These are the questions Nero must answer, a prospect that should have left me groaning with disappointment. Nero was easily the worst part of Devil May Cry 4 – a weak, whiny protagonist with a sluggish move set and a dull, uninspiring personality. I hated him. But DMC 5 did amazing things for Nero.
He was older, stronger, but not necessarily wiser. With his arm gone, he has to make do with a series of prosthetics. I cannot accurately describe the amount of fun I had using Nero, activating Tomboy and twirling into my enemies like a bloodthirsty shuriken from hell, switching to Gerbera and hopping through the air as I delivered death from every conceivable angle.
And yet, Nero is just the warm-up, an appetizer meant to illuminate portions of the mystery before V, the newest addition to the franchise unravels it completely. I wasn’t sold on V initially. I mean, I loved the look, but V’s passive fighting style contrasted so sharply with Nero’s grounded, visceral approach that I thought I would struggle to tolerate his sections.
But then V leaped into action, stabbing, slashing, and tearing from below; bathing the field with lighting from above; and teleporting from enemy to enemy like a phantom, decimating entire patrols of demons in a fraction of the time it takes Nero to hack his way through a single enemy.
I became a fan. I officially lost it when V summoned that Golem from the sky. There I was, wondering how my foes had unleashed such a fearsome monster when it hit me: the Golem was mine, not there’s. He moved at my will, devoured at my command. I would have played DMC 5 for V alone.
But we all know that the franchise revolves around Dante. Some people argue that V and Nero stole the show this time around. I disagree. Even with a rich cast of surprisingly intriguing characters, Dante was still the highlight of this entire game.
Like Nero, the legendary Devil Hunter is older, wiser, more powerful, and far from weary. They took everything we love about the character and multiplied it by 1000. This is Dante’s coolest look yet.
They have refined the protagonist, smoothing out his edges, giving all the cheesy but forgivable elements of previous games a classy upgrade. Dante just keeps getting better, his lines funnier, his arsenal more satisfying—my jaw dropped the first time I used Cerberus.
This game could have coasted on its incredible gameplay. But they complimented it with a truly appealing plot. You have to find out what happened to Nero’s arm, why Urizen is so hell-bent on global destruction, what V’s motives are. Does the game have weaknesses? Yes, but the strengths are so overwhelming that the weaknesses are negligible.
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