Devil May Cry 5 (2019): The Review

Overview

Devil May Cry 5 is the explosive return fans spent years dreaming about, bringing Dante, Nero, and the rest of the cast back with a level of confidence and style that few action games can rival. Every fight feels like a chaotic performance piece fueled by absurdly satisfying combat, constant variety, and the kind of over-the-top spectacle the series has always thrived on. Backed by gorgeous visuals, stellar art direction, and a surprisingly heartfelt story beneath all the swagger and demon-slaying madness, Devil May Cry 5 doesn’t just revive the franchise, it reestablishes it at the very top of the stylish action genre where it belongs.

Score: 8,5 out of 10

The Positives ✅

Style in video games is often superficial. A cool coat. A smug one-liner. A slow-motion explosion thrown into a trailer so people can call something “badass” online for two weeks before moving on. Devil May Cry 5 understands something most action games don’t: style only matters when there’s real mechanical confidence underneath it. Anyone can make a character look cool standing still. Devil May Cry 5 makes you feel cool while playing it, and that difference is exactly why the series still stands untouchable in its own lane.

From the opening hours, the game carries itself with absurd swagger. Demons rip apart cities while gothic metal screams in the background, characters exchange insults mid-fight like they’re competing to outsmirk each other, and every combat encounter feels less like survival and more like performance art disguised as violence. The game doesn’t simply want you to defeat enemies; it wants you to humiliate them with as much flair as possible. Few action games understand player expression this deeply.

And honestly, the combat system is ridiculous in the best possible way. Dante, Nero, and V each play so differently that they almost feel like protagonists from entirely separate games somehow stitched into one campaign. Nero’s combat feels aggressive and straightforward, built around momentum and explosive offense, especially with the Devil Breaker system adding constant mechanical variety to encounters. Dante, meanwhile, is pure controlled chaos. By the time his full arsenal opens up, he essentially becomes a walking sandbox of weapons, styles, stance-switching, and combo experimentation that feels borderline overwhelming at first until it suddenly clicks into something magical.

Then there’s V, who remains one of the strangest and most fascinating additions the series has ever introduced. Instead of directly engaging enemies, V hangs back while controlling demonic familiars to attack for him, turning combat into this oddly elegant dance of positioning and battlefield management. Some players disliked how drastically his gameplay differs from traditional Devil May Cry combat, but personally I appreciated how experimental it felt. His entire fighting style reinforces his personality perfectly: physically fragile, emotionally detached, and constantly relying on monsters to do the dirty work for him.

The combat itself is so fluid that it almost stops feeling like button inputs after a while. Once the systems settle into muscle memory, fights begin resembling improvisational choreography more than traditional action gameplay. Launching enemies into the air, juggling them between weapons, canceling animations mid-combo, swapping styles on the fly, parrying attacks with perfect timing — there’s an absurd level of freedom hidden inside the mechanics for players willing to truly engage with them.

And the soundtrack? Genuinely one of the best action-game soundtracks ever made. Devil Trigger, Bury the Light, Subhuman, the music doesn’t simply accompany combat; it fuels it. The dynamic soundtrack system, where tracks intensify as your style ranking climbs higher, is one of the smartest decisions the game makes because it directly ties player performance to the emotional energy of the fight itself. The better you play, the harder the game flexes alongside you.

Visually, the RE Engine gives the game this incredible balance between realism and absurd anime energy. Characters look dramatically more human than previous entries while still maintaining the exaggerated style the series thrives on. Demon designs especially deserve praise because they constantly toe the line between grotesque horror and heavy-metal album art. Every boss encounter feels visually memorable in its own distinct way.

What surprised me most, though, was how emotional the story actually becomes underneath all the ridiculousness. Devil May Cry has always hidden genuine sincerity beneath its over-the-top presentation, but DMC5 especially feels like a culmination of years of character history finally colliding together. The relationship between Dante, Vergil, and Nero gives the narrative far more emotional weight than the series’ reputation might initially suggest. Beneath all the pizza jokes and demon slaughter is a story about legacy, resentment, family, and cycles of violence that people keep inheriting from each other.

