Hard as nails, but oh so stylish

First off, this is the very beginning of the story, dating back before the first devil may cry. If you haven't played the first or second, the story will flow just as well.

Like a lot of other people have said, the second devil may cry left a bitter taste in my mouth that could not be forgotten. It wasn't a bad game, but it was terrible compared to the first. I had my initial doubts about the third release, but eventually (now) i picked it up from a friend for 15 dollars. I liked the first one so much, that I was willing to overlook the tragic disappointment of #2. I popped the disc into my ps2 and let it go not getting my hopes up for another disappointment.

The menu sounds are all the same from the previous two games , why can't capcom come up with some original sounds? they sound so dated. But that was to be expected, I was glad my hopes weren't up. But then I started a new game. I began to change my opinion of what this game was going to be like. Right from the very start, there's high flying action sequences to wow the eye. It was a spectacular cut scene that starts off in the rain with two people fighting (dante, virgil) The action was over the top, something like john woo films but with 10 times the number of impossible stunts. I was amazed at the choreographed action (more on this later).

After all the cut scenes were finally finished, I was greeted by a party of scythe-wielding, psycho-hooded freaks. The first thing I noticed was the responsiveness of the controls that move dante. Every move, every slash, every gun shot was instant, no matter what the last move was. Say if you slashed once, and decided you want to rain bullets onto an enemy, dante will quickly whip out his guns and blast in whatever direction you choose. There's no lag time between weapon slashes and guns. Whatever the player does with the controller, dante will respond immediately without hesitation. But despite dante's godly agility and nimbleness, he dies in a matter of a few hits, contrary to the intro where he takes 5 stabs from scythes. This is possibly the main reason why I grit my teeth every time I die, beucase I know that it's not because of the way dante was designed or cheap shots by the enemy, it's the player that made the mistakes. Every enemy in the game will not attack without warning, even bosses.

So why is this game so hard if their actions are lead by hints to attack? Mainly because of the action that goes on, the player usually doesn't notice the hints. This game requires the player to wisely choose his moves and be in total awareness to not get sliced into 5 pieces. And of course each hit takes off a good portion of dante's life, so initially don't expect to take more than 8 hits per mission and survive. To top it off, the devil triggers in the previous games that made dante stronger and more resistant to attacks, doesn't show up until almost half way through the game. As the game goes on, you can power your character up and choose from 4 different styles to play (and 2 additional styles from unlocking) 2 different sets of melee weapons, and 2 different sets of ranged weapons during a single mission. Different style and weapon combonations can lead to some stylishly devistating combos. A whole range of moves are divided between 5 melee weapons and some among the styles. All the original moves from the first and second game are present in this game. It just depends on the style and weapon chosen. You can equip only 2 melee and ranged weapons at a time and quickly switch between the two sets to mix up the action. With all the fast paced slaughtering of hell's minions, comes a bit of strain on the machine.

Details in this game are quite high, considering the play station 2 is moving on to its 6th year. With the age of the machine, shows the limits of what it can do. When there are 6 or 7 enemies in one room, and you're beating the hell out of them all with the nicely animated weapons, the machine does slow down quite a bit. While the occasions aren't frequent, they do pop up once in a while to slow down the action, especially, when the camera is viewing an enemy coming towards dante. Each time you start or finish a mission, the machine takes it easy and treats the player to a nice cinematic of what's going on.

Cinematics are generally very well done. The character voices are top notch, but dante should have sounded closer to what he sound in the other two games. The only voice that annoys me to no ends is the damn clown. To accompany the voices, the music and sounds are original. The music is very fitting. Everytime there's a battle, the music changes to fast paced metal music, and everytime dante walks though a silent hall, calm music plays. Each foot step is clear and each swing of the sword can be clearly heard. All the sounds in this game are completely original, except for the menu sounds. Every Cinematic is real time rendered. No video (except the opening) are used. The cinematics are fluid and smooth. All the moves of the characters are realistic (again, choreographed) and many times, the action is exciting to watch. many of dante's and sub characters like Lady (Mary) are way over the top, some which are wilder than the matrix. Each cinematic leaves you wanting to know more and see more. Despite the difficulty and some of the past faults like the camera.

And about the camera angle, the player can finally control it to a certain degree. The camera can now be moved using the right analog stick as far as the game will let it go, Which isn't very far but is a nice addition to some of those horrendous camera angles. You can even press the analog stick to have a 3rd person view of the game. Which is sometimes needed. Sometimes things are too big to see, or the camera angle is too steep to see much ahead of what's going on. The camera still isn't as great as it could be. This leads to another element in the difficulty of the game.

Speaking of shoddy camera work, bosses aren't that easy to see in the game even though most of them are ginormously huge. The first boss fight was probably the most difficult in terms of dealing with seeing the boss. The wraith moves around and teleports while the camera stays in the same angle viewing dante. Many times, the boss isn't even on screen but in reality, the boss maybe only 10 feet away and comes charging in for dante's head. Now this first boss is in the second mission of this game. This is within 10-15 minutes ofthe game. And it was hard. I died at least 3 times with over active button mashing. So the learning curve for this game is quite steep.

Many mechanics lead this game to be one hell of a fun game. Powering up dante with red orbs collected from enemies, using as little items as possible, mastering all 6 styles and on and on. Once you learn the ropes of this game, everything becomes clear and easy, almost like a 6th sense where you can tell what the enemies are doing, what is the best approach with which weapon or weapons. It just clicks. everytime you have to backtrack where there's a tough room full of dreaded enemies, you'll learn a little more about how enemies attack and how dante attacks and what he's weak against. Eventually, higher difficulty settings may arouse some interest along with the many combos available. All the moves that were only accessable through the use of devil triggers can now be used (except air raid that allows dante to fly using the guitar weapon) without triggering the devil mode. The only thing devil triggers do this time around is make dante move faster, strengthen his attacks and allows dante to take less damage, which is a very very welcomed thing. Well, there's one more thing that dante can do with the devil trigger, he can fly with the use of the electric guitar which is a nice way to deal with tough enemies. the different styles available leaves it up to the imagination of the player to create off the wall combos.

After beating the game on the number of difficulties available, secrets are unlocked. Secrets that can be unlocked are like extra costumes, super dante with unlimited devil triggers, picture galleries, and video documentary of the shooting of the cinematics. These documentaries show how all the characters are choreographed and it's pretty interesting to watch. There's even a movie that includes an original japanese mock up of the scenes parallel to the game cinematics. There's even a special ending if you kill 100 enemies during the credits at the end. If you didn't like a particular rank in a certain mission, you can replay it without playing through the entire game. This game is definitely worth the 15 dollars I gave to my friend. I've spent a lot more time than the game recorded just because I've retried some missions so many times.

Yes this game is HARD. It's been said, but like everything else, practice makes perfect. Once the player overcomes the learning curve, they may realize that this is a polished piece of work.