Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: PS4 & Xbox One
Release Date: March 10th, 2015 (all territories)
MSRP: $39.99
DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition is the remastered and updated release of Ninja Theory's 2013 reboot for current-gen consoles. As the name implies, it's the definitive and truest release of DmC you'll find. Taking in all the feedback and requests, the developers went back and retooled the game to make the experience much more challenging, refined, and more stylish than ever. In addition to attaining 60 FPS and 1080p visuals on consoles, they implemented a number of mods from the PC release, such as turbo-mode, style modifiers, and tweaks to combat mechanics. This title is the total package, and is the most robust Devil May Cry game we've had in a very long time.
DmC: Devil May Cry is a reboot and reimagining of the Devil May Cry lore and seeks to modernize the gameplay and narrative. As an origin story, we find a young and aloof vagabond named Dante out of sorts. Eventually, he reunites with his long lost brother Vergil and learns of his supernatural heritage, with both Angel and Demon lineage. Joining forces with The Order, a group of human freedom fighters, he faces off against the demons that control humanity through capitalism and manufactured vices. When battling against these foes, he's pulled into their parallel home world known as 'Limbo', which appears as a warped and deformed version of our own reality.
In addition to Dante's story, Vergil's Downfall explores the events shortly after the main game. As an epilogue of sorts, we experience Vergil's decent into madness as he embraces his demonic ancestry. Though this can be played right from the get-go, it's recommended you finish Dante's campaign first.
DmC continues the tradition of stylish combat and fluid gameplay, but goes about it in different way. The combat takes its influences from a variety of different action games - such as Bayonetta, God of War, Heavenly Sword, and of course the previous games. In terms of general design and progression, DmC is very much in line with the last entries. You still explore environments, collect items and gear, fight off waves of enemies, and strengthen Dante's abilities and weapons. Ninja Theory has gone a bit further to add much more traversal and platforming action sequences to break up the combat sections.
Dante and Vergil both use form based combat, switching between their Human, Demon, and Angel abilities. For Dante, switching forms alters his move set and arsenal, allowing him to take advantage of a whole array of melee weapons and firearms to switch things up on the fly. Vergil's combat style focuses on stances. Using his only weapon, the Yamato, he's able to move between heavy, quick, and normal strikes, while using his teleportation and sword illusion abilities.
With the Definitive Edition, Ninja Theory have included a whole slew of changes and upgrades to the combat engine. For instance, exploits, overpowered moves, and other controversial design choices have been addressed to make the combat feel not only more engaging and satisfying, but far more stylish than anything the original game could accomplish. Moreover, manual lock-on has now been implemented into the game. Just like in previous DMC titles, you can focus on a particular enemy and keep your attacks squared on them.
Modifiers: - These are stackable additions to the base game, and don't function as difficulty modes. For instance, you can enable Turbo, Hardcore, and Must-Style modes and still play on the lowest difficulty in DmC. These modifiers change the core experience in a number of ways.
Turbo mode: Game speed increases 20%. With this enabled, not only does combat feel faster, but the flow is much smoother. You'll likely never go back after enabling it.
Hardcore Mode: This is the most comprehensive and extensive change to DmC. With this enabled, new combat tweaks, upgrades, and rebalances are enabled. Weapon damage is re-tuned, enemy A.I is altered, certain moves' attack power are altered, and Angel/Demon specific damage has been redesigned. This modifier is a true game changer, and the change log is apparently six pages long. Playing this enabled will feel like a new experience, that's ultimately much more faithful to the series' difficulty and balancing. If you wanted DmC to be more like DMC, then this is the mode for you. Though if you still liked how the original game felt and played, then leave this off.
Must-Style Mode: With this modifier enabled, enemies will only receive damage when you reach S rank and above. On easier difficulties, this will likely not be so difficult, but on Son of Sparda and above, it'll definitely be a challenge for even action game vets.
New Difficulty and Content:
Gods-Must Die: All enemies spawn with their own Devil Trigger enabled, and no items and checkpoints are available. The game must be completed on Son of Sparda difficulty mode to unlock.
Vergil's Bloody Palace: Just like his brother, Vergil will be able to experience the gauntlet in Bloody Palace -- though with a twist. Not just a simple character swap for Dante's Bloody Palace, this one is designed around Vergil's encounters during his campaign and his special abilities. Though his version of BP only has 60 level, they switch things up considerably by introducing more environmental hazards and phases to conquer. In one instance, you'll have to warp around to different areas fighting different waves of enemies to clear the way to the next level.
