Devil May Cry was NOT what I Expected - DMC1 Review

[Music] Devil May Cry was not what I was expecting this series renowned these days for its deep fast-paced smooth combat started life as this atmospheric weirdly slow game well actually it started life as Resident Evil 4 but that's basically Scott Pilgrim level trivia at this point and we'll talk more about that later anyway this series of videos is all about getting to know the Devil May Cry franchise as someone who has only played the off-maligned reboot and of course we have to start with Devil May Cry now while I know this game is considered a classic Landmark title I don't really think I like it all that much slow down babe I respect it I appreciate it but I'm not sure I really enjoyed it that mainly comes down to a handful of issues which are going to be the focus of this video I'm not deliberately trying to be negative but these videos are meant to be about my experience with these games as a newcomer to the franchise and the fact that matter is the stuff I didn't like about this game stood out to me a lot more than the stuff that I did like so I'm really just here to communicate my subjective experience this time we're gonna start with the combat because this game's combat is janky now janky at least the way my friends and I use it is not a completely negative word to me janky doesn't just mean buggy or shitty to me it means outdated or dysfunctional but specifically in a way that's quirky or interesting or funny think Pokemon gen 1 battle mechanics vanilla wow GoldenEye not necessarily bad especially for the time but today janky there is a big difference between being janky and just being bad the platforming in this game it's not janky it's just kind of bad the underwater sections not really janky just bad the voice acting not janky just perfect inside that big body of yours yeah yeah it's basically perfect there are three main issues I had with the combat and they are in no particular order the fixed camera the automatic lock-on system and the directional inputs now I really should stress that none of these things are inherently problematic on their own here they just happen to combine in a particular way that makes combat uniquely frustrating let's say imagine you're fighting this boss an easy thing to imagine since this fight gets repeated three times and actually every boss fight gets repeated about three times I think this one just stood out to me because it's annoying and also because I'm not sure why they thought the blob on the floor was a boss fight worth repeating three times giant spider giant bird cool dude with a sword these are all boss fights worth repeating blob on the floor I'm not so sure about that one so the gimmick with this fight is that the boss can only be damaged when you've hit these meters on the wall enough to fill them up but even if you're standing really close to them pushing the stick towards them and hitting triangle will just do a melee attack towards the boss there's our lovely automatic lock-on system at work maybe you could hold the lock-on button and then switch targets to the wall doodad but oh no oh no you can't switch targets while locked on it would be nice to hit these from afar with a gun or maybe with your swords Long Range Dash attack but since you can't lock onto it you just have to run right up next to it to attack it and I mean right next to it if you're just a hair too far Dante will just swing at the boss now to mention the fact that the camera angle is constantly changing on you as you Circle the boss to avoid attacks all the while you need to be chipping away at the boss either with ranged weapons or hitting its exposed weak point with melee attacks and you might end up doing the wrong attack because the camera angle suddenly changed and what move you do is dependent on where the camera is and where Dante is facing relative to the camera which you can't control honestly at that point it just becomes way easier to just build up Devil Trigger with the grenade launcher and then use Air Raids long range lightning move for guaranteed damage this General strategy works for a pretty large number of encounters so that characteristic Devil May Cry challenge just isn't really there on a first playthrough let alone the fact that for several entire enemy types the best option is really just to walk around and Blast away with the shotgun or pistols not exactly high octane strategic action the context-sensitive dodging is easily my least favorite result of this system depending on where the camera is and where Dante is facing locking on and hitting X will either roll to the left or right or jump forwards or backwards from what I can tell this is the standard for the rest of the series and I don't really know about this one it's fine most of the time but in a couple certain fights like the one where you're locked in a tiny cage with a scissor monster it's just unwieldy you might want to dodge roll away from this guy's spinning dashing attack but he moves really fast and you have to be locked on to dodge meaning that Dante's orientation can change very suddenly and leave you jumping right into an enemy attack when you meant to dodge the side of it add to that the fact that they probably picked the worst possible angle you could view this fright from and look I get that it's easy to look back at an old game and see the obvious modern solution to its problems I honestly think having a dedicated Dodge button would have made this particular problem a non-issue but is it really fair of me to impose modern design standards on an 18 year old game probably not to give the game some credit Devil Trigger I think is a much better system here than it is in the reboot dmc's Devil Trigger fills very slowly and isn't very mechanically interesting or fun to use it makes all enemies float which is more of a hindrance than a help a lot of the time regenerates some health okay and that's pretty much all it does here Devil Trigger fills very quickly and you only get access to a large portion of your arsenal when it's active this makes it less of a get out of jail free card in in more of an active decision on when you want to increase your power and options I like this system a lot and from what I can tell this seems to be the standard for the rest of the series interesting gameplay choices to make that's what I like in a good combat system when there isn't really a choice and there's just one best option all the time stuff gets pretty boring now again I'm aware that this game is considered a classic by many and I'm really not here to [ __ ] all over its Rich Legacy it didn't take that long for me to adapt to most of these issues and once I did combat was varied and deep and all those other things people say about this series all the time I'm more than happy to give this game a little leeway considering its age but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna point out the stuff that bothered me about the combat these problems I've