So I was talking with a friend at the local bar, while engaging in some hardcore underage drinking. Just kidding. Anyway, we were discussing very serious topics concerning global economic stability, when the conversation veered off towards an equally important topic: the recent release of Devil May Cry 3. We had heard many good things about this game already, although neither of us had ever played a DMC game before. That's when he suggested that diving into the DMC series for the first time at this moment would be a good experience, and that it would be fun if we played DMC at the same time. So that's how I decided to buy the first Devil May Cry of the series.

It's a tiny bit old, but can still be found quite easily as it is for the PS2. It's also rated M because of blood and violence, but that's all it has. This action game will be reviewed on the 1-10 scale.

Story: 3

There are beautifully executed stories which inspire you, and there are badly executed ones which are just forgettable. And then there are ones so bad you actually WANT to forget about them. This game leans more towards the latter. It's not horrible enough that you want to forget it, but it sure comes pretty close. In execution only, mind you. The story itself has potential: You are Dante, a very skilled yet cocky half human half demon son of the legendary demonic dark knight Sparda. Dante is a Devil Hunter; he figures that if people come asking him to take out some demons every now and then, eventually he'll stumble upon the guy who killed his mother. So, he's chilling at his office when a girl devil named Trish smashes his doors and gives him a new mission. Then they go to some old castle so Dante can get to work. That's the very basic gist of it. Sounds cool, right? Everyone wants to have demonic powers!

But then it's just done so poorly. Some of these cutscenes are so incredibly cheesy, they actually made me cringe, especially at the end. There are good clichés, and there are bad ones, and this game has too many of the bad ones, not to mention a lot of things feel forced. Good thing these scenes are skippable, otherwise you'd be in for a lot of pain.

Graphics: 9

Even though this game is old, the graphics are still very impressive by today's standards, and that's certainly saying something. All of it is very dark and sinister though, and even more so close to the end, when everything suddenly goes pitch black and the only light is coming from you. Even though I'm not much of a fan of dark areas, it is a very good atmosphere, and anything else wouldn't suit this game. The character models are also done surprisingly well, which is more than I can say for a lot of games, even newer ones.

Sound: 5

Some people are in love with this game's music, and frankly, I don't see how that's possible. Normally, the game's music is only ambient, and you don't notice it. The loud music comes up whenever you get in a fight. Now, it's not that I don't like metal; quite the opposite, really. It's that this music just isn't very good. Some parts sound vaguely good, if only for a few seconds. The good thing is that it isn't annoying, and a couple of the boss fight tracks are actually a bit nice, which keeps the score from going below average.

The voice acting definitely needs some polishing. Sometimes the music drowns out whatever they're saying, and sometimes Dante's voice suddenly changes, and not in a good way. It's as if he suddenly decides he wants to sound more menacing, and sometimes succeeds, but other times doesn't quite pull it off.

Controls: 9 ½

Beautiful. DMC is all about the action, and the incredible controls make sure it doesn't disappoint. Dante is always equipped with two kinds of weapons at any given time: a melee weapon, and a gun. The melee weapon is usually a sword and, keeping true to the unofficial rules of videogames, swords are deadlier than guns. That's not to say guns are useless, though. Far from it. The O button is used to swing the sword, and the square button is used to fire the gun. The brilliance of the fighting system comes from being able to combine these two weapons seamlessly and stringing up combos to punish enemies.

Speaking of combos, the amount of different attacks you can do with a single button is amazing. Press the O button several times quickly and you get a standard 3-hit combo, press it with a split second interval between the 2nd and 3rd hit and you get a 4-hit combo, but press the button again after this 4-hit combo and you finish it with a final stab, making it a 5-hit combo. Make the interval between the 2nd and 3rd hit longer, and then mash the button repeatedly to make a flurry of stabs. Then there's holding the button or just pressing it, or holding the control stick in different directions to make other attacks, or jumping for a deadly downward slash. And I haven't even mentioned that you can include your gun in the combos to rack up even more hits.

