Halloween is a very fun holiday that everyone loves to celebrate! The one holiday we wear fun costumes, watch scary films, go on a trick or treat for candies, party, and eat so much candy to your heart’s content! It is the day we focus on our appreciation for horrors, and we often indulge in the media in the spirit of Halloween, but, there is a very popular form of media to puts you in the shoes of the victim of supernatural horrors, trying to escape alive. What is it? Of course, it’s video games! But what video game will I discuss since many cover horror?… Hmm. There is “Resident Evil”, “Dead Rising”, “Outlast”, and many more. But, there are also games with horror elements or focus on Halloween, such as “Kingdom Hearts” 1 and 2, “Pokemon” (Lavender Town and ghosts), “Costume Quest”, “Luigi Mansions” and of course “GhostBuster, the video game”!
I got it! Instead of focusing on games where you play as someone who tries to survive, what about games where you are a supernatural being but take down demons? But what game is that? Well, allow me to introduce you to “Devil May Cry”! A fun hack-and-slash game to play during Halloween. It has horror elements as its setting, but it isn’t scary at all as you play a funny protagonist named “Dante”, a half-demon and human who loves pizza and takes the job of taking down demons as his business. There are 5 games in the franchise and 1 reboot, but we will be focusing on the most popular and my favourite DMC game, “Devil May Cry 3”!
The Story:
“Devil May Cry 3” is the prequel to the series, as we focus on an 18-year-old “Dante”. Just opening up his business and enjoying a slice of pizza, but a man named “Arkham” stops by his service shop and gives him an invitation to a party from his twin brother named “Vergil”. But Arkham’s “invitation” was just to flip his desk and vanishes as Dante pulls out his pistols. As Dante gathers all the pizza that was flung to the sky, the roof crumbles as the demon drops down and stabs the shirtless Dante. Unfazed, he pushes them out of the way and walks to his jukebox to play rock music and take down the demons as he vibes to the music. After the cutscene, you are thrown into a tutorial about how to play the game and take down the remainder of the demons. After the tutorial, you finish the opening cutscene with Dante shooting the last demon for stepping on his pizza and saying “Look like this is going to be one hell of a party!”.
Right away, the story starts by fueling your hype and wanting more to see what else Dante will do that is cool. As you complete each level, you are introduced to many characters such as “Mary” but goes by “Lady” and is Arkham’s daughter, “Jester” who is Arkham in disguise, and Dante’s twin brother, “Vergil”. As Dante clears each level, he finally reaches the “Party” which was a trap by Vergil to steal Dante’s amulet. Both brothers haven’t seen each other for a long time, but have a strong rivalry and are ready to fight to the death as they both hate their half counterpart and don’t agree with each other. Dante despises his father (who is a legendary demon knight) and disowns his half-demon blood, but the opposite for Vergil as he despises his human mother, and disowns his half-human blood. As they fight, Vergil wins and claims the amulet from Dante. After some time, Dante awakens and enters his “Devil Trigger” form which is his demon form. Finding it cool and now more motivated, Dante jumps from the tower with style to claim back his Amulet!
As the story progresses, we soon find out Arkham is the real antagonist using everyone to obtain the twin’s father’s power using the blood of Dante and Vergil for the devil blood, and Mary for her human blood. After succeeding, Dante and Vergil put their difference aside and work together to take down Arkham, ending the fight with the iconic line, “Jackpot!”.
As the fight comes to a close, Arkham is begging Mary for help, but ashamed of her father for using her, she decides to pull the trigger. A moment that feels right for her, but soon hunts her as she continues living her life and brings it up in the 5th game. As the game comes to a close, Dante and Vergil fall to the portal to Hell to retrieve a sword that was formed after the fight. Both being rivals again, start to fight as Vergil wants Dante’s amulet to gain more power, but Dante refuses. After the final boss fight between the brothers, Vergil loses and gives up the sword to Dante and as the portal to the human world closes, Vergil tells Dante to go back home as he stays back in Hell to protect their father’s home. After the event of the game, Mary who now goes by “Lady” narrates the ending, as we see a much older Dante in his shop, and Lady agrees to work with Dante to take down demons together. As the camera pans to the outside of the shop, we see it is now called “Devil May Cry”, and leads up to the beginning of the first game.
The Gameplay:
The gameplay is a hack and slash based around a rating system as you fight enemies, with 4 different styles of fighting. The first style is “Trickster” to utilizes evading and double jumping, the second is “Sword Master” which utilizes the special attack for Dante’s many armed blades he wields throughout the game, the third is “Gunslinger” revolving around Dante doing tricks and special attack with his iconic twin pistoles and many more firearm he gains throughout the game, and his fourth being “Royal Guard” which focuses on Dante blocking attacks but perfecting it will boost your rating score a lot to triple SSS tier if you would like to focus on rating system. Dante has two bonus styles after completing the game called “Quicksilver” (Slowing down time) and “Doppelganger” (Cloning himself). If you are playing the special edition, then you will get to play as Vergil who has one style called “Dark Slayer” which focuses on Vergil teleporting as he slashes through enemies fast in the blink of an eye.
The Music:
As for music, it is one of the best as the Devil May Cry series soundtrack is heavily based on the hard-rock genre, and the third game takes it up a notch with iconic soundtrack such as “Devil Never Cry” and “Taste The Blood”. If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend checking out soundtracks on Spotify as it is available to stream and represent the early 2000s gaming very well. If you would like to hear a snippet of their music, I recommend checking out this video as it is my favourite track from the game!
Conclusion and links to the game:
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog as I go through the story that leads up to the first “Devil May Cry” game, the fun and in-depth gameplay, and the rock and roll soundtrack.
If you are interested in playing the game as a way to get into the fun franchise, then I recommend checking out these links to obtain the games for whatever platform you may be using to play your games. Remember to comment down below what your favourite game from the franchise or anything outside the franchise is!
Playstation 4/5 | Xbox One/Series S and X | Steam | Switch
P.S. The swords Dante and Vergil have were gifted by their father. Dante’s sword is called “The Rebellion” and Vergil’s Sword is called “The Yamato”.