talked about aren't game ruining flaws they're growing pains in what was at the time basically an entirely new sub-genre of action games which is pretty amazing but all that said I still thought this game's combat was kinda janky but I'm sure after that plenty of people are mad enough at me so let's move on from the combat and talk about some other stuff because there is other stuff to talk about so in terms of structure Devil May Cry is a very confused game it doesn't seem entirely sure of what it wants to be its previous Life as a Resident Evil game means there's a lot of gathering of weird-shaped keys for weird-shaped locks but these aren't really puzzles because you only ever have one key at a time and there's only ever one place to put it and a lot of this running around isn't really exploration because while the game takes place in a mostly continuous Castle setting there's only ever one place to go and most places that aren't relevant to the current Mission are inaccessible and there's no reason to go anywhere except where the game tells you to go a typical mission in Devil May Cry will start with examining a small plinth or something that says find the orb at which point you leave the room walk to another room pick up the orb and then you put it where the game told you to put it I don't mean to exaggerate this aspect of the game um but this happens approximately four million times uh throughout this game there's something oddly contradictory about this game's structure what this game really is is a series of linear levels inside a sprawling maze-like World containing puzzles Each of which solve themselves I suspect again that this is a product of the game being originally developed as a Resident Evil game I am absolutely not the first person to make this observation I'm sure the sprawling continuous castle with key hunting puzzles seems to much better suit a game about feeling trapped and isolated in a scary world like the old Resident Evil games it feels a little strange to combine these things with a mission-based action game about kicking demon ass with your sweet lightning sword it isn't necessarily bad but the core gameplay feels a little incongruous next to the game's structure atmosphere and story what this is is a problem of tone I have no earthly idea what this game's tone is supposed to be the game starts with an opening text crawl that would make Star Wars blush followed by a hilariously over-the-top cutscene where a woman in leather fetish gear drives through your door Karate kicks you through a table and throws a motorcycle at your head okay so this is going to be some high octane action-packed silly romp sounds good to me and then you get into the first few missions and they're quiet almost somber and dripping with atmosphere laughs the music in the castle is droning and unmelotic and the fixed camera and the Simplicity of early enemy encounters makes even combat feel low energy well low energy compared to that opening cutscene anyway and then after over an hour with no dialogue a cutscene starts and Dante opens his mouth again and I'm like oh yeah this guy can talk and he sounds like a [ __ ] what am I supposed to be feeling while playing this game this cycle continues on the majority of the game has almost no dialogue which makes the game feel atmospheric and lonely and then every now and then a cutscene will happen where Dante says something stupid and suddenly it's all a big goof or you can stick around and find out the hard way mind you this entire time the plot is basically Mundus is a big evil guy and um I don't know keep fighting things until you get to him I guess I I don't know I really was not clear on what I was doing for the majority of this game and then we get towards the end and the game is trying to make us feel sad for Dante I oh what are you going for Devil May Cry if the game was going for reserved interest punctuated by incredulous laughter well in that case honestly you [ __ ] nailed it if it was going for anything else then Devil May Cry I'm afraid you may have missed the mark tonally speaking then again maybe this bizarre janky inconsistent tone might be part of the game's appeal it's certainly entertaining to see the strange grandiose mythology be forced to revolve around two main characters that have no chemistry and about three brain cells between them humans what sweets if that's part of the series charm then honestly I'm kind of here for it but my question then becomes well what's the problem with the reboot now I'll admit I previously thought of the reboot's tone as being very clearly and consistently tongue-in-cheek but I'm probably giving it a little too much credit there see the first time I played the game was years ago and the most recent time that I played it for the review well I skipped all the cutscenes except the ones that I remembered were funny yeah re-watching these cutscenes okay yeah the reboot is totally inconsistent but at least the stuff that was meant to be funny was funny you're dumb in Devil May Cry 1 the funniest scene in the game is one that I'm pretty sure wasn't meant to be funny unless it was in which case yeah well done I guess [Music] is this inconsistent weird tone gonna be a thing for the series honestly I kinda hope so so where do we stand I started this series of videos in an attempt to understand this franchise a little better and so far I'm not sure I've gotten any closer to understanding anything about this series or why people weren't happy with the reboot and while I'm certainly not gonna call Devil May Cry 1 a bad game I will call it a dated janky confusing game it's a game of contradictions in structure gameplay story and tone that certainly makes it interesting and I'd rather play a game like Devil May Cry that's old and weird and uneven but unique over something recent and safe that plays by all the rules we don't get anywhere without taking some risks and trying something new and Devil May Cry 1 was definitely at the time something very very new and even though I'm not sure how much I really enjoyed the game I'm definitely very excited to see where the series goes from here which is apparently straight into a dumpster from what I've heard so that'll be fun join me next time for the one that everyone really really [ __ ] hates like comment subscribe do the YouTube things I'll see you next time thank you for watching oh this is gonna be bad isn't it can't be that bad right right

Channel: Hyve Minds

Views: 252,487

Keywords: devil may cry, dmc review, dmc1 review, dmc1, dmc 1, devil may cry series, devil may cry retrospective, devil may cry reboot, dmc5, devil may cry franchise, devil may cry classic, devil may cry good, devil may cry bad, hyve minds, hyve mind, hive minds, hive mind kh, devil may cry analysis, devil may cry first time, devil may cry hd collection, dmc ps4, devil may cry ps4, dmc collection, dmc hd collection, dmc hd collection review

Id: BmwEmGODSRU

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019