Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition Review – Review
Careful not to cut yourself on the edge.
Devil May Cry 5 is the latest in a growing trend of impressive RE Engine titles on Switch 2. In fact this may just be Capcom’s best performing Switch 2 port thus far. Devil May Cry 5 manages to hold up well, not just as a Switch 2 port, but as one of the most performant versions of this game released on consoles in general.
When a demonic tree sprouts up in the middle of town, the world turns to all the edgiest folks they can find to take care of it. Devil May Cry 5 sees you taking on the role of four different characters, each with their own unique control style. You’ll start the game as Nero, before also gaining access to V, and later Dante. The Switch 2 version also includes the option to play as Vergil who was originally presented as DLC. Each character has their own playstyle and upgrade trees. For the most part, they all feel like variations on similar ideas. A blend of close and long range attacks, with each one having some sort of unique gimmick. Nero has a swappable mechanical arm, and Dante has multiple fighting styles. The exception to this is V who, rather than fighting directly, controls two other characters. These characters, a demonic bird and panther, have their attacks mapped to Y and X respectively. I enjoyed learning V’s combat system specifically because of the challenge of essentially managing multiple attack combos at once. While the rest of the cast felt like iterations of the same idea, V is a legitimately unique combat experience. This is not to say the rest of the characters are not fun to play, it’s just that they all feel like slightly different interpretations of the same concept. Dante doesn’t feel like a different character from Nero, he just feels like a slightly more complicated version of Nero.
Level design is linear with limited opportunities for exploration. There are hidden collectibles for expanding your health and buying upgrades, along with hidden challenge stages. These stages will generally ask you to complete a set task like destroying a certain number of enemies or achieving something in a set time limit. I did notice however that Devil May Cry 5 abides by the Skyward Sword system of item notifications. Every rare collectible you pick up will cause the game to stop and tell you what it is, even if you already have an inventory full of them. That being said, I did enjoy exploring each of these levels. Despite a general focus on dark, dingy hellscapes, there is a surprising amount of visual variety. The occasional character shifts between chapters means that you are also often switching to entirely different parts of the world, keeping the aesthetics fresh.
The story of Devil May Cry 5 – and I say this with the deepest respect to the franchise’s legacy – is stupid. With perhaps the exception of Dante, I struggled to find a well written or particularly likeable member of the cast. The plot, while it jumps around a timeline constantly, is always predictable. This isn’t necessarily a huge problem, as the actual gameplay is very solid. However, Devil May Cry 5 seems dedicated to incessantly pulling you out of that gameplay for well choreographed but narratively shallow cutscenes. Once again, they’re all excellently produced, and character rendering holds up incredibly well all these years after release. The story itself just isn’t particularly compelling.
What has impressed me is the Switch 2 port itself. Devil May Cry 5 originally released on Xbox One and PS4 before being updated and re-released on the following generation of hardware. The Switch 2 manages to not only deliver on a fairly uncompromised visual presentation (especially compared to the PS4 and Xbox One original) but do it at up to 120 frames-per-second. And compared to Capcom’s Switch 2 ports of more recent titles like Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, Devil May Cry 5 also stands out in terms of image quality. This is just an incredibly well done port. And its fairly short segmented level structure makes it a surprisingly good fit for handheld play.
Devil May Cry 5 is a fun romp with a story that is unlikely to leave a lasting impression despite its best efforts to present compelling cutscenes. The cast of playable characters could perhaps be slimmed down to two, in order to focus-in on unique gameplay for each one. Regardless, the moment to moment gameplay is fun with fluid combat and plenty of spectacle. The Switch 2 port specifically is one of Capcom’s best efforts on the system. While not as graphically demanding as some of their more recent titles, this is still a gorgeous game that has been translated excellently to Switch 2.
