Devil May Cry 5: Capcom re-defines what makes video games fun with its latest hack and slash adventure

Devil May Cry 5
Devil May Cry 5

Devil May Cry 5's biggest achievement is that it doesn't try to be something it can't be.

At its core, its an action hack and slash game that stays true to its root. It doesn't follow the trend. It doesn't try to go open world, it doesn't add unnecessary side missions or non- linear areas to offer more gameplay time. All it does is focus all its energy on making Devil May Cry 5 the best action game of this generation.

Like I mentioned in my Devil May Cry 5 review, the combat in the game is always in a crescendo. What I meant by that is it keeps on adding more layers to it till the final mission. While most of the big AAA games out there try to fill in the gaps by churning out unnecessary repetitive content with a limited amount of tools to help you in combat, Devil May Cry 5 showers you with a huge amount of weapons, combos, maneuvers to master till the very end. And the fact that it is just a 15-hour adventure makes it even more prominent.

Where most of the open world games hide away most of its important gameplay perks behind a skill tree (which is also not that good), Devil May Cry 5 rewards you for just simply playing the game. It wants you to have fun. And it provides you the tools for it too. In fact, it provides much more in a short amount of time you spend in its world than those big 100 hours long games.

Minor Spoilers ahead

For example - Dante becomes playable halfway down the story and I was utterly surprised at how different his weapons and combos worked when compared to the other two playable characters. In fact, going even further, the game kept providing me with a different arsenal of weapons and abilities, so much so that at one time it all started to seem overwhelming.

In fact, Dante gets about 6 different weapons in the game and each one of them is completely different. And when I say different I mean they look, feel and perform different moves. That's how Devil May Cry 5 rolls.

It wants you to enjoy every combat encounter and for that it wants you to change your playstyle every now and then by trying different weapons and mixing them all together to create stylish combos. Every time you get comfortable with a weapon and a combo move that you have mastered by heart, it will throw up something new and exciting to try, and there you go learning all over again.

It's an incredibly fun process and made me wonder why I haven't been enjoying playing video games lately. It's because most of them have stopped being fun. They hide away the little tools or mechanics their games have to offer behind an insane amount of grinding which supposedly add the numbers to the game, and every other developer is blindly trying to follow that trend because at the end of the day consumers prefer quantity over quality right?

The fact that Capcom is bold enough to release a 15 hours long game at a price of 60$ when all the other games offer playtime of about 30-45 hours is just a reflection of their confidence. About how much they believe in their product. About the fact that what they are offering is something more fun and entertaining and has more substance than those other big games trying to do the same.

Devil May Cry 5 is out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

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