But it's not all about offense. If you hope to survive in DMC, you're going to have to learn to dodge. Jumps, side rolls, backflips; all are going to be essential in fighting the hordes of relentless enemies.

And ahhh, the enemies. These aren't your grandma's generic stumbling cannon-fodder (ok, maybe some of them are). Every enemy is unique, with its own set of different attacks, quirks, separate dodging strategies, and weaknesses. You're going to have to learn enemies' moves, and develop individual strategies for all of them. All of the different weapons you get in DMC are useful (except maybe the weapon you start with); there are clear differences in power, but no weapon ever replaces another. Each one is best for different enemies and situations. You CAN just pick your favorite weapon and fight with it throughout the whole game if you want to, but on the higher difficulties you won't have that luxury anymore. The enemies are so hard that you have to learn to switch between weapons even in the middle of a fight to adapt to changes in the battlefield.

Finally, there's the cool Devil Trigger feature. When you get your hands on a weapon that supports DT, you'll be able to press L1 to transform into Dante's devil side for a limited time, getting added power, agility, flight, and many other powerful techniques, depending on the weapon.

Now for the minor nitpicks. The camera is fixed on a certain point at all times to avoid dizzying erratic movements in the heat of battle. This means you can't move it. If the enemy decides to move away from the camera, off screen, you either have to back off so that he comes back on screen, or move to a different place so that the camera changes, or just charge him and hope nothing bad happens. This doesn't happen too often, and it can easily be countered in a moment's notice if you know how the game works.

Difficulty: 10

This has got to be the hardest game I've ever played. There are three difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, and, once you beat hard, you unlock the insanely difficult Dante Must Die mode. Of course, being the awesome video game superhero that I am, I beat Dante Must Die. I won't lie though, it was tough. You will see how hard this game is as soon as you get killed by regular monsters. And then you will feel it when the first boss kills you 30 times before being able to beat him. Seriously, that's how much I died. I never died that much on any other boss, except some of the harder ones on Dante Must Die. The reason is that it's way too hard for a first boss, and you're just starting to get acquainted to the controls. The good news is, the gameplay is so good that you never feel it's unfair. The other good news is, you WILL get better. Once you beat the game and you play again, you'll beat that first boss like it was nothing! Then you'll wonder why on EARTH you thought it was hard in the first place. Of course, when you finally beat the game on Normal, you'll think you have mastered the game, only to immediately get completely massacred on Hard. That's when you realize you're not as good as you think, and you will have to get even better, and start to develop REAL strategies for bosses. The same thing goes for the leap from Hard to Dante Must Die.

One word of warning: When you die a lot of times, the game seems to notice this, and unlocks the Easy mode for you. It then gives you the option to switch over to Easy. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT fall into this trap. As soon as you go on Easy, the game gets laughably, well, easy. Not only will the few skills you had developed completely go down the drain, but the game essentially plays itself for you! The game makes the combos for you, and you can't choose what to do. It's like being baby-walked through it; even some of the most interesting enemies don't show up on Easy, you're close to invincible, and the most idiotic of strategies will work wonderfully. This is a very bad thing, because it results in one thing: the game gets too easy, and boring.

Remember the friend I mentioned at the start of the Review? The one that said it'd be fun to play DMC together? Yeah. He couldn't take it, and switched to Easy mode. Result: He beat the game, and dismissed it as another bland and easy game. This makes me very sad, because it can't be farther from the truth.

I think the high difficulty in this game is a good thing. For added fun, try to beat it without using items, only your sword, your gun, and your mad skillz.

Of course, knowing that you'll be dying a lot in this game, it follows that there should be some kind of frustration factor involved. The truth is, there is, kind of. Whenever you die, and you have at least one life left, you just start again from the last door you entered. No frustration there. The only frustration comes when you're out of lives, and you really die. Then you're forced to start again from the beginning of the mission. The missions aren't long at all, but it's still annoying to have to do it again. My recommendation is, try to get a good number of lives. 5-10 should suffice. That way, you can try a boss ten times, and when you die and have to do the mission again, just reset, and you're back to ten lives again. Just make sure you don't save before resetting. The good news is, this problem only shows up on Normal, the reason being that, on your second playthrough, the number of lives you can find increases dramatically, and because you've gotten so much money, you can buy a lot of lives from the shop. Not only that, but you get to keep all your stuff from the last playthrough. When I started Dante Must Die, I had a little over 100 lives. Bye-bye frustration!