The Negatives ⚠️

For as incredible as the combat is, Devil May Cry 5 definitely struggles in areas outside of it. The level design, unfortunately, is probably the game’s weakest aspect overall. Large portions of the campaign take place inside variations of the Qliphoth tree, resulting in environments that often blur together visually after several hours. While the game still has moments of striking visual direction, too much of the latter half becomes dominated by fleshy red corridors and organic demon architecture that lacks the environmental personality earlier entries sometimes delivered better.

The story, while emotionally effective by the end, can also feel unnecessarily convoluted at points, especially for players unfamiliar with previous games in the franchise. Devil May Cry 5 assumes a certain level of investment in the series’ mythology already exists, and while the game does attempt to onboard newcomers, some emotional reveals inevitably land harder for longtime fans than they will for first-time players.

V’s gameplay style, while creatively fascinating, also occasionally disrupts the overall pacing of combat. His sections are mechanically slower and less immediately satisfying than Dante or Nero’s more aggressive playstyles, particularly during repeated encounters where commanding familiars can start feeling slightly cumbersome compared to directly controlling the action yourself.

Enemy variety can also become inconsistent depending on which character you’re controlling. Certain enemies clearly feel designed to complement specific combat systems more than others, which occasionally creates encounters that feel more irritating than stylish depending on your current moveset or character preference.

And honestly, Devil May Cry 5 almost suffers from its own mechanical depth. The skill ceiling is so absurdly high that many casual players will only scratch the surface of what the combat system is truly capable of. The game remains enjoyable at a basic level, but there’s definitely a gap between “finishing” Devil May Cry 5 and actually understanding how beautiful its combat systems can become once mastered fully.

The Experience 🎮

Playing Devil May Cry 5 feels like being handed a guitar during the middle of a thunderstorm and being told to improvise a solo while demons explode around you. The game radiates confidence from beginning to end. Every animation, every song choice, every ridiculous line delivery feels completely certain of itself in a way very few modern AAA games allow themselves to be anymore.

What makes the experience so satisfying is that the game never treats style as decoration. Style is the gameplay. Looking cool is mechanically rewarded. Creativity matters. Aggression matters. Improvisation matters. The game constantly pushes players toward expression instead of simple efficiency, which makes combat encounters feel deeply personal once the systems fully click into place.

And honestly, there’s something refreshing about how unapologetically video-gamey the entire experience is. Devil May Cry 5 does not care about realism. It does not care about grounded storytelling. Dante rides a motorcycle that splits into two chainsaw swords. Nero literally catches rockets midair and surfs on enemies. Vergil cuts through reality itself while standing in the middle of rainstorms looking like he escaped from someone’s gothic Tumblr wallpaper. The game fully commits to its absurdity without embarrassment, and because of that commitment, it becomes impossible not to get swept up in it.

At the same time, there’s an unexpected sincerity underneath all the chaos. The franchise has always been about damaged family relationships hidden beneath demon-slaying spectacle, and DMC5 leans into that emotional core harder than most previous entries. By the end, the story stops feeling like an excuse for action sequences and starts feeling genuinely emotional in ways that caught me completely off guard the first time through.

There’s also a fascinating rhythm to the experience once you settle into it. The game constantly pushes you toward mastery without ever outright demanding it. Every fight becomes an opportunity to improve, experiment, and look cooler than you did five minutes earlier. Few games make repetition feel this rewarding because the fun comes not from simply winning fights, but from discovering increasingly stylish ways to dominate them.

By the end, Devil May Cry 5 doesn’t just feel like one of the best character-action games ever made. It feels like a celebration of why the genre exists in the first place. It’s loud, ridiculous, emotional, mechanically brilliant, occasionally messy, and completely unashamed of every single one of those things.

And honestly? That kind of confidence is rare now.