Capcom

A memorable case study I did for school led to my love for a series of games and a whole company’s catalog. Sometime in November of 2023, I started doing a case study of Dante’s writings. These are Inferno, Paradisio, and Purgatorio, which all explore the levels and inner workings of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Now even though I walked away from the stories being soured in comparison to the mysticism that they produce within the Davinci Code. However, in my independent research, I came upon a retro game series called Devil May Cry. Now after playing the first title in the series, I have a lot of combative thoughts on the game itself and the presentation of the PlayStation 2. But before we do, I want to cover the combat and visuals of the game to find some sort of resolution to my inevitable negative thoughts about the first two titles.

So the combat creates a very well-presented view of what the hack-and-slash genre would go on to come to be. We see very basic controls with dynamic combos which would have been expected from Capcom, however, these were only dynamic at the time, looking at it now it feels very stiff and very basic. Now you obviously look at it as the goal for that game to be so basic, so it can provide a basis for future titles within the genre. Another big problem is the camera, which uses Resident Evil’s fixed camera design. Where those original games aren’t horrible with that type of camera style. However,r during boss fights it does not fit well and hinders the player a lot of the time.  Get why they did this since Devil May Cry is a scrapped conceptualization of Resident Evil 4, but it has not aged well. 

Devil May Cry forum user, Dragon Master, believes that the comfortability of the game makes it the best, “  I can already tell this is gonna get really bad, but what makes DMC  fun isn’t who got the more complex gameplay.” They continue to contend, “ but based on the gamer itself and which he or she feels more comfortable with and enjoys more.”

The visuals are in some ways, enigmatic. You see, the character design shows that they were mainly going off of PlayStation graphics, where the eyes are hidden with very few pieces of facial animation. However, there is a 3-dimensionality that the next generation approaches. I’m not sure if this is because they planned on releasing it as a last-generation title for the Playstation, but it’s unique even with its aged flaws. The assets themselves can vary, the gothic architecture truly does work well, but in the underworld stages, they are super janky and low quality.  

Reddit user BitsAndBobs304, says that there are visual problems, especially in the remaster, “I’ve seen some videos showing the visual downgrades of the HD collection, especially in dmc1, and was quite sad about that.” They postulate it by stating, “ I’ve bought and played the originals on PS2, and I’d like to play them on pc at 1080p/4k now.”

Overall, this game’s age does reflect the problems and critiques I have. I do hope after Capcom finishes their remakes of the Resident Evil series, that they turn to lesser titles such as this one. But for now, we just have to embrace its flaws.