games. That's not a "fine" result.

DMCA_01_MothDemon.jpg

It's just generic.


I feel that family drama is vastly overstated within DMC, and the series didn't need to keep indulging in it. It's why it's good that they're finally done with the "Sparda family" saga. Family drama was not what DMC1 was about, nor DMC2, nor even the initial madhouse anime. It's a focus created for DMC3 that has overstayed its welcome throughout the series and leads to "OMG Dante, I will come back and make the entire story about how you beat me up too much". They can do better.

DMC2 is significantly more urban fantasy than Gothic. The music is dark but the entire game isn't just listening to the soundtrack. DMC4, even less so. It has Vatican style buildings, but the game is neither dark, nor decaying, nor focused at all on horror. Matter of fact neither DMC2, 3, 4, or 5 is really all that focused on horror at all as a whole. It's a bit disingenuous to pretend anyone is seriously playing these games to essentially stop moving entirely for ambient soundtracks of wind blowing in an empty modern building and train stations.

No, I invoked Texhnolyze because it shares a lot of the same artistic tone and coloring like the Madhouse anime because it too was also made by Madhouse and a bunch of anime from that era look eerily familiar to each other. I found the guys criticism of Netflix DMC looking colorful as opposed to Madhouse weak because it was just following what Madhouse was doing in that time period and wouldn't look like that if they made it now.

I maintain that even though the Madhouse anime wasn't great it had like 3 good episodes in it as a departure of what the games are typically like but it is emblematic of how shallow DMC is if you just strip out the gameplay. You just get a boring show where Dante has little to no characterization and does nothing, Lady is lame, Trish is lame, and Dante himself looks bored of his own life and they just live in a nondescript city that could by anywhere.
 
Alright, your latest reply has some more thought put into it; I no longer think you're trolling, at least not with low-effort. Still a lot of hair-splitting and approaches to aesthetic that I disagree with, though. And don't think I didn't notice you skim over all the other things I mentioned and evoked just to say "the music alone isn't enough" and call me disingenuous as if that was my only point or didn't display other aesthetics in some of those videos (or allude to the areas they played in). And yes, all the games have dark, decayed, period-architecture-adjacent areas in them that could be called "gothic" -- again, the notion of the series ditching that aesthetic to the point of being incoherent is absurd -- but moreover, they are cool-looking, well-trimmed, well-staged, varied, and coherent. That's the main point I was contesting for, no getting hung up on specifics even if your saying DMC3 is only a little gothic is absurd.

Madhouse show is fine and watchable if one's a fan of the series (yet not high priority even then since life is vast and brief), it's neat to have a borderline slice-of-life episodic approach even if it is kneecapped by having to not go too far out there, the moody look is nice and the right direction even if it isn't done as well as other things in its lane, 2/5, props for not having a stupid Green Day montage or "humans are the REAL demons!" message. Nothing else to say there.

I don't really care about "the future" to assess something by so much as I care to assess the thing itself. I'm not gonna be harsher on the real Halo games just because the 343 ones stink, much less against a series that hasn't (yet?) overstayed its welcome or gone a foolish direction in the same way. The five real games had their stories/story and have told them/it without overstaying their welcome or being maudlin about it. Putting aside if "all of them are/aren't about the same thing" -- even though, yeah, DMC1 had elements of family legacy and putting the old demons down, -- all of them are serviceable at worst, quite enjoyable at best, and have variety (again, within coherence). I agree that anything next (if there should be anything next) should be extra fresh; no REmaking, thank you.

Fretting about things that they wouldn't get more from prioritizing from -- again, we've seen the fruit of what more focus on setting looks like with DmC and the Shankarshow, and it's goofy and impersonal even before you get to the problems in execution -- is like complaining that an atmosphere-focused game like Half-Life 2 doesn't have execution kills or jungle gyms like Doom: Eternal or that Doom: Eternal doesn't have a gravity gun or a stark little canal where you can listen to windchimes. Not getting hung up on Kirby; you know what I meant even as I was using levity. "The setting of Devil May Cry is too weak, flimsy, and inconsistent to be a real focal point for anything," and then you concede that it establishes what it has to (and little more in the way) to tell its character-driven stories. Okay.

"[H]ow shallow DMC is if you just strip out the gameplay" -- wuh, see, yeah, there we go, the plots of the games are worthwhile because they synthesize with the gameplay, the music, the cutscenes, the general aesthetics, etc into the whole. What is the issue here? Shove some raw flour in one's mouth and say "Wow, this blackberry-forest cake sucks!" No one was even saying the non-game stuff was high-art, it can just be a little curiosity to have a new angle like that to the side every now and then, simple as that. Don't overthink or despair this.

I'm not aiming to reshape your tastes so much as dispute some assertions. Though this is pretty much reaching the "agree to disagree" point, any more would be tedious. No problem with you as long as you're not being antagonistic (and even then not that much since it's no skin off my nose & even an idle chat like this can be stimulating writing practice).
 
Not much on the 2nd part, so this is brief.
Beyond Ultimate part 2

Story continues off with Dante and Nero at a railway station, fending off more Demons.

They bump into Christine, a new character who likely belongs to a group of Devil Hunters, she tells Dante she was sent by the Order to check out the large rift that opened up at Central Station earlier.



Mission ends with Dante jumping through the rift into Greyworld, where he states it looks dead, and Dante seeing Vergil fighting in the background.

