Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition

"Rekindled my interest in the series"

I played the original DMC3 last year, and I hated it. Well...I didn't so much as HATE it, but I probably would have given it a 6/10 if I had reviewed it after playing it. Due to the rave reviews on websites and in gaming magazines everywhere, I decided to rent it to see what it would be like. The one thing that got to me (at the time) was the difficulty. Of course, we should all know that the catch behind the game is to learn enemy attack patterns and to use your Style abilities as best as you can. Unfortunately, even when I caught on to the idea, the game was still a frustrating mess for me, with each Boss seeming more and more like they should have been saved till the very end, and the fact that a lot of the game will make you burn a lot of calories in your wrists. Being turned off to this seemingly-exhausting game, I dismissed it upon returning it to the video store and happily erasing the corresponding save file off my memory card.

Fast forward one year later. After the game literally scared off many a gamer due to it's demanding difficulty (many copies of the game were returned to my game retailers simply because of this fact), Capcom decided to wise up and re-release the game as Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition.

GRAPHICS----
I have seen better than this on the PS2, but that doesn't mean the graphics are a slouch. With crisp visuals and high-quality particle effects, the game warrants a good enough supply of eye candy to keep you from rolling your eyes in disgust. You've also got the slick character animations that literally come to life when watching the characters do their thing. There are moments when textures look stale and lifeless (namely the dirty water at the gates just outside Nevan's lair), but that's pretty much all I can say about the graphics that doesn't already speak for themselves.

SOUND----
The sound is, of course, top-notch. You can almost feel the destruction that you trigger as you beat down a legion of demons, listening to your sword slicing through them, to the sound of your guns lobbing round after round into their brainless skulls, and their all-to-entertaining death cries. You know you're doing something when you can't hear your enemies trying to attack you, namely because you've already killed them. But, who can forget the voice acting. Let's get this straight...Capcom isn't necessarily known for loading up their games with respectable voice acting {cough}ResidentEvil{cough}, but this game somewhat gives Capcom some good cred. I certainly wouldn't choose this game out of a line-up of games with superb, over-the-top voice acting (Dante's one-liners are obviously stuck in the 80's), this game certainly beats the voice acting in a lot of the other games I've played, especially from Capcom.

GAMEPLAY/EXTRA FEATURES----
Oh, here we go...the one thing that made me spit on this game before returning it. In the original, fighting became a redundant activity that would eventually lead to a 50-hour marathon boss battle. Here, even though the combat engine hasn't changed much, it's more satisfying here. I mean, I played and beat this game even on the highest difficulties, and pounding enemies just felt better and better. If you're playing on Easy mode (which is actually easy this time), casual gamers will break no sweat at all beating the game. You can literally go through the game whilst depending on one or two health items per level. However, if you play and beat the game on some of the higher difficulties, the Easy mode will start to seem boring, as you're pretty much expecting a challenge since you've worked hard to get past the "big boy" difficulties. But, thanks to Easy mode, you can rely on more trial and error when fighting bosses, and you will be able to learn and examine each enemy's attack patterns. If you've taken good advantage of what you know of your adversaries, you can literally defeat each boss by getting hit only once or twice in the whole fight.

The Easy mode wasn't the only thing to be tweaked. The new Vergil mode puts the gamer in Dante's meglomaniacal brother's boots. Vergil, of course, has a completely different moveset than that of Dante's. Dante can take advantage of one of six different styles he has in the game, not to mention he has access to different kinds of weapons. Vergil, on the other hand, doesn't require much maintenance. He essentially has the same four weapons throughout the game: the Yamato (his Japanese katana that has an insanely wide attack range), Beowulf (which essentially allows him to fist fight with enemies, much like Dante's version of the same weapon), the Force Edge, which allows Vergil to attack enemies in rapid succession by alternating between his Yamato and the actual Force Edge blade (however, it lacks the range of the Yamato by itself, perhaps to keep it balanced), and his Summoned Swords, which serve as his projectile weapons aside from Dante's guns. For some weird reason, the game calls his Summoned Swords "guns," and Vergil doesn't even use one. Along with Dante, Vergil can upgrade himself and his weapons at their local divinity statue, allowing the two to become stronger as the game progresses. However, you can pretty much level up Vergil fully before the game is even over. Though it does prepare you for the battle ahead of you, it's still a wonder why the game bothers to make you level up each individual aspect about yourself when you can level all the way up in such little time. Oh, well. It works, though. One gripe I have is that, even when playing as Vergil, the game fails to actually tell the story from his point of view. You get an introductory cutscene about what he was up to before the craziness started, but that's about it. The game then plunks you into Dante's missions, just with all his cutscenes cut out. You also end up fighting yourself in the boss battles against Vergil (the AI Vergil just has a red overcoat, but his moves and attacks are eerily similar to yours), so it basically ends up being a clone battle.

Another new feature of the game is the addition of the Gold and Yellow modes. Yellow mode isn't new, as it basically works the very same way it did in the original. Basically, you have to buy continues from the divinity statues. If you ever die, you get to start from a checkpoint you last visited as long as you have continues on reserve. If you run out of Yellow orbs, you either have to restart the entire mission over or just quit the mission altogether. Gold mode should make the game less stressful. In this mode, you can buy Gold orbs that allow you to respawn at the very point you had just died. So, if you die during a boss battle, just use a Gold orb and keep on moving. Also in this mode, if you die and you have no Gold orbs left, you can still choose to continue from the last checkpoint you visited, You'll still maintain all the orbs and items you gained (and still lose the ones you wasted), and you will be able to continue to level and back to wherever you just were.

Yet another addition is the Turbo Mode. I didn't really find much difference in the speed-up rate compared to non-turbo and turbo, but it does help make things a little more frantic than they already are.

Yet ANOTHER addition is the Bloody Palace mode. After beating the game once (or already having a DMC3 clear file on your memory card), you'll unlock this mode, which is basically a tournament consisting of 9999 rounds against an entire host of enemies. You don't necessarily fight ALL 9999 of them, unless you've got time, patience, and nerves of pure steel. But, the Bloody Palace is a nice way to burn off two hours or so.

And that brings me to what I thought was the most pointless addition...the Jester boss battles. Yeah, it was cool going through them at first, but after my first playthrough, I just skipped all his battles (except the one you can't skip early in the game). Fighting him is only good enough for a tad bit of comedy, but that's about it. There are no special rewards or secrets to uncover if you do beat him, which is even more reason to just skip his battles.

BOTTOM LINE----
I didn't really insist too much on playing this game, especially after getting turned away from the original. For some, this game is worth a purchase, and with a $20 price tag, you won't necessarily be wasting your money. For others, you should at least rent it for a few days. It's just as much worth a rental aside from a buy. 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/06