It seems like it was yesterday when Yunchang Game announced that they would be making a mobile game based on Devil May Cry, but  Devil May Cry Peak of Combat  or Pinnacle of Combat was actually announced in 2017, so it took almost 6 years for the game to finally be playable worldwide as the game held a few closed beta tests.

Devil May Cry Peak of Combat is a simplified version of DMC's core gameplay with the balancing mechanics of a gacha game. The game is quite free-player friendly and has plenty of modes, and while the story isn't too exciting, the way it presents the story mode as a continuous sequence makes it feel closer to a game title. console than a mobile game.

Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat is a lot of fun, and for fans of the Devil May Cry series, it's a great novelty to have in your phone to enjoy the action and modes of the series wherever you are, and if you've never played the main titles, it's a fun introduction to the series and a gripping action game in its own right.

The Return of the Sons of Sparda

Devil May Cry Peak of Combat takes place after the events of Devil May Cry 3 in an alternate universe. It's not canon, so the developers took a lot of liberties when it came to its story, but that also means there are a few new things you don't usually see in the main games, like a lot of human NPCs .

A demonic invasion occurs on Earth due to the appearance of "The King of Demons", not to be confused with Mundus, Urizon or Argosax. This new threat brings an invasion of thousands of demons, and it's up to Dante and Lady to put an end to it, while trying to find out where Vergil is in the midst of this chaos.

Devil May Cry Peak of Combat's story mode is presented through a continuous sequence similar to what it would look like in its original entries. You start with the game's basic tutorial and fight as Dante and Lady through enemy rooms, facing new enemies and learning their patterns while increasing your style meter.

This game doesn't really have a main menu, but the game's default state is actually in its story mode when you'll either be loaded straight back into your current story level or hanging out at the new devil hunting office in Dante. On top of that, there are also a plethora of challenge modes and farming levels that you can participate in, but more on that later.

Since Peak of Combat's story isn't canon to the series, it's mostly a fun adventure through new locations while fighting enemies. This is also one of the only times the DMC series has introduced NPCs that Dante can talk to, as for the most part in the DMC series it's usually just the Devil Hunters, and very rarely do you see them talk to real humans seeing how they live, let alone interacting with them. as part of the game. Many enemies, new and old, appear here, all with their old gadgets.

The game looks pretty good for a mobile game and performed very well as well. I was running it on an iPhone 12, so even though it wasn't exactly the oldest device, the game was telling me that at max settings it wasn't even using 30% of the device's charge from my phone and maintained a fairly smooth 60fps throughout so it didn't drain my device's battery, unlike something like Genshin Impact. The game will still experience occasional frame drops, and this seems to be more of an issue with prolonged fights, suggesting some sort of memory leak in the system or an issue with removing old particle effects, although this occurring less and less as the beta continued to receive patches.

Although Peak of Combat's moves don't share the same name as their original counterparts, Dante's Stringer, Nero's High Roller, Vergil's, Lunar Phase, and many other moves look, feel, and sound exactly as they should during the combat, feeling just as satisfying to use as it did in the original games, especially with the original voice files added, with a few omissions. Oddly enough, although the game's story wasn't expressed most of the time in cutscenes, making it quite difficult to watch, although with the weirdness of the game's translation, it's not really A suprise.

The game also uses songs from previous games, with tracks like Taste the Blood, Assault and more playing during combat. Peak of Combat also has no reservations about bringing in characters from different timelines and games, such as having Nero and DMC5 Vergil in the game, as well as variations of the base characters using specific weapons.

It's about as close to DMC as you can get for a mobile game, and while some of the new designs may seem a little wacky and out of place, it's nothing too much for the series, at least for now .

Peak of Combat on mobile

Peak of Combat also plays pretty faithfully to the original series, adapting the core combat mechanics of Devil May Cry, while simplifying it with a few tweaks and additions of its own to make it more manageable on a phone.

Peak of Combat's control scheme is a simplified version of Devil May Cry. There is an attack, jump and dodge button, as well as a skill and super attack button. This means that the game gets rid of the style change, weapon change, style button, and unfortunately even the taunt button, and also means that there are no lock-on shenanigans or directional input.

This may seem like a lot of things being cut, but Devil May Cry Peak of Combat has a few new additions to add to the system to make up for it. Instead of switching weapons, you have multiple versions of a character each wielding a different weapon and move sets. So rather than switching between weapons and styles, you switch characters, and since each character has multiple forms, you can also fit three into a team. For some characters, the different versions of them will have unique gimmicks, like how the Imperial Guard Dante uses Beowulf, and his dodge has been transformed into the Royal Guard, his skill being Royal Release.

