Devil May Cry 4: A “Retrospective” — Fiddle Me This

It’s easy to see the ideas Capcom had in mind while creating Devil May Cry 4. The development team didn’t want to entirely rehash ideas from Devil May Cry 3, and wished to respond to criticism from certain players about the game being difficult to approach. The logic was understandable, even if it irked select hardcore fans. Three DMC games in a row had starred Dante as the protagonist (Lucia’s quest in Devil May Cry 2 was more of a bonus addendum), and the timeline was already all over the place — before they shuffled DMC2’s position years later. For as fun and deep as DMC3 was, it was intimidating to learn six (!!!) styles alongside the attacks attached different melee and mid-to-long-ranged weapons. The desire to appeal to a wider audience was bound to happen with this game’s increased budget, as the first DMC game to be designed for high-definition platforms.

This explains why DMC4 turned out the way it did. The game introduced Nero, a new protagonist at around the same age Dante was in DMC3 (somewhere in his teenage years), with a much simpler move set. Nero, who is notably not a fiddler or a riddler, has access to only one sword throughout the entire game, the Red Queen, with plenty of techniques and combos attached to it. The same goes for his unique and nicely-sized revolver known as the Blue Rose. He also comes with the Devil Bringer, a demonic right arm which he can use for grappling attacks or for grabbing enemies and objects from longer distances. It’s a considerably lower number of moves compared to Dante in the previous game, making him welcoming enough for anyone who either played this as their first DMC game or threw in the towel on previous games due to them being too difficult to approach.

Nero is ostensibly simple to grasp, but can get difficult to master should anyone attempt to learn how to Instantly Rev up the “Exceed” gauge for powerful combos, which requires pressing a shoulder button (or whatever the player maps it to) to rev the sword up with precise timing just after the sword is swung. It’s harder to master than most of Dante’s move set, but it’s perfectly easy for anyone to play through the main quest without learning it. He’s overall still easier to grapple than Dante, pun intended.

Nero’s different, but the level design is largely similar to DMC3, in an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. The levels are linear and full of enemy encounters and bosses that Nero’s abilities will help with, select examples of which taking advantage of Nero’s platforming maneuvers. Not every level is a winner, especially the bad dice game-driven ones, but they’re mostly good. It further helps that the levels themselves look beautiful, complete with art direct that floors DMC2’s and DMC3’s — though I was more than convinced at this point that they’ll never top DMC1’s horror-ish art direction. By being the first DMC game made for HD platforms, the game remains a looker to this day despite the character models showing their age.

You’ll want to note the words “largely” and “mostly” in the last sentence, because the level and game design don’t hold up later on. DMC4 was actually one of the first games to show how Japanese developers would struggle to adapt to HD platform development, given what this game does to pad out its length.

There was no way the developers would leave out Dante thanks to how important he is to the DMC mythos. He’s present throughout the story (which you can see throughout my original review from forever ago), but makes a playable appearance later in the game. He’s incredibly fun to play, not only thanks to how robust his move set is compared to his DMC3 self but also because he has access to the entire repertoire at all times. Instead of being bound to one style, he can access the main four from the previous game (that’s Trickster, Swordmaster, Gunslinger, and Royal Guard) through mere presses on the d-pad. This means the player has to keep track of all the moves they’re capable of, which is not easy and takes time and ample practice to remember on the fly. But he’s a ton of fun for anyone who learns him.

This is what makes it a real damned shame the game design fails him. Dante is only given one unique level of his own that takes advantage of his abilities. The rest involve backtracking through levels Nero ventured through with a mixture of identical and different enemies and only one unique boss. It could not have been clearer that all the bosses were designed to be fought with Nero, considering how easy it is to floor them with Dante’s massive repertoire of moves. It’s a revealing attempt to stretch out a game to ensure that it was about as long as its predecessor (about 12-15 hours normally). It’s a shame it had to be this way, even though the team and other Japanese developers eventually adjusted to the hurdles required for newly powerful platforms.

As it stands, there wasn’t much use for Dante here for the main campaign outside the fanservice. The development team could have made a game that entirely relied on Nero, if the choice was between implementing Dante or having the option to create more levels for Nero. Perhaps a Dante quest could have been an unlockable bonus, released as DLC, or another cool addition for the Special Edition that also added Vergil, Lady, and Trish as playable characters. We might have missed out on some hammy cutscenes, but it would have been a worthy sacrifice for more levels without the excessive reuse.

As it stands, though, DMC4 is a perfectly fun game, but the backtracking makes it less enticing to replay compared to DMC1 and DMC3. The reception to this game and fear of what a future game could sell i led to Capcom going with a reboot instead, and to say it was merely divisive would be a comical understatement. Let’s save the rest of that for the next “retrospective” post.