Okay! Okay! I’ll get out of the room, but not before telling you about the demo. Deal? Deal. Now, on to the hands-on impressions then.

You can visit the Devil May Cry V booth in the Xbox area of Gamescom 2018 which also hosts demos for Kingdom Hearts III, Jump Force, Resident Evil 2, and many more!

First of all, let me start with a small summary of what I think about Devil May Cry 4. While it may not have a great story (it depends on your opinion), it is probably one of the if not the most technically deep hack and slash action game out there. Its control is tight and responsive, almost every move is cancellable to anything, there is a well defined pace and momentum to each fight and movement, and it is every bit of stylish that you can imagine a DMC game to be. Probably the only complaint that can be drawn from this aspect of the game is Nero’s lack of moves in comparison to Dante’s or even Vergil’s and Trish’s.

Yeah that’s the ‘ol Red Queen combo alright

Gameplay wise, Devil May Cry V is all that, and more. The controls are still tight and responsive, moves are still highly cancellable, the pace of the battle and the feeling of momentum in each move is slightly adjusted but that’s for the better as it needs to fit the more open-world natureof the game (if the rumors ends up true) which is one of the new, welcome change to the game for probably everyone, among the other changes. After all it’s a new game and it will need new stuff, otherwise it will get stale.

Speaking of stage, the camera angles has now been changed and now does third-person cameras more often than the fixed camera angles that was more often used in the previous entries in the series. This is done because now the stages are less confined and claustrophobic, instead it’s spacious and allows for lots of freedom of movement for both the player and the camera. It still uses the fixed camera angle in some spots but they can adjust themselves (so it’s semi-fixed angle I guess?) according to the direction of the target so the amount of enemies that are off-camera is minimized, which is important for this kind of game.

That is a spacious arena indeed….

Another new thing is, this time Nero got an upgrade in the moveset department with his replaceable mechanical arms. Now instead of just the Devil Bringer, Nero has access to other types of arms, with the two in the demo being the Overture, an electrically charged arm, and the Gerbera, which seems like it produces shockwaves that in the demo can be used to propel Nero around while also damaging enemies. I am not sure whether this works the same for all of the arms or every arm does a different thing, but during my time playing the demo, charging the Gerbera results in Nero firing a huge beam from it. Additionally there is also other arms shown in the trailer one of which is colored and seems to function similar to Nero’s old Devil Bringer from DMC 4 and basically allows you to do an enemy-specific grab move, just like the old Devil Bringer.However the arms aren’t permanent additions to Nero’s weapons. They can be picked up as dropped items on the stage and they can be broken if you get hit while using them or can be manually broken off to change to the next one in your arsenal. Yes, you heard that right, you need to break one away to change it. On one side, this new system brings resource management into the table as you can indeed run out of arms, but on the other it limits the creativity for self expression through combos that the series has been known for, though luckily the snatching move with the devil bringer (now a grappling hook) is forever usable so we still have that going for us.

Other than that, there’s nothing much to complain for other than some nitpicky things. One of those things is the lack of Turbo mode which speeds up the gameplay which absence in the demo is understandable, but would be a very welcome addition to the final game. Another nitpicky thing is that apparently one of the moves is now assigned to a different command input, but so far it’s only been exactly one move. While not crucial, it will still mess with your muscle memory. One rather nitpicky but rather crucial thing is the lack of controller button customization, which while is also understandably absent, could really improve the demo experience and is a must in the final game, especially since I keep accidentally pressing the button to break away the arms when I don’t need to, something I think might be caused by my inexperience with the Xbox One controllers.

All in all, the demo has been a great experience, it holds up to my expectations and more and I am completely expecting this game when it comes out later March 2019. Hopefully, Capcom will be kind enough to hand out a(n even better) demo through PSN or even Steam some time soon.

Alright, -F- out!