Devil May Cry 5

Character-action is a genre that mostly lives on reputation. Few studios attempt it, fewer get it right, and the ones that do tend to take a decade between entries. Devil May Cry 5 arrived on March 7, 2019, eleven years after Devil May Cry 4, and the wait shows in the best possible way: this is a game made by people who spent a long time thinking about what a combo system is for.

Developed and published by CAPCOM Co., Ltd. on the RE Engine, the same technology behind the modern Resident Evil run, the game drops a demon tree called the Qliphoth into the middle of Red Grave City and sends three hunters in to cut it down. That’s the plot, and the game knows it’s thin. The story exists to move you between arenas and to give long-time fans a payoff, which it does with more warmth than the series usually manages.

What matters is the structure. The campaign is split into missions assigned to Nero, Dante and the newcomer V, and each plays like a separate design thesis. Nero is the accessible brawler with a consumable gimmick, Dante is the sprawling expert instrument, and V is an experiment in fighting by proxy. A D-to-SSS style rank grades every encounter on variety, evasion and unbroken aggression.

The critical reception has been strong — the game holds a Metacritic score of 89 — and it’s easy to see why. This is a game that respects both the newcomer mashing through on the default difficulty and the veteran chasing a no-damage run hundreds of hours in. It sits where few action games do: a premium, single-player, mechanics-first release with no live-service scaffolding holding it up.

• Three Playable Hunters: Nero, Dante and V each bring a separate combat system, not a reskin. Switching between them mission to mission keeps the campaign from settling into a rut.
• Devil Breakers: Nero’s prosthetic arms are swappable, breakable and individually specialised, turning a loadout into a resource you spend.
• Dante’s Arsenal and Four Styles: On-the-fly style switching plus a wide spread of melee and ranged weapons, including a motorcycle that splits into twin blades.
• V’s Familiars: Three demons fight on your command while V hangs back, stepping in only for the killing blow.
• Style Rank and Dynamic Soundtrack: The music builds as your rank climbs from D to SSS, so the soundtrack reflects how well you’re playing.
• Replay Infrastructure: Extra difficulty modes, secret missions, The Void training mode and the Bloody Palace survival gauntlet.

The Combat Loop

The loop is simple to describe and endless to refine. You enter an arena, demons spawn, and the game asks one question: how well can you do this? Winning is the easy part. The style meter punishes repetition, drops when you take a hit and rewards you for using everything you own. Lean on one effective combo and the rank stalls. The game is telling you, politely, to stop being boring.

Red orbs earned in missions buy new moves and upgrades, and the drip is well paced. Each purchase adds a new option to a move set you’re still learning, so a first run works as an extended tutorial. The real game begins on the second.

Nero: The On-Ramp

Nero is where most players will feel competent first. The Red Queen sword has a rev mechanic that rewards timing, the Blue Rose revolver handles spacing, and the Devil Breakers add a layer of risk. Each arm does something different, and each can shatter if you’re hit mid-use.

The catch is that you work through your arms in the order you loaded them rather than selecting freely. It’s a deliberate constraint that forces you to commit and improvise, and the intent is easy to respect. It’s also the one system in the game that occasionally seems designed to fight the player instead of the demons.

Dante: The Deep End

Dante is the reason this game has a community years later. Four styles, switchable instantly, layered over a weapon roster you can also cycle mid-combo. The input ceiling is enormous. An expert’s Dante looks like a different game from a beginner’s, and the quiet triumph of the design is that the distance between the two is all learnable skill, with no unlock required.

The weapons have personality, too. The motorcycle-turned-twin-blades is ridiculous on paper and, by all appearances, heavy and satisfying to use. That’s the series’ tone in one object: deeply silly, executed with total seriousness.

V: The Interesting Misfire

V is the boldest idea and the weakest result. Commanding familiars from range while reading poetry is a striking concept, and his missions are a welcome change of pace. But the latency between input and a familiar’s action blunts the precision that defines the other two characters. You’re managing combat rather than performing it. His missions are good, while Nero’s and Dante’s are exceptional.

Where It Stumbles

The level design is the honest weak point. Early city streets give way to a long stretch of fleshy, red-brown Qliphoth interiors that blur together. The missions are corridors connecting arenas, with little exploration beyond the secret missions.

The campaign is also short. That’s a fair complaint if you play once and leave, and irrelevant if you engage with the difficulty ladder, which is where the game expects you to live. The cameo system, which drops other players into certain missions, is too limited to count as co-op. And the paid add-ons sit awkwardly beside a full-price game. None of them are necessary, which is exactly why they feel cheap.

The RE Engine does exceptional work here. Character models are photoreal without tipping into the uncanny, with faces, leather and fabric rendered at a fidelity that still holds up. Animation is the real achievement: every swing has anticipation, impact and recovery you can read at a glance, and in a genre where reading frames is the game, that clarity counts for more than looks.

The engine is built to scale across hardware, with a high, stable frame rate clearly the priority of the design. The HUD is restrained: health, Devil Trigger gauge and style rank, all legible in peripheral vision.

Art direction is more uneven. The characters and demons are superbly designed, but the environments are not. The Qliphoth’s interior palette is monotonous, and no amount of rendering quality fixes a space that has nothing to say.

The soundtrack earns a mention as a mechanic in its own right. Battle themes layer in vocals and intensity as your rank rises, so playing well literally makes the music better. It’s one of the smartest feedback systems in action games.

Steam: This is the mature, proven version. Use a controller. Mouse and keyboard work, but the game’s design assumes simultaneous access to face buttons, triggers and a stick for style and weapon switching, and Dante in particular becomes finger gymnastics on a keyboard. The PC release scales across a wide range of hardware, and the modding scene has extended its life considerably. One caveat: the PC version never received the full later-generation re-release treatment that consoles got, so some extras arrive as paid DLC rather than in the box.

Nintendo: The listing here is the Switch 2 “Devil Hunter Edition,” published by Capcom. Check frame-rate performance before buying. This is a game where a locked 60 frames per second is a functional requirement, because input timing, parries and dodge windows all depend on it. If the port holds that target, portable Bloody Palace runs are an easy sell. If it doesn’t, the Steam version is the safer purchase.

There is no iOS or Android version of this game. Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat on mobile is a different product entirely and shouldn’t be mistaken for it.

Devil May Cry 5 makes a clear trade: it pours nearly everything into how it feels to fight and treats the rest as support. The environments are repetitive, the campaign is brief and V never quite matches his co-stars. None of that comes close to sinking it.

The combat is that good. Nero is immediate, Dante is bottomless, and the style system turns every encounter into a test of how well you can play rather than an obstacle to clear. Years after release, few games in the genre match it, and we recommend it without much hesitation — with the level design and V’s missions as the real reservations.

Buy it on Steam with a controller in hand. Consider the Switch 2 edition if portability matters and the performance checks out. Either way, plan on playing it more than once.