Devil May Cry 2 - How To Not Make a Sequel
We're all familiar with the concept of the Black Sheep: that one element that ends up sticking out in a particular group, whether in a positive or negative connotation.
In the world of videogames it's an expression that's often used to describe specific titles in a long running series: whether is for an extreme deviation in gameplay like Zelda II - Adventure of Link, for a drastic change of setting and atmosphere like Doom 3; experimental mechanics like Tekken 4, or simply a game that's not at the same level of quality as the rest like Phantasy Star III - Generations of Doom.
Devil May Cry 2 fits perfectly in this category: at launch it got a very mild reception. Most of the fans treat it like a game that doesn't exist, and even CAPCOM itself seems to consider it a mark of shame.
Up until Devil May Cry 5, this was the furthest point in the timeline, with no other game daring to go past it. Even the recap video for the series, produced by CAPCOM itself to celebrate the latest game in the series, barely mentions the story, it's just a screenshot of the game with this written on it:
“Many demons continued to invade the human world, but not even demonic rulers, rivaling the power of Mundus, could match Dante’s strength.”
At least the characters deserved a mention in the novel Devil May Cry 5: Before the Nightmare, but it's very sad to see that this mention and a 10 second cameo, at best, in the Netflix show are the most of recognition this game received.
Is Devil May Cry 2 really worth this awful reputation? Or there's maybe a little diamond in the rough waiting to be found for those who dare to dig deeper? Let's find out!
Devil May Cry 2
About the Plot
On the island of Vie de Marli, the Protectors clan is set to guard the four Arcana relics: seals that bind the devil Argosax and prevent him from reaching the human world. Their work however is put to the test by Arius, president of the company Ouroboros, which not only employs demons in his army, but it's also intent on freeing Argosax in order to obtain eternal life.
The old chief Matier, and her daughter Lucia, are doing everything in their power to stop him, but they cannot handle this situation alone. Matier decides to contact Dante, who accepts to help them in exchange for some information about his father Sparda, who fought alongside the Protectors in the past.
So begins a fight on two separate fronts. Dante will bring war directly to Arius, while Lucia will take the four Arcana to safety.
Exactly like the first chapter, the story is more or less an excuse to put the characters in a scenario where they'll be forced to kick some demon's asses along the way. This game however deserves an award for having the barest plot of them all.
Lucia is the actual main character of this story: her land is in danger, her clan needs protection and she also has a connection with Arius. Exactly like Trish, she's also a demon construct, created by Arius himself, to serve him as one of his bodyguards. However, sometime during her lifetime, she deserted the ranks, lost her memories, and Matier raised her like a daughter.
Lucia is of course taken aback by this revelation, especially since she fears her demonic nature can one day awaken and take over her conscience. Near the end of the game she even tries to force Dante to kill her, but he refuses, considering Lucia much more like a human than a demon.
I'm happy that this revelation didn't result in a broken trust between Lucia and Matier. Often when something like this comes up, it results in a break up in the family dynamic, even if only temporary. Here instead we have Matier reassuring her that origins and blood ties don't matter, what's really important is what they shared together.
I feel this message is much more important than having to constantly underline the fact that the "real" family is only dictated by bloodline.
For all the credit I can give to the concepts, it's still the same issue as the first game: they're introduced way too late and resolved way too quickly. The biggest problem in this game is the almost complete lack of dialogue between the characters.
I'm aware that this is Devil May Cry: I'm not expecting dialogues the length of an RPG, but it's not just an issue of quantity, it's mainly quality! Dialogue is cut down to essentials, there aren't any lines that end up enhancing anyone's character: it’s mostly exposition in its most basic form, that leaves you with nothing to feel or care about.
The lousy dialogue completely ruins Dante.
Dante is a character defined entirely by his strong personality. Always confident, he's a show-off that enjoys humiliating his adversaries. Take all of this characterization away and you're left with a demon hunter which, while extremely competent, barely says a word and he enjoys his job just as much as I enjoy doing the line at the DMV.
