Devil May Cry 5 Review: 5 Ups & 3 Downs

Ups...

5. The Best Combat In Action Game History

No developer has the experience with high-octane third-person action quite like Capcom, and it shows.

DMC 5 feels like a master executing their craft using decades worth of time-tested knowledge. What starts as a playful chaining of three hit combos, aerial leaps and explosive specials turns into accurate button taps powering up specific swings, jabs of the d-pad to switch stances, or watching an enemy’s animations so you can kick them up into the air for a timed finisher.

It might have been 11 years since DMC 4, but waiting that long has produced a sublime, purely action-focused experience I can’t see any other developers besting for quite some time.

DMC 5 also addresses the half-baked inclusion of Dante in DMC 4; there’s NONE of the back-tracking filler that dogged that entry in the series. Half of the game does go by without him again, but when the Son of Sparda shows up, he gets to shine brighter than ever.

This sets a new bar not only for the responsive, synaptic connection between player and character, but for graphical presentation and experimentation in combat.

Talk about a return to form.