 Have you seen the candles? Yeah, so I'm praying to the Devil May Cry gods to give me a new Devil May Cry game. Sorry. You do realize they literally just put one out, right? Oh. Hey, I don't want to interrupt, but I'm still taking your soul, right? Held a very special place in my heart. In fact, sometimes I really wonder if the hack and slash genre is my favorite genre of video game. And it's not because they ever have the best stories or the most fleshed out gameplay, but because most of the time they're just mindless fun. It's hard to screw up a hack and slash game, but it's kind of like mac and cheese. Even bad mac and cheese is still good. But that's not to say you can't make incredible mac and cheese. Like when you go to a fancy restaurant and they bring you that lobster mac and cheese, and it's just the best mac and cheese you've ever had, you can always make it better. So is Devil May Cry 5 my lobster mac and cheese, or is it my craft box mac and cheese that I left on the stove a little bit too long, but I'll still eat it? Well, before I talk about the fifth game, I want to dive down memory lane and talk about the series, because as much as I love hack and slash as a genre, Devil May Cry has always been my shining example of what a hack and slash game should be. Other than this one. We don't talk about this one. I grew up as a Nintendo kid. When I was born, there was an NES in my house, and from there I had Super Nintendo 64, Gamecube, you get the idea. So from early on and even going into my early teenage years, my only real experience with gaming was very lighthearted Nintendo Disney fun. But then one day I went to my friend's house and his older brother had brought home Devil May Cry. It looked very intriguing to me. I'd never heard of it before, but I asked if I could play it. And the opening cutscene was like nothing I'd ever seen in a video game before. It was so over the top and wacky, with the perfect kind of action and humor that I already love, that I became hooked on this style of over the top hack and slash gameplay. Again, as a very family friendly orientated video gamer growing up until that point, there was moments in the original game that blew me away. When Dante finds his rebellion sword and it pierces him through the chest and he falls to the ground, I remember thinking, well, that's a twisty twist. The main character is dead. But as he began to lift himself up off the floor and pull that sword out of his chest, I knew that I had discovered a very special game that I was going to play countless times. The first game and the third game have always been my favorites, but I actually really enjoyed the fourth game as well. I even enjoyed the prequelter. I thought they did a great job on the game in telling Dante's backstory. But when this released, I will admit I was a tiny bit disappointed because I thought that marked the end of the series of Devil May Cry. And then the original developer of the series announced Devil May Cry 5. And I don't think I have to tell you how excited I was. And as the development progressed, I was becoming more and more excited. When the trailers dropped, I was beyond excited. The gameplay looked insane. I remember the main thing I was really hyped about was the hitboxes. I had the feeling that not only will this be the best Devil May Cry game yet, but it may truly be the best hack and slash game we've ever seen. And then we started to hear about microtransactions. And my heart started to sink a tiny bit. And then about a week ago Capcom was nice enough to actually give me a review code for the game so that I could play it a little early. I began playing the game and literally immediately. Immediately. Any worry that I had, any fear that I had that maybe this game won't live up to any kind of standard that I personally set, fell away as I began enjoying the experience. Everything from the setting to the story to the gameplay exceeded my expectations and instantly solidified itself as my favorite hack and slash game of all time. Without freaking question. Let's start with the story. This game may as well have taken a page out of Smash Brothers book and called itself Devil May Cry Ultimate. You got Dante, you got Neo, you got Trish Stratus, you got Naked Ladies. You even got some new characters making a cameo like Chris Angel and that one chick from Final Fantasy 15. No, but honestly it was really cool seeing all these characters come together with a purpose. That purpose being the strongest demon we've seen in a Devil May Cry game yet and everyone coming together to take this thing down but each with their own reason for doing so and stories that intertwine with each other. We actually have a larger than life grand story that's more than just two characters stuck in a rivalry or one character trying to take down a demon. And on top of that in my opinion this is the first Devil May Cry game where all of this crazy stuff is happening in the real world and it's actually having an effect on the civilians. You see innocent people on the street getting speared by tentacles. You see army guys losing their lives trying to take down the demons and Nero actually coming in and saving the day. I adore the character of Nero in this game. I really enjoyed him in the fourth game but I always felt like there was a depth to his character that was missing and they definitely fleshed that out in this game. Again I don't want to go on a spoiler so I guess I'll leave the story here as much as I want to dive into it more. Visually this game is gorgeous interestingly but I guess not too surprisingly the graphical style of it really reminded me of Resident Evil 2. Obviously these are