Rather than port the Devil May Cry HD Collection to the Switch Capcom are instead releasing each of the original PS2 trilogy separately. This means that Devil May Cry 2 has been released on its own again last week, please learn from the people who fell for it the first time, do not buy 2 on the basis of liking the first game. Devil May Cry 2 was handed off to a different development team who fundamentally misunderstood Devil May Cry. Today let’s look at exactly went so wrong with Devil May Cry 2.
If you think of Dante’s character design on thing that might jump out is iconic weaponry, he carries a sword and his twin handguns Ebony and Ivory. The thing is in the first game the sword and it’s melee combat was the star of the show and the guns were used more as an accessory to it, being used to keep enemies in the air or maintain your combo while an enemy was at range. In 2 they’ve shifted the focus over to the guns and the truth is that the gun gameplay is not good. Devil May Cry is not a shooter, it does not have the depth of a shooter; the guns have an auto aim system and infinite ammo so you don’t have to consider aiming or reloading at all, it literally just descends into mashing the fire button which isn’t exactly a riveting experience.
Even if the gunplay isn’t great if the melee combat was still intact from the original that could redeem the game but it is compromised in so many ways. In the original’s castle setting you often fought in smaller more cramped spaces, 2 opens up to a larger environment with fights now taking place out on town streets, the consequence of this is there’s now more space between enemies and when they are sent flying by your attacks they travel further away from you so to keep the combo going you have to use your guns. Further compounding the issue is the auto lock on system, the camera ties its focus to the enemy you are attacking and when that enemy is sent flying the camera is dragged away right with them, so if there’s multiple enemies around you this creates a definite risk of being blindsided by an off screen enemy (this risk does apply when just shooting enemies). The worst design choice affecting the melee combat is how many enemies are simply out of reach, there’s numerous flying enemies with the most egregious example being the infested helicopter boss the genuinely spends most of the fight flying off screen so you just can’t use melee combat.
That was the crux of why melee was a worse option but the combat itself was also weakened. The weapon variety keeps the games theme and focuses on guns over melee, there’s a selection of swords but they are only differentiated by stats, by comparison the first game had a set of gauntlets you unlocked that played differently but 2 does not have this kind of variety. It also seems that the sword combat itself is downgraded with moves from the original that seem to be totally absent like thousand stabs. Now in the interest of fairness there is a second character Lucia who is on par with Dante’s gameplay but has different weaponry, and there is also Trish from the first game as an unlockable character who I’ve heard plays more like Dante from the original but I’ve not tried her myself as it would required playing through Dante’s campaign again to unlock and I just don’t want to do that, plus even if she plays better there’s still all the design choices that hurt the melee combat.
Unfortunately there’s other problems with the rest of the game as well. Its design is pretty dull; most of the environments are just brown and grey, and a lot of the bosses designs are unremarkable with them being things like possessed buildings and vehicles which doesn’t live up to the designs of the first game, like how it’s first boss was a lava spider. Well I tell a lie there that boss is reused in 2 despite already fighting them 3 times in the original. The last big problem is Dante himself, now to be totally fair in terms of design this is Dante’s best look bur his personality has taken a real downward turn, the cocky joker from the first game is gone Dante is now quiet and serious. I get why they’ve done it Dante is meant to be “cool” and the strong silent type is another “cool” character trope, but it just isn’t escalated well and doesn’t fit with the established character.
As a final point the game is really short, it only takes around 2 hours to beat the Dante campaign but I struggle to call that a negative, it seems more like a mercy. So instead of playing Devil May Cry 2 you should instead play the waiting game for the Devil May Cry 3 release, the great redeemer game that showed what a Devil May Cry sequel should have been.
The David E Gamery 