Yes, in my infinite kindness I am giving you guys the review a day early. Actually this is happening mainly because tomorrow is Easter. Pretty much my Easter present to you all. Not a very good one, but it is considered a very good game by nearly everybody so be happy.
Well, Devil May Cry 3 is the third installment in the Devil May Cry series. Released in 2005 for the PS2, and ported to the PC in 2006, this game is widely regarded as one of the PS2's best games. That is no easy task seeing as the masterpieces this system has given us. When it was released in the US, the difficulty was changed. What was the Japanese hard mode is now our normal mode. Let me say that this is totally unfair. Japan is known as having some of the best gamers in the world, and we get the difficulty increase? Fuck you Capcom. This change really shows. I played on normal, and it took me four or five attempts to beat each boss. Seriously, you will die many times. Like higher than you can count if you manage to get through this game.
So, let's talk about the story. You are a demon who is attempting to make a living like a normal human being. Suddenly, a man pops in the store and attacks Dante with many demons. Somehow you understand what this means. You walk outside and a huge ass tower appears right in front of you. You know you must climb the tower and fight your brother. You find out through multiple cutscenes that your brother is after a necklace that your father gave you both. He defeats you and takes the necklace. Now, you must find him and defeat him. Yea, not the most intriguing story. I never played the first two so maybe all of this ties together with the story of the first two. As you all know, I am a huge fan of games with a great story. Unfortunately, this does not have a compelling story in the slightest. In fact, there are only two things I really enjoyed about this game. One of those is the battle system.
The battle system is incredibly simple. You choose two melee weapons, and two ranged weapons which you can easily switch between during battles with the L and R trigger. There are certain combos you can do with each weapon by just spamming triangle. There are also special moves that you can tie into those combos for massive damage by hitting a specific pattern of buttons. What makes this differ from the traditional hack and slash game is that the AI enemies are extremely intelligent, and very strong. You must use strategy to hit enemies while dodging incoming attacks. It does not take very many hits to kill you even when you increase your health making every move you do count. That is where the difficulty lies in this game. Every enemy has power to really fuck your day up if you aren't careful. To buy new moves, and potions you must defeat enemies and absorb their little red orbs. That is this games currency. You also receive orbs by finishing the mission in certain times, by using no potions, and many more things. There is also something called the Devil Trigger. It is pretty much Dante going into his demon form to reek havoc. It increases your attack, defense, restores health, and allows use of special attacks. It's a pretty cool addition as Dante changes his appearance while in this form. To switch into it you must defeat enemies
The graphics are very good in this game. Everything is extremely detailed, and the lighting throughout the game is extremely good. It ranks behind FFX for me, but that is no fault as the graphics are still very good. I am a huge fan of the sound as well. I love the heavy metal soundtrack. It fits really well with the atmosphere of the game as well as Dante's attitude. The voice acting isn't bad either.
Probably the main thing I should talk about is the Styles that are available. Each style gives you special moves which you can use in battles. There are six combat styles.
Trickster: Relies on dodging attacks and moving fast over damage. You use your rolls, and different dodges you unlock to confuse and outspeed enemies.
Swordmaster: You use a sword as a primary weapon. Your special move is that you swing your sword in a circle damaging any enemies around you. Pretty useless special which I never really used.
Gunslinger: My favorite style. It increases the damage of your guns, and allows you to use them in very unique ways. Difficult to explain the special for this.
Royal Guard: Defensive oriented. You can block incoming attacks but it requires large amounts of precision, and timing. Pretty useless style in my opinion.
QuickSilver: Unlocked after beating mission 12. It has the most potential, but is difficult to get used to. Dante moves extremely fast while in this style. I have used this quite often while not using Slinger.
Doppleganger: An interesting style to say the least. You pretty much make a duplicate of yourself which attacks with you. I never really used this, so I do not know everything about it.
You can level each of these styles up by just killing enemies as them. I chose Gunslinger because a majority of the bosses will be killed with guns, and not the sword. In fact, getting close to some bosses will get you pummeled.
Final Score: 8 All in all, this is a good game. I can see why some people really love it. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. While I consider it a good game, it got very bland to me after a while. It was very repetitive, and the combat system could not save it from that. There were some very simple puzzles being thrown into the fray to attempt and spice the game up, but it just didn't do it. I loved the challenge that the game presented, the sound and graphics, the variation of enemies in the game, and the combat system. It really didn't have me looking forward to playing again though. I never got the feeling that I really wanted to keep playing. Only that I was getting bored.