 
Follow_Doctor_Freeman said:
Alright, your latest reply has some more thought put into it; I no longer think you're trolling, at least not with low-effort. Still a lot of hair-splitting and approaches to aesthetic that I disagree with, though. And don't think I didn't notice you skim over all the other things I mentioned and evoked just to say "the music alone isn't enough" and call me disingenuous as if that was my only point or didn't display other aesthetics in some of those videos (or allude to the areas they played in). And yes, all the games have dark, decayed, period-architecture-adjacent areas in them that could be called "gothic" -- again, the notion of the series ditching that aesthetic to the point of being incoherent is absurd -- but moreover, they are cool-looking, well-trimmed, well-staged, varied, and coherent. That's the main point I was contesting for, no getting hung up on specifics even if your saying DMC3 is only a little gothic is absurd.

Madhouse show is fine and watchable if one's a fan of the series (yet not high priority even then since life is vast and brief), it's neat to have a borderline slice-of-life episodic approach even if it is kneecapped by having to not go too far out there, the moody look is nice and the right direction even if it isn't done as well as other things in its lane, 2/5, props for not having a stupid Green Day montage or "humans are the REAL demons!" message. Nothing else to say there.

I don't really care about "the future" to assess something by so much as I care to assess the thing itself. I'm not gonna be harsher on the real Halo games just because the 343 ones stink, much less against a series that hasn't (yet?) overstayed its welcome or gone a foolish direction in the same way. The five real games had their stories/story and have told them/it without overstaying their welcome or being maudlin about it. Putting aside if "all of them are/aren't about the same thing" -- even though, yeah, DMC1 had elements of family legacy and putting the old demons down, -- all of them are serviceable at worst, quite enjoyable at best, and have variety (again, within coherence). I agree that anything next (if there should be anything next) should be extra fresh; no REmaking, thank you.

Fretting about things that they wouldn't get more from prioritizing from -- again, we've seen the fruit of what more focus on setting looks like with DmC and the Shankarshow, and it's goofy and impersonal even before you get to the problems in execution -- is like complaining that an atmosphere-focused game like Half-Life 2 doesn't have execution kills or jungle gyms like Doom: Eternal or that Doom: Eternal doesn't have a gravity gun or a stark little canal where you can listen to windchimes. Not getting hung up on Kirby; you know what I meant even as I was using levity. "The setting of Devil May Cry is too weak, flimsy, and inconsistent to be a real focal point for anything," and then you concede that it establishes what it has to (and little more in the way) to tell its character-driven stories. Okay.

"[H]ow shallow DMC is if you just strip out the gameplay" -- wuh, see, yeah, there we go, the plots of the games are worthwhile because they synthesize with the gameplay, the music, the cutscenes, the general aesthetics, etc into the whole. What is the issue here? Shove some raw flour in one's mouth and say "Wow, this blackberry-forest cake sucks!" No one was even saying the non-game stuff was high-art, it can just be a little curiosity to have a new angle like that to the side every now and then, simple as that. Don't overthink or despair this.

I'm not aiming to reshape your tastes so much as dispute some assertions. Though this is pretty much reaching the "agree to disagree" point, any more would be tedious. No problem with you as long as you're not being antagonistic (and even then not that much since it's no skin off my nose & even an idle chat like this can be stimulating writing practice).
Click to expand...
I actually focused on the music because all the linked examples were pieces of music. The series ditched that aesthetic for a more urban industrial aesthetic. It doesn't mean that it became "incoherent" in that manner, they just left behind something DMC no longer is, or was. Every "dark" setting isn't gothic, we know this already. DMC5's red bloody repeated qliphoth levels certain aren't gothic at all even if they are dark and at times grotesque. The part I called you disingenuous is picking idle background music that the vast majority of players likely don't care for or remember. You only hear them when you stop moving, which you don't do much in a short & fast paced action game.

You are under the impression I'm harsh here because of the Netflix show or something. I've been playing these games before they were ever released or announced. It's not necessarily retroactive criticism, they're just flaws evident in the 5 games. DmC did have a more interesting setting as a whole than the main games too, but setting wasn't its problem. It's also not more goofy than the primary series either.

Again, stop asking rhetorical questions. The series is now a multimedia franchise, we will get more games, comics, etc. out of it. A series this shallow everywhere but gameplay - more specifically combat of that gameplay - invites banal, boring, material. You already have this with DMC5's main narrative where they want to eat their cake and have it. They want to be wacky wahoo pizza man, and drama, and hyper action and incredibly high number of fanservice rolled in one to a shoddy result. That's the problem. They are already leaning in more heavily into a story focus than they've ever done before with weaker results. It would be better for them to make that part better.
Also, another thing, I do care about the future insofar as where the series should head. Certain things I'd prefer to see than others.

Yea, I'm not antagonistic, I like these games, I wouldn't be here if I didn't. These sort of criticisms aren't new from my perspective either. Even sticking to others who like these games, some, like Matthewmatosis, who gamingbritshow likes, also leveraged these same criticisms. Lol, I remember him cringing when DMC5 was announced because he's like he doesn't want to see goofball Old man Dante and he probably has one of the most watched DMC1 videos ever. Even Kamiya didn't like parts of DMC4 either, don't think I've ever seen him particularly positive about that game. All of this was pre-Netflix.
 
just asking if people are interested in the MU (Its just for fun thatsall). I assume some ppl here played RE so I was checking for more active supporters.
 
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