I'm not exxagerating when I say you can count the total number of lines he has in this game with just your two hands. And just a couple of those are even slightly coherent with the guy we knew from the previous game. The rest are mostly responding with one or two words while he looks like he's either bored to tears or wondering if he turned off the oven before leaving.
There's also this completely random quirk that Dante has now, for some reason every decision he makes is dictated by a coin toss, with a coin that you can immediately guess is double sided. I don't why he does this, maybe it's a way to mess with the clients and make them feel like they won't get the help they desperately need? Or maybe it's just the way he found to keep his mind awake before fidget-spinners were invented.
The fact that Dante is merely an accessory to the story it's not a big problem, as much it is that his own personality is being altered to the point of being completely unrecognizable.
The only positive aspect about Dante in this game is his character design, to this day I still think this is the best he's ever looked. In general I think this game looks gorgeous, a big step up from its predecessor.
The environments are big and detailed: you go from a gothic atmosphere to more urban places, to finally end up in some: weird, distorted, demonic worlds in the final act. Even the team up with the DIESEL brand, for as weird as it was, created some gorgeous outfits for both Lucia and Dante. I feel Daigo Ikeno and his art team really deserve a round of applause; they're the peak aspect of this game!
So we have a visually stunning game with a bare bones plot and lacklustre characters, and the problems are not gonna end here…
About the Gameplay
Back in the day whenever I heard that Devil May Cry 2 was the worst in the series and a chapter you should ignore, my first instinct was of course to check out some gameplay videos and try to see if I could get the idea… Which left me very confused, because by the looks of it, it didn't seem like anything was different from what was established in the previous chapter.
The structure is in fact, identical! The story is divided into chapters in which we'll end up exploring a different section of Vie de Marli, and we also face an army of demons along the way, with the objective to defeat them in the way that makes us gather more style by the end of the chapter.
Being a game with two characters, we also have two different campaigns, which share many of the levels, but also have their dose of exclusive missions. Surely this game is not lacking in terms of content.
The problems emerge the moment you grab the controller, and they're even more apparent when you play this game right after the first one. As much as the combat looks identical, it got worse under every possible aspect.
Everything in general is a lot slower: I always had this feeling of moving underwater! Slicing demons with the sword didn't feel as satisfying, not helped by the fact that all the characters seem to only have one combo in this game. I tried many things: changing the rhythm of my button presses, adding more directions between attacks, but nothing seemed to change.
Our arsenal has also been reduced. The first chapter wasn't exactly a shining beacon of combat variety, but at least we had some Brass Knuckles with a different move set to use. Here are just swords, whose only difference is power and attack range.
Closing the distance with the enemies was also much harder! Even if you have moves like Stinger, a lounging attack that covers a lot of terrain, the enemy gets pushed back so far when gets hit that it's impossible to keep up the pressure. The arenas were also an obstacle too. Having more open and less claustrophobic environments ended up dispersing the enemies too much, making it even harder to keep the pressure and get a higher rank.
Because of all these issues, the combat rhythm is very disjointed, and the presence of a single combo turns everything into button mashing until the enemy dies. Even worse when you're facing enemies who only stay in the air, forcing you to only rely on your guns.
Enemies like Infested Tank and Infested Chopper became rather infamous for being some of the most boring enemies in the series! The first is a tank which has no way to hurt you in close combat, the other a chopper whose fight revolves into keep shooting the guns and dodging a missile on occasion. Both enemies have a very long life bar and you face them both by pressing a button until they die, with zero tactics.
In general the enemy's behaviour is the worst step back. In the first chapter, even the easier enemies in a large number had a strategy and an aggressiveness that would keep you constantly on your toes, forcing you to split the attention in order to not get overwhelmed. In this game even the enemies seem like they're falling asleep: many of their attacks are slow, they don't put up a fight and thanks to the enhancements to Dante's dodging, it's very easy to avoid getting hit.
The situation gets even more bent in your favour the moment Devil Trigger gets into play, since both your attack power and your speed get a big boost. The moment you also decide to use your ranged weapons, the enemy has nothing else to do than sit back and watch his life bar melt in an instant. Ranged weapons have received such a boost in power that you're almost tempted to play this game like a third person shooter.
