Coming in at number 2 of my top 3 list of action games, we have Devil May Cry 3. After the amazing Devil May Cry and lackluster Devil May Cry 2, Capcom went back to the drawing board with Devil May Cry 3 and created one of the most technical action games ever made.
Devil May Cry 3
Devil May Cry 3 acts as a prequel to the overall storyline of the series; featuring a young Dante on his first big quest that involves his twin brother, a lot of demons and the usual end of the world stuff. The original DMC set a new standard for high paced action thanks to the focus on movement, and Devil May Cry 3 continued that with several under the hood and mechanic changes.
The game introduced the concept of styles which altered Dante’s basic moveset towards different strategies depending on the one equipped. Swordmaster for example gave the player additional attack combos when wielding melee weapons while trickster allowed you to dash to avoid attacks. Overtime, the different styles would level up depending on usage and would unlock new abilities.
But what really elevates Devil May Cry 3 and puts in the #2 spot for me, is the variety of weapons available. Many action games feature weapons that respond the same way, despite having different ranges or functionality. What the developers did for Devil May Cry 3 was to give each weapon its own combo lines and abilities; making them completely unique from one another. One weapon was a pair of gauntlets that gave you slow but powerful punches and kicks, another was a guitar that summoned lightning bolts and there was a lot more. On their own, these weapons were amazing, but the developers allowed you to switch weapons at anytime via a button press.
That may not sound like a big deal, but the ability to instantly swap weapons mid combat, allowed players to create some amazing combos and made Devil May Cry 3 the most technical action game ever released. Expert level play of the game was truly a sight to be seen, with people performing amazing combos with unconventional weapon combos.
Each weapon had its moves further modified thanks to the styles and gave players a lot of options of how to play
Of my top three, Devil May Cry 3 is the one that just ruined Bayonetta 2 for me, because of contrasting combat systems. Where both games feature a variety of weapons, Bayonetta 2 simply didn’t make use of them in an interesting manner and the combat system suffered for it.
If you look at them both, Bayonetta 2 kept to a unified or standardized combat system, where the weapons themselves didn’t affect the combo inputs, but where they were attached to Bayonetta 2.
This meant that the weapon types didn’t affect how you used them during a fight and made everything simplified in the process.
Devil May Cry 3 and its special edition remain unique to the series as having the best of both worlds in terms of complexity and variety. Devil May Cry 4 tuned things down while presenting a new mechanic of revving up attacks and even though DMC was a great game, the developers removed the weapon variety for an element based combat system.
Interestingly, Devil May Cry 3 is similar to my #1 game in how the difficulty system was retooled between the normal and special editions. The original version’s “normal” became the special edition’s “hard” due to people complaining about the difficulty.
Up next we turn to number one, a game so hard that I’ve yet to hear of anyone beating its ultimate difficulty.
