Devil May Cry 2

"A Detailed Review of DMC2"

Why Devil May Cry 2 doesn't quite cut it:

Devil May Cry was a masterpiece. It was an excellent example of what an action game should be, with an engine that emphasized fast-paced action, cool moves, and above all, fun. Devil May Cry 2 is the sequel to this amazing game.

Now, I'm not foolish enough to expect a new game to be true to the original. I expect changes, and I expect to judge the new game as an entirely separate entity.

However, with Devil May Cry 2, it can't be done. Devil May Cry was amazing. It wasn't just an action game. It was cool. Dante made sarcastic comments to bosses, and you could eventually become so skilled that no attack could ever hit you.

Because of the fact that Devil May Cry defined a new kind of game, the sequel had to somehow hold on to that magic. But sadly, it doesn't.

Now, I'll warn you: This review may contain minor spoilers. I promise that they won't destroy the experience of playing this game for yourself, whether you like the game or not. I will divulge no plot information, nor will I spoil anything that would make you say ''Cool!'' It simply isn't possible to talk about the pros and cons of this game without mentioning minor things that could be interpreted as spoilers.

Before I go ripping into the game(which may take some time) I'll list off what I did like about Devil May Cry 2.

The game has very little story, but what little story it does have is enjoyable. Still, the story won't get in your way if you are simply looking to play through a fun action game.

The games graphics and sound are akin to the first game. For the PS2, the graphics are about the average that you would expect from a big name company like Capcom. Sometimes a character's clothing will pass through another part of their body, but I think that it's a fair price to pay for characters that wear cool, flowing outfits. As far as the sound, I have absolutely no complaints. The sound fit the ambience the entire time.

The game takes about 5 hours to play through with a single character, although with replays through the various difficulty levels, a player can easily rack up around 30 hours on this game. Special endurance modes add to the replayability of the game.

The best feature of Devil May Cry 2 is an extra mode called the Bloody Palace. In this mode, you can take your characters from the normal game and battle through what is basically an enhanced survival mode dungeon. You start in room 1, and fight all the enemies there. However, after every room, you are offered the choice of 3 portals to enter. One leads to the next level, one leads 10 levels up, and the last leads up 100 levels.

However, the levels aren't set. That is, depending on the ''path'' you take through the Bloody Palace, your enemies will be different at different levels. A person who plays all the levels from 1 to 11 will have a different level 11 than a person who plays level 1 and then jumps 10 levels to 11. This gives the Bloody Palace an amazing amount of variety.

Also, on multiples of 10, you get to fight bosses from the real game. Sometimes these bosses have normal enemies or even other bosses helping them out. It's very fun to see what you get to put yourself up against.

Now, I've heard that the Dungeon goes up to level 9999, but I've only reached about 1300. However, I'll tell you, if there's one thing that saves this game, it's the Bloody Palace, which is why I've rambled on for so long about it.

The other thing I like is the use of multiple kinds of enemies in the same area. Devil May Cry would never mix enemies, but DMC2 is bold enough to do so, which makes the game quite fun and adds some strategy at points. Different combinations can be tricky to battle.

Now it's time to focus on the most important aspect of any game: gameplay. Sadly, this is where the review takes a turn for the worse...

Reasons why Devil May Cry 2 doesn't cut it:

---1. Underwater levels ---

In Devil May Cry, there were first-person water levels where you could shoot lizards with the Needlegun. It wasn't ever especially hard, and it was actually pretty fun to have an underwater interlude every now-and-then. However, Devil May Cry 2's water levels are amazingly different.

For starters, the action is 3rd person. In a game that is supposed to be about non-stop action, your movements and actions are ridiculously slow. To top it all off, the camera is fairly poor, which makes navigation difficult.

However, with all of these great features already in place, the (clever) designers of this game decided that the only thing that would make this game any more fun would be a battle with a giant fish.

This isn't just any fish, though. It can turn invisible(though the player can see where it is), and when this happens it can't be targeted. This means that there is almost no way to hit it, because there is no way to manually aim underwater. Additionally, the fish turns very well, swims fast, and has a massive life bar. This isn't that much of a problem until the later difficulty levels when he never(no exaggeration) becomes visible, meaning that it is virtually impossible to hit him.

This is by far the least fun experience I have ever had gaming. In all honesty, the person in charge of this boss should be fired, because they obviously weren't concentrating on what they should have had in mind the entire time: making the game fun to play.

---2. Simple enemies ---

In Devil May Cry, enemies were all very cool. They usually had a wide variety of attacks and cool tricks associated with them, all of which were stored away in enemy files that you could collect. The depth of the enemies in the game, as well as the multitude of the possible ways that Dante could interact with them, were part of what made the game fun.