Complete Change Log - Capcom -Unity
Review Thread - thanks to LHK
Articles:
Capcom-Unity Announcement Post
Destructoid's Feature/Impressions article
Video:
Announcement Trailer
60 FPS Gameplay Footage
60 FPS - Combos and Manual Lock-On
Vergil's Bloody Palace (60FPS)
Launch Trailer
Brought to you by DMC-GAF's Dahbomb:
Q: I don’t care about DmC DE… when’s DMC4SE?
A. This is not the place to ask about DMC4SE!
Q: I have played and finished all previous DMC games but never played DmC because I heard it was bad. Should I play this version of DmC? Also what difficulty modes should I be playing on?
A: Short answer is that yes you should play DmC DE. A lot of changes have been made to cater to players like you who liked the previous DMC games. For you definitely start on Nephilim mode with Hardcore and Turbo mode enabled. Then keep those modifiers on while you unlock more difficulty settings. Try out Must Style mode if you feel you are styling on the enemies too hard.
Q: What is this Manual lock on mode? Is it mandatory?
A: The Manual lock on is the hard lock on from previous DMC games. It allows players to lock on to enemies with a reticule and the movement of the player was tethered to the position of the enemy along with the camera. It’s not exclusive to any mode, you can use it whenever. By default it is mapped to the R1/Right bumper button in DmC DE. It is a completely optional feature, you can play the entire game without every using it however it makes doing certain things a lot easier and more precise.
You can choose to map the Lock on to any other button on the controller or you can choose to remove it from the controller completely. With Lock on you also have a function for the L3 button which allows you to switch targets of your lock on. Furthermore the Lock on comes with a dial that gives you a very good representation of enemy health.
Q: With the new manual lock on, how are Stinger-like motions handled? Are they still double tap forward or did they change it to the classic method? What about Hightime like moves?
A:There is a new option in the menu that allows you to dictate how you want to do Stinger motions. The default option is Forward, Forward + button but you can also do the classic version which is Lock + Forward + button. But that’s not all! You even have the option of BOTH at the same time so you can do a Stinger motion with both double tap and lock on.
Q: I hated the color coded enemies in the original DmC. Have they changed that?
A: The color coded enemies are still in DmC but there have been alterations made to them. You can now damage them with every weapon although using an off color will do reduced damage. Furthermore, hitting enemies with off color weapons with do practically no hit stun. The game still gives you big incentive to hit enemies with the right colored weapon but you can still kill enemies using whatever weapon you want and there is no interruption to game play flow.
Q: Ok… so what about enemy behavior and bosses? The bosses were too easy in the original.
A: Bosses have been tweaked most particularly the final boss of the game as well as the boss in the Vergil DLC. Enemies have been made more aggressive in the harder difficulty settings. Along with the additional modifiers, bosses are not going to be as easy as they were before.
Q: Will there be a PC version to this? What about these additions being added to the console versions?
A: No news on whether we will be getting PC version of DE. In an interview, the creative director of the game stated that due to the nature of 60FPS and the scope of the various balance changes, they would not be able to get many of the changes to work on the previous generation of consoles. That is because 30FPS would result in loss of frames/overall jankiness with Turbo mode and with less frames to work with it was harder to tweak the timing for the dodges/parries (one frame at 30FPS determined whether it was too easy or too hard, at 60FPS that balance was easier to achieve because they had more frames to work with). For all intents and purposes, the DE was designed around 60FPS.
Q: I see that Vergil has a new HUD. But it doesn’t seem to do anything… what is it really for?
A: The HUD on the bottom left side of Vergil is in fact something new to the Definitive edition and it highlights a feature of Vergil that no one really knew about from the original game. The HUD is linked to the Doppelganger ability of Vergil.
The portrait on the bottom indicates that currently Vergil’s Doppelganger clone is in the default state which means the clone will copy all of Vergil’s actions. Pressing Down on the D-pad causes the portrait to change slightly indicating that there is now a different level of delay for your clone. So whenever you do an action, based on the delay that has been set the clone will do the appropriate action after the appropriate delay. There are 3 different intervals for the delay.
The other 3 buttons correspond to stances that you can lock the clone in. Pressing Up on the D pad will lock your clone into the Human stance. Even if you do moves with your Angel/Demon stance, the clone will always do the Human move equivalent as he is locked into that state. Pressing Left on D pad will lock the clone in to the Angel state and pressing Right on D pad will lock him into the Demon state. This allows for some crazy combinations of attacks with your clone where you can combine multi stance combat with dual characters. Unfortunately, the clone cannot be controlled by a second player like in DMC3.
Special Thanks:
DMC-GAF
Capcom
Ninja Theory
And all the 'combographers' that kept the series going strong