The game also adds a QTE mechanic, which allows you to jump during certain attacks, narrowly avoid them, and then give yourself time to perform a devastating counterattack. The character swap mechanic also has utility in combat, as if you can meet certain conditions like using a character's skill or their full combo, you can switch to another character to instantly use their skill for free, dealing big damage and continuing your combo.

Some characters even have unique combo executions like how Lady can chain three normal attacks into the dodge button to do a flurry of bullets while spinning, or how Nero can chain an attack after any dodge to perform a sequence at any time. Even Vergil with his Yamato retains his signature Judgment Cut ability, with timed entries. Having multiple characters behave so differently makes it something of a shoo-in for the style system, and being able to combine attacks against each other is always something cool to watch, especially if it leads your opponent to never touch the ground, just like in the main games.

So while the game is fundamentally quite different from console games, it plays just well enough to be a good enough adaptation of the genre to mobile without you needing to break your fingers to get the most out of it. It's simple to pick up with plenty of room for new players to the series, and for veterans to have a decent amount of fun by simply experimenting with the mechanics and diving on enemies.

The game also features a wide variety of game modes, including a practice mode, currency farming, and "card" farming, which allows you to insert cards with different set bonuses and random stats similar to artifacts in Genshin Impact. These modes all play slightly differently, requiring you to complete a different objective, so some teams may excel better in these stages, and you can sweep most of them, which is a nice idea.

If you want to get a little competitive with your style, the game has Bloody Palace, which has been reworked into a mode where you fight enemies from a smaller set of floors, starting with floors 1 to 23, each set of floors being increasingly difficult. The goal is to complete these stages as quickly and elegantly as possible to get a higher score, with player leaderboards counted every week to distribute gems, and it's a good place to test your skills and show off A little.

There's also a PvP mode, but as you'd expect from Devil May Cry's combat system, it's not really well fleshed out and quite unbalanced, with some characters like Vergil and his Judgment Cup being incredibly powerful in this mode. , and you'll just be at a disadvantage without it. Other than that, while Devil May Cry Peak of Combat is a lot of fun to play, and while it won't satisfy hardcore DMC fans, it's good enough to satisfy more casual players, and just scratch that itch for the character's action.

If you want, you can even connect a controller to your phone, to emulate the experience even closer to its console counterparts.

Several features dedicated to F2P

While there are a ton of ways to pay to get gems and other goodies in this game, Peak of Combat seems to have even more ways dedicated to helping its free players, although as it's still about 'a beta version, these are still subject to change.

For starters, the game had a ton of beginner missions. To progress in the story, you will obtain fragments of the starting characters, which will make it easier to rank them S and have them at a fairly comfortable power level.

The game even has a system that allows you to get draw discounts, the more you draw with a certain type of currency, the more extra draws you get in return, which is not a system you often see in games. other games. Aside from that, the game has a 70 draw mercy system, with a 1% chance of grabbing an S-rank hunter and a 50/50 chance of grabbing the featured hunter or weapon.

It's a system that's becoming more and more common, especially in games made by Chinese developers, but with the number of rewards the game generates (supposedly up to 270 free draws in regular play), this means you will get at least 4 Legendary Hunters, and are guaranteed the one featured in the early parts of the game, if the game maintains this level of rewards at launch.

Aside from that, there are ways to upgrade your characters with duplicates, and you can collect shards for them in certain game modes, with shards for characters you haven't even unlocked appearing every week. The only problem is how much you'll be willing to play DMC Peak of Combat, because while game progression is free, some things like picking up cards and character shards don't have a swipe feature, and when it gets to a point where you can take these steps without much effort, it's a shame not to have it.

Regardless, during my time in the beta I felt no urge to pay for the title, and because the game is also generous enough to let you try out one of its characters before to shoot for them, it helps let you decide if you really want to go or not.

Peak of Combat looks very promising

As a huge fan of the DMC series after DMC3, I was quite skeptical of the idea of ​​a new Devil May Cry experience being brought to mobile, but the game did enough to alleviate those woes, while even adding a lot of great features and things for F2P players to make the experience quite enjoyable.

Great graphics performance and a gameplay loop that's pretty faithful to the original series, while also having a lot of cool additions and things to consider for your time make Devil May Cry Peak of Combat a pretty exciting action game to play. hope, especially for fans of the DMC series looking for more DMC content after the release of DMC5 in 2019. The game is really just "DMC on mobile", and that's about all it you can wish.

Its story content may now be as fulfilling and the translation is rough, but the foundations are definitely there, and if the game came out exactly as it is now, I doubt many players would have too many problems with the game as a whole.