Characters: 7

Let's talk about Dante first. Many people say he's the coolest thing ever, and I can definitely see where they're coming from. Yes, Dante is very cool, but only sometimes. He's just not very consistent. In-game, all you see are his cool clothes, awesome skills, and his super cool devil transformations. But then in cutscenes, there are times when he says stuff that make his cool points go down. Another thing, he's just too cocky. Confidence is good, but overconfidence bordering on immaturity is bad. Also, as I mentioned in the sound section, his voice could use some work at times.

There's also the girl Trish. She's not very interesting, all she does through most of the game is just admire Dante's power. You barely even see her, except close to the end.

Not wanting to give away many spoilers, the enemies are all very well done. As I said earlier, all of them have myriad different attacks, and have their own unique feel whenever you battle them.

Items: 10

When you defeat enemies, they drop a number of red orbs (the currency used to buy in the shop) proportional to their difficulty and the amount of style with which you defeated them. This is a very good idea that all action games should have, because it actually gives you incentive to fight everything, even when the doors aren't shut by the monsters' presence. Monsters may also drop green orbs, which replenish health, although it's a bit rare.

There's a great amount of stuff you can buy, and you'll definitely want to garner the most red orbs you can. There's so much stuff that you probably won't be able to buy it all on your first playthrough.

The most important things you can buy are moves. That's right, you can buy new moves for your weapon of choice on the shop. You'll probably want to get these before anything else, as they greatly improve your chances of success and make the game more fun.

The miscellaneous items include blue orbs, which increase your maximum health, yellow orbs, which are the equivalent of a life, and purple orbs; by far the most important, these increase the maximum amount of time you can remain in Devil Trigger mode.

Rounding out the package are a variety of other items that are by no means necessary, but are very helpful in fighting enemies. I've always liked having a level-up system incorporated in games, as it makes the experience more worthwhile; however, these items which improve your performance, much the same way as leveling up would, are just as good. It goes without saying that you CAN find some of these items lieing around, although most of the time hidden.

Secrets: 9

Eventually the shop will run out of blue orbs, and your health will still not be at its maximum potential. That's because there are countless blue orb fragments scattered about the game, just waiting to be discovered. In fact, most of your health upgrades will come from finding these precious little pieces. And you will definitely need every last bit of health you can get if you hope to beat the game on its higher difficulties.

As if this weren't enough, though, the game possesses 12 optional mission aptly named Secret Missions, hidden throughout. These secret missions test the best of your skills, and usually reward you with a blue orb fragment. Finally, beating the game on Hard and Dante Must Die unlock some interesting slightly different characters to play with, though they're still just basically Dante with a twist or two.

Length: 4

The first time I played it, it took me about 15 hours to beat it. Sounds decent enough, right? However, once you know what to do, you can easily beat it in 8 hours, and sometimes even in 5. The thing is, the regular length of one playthrough is miniscule.

Replayability: 10

Incredible. Seriously. This is the only game, ever, that has made me replay it up to four times back to back, trying to beat all of its difficulty levels. It's. That. Fricken. Good. Sure, there were some nice characters to unlock, but I did it only because it was fun. Playing a game again simply because it's fun is, in my opinion, the highest and purest form of replayability.

Fun Factor!: 10

Not much to say, it's the truth. From your humble beginnings learning how to play on normal, all the way 'til you've owned everything on Dante Must Die, the beautiful and challenging gameplay will always prove to be immensely fun.

Overall: 9 ½

I'm glad my friend suggested buying this, otherwise I would have never experienced this amazing game. Even if his opinion ultimately differed.

Save for a few minor camera problems, Devil May Cry is a beautiful game that cannot be missed.

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