Devil May Cry 5 is just the latest game that I started playing on Xbox’s Game Pass service, and I pushed myself to beat it in a single day because someone out there wrote that it was only a few hours long and hyperbole isn’t always communicated well in writing. If I had to guess, I’d estimate that it’s 6 to 8 hours long, and between Devil May Cry 5‘s terrible storytelling and awkward mechanics, I’d say that I enjoyed ~30 minutes of that toward the middle of the game. Its sense of style would be a saving grace, but the Xbox One version automatically skips cutscenes if you take a screenshot, which is such a blindingly stupid design decision that I can’t fathom the thought process behind it. It’s worth mentioning that this is my first exposure to the series. I rarely got into action games back in the Playstation 2 days because developers as a whole didn’t have a great handle on decent camera systems or game balance, and once you’re several games behind in a series, catching up requires a prohibitive amount of work.

There were points where I could kind of understand what die-hard fans of the series enjoy about it. Occasionally, the humor and satisfying combos all click and it becomes possible to set Devil May Cry 5‘s uninspired story and grating characters aside.

This doesn’t last for long, though, because the game takes its ridiculous storytelling way too seriously most of the time. The whole thing comes across like the bro-fest that was Final Fantasy XV‘s story, only cranked up to 11 and filled with Dragon Ball Z-style moments of people randomly attaining extra power just in the nick of time through mechanisms never adequately explored. By the time everyone started stabbing themselves to attain super-powerful demon forms, I found myself hoping that they’d just die. None of the three main characters are likable by any stretch of the imagination.

You start out by playing as Nero, whose need to out-bro other, more established bros is deeply embarrassing. He’s equal parts child and douchebag, and this is only slightly made up for by his combat having a grappling hook attack that can be equal parts entertaining and useful during combos. Remembering the specific inputs required to use it and other moves is a problem for a first-time player, though, because there are two other characters with totally different controls. First, there’s V, who attacks with shadowy animals and whose only hands-on role in combat is to finish off enemies. Then there’s Dante, the main character of previous games, who plays like Nero minus the grappling hook but can eventually get a rocket launcher. Devil May Cry 5 switches between the three almost at random between stages, and I found myself consistently pressing the right buttons for the wrong characters. It’s aggravating.

I hate the way Devil May Cry handles dodging; you can dodge to the left or right, but trying to roll forward or dodge backward instead results in a jump. Jumping has invincibility frames and can be useful, but the timing of those invincibility frames are different than when you’re rolling side to side, and sometimes you’ll go to roll and end up jumping instead.

Once you add in visual effects that obscure enemy attack cues and the fact that some enemies can attack twice in the time it takes you to land (leaving you unable to dodge their attacks), the whole system becomes a mess. The camera certainly doesn’t help. I fully recognize that fans of the series love that Devil May Cry 5 plays like a Playstation 2 game still, but can we maybe also recognize that automatically locking on to large enemies during boss fights is a bad idea when all of your movement and combo inputs are relative to that camera?

A better camera is just one of many areas where the series could stand to be improved. The area designs early on are varied and interesting, but the entire second half of the game takes place in same-y tunnels that are alternate shades of gray and brownish-red. Even after setting the brightness at the beginning of the game, everything was too dark, and while some areas are stylish, most of them are nothing more than hallways that play a cutscene every 10 steps. Area of effect attacks are really hard to dodge at close range, but enemies are tanky and your combo meter ticks steadily down when you’re not varying your attacks, so staying back doesn’t feel right either. And honestly, the balance is all off. I played on the easier Human difficulty (without auto-assist) because it claimed to be designed for newcomers to the series, but 90% of it is pitifully easy.

The other 10% of the time, enemies are tanky enough that I was glad to be playing on an easier difficulty setting. It’s annoying how often you’re thrown into an inescapable room with waves of enemies who randomly spawn like in Dragon Age 2 and refuse to die quickly. There are some bosses who are defeated faster than these rooms of enemies, and nothing murders the pacing of a game more efficiently than mandatory arena rooms filled with damage sponges. Speaking of pacing, the story bounces around in time, and you’ll fight the same guy like 5 times with only minor changes. Devil May Cry 5 takes forever to get to the point. Instead, it wastes its time on uninteresting sidenotes that are pure padding.

I used to think that I was missing something by not playing Devil May Cry games. Beloved series are usually beloved for an obvious reason, after all. If Devil May Cry 5 is any indication of what can be expected from earlier games, though, consider me thoroughly disabused of that notion.

Story: 1/3 Gameplay: 1.5/3 Visuals: 1.5/2 Music: 1/2 ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ – 5/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

Mini-review: I can’t stand Devil May Cry 5 first appeared on Killa Penguin