Sometimes it really feels like there's something broken in how the enemies attack: a perfect example are Freki and Geri, two demon wolves who attack very quickly by jumping off the walls of the arena in order to lounge against Dante. Too bad their attack most of the time ended up missing the target by a country mile, making the entire fight feel like a comedy sketch.
All of these elements make Devil May Cry 2 the easiest game in the series. Having a more accessible chapter is a perfect way for a novice to approach, and learn the game's systems, before they try it at a higher difficulty. The problem here is that the easiness doesn't come from an intentional design choice, but from a game which is poorly designed at its core.
Exactly like the first Devil May Cry, I wanted to test the game's hard mode, and I barely felt any difference. Some enemies had a couple more attacks that could catch me off guard, but they were as lethargic as they were in normal mode, making the entire experience feel pretty much identical.
So, is there anything positive that was introduced in Devil May Cry 2?
Firstly, a dodge button for the characters, which also allows them to walk on walls and prevent them from being cornered by the enemies. A welcome change compared to the stiff dodge of the first game, and the genesis of what will become known as the Trickster style in Devil May Cry 3.
I also appreciated the presence of a quick change button for our ranged weapons, something that I felt was desperately missing from the first game. We don't have one for the melee weapons yet, but that's not an issue here since we have three almost identical swords.
It's also the first game to introduce unlockable characters: in this case Trish! The character is handled more like an alternate skin and really has no role in the story, but it's still a different character with a different move set to play with.
Finally we have the introduction of Bloody Palace, an arena mode where we face different hordes of enemies on every floor with escalating difficulty. It's not a mode I'm used to spend too much time on, since i prefer to just play the main plot, but in a series so focused on combat is an amazing mode for those who really wanna put themselves to the test.
Unfortunately none of these modes help with the game as a whole. Having a third character to play and an arena mode is certainly good in terms of content, too bad but they're also tied to the game with the worst combat in the entire series.
In Conclusion
By doing some research online it's very easy to find out that Devil May Cry 2 had a very troubled development. The game was firstly assigned to a very young team, which mostly came from the Arcade games division of CAPCOM, who had no experience with handling a game like this. Hideki Kamiya was still involved in the localization process of the first game, so both he and his team weren't involved in the production phase.
To this day the name of the first director of Devil May Cry 2 is unknown: the game is credited to Hideaki Itsuno, who only joined during the last four months of production in order to push the game into a state that was deemed acceptable to publish.
This feeling of inexperience is brimming throughout the game, and Itsuno's work was not enough. As much as the game is perfectly playable, it's impossible to not notice how everything feels wrong. The characters have no personality, the plot is lacking, the villain is forgettable, the combat gives zero satisfaction and the difficulty is non-existent.
This game is fundamentally boring, and a step back from the previous game in everything but presentation; A massive blunder for a new series that had just started to establish itself.
If you're curious about this game, and want to try it out yourself, you can easily find it in the Devil May Cry HD Collection bundled with two much better titles. A game I can recommend only to the hardcore fans of the series that really want to experience it in its entirety.
It's a shame that CAPCOM pretends this game doesn't exist, especially for a character like Lucia, which not only has a beautiful design, but being a demon herself i think would be fun to see her bounce off a character like Trish. It would especially be cool to see her combat style fully realized in a much better game.
If one day we'll ever gonna get confirmation about Devil May Cry 6 existence I can only hope CAPCOM will make it so Lucia can have her own chance to shine. Alternatively, since we're constantly living in a never ending cycle of Remakes and Remasters, why don't take the chance and entirely remake Devil May Cry 2 from scratch?
Of course it's not gonna happen, because there's no guarantee everyone will just jump on the shelves in order to relieve their nostalgia again, but, if there's one thing in which there remakes could really be useful, is with giving a second chance to games that were unable to be fully realized in the first place!
So, what do you say? Would you like to see Lucia return? What's your opinion on Devil May Cry 2? Do you have any good memories with it or it's just something you'd rather forget? Let me know with a comment down here, and once we'll return to the world of Devil May Cry, it would be with Hideaki Itsuno's magnum opus, the game that launched the series into the stratosphere, Devil May Cry 3!
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