[It’s guest post time, and it’s always exciting to be introducing a post from Shaun Musgrave! Among others he previously wrote here about Ristar and previous early-gen Capcom action game Onimusha. Shaun posts at Post Game Content and on twitter as @ShaunMusgrave]
In a lot of ways, Devil May Cry 4 is emblematic of both its era and the state of its publisher at the time. The transition to the HD era was a challenging one for game companies, and some had a smoother road than others. Budgets were ballooning significantly, making it more important than ever to reach the widest possible audience. Using bespoke engines for each game was quickly becoming a thing of the past. Some publishers opted for third-party solutions like Unreal Engine, while others rolled up their own general purpose engines. For Japanese companies, the lack of decent documentation in their language for Unreal and its ilk made the latter a more attractive proposition.
By the time Devil May Cry 4 released in 2008, the general state of the video game market for the generation had settled, and it had done so in a way that almost no one could have predicted a few years earlier when the game entered development. The PlayStation 2 had dominated the landscape of the previous generation, and there had been no reason to believe that Sony wouldn’t continue its reign. Surely the PlayStation 3 would be number one. Surely the PlayStation Portable would kick the Nintendo DS aside. The Xbox was a buzzing gnat, and Nintendo was about to run out of places to hide.
The reality was a generation that was more divided than the industry had seen in a very long time. Nintendo’s Wii had been a disruptive smash hit. The Xbox 360 had significantly built on the success of the previous console. The PlayStation 3 had had a miserable time of things but was turning things around on the back of a price drop and a console re-design. The Nintendo DS was pulling in players who hadn’t ever touched a game before. The PlayStation Portable, while not able to keep pace with Nintendo’s handheld, was still doing very well in its own right. Depending on which region one looked at, the exact breakdown of the market share of those devices varied considerably.
Devil May Cry 4 was conceived as an HD console game, likely because nobody could have expected handhelds to do as well as they did, let alone the underpowered Nintendo Wii. It was multiplatform, to reach as wide of an audience as possible. It used Capcom’s then-fresh MT Framework engine to make that multiplatform launch as painless as possible. All of this, laid down without even talking about the game itself. In one sense, Devil May Cry 4 was lucky. The brand was quite popular in the West, and it was coming off of a commercial and critical success in the form of Devil May Cry 3.
With that prior success came some pressure, however. The last time this particular development team had followed up on a successful title, it had dropped the ball spectacularly. Devil May Cry 2 was met with such a frosty reception that it had essentially buried the fledgling franchise. The only silver lining from that outcome is that no one really had any serious expectations from Devil May Cry 3. While that third game turned out to be brilliant, the only bar it needed to clear was the low one set by the second one. Devil May Cry 4 had larger expectations to deal with.
Devil May Cry 4 was also the first pre-existing Capcom franchise to see a new installment exclusive to the new generation of consoles. While Capcom had dipped its toe in the waters with Dead Rising and Lost Planet, Devil May Cry 4 would be the first chance for players to see a familiar Capcom brand done up with spiffy new hardware. It carried on its shoulders the responsibility of setting the pace for the storied publisher in the new generation. It couldn’t afford to be the relatively small, unassuming project that Devil May Cry 3 was.
It’s little wonder then that Devil May Cry 4 ended up coming up short despite being a very good game. The challenges of HD game development and making a simultaneous multiplatform release for the first time in the series led to some design decisions that drew criticism. On top of that, the corner the franchise had painted itself in terms of narrative led to the risky choice of replacing the popular protagonist of the previous games, Dante.
Devil May Cry 4 follows a mysterious new hero named Nero. He looks a lot like Dante, but he’s got his own bag of tricks thanks to his handy Devil Bringer. From a mechanical point of view, this adds a whole new dimension to Devil May Cry 3‘s already highly refined combat. It provides a handy way for the player to close the distance with enemies, allowing them to make longer and more satisfying combos. Nero isn’t as strong as Dante, a point the game hammers home early on by having the player fight Dante. He’s just as cocky here as he was in previous games, and it’s interesting to see what it’s like to be on the receiving end of his bag of tricks.