both Capcom games so it's not too surprising they share a similar visual style. Devil May Cry has a lot more abstract style to it. Some of the levels where you can see off into the distance and all of the earth and the buildings being raised up around this giant tree that's forming it's absolutely gorgeous to look at. And then all the visual effects from the combat and then the enemy designs. There's always something to look at. No part of this game wasn't visually stimulating and I love that most of the environment is destructible or interactable in some way. You can slash shoot or destroy almost every object in the environments. There was one level in a library and as I was fighting I was hitting the bookshelves and I realized that books were falling out of the shelves. So many nice little details like that that were animated so well that make the entire world feel alive and not just some generic hack and slash where you're progressing through just random boring levels. And honestly it was that moment with the bookshelves that I really started to pay attention to every little detail and I realized how much love, effort, and care really went into this game in every aspect. The levels never got stale whether you were platforming or exploring or hacking away at enemies there was always something new around every corner. And a level design that was very unique and I didn't expect is that some of these levels you can actually pick which character you play as. Sometimes you can pick between two characters or three of the characters and depending on who you pick you will play the level in a different way and something ingenious that they added to that is a cameo system where if you're playing online it'll really quickly, really seamlessly and easily I don't even notice it add people into your game that are playing as those other characters in the different parts of that game. And there's a lot of parts in the levels where those areas meet up and you can actually see other players playing as those characters fighting off in the background and the distance or even right next to you. It doesn't interfere with your game it doesn't interrupt it it doesn't affect it in any way it's just really cool to see. Stop and watch their gameplay style and see how they played that character differently to me. Just another one of those extra details and extra effort put into the game to make it something special and it adds a ton of replayability. I lost count of the insane, unique and exciting boss battles you have in this game it was just awesome. And it seemed like every level starts and ends with a really cool cutscene that keeps you invested in the game. It felt like finishing a great episode of a TV show and getting that cliffhanger at the end of every level and then just wanting to start the next one so you see that opening cutscene and then you of course get hooked into playing again. The story was delivered perfectly that way with just the right amount of twist and turns to keep you playing. And I think that's everything I can gush about without going into the gameplay so let's not put that off anymore and attempt tackling it because there is so much going on in the gameplay it's so complex with so many different gameplay styles it's gonna be a challenge to break down and let me try it. So there are three playable characters in this game Nero, Dante and V. You will of course be familiar with Dante and then possibly even Nero if you played the fourth game but V is a new character with an all new gameplay style. So let's start by talking about Nero and how he plays. If you played the fourth game you'll remember that Nero has a demonic arm which he can use to smash bash and crash enemies around with Well very early on in this story you find out that he's lost that arm and if you've seen any of the gameplay trailers or you played the demo of this game you'll know that now he uses a bunch of mechanical arms. I believe there was eight unlockable mechanical arms but there's a ton and they all do very different things. The main one that you'll see in the trailers and the promotional shots are the electric palm arm, bad with names which shoots off a huge burst of electricity. The other more common arm is the one that I love the most and it's called and it allows you to cancel out of any move with a huge gust of momentum blowing you in any direction that you wish. If you do it towards an enemy you'll actually swoop him up with you and you can start attacking him in the air and for those that just preferred the way that Nero used to play with his normal regular demon arm there's actually a devil bringing a mechanical arm you can equip which just turns you back into that. You can play the old school way and I'm not going to ruin what all of the arms do but obviously depending on what arm you use it kind of drastically changes your gameplay style. So on top of all the different arms Nero has he has a sword and the way he uses his sword is very familiar to the way that Dante uses his sword but there's an added mechanic of Nero sword the red queen has an engine in it which is cool and if you spam left trigger when you're not in battle you can charge up the engine which will do massive hits of damage when you attack next and you can get an ability that I highly recommend unlocking as soon as you can and perfecting being able to use it and it is hard because it requires perfect timing but when you attack if you hit the left trigger at the right time you'll get an instant charge on the red queen if you time it right after every attack you'll just constantly have that boost it's incredibly difficult to master and it's kind of a gameplay