In Devil May Cry 2, there are around 50 enemies. However, none of them are very interesting, and many of them are simply more difficult versions of other enemies with new colors. Enemies usually have 1 or 2 attacks, and there isn't much creativity in trying to battle them: avoid their simple attacks while hitting them with any of your weapons.

Enemies also never deal much damage. Even bosses don't take much off your health meter. It's fairly easy to shrug off attacks that deal no damage, meaning that there is no consequence for playing poorly. If the player doesn't feel like they have to try, they'll realize that whatever they do doesn't really matter, and that's not fun.

This leads us to our next point...

---3. Lack of perfection ---

This is a bit harder to explain. In the original Devil May Cry, it was possible to learn to play the game so well that you would never be hit by any attack from anything. Anyone who has played through all of the difficulty modes of Devil May Cry will know what I'm talking about. At later difficulties, players would be forced to learn how the game worked to the point where they were perfect, because getting hit by a single attack usually meant that you lost a third of your life.

However, enemies in Devil May Cry 2 deal very tiny amounts of damage. To make up for this, the designers decided that they would make it much more possible for the player to get hit. This is accomplished by firing ridiculous amounts of projectiles from offscreen, or by surrounding the player with 10 enemies that randomly pounce. Additionally, the player can now be juggled by enemies. If there's anything that screams ''fun'' in a game, it would have to be punishing a player for getting hit by an attack generated by a random number.

Because the action is no longer cool and controlled, but is no wild and silly, it isn't possible to master the game in the same way that a person could master Devil May Cry. Attaining mastery feels good, and it's something players of Devil May Cry 2 will never feel.

---4. Weapon Levels ---

In Devil May Cry, you would gather Red Orbs by defeating enemies. These orbs could be spent to purchase amazing new special moves or demonic powers for Dante. In Devil May Cry 2, these orbs are used to level up your weapons.

When I say level up, I don't mean anything special. Leveling up a weapon doesn't give it any new cool moves, doesn't change it's shape, and really doesn't do anything that is really noticeable. What is does do is make your weapons stronger.

Devil May Cry was an amazing action game. Welcome to Devil May Cry 2, the silly action-RPG.

---5. No Cool ---

Dante used to be the coolest guy in the world. He was a toughie, and he always had a clever way to taunt bosses. However, this new Dante doesn't have the attitude he used to. He almost seems depressed. Almost all of the bosses will battle Dante without speaking a word, and the few that say anything don't produce any memorable lines.

Dante used to have a barrage of cool moves, too. He could do amazing things when fighting enemies, and when Dante Devil Triggered he was a force to be reckoned with. In Devil May Cry 2, Dante has really lost his touch. Stinger doesn't travel nearly as far. The amazing Devil Trigger attacks are gone, replaced with slow sword attacks and rapid-fire guns. Dante is actually cooler in this game when he is NOT in Devil Trigger.

Devil May Cry claimed to be a new genre: ''Stylish Hard Action.'' Devil May Cry 2 just isn't.

---6. 2 Characters, 1.5 Games ---

While the game has 2 characters, they play almost exactly the same, end up visiting many of the same places and fight many of the same enemies. In fact, the games are more similar than they are different. Perhaps that's not a terrible thing, but for someone who is trying to beat all of the difficulty modes, it means playing through some of the not-so-fun parts of the game(and there are quite a few) 6 or more times.

---7. No Super Dante ---

There's not much to explain on this one. In the first game, if you beat all the difficulty modes(which was quite a challenge), you were rewarded with Super Dante, which was Dante with an infinite supply of Devil Energy. This was a great reward, and it really felt good to receive it after all of the work it took to earn it.

However, when I finally beat Devil May Cry 2 on the final difficulty with both characters, I received nothing special, save for a message stating how great I was. After fighting that stupid fish(yes, I truly hate the fish), I felt like I deserved more.

As a gamer, in the end, I was left unfulfilled.

---8. Other qualms ---

-Poor camera at times
-Low level of difficulty overall, even in supposedly ''hard'' modes
-Near-worthless poison status effect

---Conclusion---

In conclusion, Devil May Cry 2 isn't a terrible game. I'm giving it a 7, which puts it ahead of most of the worthless games out there. For the most part, I had a pretty good time playing this game, and it was played for quite a few hours as well.

However, as a hardcore gamer, a 7 isn't really worth my time, especially when I was expecting to play the awesome sequel to one of the greatest action games ever made. It's probably worth a rental. The only reason to buy it would be if you really get in to the Bloody Palace.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/05/03, Updated 02/05/03