Devil May Cry (PlayStation 2) review "A legend states that two millennia ago, a demon knight named Sparda sought the right path and rebelled against the Devil to save the human world from hell on Earth. Two thousand years later, a demonic man named Dante unearths clues that reveal an attempt by the Devil to resurrect his rule. Somewhere within Dante lies ancient demon blood, the key to defeating the dark realm. The fate of the world now rests in Dante's hands. If he succeeds, the Devil May Cry. "

A legend states that two millennia ago, a demon knight named Sparda sought the right path and rebelled against the Devil to save the human world from hell on Earth. Two thousand years later, a demonic man named Dante unearths clues that reveal an attempt by the Devil to resurrect his rule. Somewhere within Dante lies ancient demon blood, the key to defeating the dark realm. The fate of the world now rests in Dante's hands. If he succeeds, the Devil May Cry.

The game starts off with a lovely young lady flying down from the sky. She looks up to see the building with a title Devil May Cry. Within the building lie our hero Dante, relaxing at his desk and answering his phone calls. He gets interrupted by a motorcycle flying right through the door and landing in front of his desk. The rider just happens to be the same girl from earlier. She asks him if he is the man who will get any dirty job done. You find out a minor detail about his past. His mother and brother were lost 20 years ago to the same devil that Sparda had once confined, thus leaving Dante with no choice but to seek revenge.

Having low confidence in him, she tests his strength by casting a prodigious amount of energy towards him, leaving him flat on the ground. She then proceeds to throw his sword and lunge it right into his chest. Thus leaving you to wonder what the hell just happened. The girl reaches for the motorcycle PICKS it up, and throws it towards our hero. "Didn't your daddy ever teach you how to use a sword," she tells him. He then laughs and pulls out his guns Ebony and Ivory and blows the hell out of the bike. The bike then makes its way towards the woman leaving her with no option but to eschew the attack.

Dante then gets up from being mounted by the sword and mentions the fact that he is getting closer to finding this devil, and if this woman knows of his goal, he must be going somewhere in the right direction. She introduces herself as Trish, and she seeks his help in destroying this devil. Trish leads him to Mallet Island where the devil is planning on his revenge towards the human race. Dante is getting closer and closer to his goal; Trish then leaves Dante at the entrance where you take control.

The basics of this game are quite simple. Since this is a third person viewed game, Dante will most of the time have his back facing you. Use the analog to send him forward or backward when on the screen. While tapping the triangle button, you get to jump so you can reach higher levels of the game, or you can use it to launch over a large gap in the floor. Jumping is a key factor in this game if you want to dodge attacks. If you want to pick up an item or examine it, just press the X or [ ] buttons, either one will get the job done. The items will all shine so it is easy for you to find them. The items are mostly something to advance you through the game. Or they could be an item to help you in your battles. Square and X also will open up doors; you will find that you use those two buttons the most.

Holding down L1 will have Dante raise his guns, and if you press the [ ] button, he will unleash a lot of rounds. When using L1 button, it is important to lock on enemies when you’re attacking. It’s good to pay attention to your surroundings as well, making sure there are no enemies to interrupt your fun. Mashing down the O button gets Dante's sword swinging like crazy. You can make plenty of combos with his sword, and using his guns will help to award you style points. Finally we get to the L2 button that will release the Devil Trigger.

The Devil Trigger is a key importance to your skills when going through the game. When you find the Alastor, Dante's devil powers are released. It also works with "Ifrit" as well. Alastor and Ifrit are two of the main weapons in the game you get, both having special abilities. For example, with Ifrit you have to power of fire within the gauntlets. You can use this to your advantage, because some monsters are weak against fire attacks. To take advantage of these you need to follow two rules. Make sure the Devil Trigger gauge -the symbols under your health bar- has a minimum of three highlighted symbols. You can do so by fighting enemies. Secondly, you simply press the L2 button, and Dante will release his powers.

Besides the gain of extreme speed and outrageous power, you will also get abilities learned from the weapon. With the Alastor you can gain things such as being able to blow your enemy away, or turning into your devil form and flying above the enemy to launch lightning bolts at them. Those are just minor abilities you learn at the beginning of the game; as you advance, there are more helpful abilities to learn.

