Back in July of 2022, I played through Devil May Cry 3… at least most of it.
Since then, I’ve been meaning to write about it but I just didn’t have quite the time to do so just yet, sadly… until now at least.
For anyone that doesn’t know about it: Devil May Cry follows a Nephilim named Dante on his quest to kill a bunch of demons. It’s a Hack and Slash adventure with a bunch of different games (1-5) and even a reboot in the form of DMC: Devil May Cry, a title I may write about in the future.
Anyhow, in DMC3, Dante and his brother Vergil are battling it out on top of a tower – but there is someone else pulling a bunch of strings. Interesting stuff.
I was quite excited about Devil May Cry 3, especially after the disappointment of Devil May Cry 2, because many people told me that the series would “start to get good after DMC3”, so I trusted them and… yes, DMC3 is pretty great.
Btw, the one female character in the game is still not written well. They didn’t even try. Dante calls her Lady throughout the game because she doesn’t want to tell him her name… and in the end, she throws away her actual name and assumes the name of Lady… which I found iffy as a plot point.
Frankly, there were a lot of changes that I liked. For starters, the combat system has been overhauled completely with a “style” system that essentially lets you use different moves depending on what style you use. Gunslinger is obviously about utilizing guns whereas other styles are based on guarding/parrying, lots of damage, or lots of style points/combo meter progress – although mostly focusing on melee abilities.
All of these “styles” can then be levelled up to unlock new combos, attacks, and interactions… which is pretty great in theory due to the variety in playstyles but in practice, it’s kinda grindy to level these up. Oh well.
You can switch weapons on the fly, btw. You may equip two melee weapons and two ranged weapons and switch between them whenever you want. Melee weapons typically drop from specific bosses that you fight and include a bunch of incredibly cool options from an electric bat-slinging guitar-scythe to dual swords that control wind and fire… to nunchucks that also do ice damage and summon crystals when used correctly.
DMC3’s main selling point is probably the freedom you have in terms of gameplay styles and weapons. Your arsenal is filled with cool shit to use the beat the crap out of enemies… and it’s a lot of fun.
As previously mentioned, equipping a total of four weapons at a time and then using different combos based on the style you’re going for makes for a lot of variety and there should be something for every person here… Trickster is about agility and dodging and I found it to not only be quite helpful but also pretty fun to use. Swordmaster had the most DPS, as far as I know, so I used that one primarily. Gunslinger is just about guns… so whatever… and Royal Guard is all about parrying enemies, blocking damage in the process and dealing good damage to the enemy – but it requires good timing and nerves of steel.
Also, there are other styles found later on that are quite interesting. One of them “Doppelganger” lets you summon a clone that apparently can be controlled by a second player. Similarly, you can also play as Vergil who also has different weapons and styles.
Combat’s pretty great but I disliked in DMC3 how you just didn’t really have any combos on some weapons and no real skill ceiling if you played something like “Gunslinger”, at least in my opinion. On top of that, I found the difficulty setting to spike up quite a bit at some points… and other times, I’d get bored with level designs and just hordes of enemies requiring some beating, idk.
Anyhow, as always, the soundtrack is amazing. Don’t really have much to say about that…
And well,… I didn’t actually beat the game. I played through all of it up until the final boss… and I stopped playing there because the final boss is just… so… darn… frustrating… UGH.
Whoever thought of that final boss just doesn’t value people’s time. Look, you basically fight against this demon guy who assumes Sparda’s form (Vergil’s and Dante’s father) to unleash the demon world through a portal… but it’s too much for him to handle, so he turns into this blobby mess of a demon… and in the end, you fight against it with the help of Vergil who isn’t really much of a help… at all.
The Blob Guy is a huge damage sponge with attacks that are quite hard to dodge and with many attacks that just take… SO… MUCH… DARN… TIME… until they’re done and then you have to kinda wait for him to re-assimilate into the blob so that you can then damage him again. And when you fail, there isn’t really a checkpoint and you go back to the start of the fight, not necessarily to some sort of half-way mark or Stage or whatever… it just sucks.
So, I refused to try more than those four or five hours I tried. Fuck this game’s final boss.
Overall, DMC3 was a massive improvement over DMC2 and I’m excited to eventually play DMC: Devil May Cry (again) before then playing DMC4.
I did play DMC: Devil May Cry (the reboot/retelling of Dante’s origin story) in the past and really enjoyed it. It’s quite short but incredibly edgy and just a ton of fun. I loved a lot of the ideas that were in place here and I’ve been meaning to play it again on stream. Once I’ve played that, I’ll probably play DMC4 which released two years later… and which I haven’t played at all yet.
For now, though, I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on Devil May Cry 3. Surprised I haven’t played it until July? What did you think of it? Did you actually beat it? Let me know!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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