Nero’s role as the main protagonist serves a dual purpose. First, he’s a handy jumping-on point to the world of Devil May Cry for new players that might be joining as a result of the game’s multiplatform status. Dante’s story was already getting a little complicated by this point, and there was no guarantee that Xbox 360 owners had played any of the previous games. Second, it allows the developers to have the player start in a weaker state and grow throughout the course of the adventure, without having to find what would surely be a clumsy narrative excuse to de-power Dante.
For a while, all is well. After one gets over the idea that we are not playing as Dante, Devil May Cry 4 is a very fun game. The combat system has more possibilities than the previous games, the battles are tense and enjoyable, and while Nero lacks the devil-may-care charm of Dante, he’s not a particularly annoying character either. Story was never a strong point of the Devil May Cry games and this one is no better or worse in that regard, but the game has some fun with the mystery of why Nero shares so many qualities with Dante. It never outright reveals the answer, but it implies enough for series fans to connect the dots.
As Nero’s powers grow, so too do the player’s options for how to approach each encounter. Players are richly rewarded for mastering the gameplay mechanics, as better performance rewards more Proud Souls, a new type of currency that is used to unlock new abilities. At a certain point in the story, Nero will claim Yamato, the sword that once belonged to Dante’s brother Vergil. From this point on, he is able to make use of Dante and Vergil’s signature Devil Trigger ability, and it powers up his Devil Bringer arm in some truly delightful ways. While the stages themselves are sometimes a little dull, enemy encounters constantly offer new opportunities to play around with the sandbox of moves at Nero’s disposal.
At a climactic moment, Nero is captured by the enemy. And it is here where things take a pivotal turn for Devil May Cry 4. The player now finds themselves in control of none other than Dante. On paper, this should have been a great moment. Nero’s growth has closed the gap with Dante, but the former series lead still holds an advantage. His moves are familiar enough for veterans of Devil May Cry 3, but with even further improvements and refinement. And hey, he’s Dante. What’s not to like? The problem is that Dante’s part of the game sees him going through the same stages and, in many cases, the same bosses Nero went through. There are some twists here and there, but there’s no escaping the fact that you’ve been through all of this, and rather recently at that.
This led many to criticize the game for watering down the soup. While Dante is a joy to play and there is some narrative value in showing how easily he can stomp enemies that gave Nero trouble, the backtracking feels arbitrary and more than a little blatant. Those who signed up purely for the moment-to-moment gameplay would certainly find a lot to love, but those who came for a sprawling adventure would probably feel let down at just how compact the world ends up being. Whether this was by design or a consequence of the demands of HD game development, it didn’t go over well. The dreaded murmurs began: Devil May Cry 4 wasn’t as good as Devil May Cry 3. It was… a disappointment.
Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this at a glance. Devil May Cry 4 was handily the best-selling game in the series at that point. The reviews were largely sparkling, with the second part of the game being mentioned but not bringing down the buzz much. The particular branch of fans who had spent hundreds of hours fully exploring the combat system of Devil May Cry 3 broadly appreciated the new additions to Devil May Cry 4. A resounding success, surely?
It would be eleven years before Devil May Cry 4 would get a direct follow-up. Despite the success of the game, Capcom opted to pursue a reboot with an external developer for the next game in the franchise. The chilly reception to that game combined with a considerably improved 2015 Special Edition release has seen something of a rehabilitation of Devil May Cry 4‘s reputation among players. Hindsight has made clearer the circumstances that may have contributed to certain aspects of the game, which has perhaps also put people in a more forgiving mood. Devil May Cry 4 was given the job of being one of the early flag-bearers for its generation, and its biggest crime may well have been that it ultimately embodied that role too well.
Top of the charts for week ending 9 February 2008:
