I'm about to play the entire Devil May Cry series in release order (even the reboot). What am I in for?

>1
As it began as a Resident Evil game before becoming a new IP, it will feel like an action-based RE or a gothic Onimusha with some combat depth than anything else. The camera will infuriate you but the game is otherwise really well-designed and is still the best in the series in regards to atmosphere, level design, and enemy design. Most of the bosses are great too. The underwater section is fucking awful but it lasts 10 minutes max.
>2
Legitimately terrible game held up by some solid visual design and great music.
>3
While 1 inspired a genre, 3 redefined it. Dante's growing arsenal of weapons, guns, and Styles in this game gives you a ton of choice in how to approach a given Mission. Best story in the series, and one of the best in an action game, with exceptional examples of tying the story to the gameplay and underrated cutscene scoring. 3SE adds bonus content and playable Vergil.
>4
A blatantly unfinished game due to being rebuilt for multiplat without getting a delay halfway through. The gameplay for Dante was further expanded upon but at the same time he feels off because the game was designed for the new character Nero, whose moveset in comparison feels incomplete. Still a good game but you can feel that it's half the game it wanted to be. 4SE adds three new characters and more bonus content.
>DmC
A painfully average game dragged down by hilariously bad character design & story that doesn't seem to care how much it deviates from what people liked about 1/3/4. The combat is decent but is locked into an unintuitive control scheme. Play Definitive Edition, which makes some improvements and locks it at 60FPS, while having all DLC content.
>5
Made as a love letter to the entire franchise. References and nods to 1-4 and even DmC, 3 characters to start, visually impressive, and a great OST. Dante has an incredible number of options, Nero feels complete, and V is completely unique.

1, 3 and 5 are entirely different types of action games with different objectives. Dont listen to people who say they're "better" or "worse" than each other.

I just finished playing the entire Devil May Cry series in release order including the reboot.
You're in for fun times.

Why do you pretend 5 is some sort of perfect game when it's obviously flawed in a lot of aspects?

This. They're all different enough to have merits that the others don't, and so the only ranking one can have is personal preference. Even 4SE has a few things 3&5 don't.

5 > 1 = 3 > 4 personally but don't let that sway you, they're all great.

>Why do you pretend 5 is some sort of perfect game when it's obviously flawed in a lot of aspects?
I never said it was perfect, just that Itsuno made it as a culmination of all previous games (and the anime and some of the reading material). I would've written more but I was hitting the post length limit. DMC5 is a 9/10 game, but it's my personal favorite DMC by a small margin.

I don't think deserves a 9/10 with that terrible music, half-assed story and zero level design/theme variation

power

I really like that DMC5 is a boss focused game instead of being 3 again with more whistles. The entire game is built around regular enemies being warmups to test your strategies.

Isn't that every DMC aside from 1?

More like every DMC besides 1 and 3

>terrible music
It all comes down to subjective taste here, but I think it's the best in the series overall. Nothing touches the peaks of 3's, but track-for-track it's better. 1's OST is overrated outside of like 3 tracks and 4's is just pretty good. 2 & DmC also have some very good music but they're not good games so people forget.
>half-assed story
I'd call it poorly paced but not awful. The only real fumbles are Vergil appearing so late and Trish & Lady doing literally nothing besides giving Dante their weapons.
>and zero level design/theme variation
More variation than 3 ended up having. Both had issues with centralizing their Missions in a huge tower above a city, but 5 spends more time outside of it and in more locations. I think the first 7 Missions, M9, M11, & M12 are great in both respects, and even some of the Qliphoth Missions like 8 & 15 manage to have solid level design, despite being among many Qliphoth levels. They're more straight-forward than previous games which I think has both good and bad; I'd rather have a straight shot with some secrets than a boring overlong puzzle with a lot of running around, but I think there are games that have real level design in an action game without killing the pacing (like NG Black) that it could've learned from.

Ah, you're right, DMC1 has an awful story so it doesn't fully count while DMC3 has the only decent narrative. They should count as the exception together, my bad.

Different user here, the flaws in 5 are minimal compared to the rest of the series. If I had to nitpick:
>level design is uninspired for all except a few missions (2, 7, 11 off the top of my head) and many of the Qliphoth levels look samey
>V's combat is underdeveloped compared to the others
>V is way too easy to hit SSS
>Stylish point calculation can be wonky—it is usually best to skip the small battles until you hit high difficulty and some missions seem to be way stingier with points than others (e.g., 10 and 18)
>Mission 14 is the laziest shit mission ever
>The secret missions are piss easy
>Mission 20 is far easier than 19 (unless I'm just way more effective with Nero than Dante)
>Alternate battle themes aren't dynamic
>No multiplayer in Bloody Palace, and multiplayer seems underutilized given that replaying Mission 13 is the only way to have a consistent experience
>Trish's face looks off
>Lens flare censorship on dat Lady ass
>Can't see Kyrie

That's about all that I have.