style all on its own you don't really have too much time to think about anything else other than maybe dodging but it's really cool and really unique. So that's how Nero plays V is very different he doesn't have much body strength himself so he relies on his shadows to attack he has an eagle shadow a key cat shadow and then a big beast shadow. V not having much strength of his own uses these characters to attack however they can actually finish and kill an enemy so once they're down and out that's when V swoops in and finish the job. So really playing as V is all about micro managing these characters sitting back in the distance and trying to take any damage it's a real balancing act playing as V and honestly I love it. I definitely wouldn't want to play a whole game with his gameplay style I feel like it would get tedious after a while but V has more than enough unlockable abilities just like all three of the characters to keep the gameplay fresh and interesting as long as you keep investing and unlocking new things and you don't have to use him as much as the other two characters so that helps him not get too stale. And then lastly there's Dante who by far has the most complex gameplay mechanics. There are several different ways to play this character. Okay there's so much going on with this character I don't even know where to begin. Okay to start with his main gameplay gimmick is he has these four different styles. Trickster, Swordmaster, Gunsmith and Royal Guard I believe they're all cool. For the most part all four of these different gameplay styles will change up what the B button does if you're playing on Xbox and probably the circle on PlayStation. Having Trickster selected will make it so that you can dash in a direction really quickly. Having Royal Guard selected will make it so that you guard any attack. Having Gunsmith selected makes it so whatever gun you have equipped at that moment when you press that button you'll do some kind of fancy with it like the shotgun you'll spin around you firing shots at every enemy. And it's a similar situation with the Swordmaster where when you press the B button any sword or melee weapon you have equipped you'll do some kind of crazy with it. That mechanic in itself creates four very different unique gameplay styles just with this one character. And then on top of that Dante is known for being filled with more gadgets than Inspector Gadget. You unlock four or five different guns and four or five different weapons throughout your playthrough in this game. Most of my favorite weapons come in later in the game and I I just I don't for me that's one of the best parts of the game is discovering these weapons and experiencing them for the first time and the way you get these weapons so I'm just not even gonna talk about it although I wish I could. I don't want to ruin anything but geez that's like the craziest and coolest part of the game. So as you can imagine between the four different styles and all the different weapons and what the weapons do depending on which style you have equipped it just create so many different kinds of gameplay styles from the one character and it's why he's so difficult to master because sometimes different situations and different enemies really cool for very different combinations. So I would say it's more than fair to call the gameplay in this game extremely ambitious because they created three very different styles of hack and slash gameplay in the one game hoping that players enjoyed every style and I know personally I did and I hope that everyone enjoys it the same way I did and you can tell a lot of love effort and work went into perfecting all three of these styles and making them feel unique and different enough while still not being jarringly different and feeling like it doesn't belong in the game. There wasn't a single part of this game in my first play through that I didn't feel like something new was happening in that part of the game. I never felt like I had the same fight twice I never felt like I beat a similar boss twice I never felt like I was beating a similar wave of enemies twice it constantly through fresh and new ideas at me throughout the entire experience. The gameplay is super crazy tight the hitboxers are as crazy as they look like they were in the gameplay trailer I didn't have to spend any money on the game whatsoever on top of the well I got it for free I did buy it after the fact but I didn't have to spend any money on top of buying the base game if you're a fan of hack and slash games you owe it to yourself to play this game because it is by far the best hack and slash game I've ever played and if you are a fan of devil may cry you need to play this game it ties all the story that's ever existed in devil may cry universe together in one cohesive story you do such a great story and again the gameplay anything you've ever loved from any of the games in the series was made better in this game I am incredibly impressed also I'm just impressed with capcom because this is the second capcom game this year that exceeded my expectations and blew me away and I have to say I think I've been disappointed by every other big release this year from any other studio I hope this spells really cool things for capcom's future all I can say is devil may cry 5 was freaking awesome if you're on the fence if you're thinking about getting it if it looks like something you might enjoy you definitely will if you like this video or you learn a little something please have flip all over that subscribe button click or tap on this video right here I really appreciate it smash that like button while you're going down there too that funny