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Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (PC) artwork

Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (PC) review


"PC gamers rejoice. One of the most stylish and fast paced series of the Playstation 2 makes its grand debut on the PC. Yes my fellow gamers the half demon half-half human Dante has finally arrived on the PC in what is no doubt the most stylish game to be released in the devil may cry (DMC) series. Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition as the name suggests is the special edition of the 3rd installment in the series. The game though the 3rd installment is actually a prequel to the 1st game and shows eve..."

PC gamers rejoice. One of the most stylish and fast paced series of the Playstation 2 makes its grand debut on the PC. Yes my fellow gamers the half demon half-half human Dante has finally arrived on the PC in what is no doubt the most stylish game to be released in the devil may cry (DMC) series. Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition as the name suggests is the special edition of the 3rd installment in the series. The game though the 3rd installment is actually a prequel to the 1st game and shows events, which occurred even before the 1st Devil May Cry game.

If you have been a follower of the DMC series on the Playstation 2 of course then you know what a great game DMC 1 was and what a mess DMC 2 was. While DMC 1 was a unique and enjoyable gaming experience with a class of its own DMC 2 was an experience that many gamers would like to forget mostly because of its short length and relatively easy difficulty level. So to make things right Capcom went back to the drawing board and build a new game engine, rebuild and redesigned everything thus making Devil May Cry 3 a welcome release after 2 long years.

Since the game is a prequel the game starts with Dante about to open his Devil May Cry investigation agency (which is already up and running in DMC 1) when some mysterious guy enters the shop and gives Dante an invitation from his evil twin brother Vergil after which he disappears and monsters warp into his office from thin air and thus the game begins with you in pursuit of your twin brother.

While 90% of the game takes place inside a huge tower called the Temen-NI-Gru, there are a few missions that take place on the streets and the 1st mission takes place inside Dante’s office thus giving you an experience of battling foes in open as well as closed environments like a mixture of DMC 1 and DMC 2.

The Devil May Cry series has always been about style and DMC 3 surpasses the previous 2 installments in every definition of the word style. You have a total of 6 different styles out of which 4 are available to you from the start of the game (the remaining 2 are unlocked later on in the game) to choose from including Gunslinger, Trickster, Swordmaster and Royal Guard. The Gunslinger (my favorite mode) lets you learn stylish moves with your guns, which include new moves like Rain Storm among many others. Swordmaster includes moves that you can do with your melee weapons like juggling your enemies with your sword. The Trickster mode lets you dodge enemy attacks in style like running up on walls. I will let you discover about the 3 remaining modes by yourself.

Whichever style you choose to play with, the moves of all the styles look fantastic. Though you might be tempted to try out each of the styles during the course of the game it really pays to stick with one style, that’s because after you earn a certain amount of style points your style levels up thus giving you even more powerful moves.

Style points are what you earn for killing your foes in, you guessed it, style. This time around there is a small meter that lets you know whether you are fighting your foes in style or not. By attacking your enemies in the same fashion again and again you’ll earn few style points but if you string together different attacks and combos you will earn a lot of style points. Thus you can come up with great looking combos by using both your melee weapon and firearms, and you can also combine 2 or more melee weapons and firearms for even greater looking combos.

Killing your foes earn you red orbs and if you kill them in style you will earn extra red orbs. Red orbs which can be also be found lying all around the game are the currency of the DMC series which you use in the game to upgrade your melee weapons, moves and firearms. Upgrades to firearms include an increase in the maximum firepower of the guns, increase in the number of bullets fired in a single shot etc. New moves that can be purchased include an ability to jump higher, flying ability when in devil mode and many more.

You can also use red orbs to buy items. Items include vital stars that replenish your health immediately, devil stars that replenish your devil power, holy water that damages your foes, blue orbs that increase your health bar, purple orbs that increase your devil gauge and yellow orbs that allow you to continue the game from the point where you die.

Besides the regular foes that you will fight you will also have to regularly face
up against the game’s many bosses. The boss battles are all amazing, with each boss being a unique experience. Bosses look great and animate nicely and will often require you to defeat it with a different strategy. Needles to say boss battles are also very tough and defeating each boss will give you a sense of accomplishment that you will get from very other games.
While there are some puzzles that you have to solve here and there they are very easy often requiring you to bring an item and placing it at its right place in order to progress forward.

Thus you will be spending most of your time in combat and that’s not really a bad thing because combat in DMC 3 is highly addictive. Dante and your foes move with great fluidity and the fast pace of the action make the combat engaging. The sound effects and music also play an important part in making the combat of this game work. The sound effects of your melee weapons slashing through your enemies and your firearms blasting through them, both sound great. Other sound effects are also up to the mark. The music is exactly what you might expect from a game like this. It mellows down when there are no enemies around but switches to a heavy rock soundtrack as soon as the action starts. Sometimes you will be banging your head to the great soundtrack. The music really helps you get in the mood and get that adrenaline pumping.

Characters in cut scenes look great and show facial expressions while lips move accurately with the words that are being spoken and the voice work is also up to the mark. The action in the cut scenes looks as if it has been taken out of a movie and one movie that comes to mind is The Matrix. Bullet time has been used a lot in the cut scenes giving them style. You haven’t seen anything like this in a game before this I guarantee.

Environments in the game look awesome. Inside Temen-Ni-Gru or outside all the environments are highly detailed, wear a gothic look and are well lit. Besides the environments all the animations and effects are spot on thus making it a very pretty game.

The original DMC 3 was a tough game and being so tough was the only negative point about it. Because of its steep learning curve and difficulty, many gamers looking for a casual action game were turned away towards easier action games. But those gamers who stuck with the game found that in the later stages the game becomes relatively easier because you can transform into devil form plus weapons upgrades and items that you will have purchased will help you survive.

So this time around they have toned down the difficulty level and added an “easy” difficulty level setting allowing casual gamers to also give this game a try. 2ndly the game allows you to continue the game from the last checkpoint whenever you die and also lets you buy a new gold orb that instantly brings you back to life wherever you die (kind of making the yellow orb useless) which wasn’t possible in the original.

So what else is new in this SE you might ask. Well besides the introduction of a new difficulty setting the game allows you to play as Vergil, Dante’s brother thus giving you a whole new set of different fighting moves, weapons etc. But you won’t get to see or experience a different story line from that of Dante’s, which is a bit disappointing. It’s the same story with a different character.

Finally, DMC 3 SE is a very fast game and I would recommend you to play this game with a game pad since a regular fight will have you jumping, dodging, hacking& slashing and shooting. Although you might manage to do that with your standard mouse and keyboard it wont be easy nor as much fun.



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Community review by blood-omen (November 16, 2007)

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