I find it a conscious design decision rather than "not learning."
5 is more focused on combat than any other entry. The levels are tutorials, storytelling and challenges in consistent performance, not places to be explored.

>It all comes down to subjective taste here
>I think it's the best in the series overall. track-for-track it's better.
When was the last time you checked your ears?
youtube.com/watch?v=nd6qA9XZKdo

>More variation than 3 ended up having
Not really, DMC5 only has you going through a bit of the city in the beginning then climbing the shitty tree that looks the exact same for +10 missions

An awesome experience.

DMC1: Master Piece
DMC2: Terrible, really terrible.
DMC3: Master Piece
DMC4: Good Game
DMC5: Good Game

>Mission 20 is far easier than 19 (unless I'm just way more effective with Nero than Dante)
They give you Infinite DT, its intentional.

DMC3 Cerberus theme is the best song in the series. Change my mind. When the bass line is teased in DMC5, I was super hyped. Only to hear the old theme completely vanish.

>1
A fun if somewhat primitive game with regards to mechanics. Has a much darker atmosphere that doesn't carry over as much into the other games. When you fi fish the series this will either be a game you simply look back on fondly or you may treat it as the peak of the series
>2
Rushed garbage with only slight glimmers of "okay" execution, a game that you will push out of your mind when thinking of the series as a whole
>3
Tight action game that some feel is the apex of the genre, introduces a controll schema that Carrie's over through mostly with the rest of the series, can be hard at first (especially if you only play through 1 once) but very rewarding. When you're done the series you may think this is the best in it or you may feel it doesn't hold a candle to 1
>4
Rushed but still decent, a game that introduces new characters that play fairly differently from each other (assuming this is the SE) that is marred by a rather boring and repetitive campaign--good overall combat, but could be better
>DmC
Feels like it was made with the intention of telling you that you were wrong for even liking any of the previous games--combat (assuming this is the Defenitive Edition) isn't bad for a Western hack and slash, but it doesn't hold a candle to the rest of the series--feels insulting at many points
>5
A good return to form with a solid campaign backed up by solid mechanics--3 is arguably better if only in that it probably has a better overall campaign, and mileage will vary with which characters you like to play/dont like to play, but overall an incredible entry

Infinite DT is only the first time you clear it. Even in subsequent playthroughs it remains far easier for me. I know some people are Dante gods, but for me 19 is the real final boss challenge.

I suppose you're right. It's just that I've played NG for the first time recently and I was surprised at how well it managed to pull off its level design. It's at least as good as DMC1's, if not better for being more interconnected while lacking 1's weakspots like the underwater FPS section and the forest of illusion trial-and-error shit.

The Qliphoth Missions are Prologue, 8, 10, and 13-20, and I would argue that P/8/10, 13-16, 17, and 18-20 are four distinct looks that the tree has. It's a shame that the game was backloaded with more samey Missions but you definitely have more variation than 3 afforded (M1/2 at Dante's business, M3 in the city proper, one Mission in Leviathan, M19-20 in Hell).

>Picks the worst track in the game
Why do you feel the need to be so disingenuous?
2 had the best OST pound-for-pound anyway.

I can't believe someone like you is so deluded that he unironically thinks 5 has more level variation than 3. When the game has you exploring the same shitty halls of the tree that look the exact same.

contrary to the other user i'd say at least try playing it and drop it if you really can't stand it

it set some stuff up that got carried over to 3 which is neat to see but beyond that it's not good

M20 is a victory lap. Vergil is designed around being Dante's equal, whereas Nero's kit circumvents a lot of it (he loses hard to Charge Shots, Buster shreds his life and interrupts the jet plane, Nero's air movement easily evades some of his attacks, certain Breakers just disrupt his pattern).

Not him but 3 has way more variation, what are you talking about?

>What am I in for?
Why don't you fucking play it and find out?

A slightly less complex and VASTLY less difficult version of Dark Souls, as envisaged by Japanese devs. If you like anime-style cinematics and over the top action, though, you couldn't have picked a better game. The DmC series has those down pat.

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4SE's new characters and lack of much bonus content really highlights how unfinished 4 is.

Yeah, I go back to 1 from time to time just because I love the design so much. I just feel like level design needs to be assessed based on the game's intent. Like, I'm going to expect far less from DMC's than Mega Man's simply because the game is more focused on your tools.

My only complaint was there was very little utilization of the Z axis in fights. There should have been steeper slopes and more areas with slight changes in elevation.

4 and 5 are most certainly the same type of game as 3 gameplay wise, just more characters and options.

