Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening

"The Handsome Devil returns"

After the failure that was Devil May Cry 2, I did not expect a sequel. But lo and behold, it is here. The primary outlook of Devil May Cry 3 (DMC) was change and improvement. The developers had taken what had been good about the second game and the first and churned out a better product. This is obvious as it stems from its stylish action game and really capitalizes on this fact.

How is this capitalized? The first that really fits is the Style system. This is mainly the use of the action button that performs a sort of style that depends on the preference of the player. The basic four are the Swordmaster, Gunslinger, the Trickster and Royal Guard. The action button performs what the different style that is selected. For example, the Trickster allows the player to dodge an enemy imminent attack, while the Swordmaster stems its strength from the ability to help players chain more attacks using the action button. With careful and persistent training these styles will eventually level up into better proportions. However, past the action button, there is no real benefits to this. The Gunslinger style does not inherently give any additional power to the guns nor will the Royal Guard grant Dante with additional passive damage control. This makes the style system less fleshed out and should probably be looked at soon. However, this at least makes it not repetitive in battles as styles can be switched out in the beginning or (in special conditions) during the mission.

And oh, how exciting the battles already are. The action itself gives the game an already nailed down purchase for anyone. As before, the stylish action makes a smart return with newer and expanded weapon selection as well as moves. The mere mention of the number of weapons is staggering. 10 weapons with different play styles and permutations only serve to intensify the degree of action and adventure. The weapons too are unique to their playstyle. The Rebellion which gives people a good starting weapon due to its sheer simplicity and easy combos to the slow but utterly damaging Beowulf gives players more choices in the fighting style. Meet a bunch of Hell Greeds? Take out the Nevan and start playing away. See a fast boss? Agni and Rudra or the Cerberus would prove to be very useful. Each weapon governs its own combos and moves sets which can be bought from the local Ancient Clan vendor. Do not worry about redundant moves, for each would display their usefulness especially when faced with the Stylish system (notice the sure amount of milking of the word “style”? Thought so.) More on the stylish later. The moves themselves stems from direction of the character and it is easy to be able to perform these moves so it should not be worrisome about that issue. Lest we forget, the firearms. These are the featured side weapons that reveal mainstay characteristics. The common twin pistols and shotgun coupled with various returns with a different skin. All this makes for a lot of variety and thus makes the battles fun for most of the parts. Why not all? Because the fact that only 2 of each type of weapons restricts the amount of variety that one can take into battle. Granted, this allows more strategic use of given weapons and also less stress on the developer's side but it disallows creativity during battles. All said, the stylish action that is the de facto of DMC makes its return with a better follow up and nothing that the first sequel could ever hope to achieve. A very tired complain about the game is that it is a difficult game to master. Difficult is just another word for people who want to give up and only find that the fault. With careful mastery of the system of action it is not very hard to best enemies and bosses alike once the battles are gotten used to. Although yes the easy difficulty presents a challenge rarely seen in most games, it probably is for the better. This is an action game where reflexes and quickness of mind are the order of the day. If such skills are lacking then it would be better to stick with less speed intensive games which can be found in other genres.

To complement this action would be to feature graphics that blow the mind. This really is an upgrade of DMC 2 where the graphics traces back to its roots to the very first where darker themes and palettes are used to enhance the mood of the whole devil theme. The cutscenes in between missions are also well done and over-the-top. One problem, however, is the useless and often frustrating camera angles that spoil the fun. The most frustrating aspect has to be this. The problem is not that the camera cannot be adjusted, but the angle starts out BAD and the necessity to change it would only prevent players from starting to kill enemies as well as the avoid taking damage while wrestling with the angles. All said, while the aspect of graphics is beautiful, it has not reached its full stylish potential by the terrible problem with camera.

With the graphics that are oh-so pretty, the music well helps to enhance the action and the intensity of combat and dishing out stylish cremation. While not as powerful as DMC with its repertoire of music such as Lock and Load and the amazing boss theme, the BMG in DMC 3 is still good. Nothing much to comment, but the music still retains its Metal origins and worth the hum-along, although the remixed Lock and Load still beats out the rest of the soundtrack(even with its scant 3 seconds of playback).

The missions of the game is sadly not very well planned. The problem with the game is that it suffers a repercussion of short-long-short-long kind of pattern. Like the mission of beating the Brothers is terribly long, but the mission after involves a 10 minute battle, claim an item and its almost done. This is further supplemented with the ungodly set up of continuation. If Dante should fall, he would have to start all the way at the beginning of the level, and if luck permits he holds the yellow orb which places him back to the start of the room, having to redo the whole scene with full life and devil trigger. Gone is the fact that the yellow orb simply revives him at the moment he dies. Still, this only gives the player one option: to be a better player/ dodger. If the player does not grasp this concept, then getting this game should be out of the question. If, however, the player does get better the satisfaction of completing the room is ever so lovely. Although the missions are badly planned, it is still fun and the short missions are probably “breather” periods to loosen the tightness that came the mission before.

With so much to do and so much fun to be had, it is no surprise that people should give it a definite spin. The problems of difficulty may plague some but overall the experience is top grade.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/05