This article starts by stating the obvious, and what you already know by now. It’s a universally known fact that Devil May Cry 5 is an all-round amazing action game and one of the greatest showcases of the hack-n-slash genre. It’s right up there with the very best in the series and is a colossal improvement over it’s predecessor DMC 4 is every single way. It’s also far more modular and layered in ways that make it both accessible for newcomers and challenging for players who are well familiar with the signature playstyle of the series, which is a great feat by itself. Overall, DMC 5 is as great as a sequel can possibly be, and simply a must-play for anyone who loves the genre.
But that’s not what this article is about, rather it will focus on a far more subjective aspect of the game, and something that I had felt way back when the early gameplay demos and trailers had hit the Internet. Although it wasn’t until several years that I actually got around playing the game in it’s entirety, and yet even after that, it only re-affirmed what I had felt all those years ago. And I was also genuinely surprised to find not much of any discussions or analysis about such glaring shift that took place in this game which kind of ended up distancing itself from the previous entries in ways that’s quite unexpected and far more important to the series as a whole.
It’s the radical change in tone in DMC 5, which is far more darker and ghastlier than anything the series has ever seen up to this point. If you look at the history of the series, DMC has always had a consistent anime-meets-videogame blend of style and a lighthearted but sincere tone to match. That’s one of the reasons why an anime adaptation of the series felt so integral, although how it actually turned out is a topic onto it’s own. But stylistically, DMC (especially 3 and 4) has always been fairly consistent and you could actually see how Dante in DMC 4 was a natural evolution of his younger self in DMC 3 and the rest of the characters along with the world design completely felt in tune with all of it.
From the mountain-covered Fortuna City in DMC 4 to the Timen Neguru in DMC 3, the art direction of the series was always rooted in fantasy-inspired themes which DMC 5 completely did away with as it went for a newer, hyper-realistic artstyle which ended up looking and feeling far more brutal and darker than anything we’ve seen from the series. The locations felt more macabre (same with the enemies) with copious amounts of blood and all sorts of shenanigans that went with it. Even some of the humour felt overly repulsive and borderline disturbing, which was really a first time in the series.
And unlike all the previous games in the series, DMC 5 was a Hard R experience from start to finish. It felt really odd seeing this kind of massive shift in tone in these characters whom we’ve become so familiar with for more than a decade. And as a result, most of it did end up feeling really out of place, for me at least.
Thankfully, both Dante and Vergil have remained their faithful selves in this game, so no complaints there. But Nero felt way too different than how he was in DMC 4, and while his much inflated aggression may have a lot to do with him losing his arm during the earlier events of the game’s timeline, but still Nero came up a lot different than his DMC 4 self, which included his looks and overall personality as well.
Ultimately, DMC 5 had a distinct tone to it that really separated itself from what we’ve largely seen from the series as a whole, but as a longtime fan, I have to say that this shift did feel rather inessential and frankly, distracting. It was also genuinely surprising seeing these characters churning up stuff that felt way too different than their previous selves in the past games. In the end, this stylistic departure from the earlier titles came out of nowhere, hit pretty hard and honestly, felt really uncalled for.
But overall, as a game, DMC 5 did outweigh it’s tonal issues so much that they can’t really mar the experience or stick out enough to detract the player too much. Gameplay-wise, it’s a real Hurrah that the decades-old franchise needed and did put it back at the very top of videogame action spectacle. But as a longtime fan of the series and it’s characters, these tonal anomalies do come across as unnecessary and something that really could’ve been done away with. Like surely DMC 5 couldn’t really have become any less if it didn’t have that Hard R tone and all the crass humor in it. And even though it’s not enough to take you out of the experience, it’s still something worth writing about.
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