Don't get the idea that these abilities are just found here and there. Capcom added a little shop into the game called "God of Time" where you can purchase them, and other items that you will soon learn to love. Throughout the game you will see these red orbs scattered all over the place. You can also obtain them by killing your enemies. A last option is a red pillar; you will recognize this by the red rings that float around the pillar.

Just keep attacking this pillar until it breaks, while you are attacking, it will release a lot of red orbs. When you reach a certain amount you can pay for whatever you plan to upgrade on your weapons. When I mentioned they style points earlier, I was leading towards the orbs. The best way is to know your combos, so you can unleash a lot of damage. After you beat the mission, you will be rewarded handsomely with orbs. Everything you do in this game is based around a grade. The better the grade you get, the more orbs you are rewarded.

At the end of each mission you will be graded on your progress. You can get anything from the scale of S, A, B, C and D. S being the best score in the game but hard to achieve. The score is graded by the time it took you to beat the mission and how many orbs you find. Aside from the 23 normal missions in the game there are 12 additional secret levels. In each you will have a specific mission to achieve; if you succeed, you will gain some more red orbs. You will also be taught something new in each level. If you are still new at the game, the secret missions will help you to learn specific moves or ways to help you later on in the game. For example, in one of the secret missions you find out that you can jump off an enemies head. With that you can reach some items that would seem impossible to gain. There is always some new information for you to obtain in these missions, so they didn’t just throw them in to make the game longer.

Within the missions you will find a load of demonic enemies. The enemies in this game are one of a kind. Creatures like Marionette's to floating skeleton heads. The castle has all sorts of evil spirits that you would find in the dark realm. When you go through a castle, there is nothing better than fighting a tyrant spider in the middle of a mission. Dante shows you how manly he can be by taking on some of these creatures. Each creature has a specific pattern of movement for you to adapt to. That is what makes each of them unique. You won’t be able to use button mashing on one opponent and expect it to work on the next. Each creature will teach you how to evade much better than you were before. And help you time your attacks better. Noting that the monsters are fun to battle, Capcom didn’t put too much diversity into the game. You would think Capcom would have enough creativity to throw in a new adversary for you to take on, but they leave you with the same damn spider at least 3 times. Making the boss a little tougher each time isn't really that exciting. But if you have the game on Easy-Auto you should have no trouble with the famous "Phantom" boss.

The bosses become harder with each difficulty, the monsters just take a bit longer to kill. The bosses show you that they have harder moves to dodge and that they do a lot more damage than before. There are three main levels of difficulty for this game. For those who have confidence in their abilities, there is the novice/normal mode. If you are not good enough for such tasks, the game will prompt you to go to the hidden Easy Auto mode. In this mode you will find the game to be a lot less stressful than normal mode. Instead of holding down L1 and hitting [ ] to shoot your guns, the game will automatically get the guns ready for you, all you have to do is nail that [ ] button like crazy. Then for the more advanced devil hunters there is the challenging Dante Must Die mode. I would only suggest this if you are experienced at the game and have a lot of patience. The enemies in this mode will not wait around for you to get your weapon ready; they will come from all sorts of angles and proceed to lay the smack down. If you thought they were hard on Normal mode, then you are in for a treat. You will have troubles with even the weakest enemies. Leaving you with that much you can ask yourself the question, which kind of devil hunter are you?

With that much said about all of the difficulties, we could now make our advancement to the detail in the surroundings. Capcom got down to every crack in the wall when they put in the detail into the castle. This place looks really convincing. It would almost seem that Capcom wanted to focus more on the backgrounds than the actual characters. You will notice the off-time mouthing and horrible facial expressions. Along with the timing come the voice actors: they are not exactly the best of the bunch. The most noticeable is Dante himself; Capcom got to the point that you know of his cockiness, but when he goes to show his true emotions, you could mistake him for a wimp. Most others are just a guy with a deep voice and an added creepy tone to make it seem somewhat convincing. But we all know there is no such things as a gigantic lava spider that can talk now don't we. Though Capcom left us with no promise in the characters, they pick up on everything else in the game. The videos are just basically a little upgrade from the actual in game graphics, nothing to be wound up over. After all of that talk, it is time to leave you with closure. This game is too good to pass up, if you don't grab it, the Devil May Cry.

Community review by alucard517 (March 21, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.