The first game is fantastic, it holds up.
DMC3, too

Makes sense to me. That sounds exactly like how I've been playing the mission. Avoid the projectiles by jumping. Hold charge the entire time. Shoot Vergil right after I dodge a mêlée attack. Wail on him after the stun. Use DT to increase damage. Mission 20 was the first one I cleared with zero damage, which seems wrong to me.

2 is like 3-4 hours long, just burn through it and be done with it after 1. You don't want to end the series playing 2.

Good
Bad
Good
Meh
Bad
Good

2 is fascinating if you bother to play through all three difficulties and use Trish a bit. You can see the schism of pre/post-Itsuno very clearly. The people working on the game weren't shit, the project was just helmed by a fucking moron. If you restrain yourself from spamming guns you can even see some decent enemy design shine through in places.

My point is that 5 has way more Missions outside of the tree than 3 did outside of the Temen-Ni-Gru and has more variation among them. Both games have an issue with their samey towers. 3 varies up some of the rooms while keeping the same look to most of them, while 5 mostly varies it up in the color palette since the level design itself is the larger variant (since it has to be designed for either Nero, Dante, or V specifically outside of 13). I'm not even saying that 5's tree is that much better than 3's tower, just that they're both an issue that 5 sidesteps more.

>My only complaint was there was very little utilization of the Z axis in fights
I agree. I think 3 attempted to do this in some rooms but the enemy design made it more frustrating than interesting (that gear room with the birds for example). 4 & 5 use it more and I like it a lot, 5 in particular has a few really interesting combat rooms, especially that escalator fight in M7. I'd love more fights like that with different enemies (since honestly, having the Sin Scissors there kind of hurts the point of fighting on moving slopes because it's mostly airborne).

1 and 3 are fucking awesome, I really recommend you play them to DMD before moving on, it will make you appreciate the sequels better.

>5 has way more Missions outside of the tree than 3 did outside of the Temen-Ni-Gru and has more variation among them
It really doesn't. The only time you're outside the tree is the very beginning of the game.
3 has you out of the tower at the very beginning, when you enter leviathan and when you enter the demon world.
It also manages to have a lot of variations than 5, making you go to lava sections of the tower, riding a train, a library, the gears room, the deep cave with the waterfalls and the main control room. In contrast, 5 only has you travelling through the same blood tubes and I remember one entire mission where you had to drop down literal circle arenas until you reched cerberus at the bottom.

It has to do with concept I guess. 3's whole thing is that you were exploring a big demonic tower and it led to rooms with gears, floaty stuff, hallways and stuff that makes it look more like a castle. 5 was esentially the same thing about a big structure erupting from the city, but they went with setting the game in a destroyed city until you get to the Qlipoth. I like the idea of a demonic tree, but I have to agree that the levels felt the same, then again it's just very few missions and some visuals do stand out from the rest.

Personally I'd loved more gothic visuals, but I guess they weren't going for it this time around.

Absofuckinglutely not.
3 is way more focused on the adventure aspect than 4 and 5.

bing bing wahooo punching bag simulator

>The only time you're outside the tree is the very beginning of the game.
The first 7 Missions after the Prologue as well as Missions 9, 11, and 12 are entirely outside of the tree, and the first half of 8 is the entrance which has pieces of the city still mixed in with it which makes it more distinct than most of the other tree levels.

I'll admit I forgot about the waterfall and lava in 3 though, it's been some months since I played it last. It's weird that you mention trains and libraries though when 5 had those in its city missions via the subway in M7 and the library you enter from the sewer in M3.

Bing Bing Vergil in Bloody Palace, see what happens.

5 didn't have any trains you could ride. Just a smal sewer/subway section at the beginning of the game.
The main problem besides the lack of exploration in this game, is that it doesn't really give you anything past mission 9 that's remotely interesting. I got seriously disappointed when I finally reached the top, faced Vergil and got the ending, because I genuinely thought I was going to get at least 1 or 2 more missions in the demon world.

Qiploth top a the end of the game was visually amazing, far better than any DMC3 level

The ending feeling like sequel/DLC bait is a separate problem entirely with the pacing of the game. I think M14-16 should've been one Mission 14 with three routes like M7, Urizen 3 being M15, and then you get a full quarter of the game after Vergil's return. However, it's also clear that their budget was starting to run out in the final stretch.

DMC2 is kind of boring. Not sure if you're including DmC but it has shit characters, shit music, and a shit story but the level design is alright and the combat is decent.

It's not a separate problem when it's part of the game.
3 didn't hide the demon world behind a DLC or SE.

A great game, then a shit one, then a great game, then a shit one, then another shit one, then another great one.

Fun. Expect the games to really not hold back on punishment for your mistakes. Beating the games on higher difficulties is a badge of y honor. Skip 2, literally everyone will tell you it has very little worth seeing.

>putting 4 and 5 on the same level
No.