Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition

This remaster of 2019's action adventure gets new life on a new set of consoles, but there isn't a ton of additional gameplay here that sets it apart from the original. Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition leaps onto the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S by taking advantage of the horsepower from the newer consoles to present this battle between good, evil, and worse evil in striking detail. The enhanced visuals of the Special Edition leap off the screen in 4K detail, and the addition of ray tracing and options to tailor your play between visual fidelity and frame rate allows you to tailor your experience to the equipment you own. Regardless of what tweaks you make to the play, your fight against Urizen's demons in Red Grave City looks phenomenal. On top of that, some of the added features makes this game much more challenging, especially for players that have started to master the gameplay of DMC5. The Legendary Dark Knight difficulty raises the challenge significantly, and when paired with Turbo Mode, which accelerates action for both heroes and monsters alike, requires skillful timing and knowledge of each character's skills and attacks to successfully navigate a level. The same can be said about the Bloody Palace mode, which makes it way from previous downloadable content, and sets you up against waves of monsters. While the combo assist for new players will work for a while, there's no way that you can survive, much less elevate your stage score without mastering the skills and evades for your characters.

The characters are still essentially the same as the current gen systems: Nero's got a direct attack style that's enhanced by his interchangeable prosthetic arms known as the Devil Breaker. Not only do the arms have their own abilities, but they can be fired as weapons themselves to cause larger amounts of damage. V, by contrast, is more of a distance fighter, conjuring his personal bird, panther, and rock demons to weaken enemies for him before he performs the killing blow. Dante is more technical, switching between four separate combat styles and multiple ranged weapons. These three are joined in this edition by Vergil, Dante's twin brother, who has both powerful strikes and rapid ranged attacks. For newcomers to this series, he's possibly the easiest to dive into and be successful with, but will still become incredibly difficult to master. Unfortunately, there's a downside to including Vergil, and that's while there's a slight glimpse at the other side of his story in the game, there's nothing radically new content-wise from his perspective. There's virtually no new cutscenes or dialogue from him, making his gameplay just seem like a character swap without substance. That means that favoritism for a character from the original game returns based on your preference or playstyle, but for Vergil players, the story simply evaporates. Plus, Dante's role still remains shallow and the ending still feels rushed instead of developed properly. The end result is that if you haven't played DMC5 on a current gen system and want a fast-paced action title that showcases the power of a next-gen machine, Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition will keep you entertained. But if you've played the previous version and were looking for deeper or expanded content, you'll probably be a tad disappointed.