Well, I just finished the game:
1. Easily the second worst Devil May Cry story, with only Devil May Cry 2 beating it out. Even when you lay out the story In your head in it's chronological order, it's still weak because it falls back on "sibling rivalry" or some crap for Vergil beginning this all. We needed to see more of Vergil prior to splitting himself in two, or some monologue after, where he sells this to me better. But, on the order thing...
3. Why why why have so many "mysteries" when you bludgeon the answer to every single one of them in our faces miles before we get to their conclusion?
That they changed Vergil's motivation into this bullshit, I still can't believe it. All thrown away with this mother left me crap, the nonsense of envying Dante's life and both just want to beat the shit out of each other.
(And his new clothes are ugly.)
I really watched it that way: It is more than obvious, that Urizen is Vergil. But they also put some effort in pointing out, it's Mundus. (Hell, even one of Morrison's letters is about it.) So I wanted to see if Dante's reaction tells me, what he thinks – fighting against Mundus or Vergil? I was completely torn, and when it was finally made clear, he knew it was Vergil all along, I was ready to flip the table. I know some are fine with him acting this cold, but I can't. It doesn't add up. And I think, people put too much evil on Vergil. (While I, fair enough, tend to defend him too much.) Despite the tower, he never did anything else directly out of his free will. (We still don't know if the tree was really his goal when splitting or his demon side running amok on its own, while his original plan was just to get his dying body strength back with discarding the human side.)
It seems there is a whole cutscene missing between Dante and V, after he dropped Vergil's name about all the questions Dante should have and how he gets in the mood he is in later.
I could go on and on, but at the end of the day I'm disappointed. This was Vergil's return, and the story was told in such a mishmash manner. By the end, I'm not disappointed the game is bad, because it isn't. Gameplay is amazing, and I had a blast once I got Dante into my sweet hands. What I'm disappointed in is how much better it could have been, and how close it was to that greatness.
There are dozens of us .gif
I expect the writing to land on the beats that it establishes. Which is why I like DMC3's story more even though DMC5 had way more going for it.
The difference between DMC3 and DMC5 to me is that DMC3 kept it super simple with it basically a huge sibling spat story interwoven with Lady/Arkham stuff. The story was simple but it landed what it needed to do, which was establish Vergil as a badass rival to Dante.
DMC5 wanted to have too much.
It tried to establish a sense of mystery with Urizen's identity, except all the attempts to keep it hidden was pretty weak. Anyone with established DMC franchise history knows it's Vergil the moment Yamato was retrieved from Nero, and those without DMC franchise knowledge would feel like the story was leading you astride with the identity 'who's Urizen' bits but dragging it out without much suspense.
It wanted to have a sense of history. For it to take place in Dante/Vergil's hometown, for them to revisit their old home, for them to have the flashback, have Urizen's bossfight take place in the illusion of their old home and to basically reestablish the old adage of the Dante/Vergil relationship from its roots. And yet the story never quite landed what I call the 'Shadow Moses' moment where we see those things happen, but as it happens - it never lingers enough. On paper I can kinda see where they're going for, where they go back to the roots of where it all started for Dante/Vergil but in execution? It wasn't great.
Same with Nero's beats. The relationship between himself/Dante/Vergil/V. The game explores bits and pieces of their relationship, but we never really get to see any real connection or meaning that is built on top of the relationships that is there. Be it the small friendship that Nero and V built, Dante's attempt to dissuade Nero from pursuing the matter to protect him from patricide, Dante's passing of the torch to Nero, the throwaway aspects of Vergil letting Nero keep the V book, the emotional disraught of Nero's struggle and acceptance of the fact that he has family in the world and how he manages to find it in himself to break out of his shell and not accept the pre-determination of the Dante/Vergil squabble. Everything i just wrote there - never really landed with finesse. All the interesting relationship dynamics were touched upon, yet practically all of them never has a great payoff.
I could go on but I think in general those are my main gripes. And I didn't even go into parts that are wasted character involvement/etc where Trish/Lady literally do nothing in the story - the fight between Dante and the Three Familiars which were Mallet Island bosses were interesting as a callback but does nothing much to further the Vergil or Nero Angelo aspects of Vergil's time in DMC1, etc etc.
I'm all with you, and it sounds so much better than when I try to express those things. ^^
This is especially true when it comes to Vergil and his relationships and motivations in the game.
I hate it so much. :/ But it's also a question of taste to some degree. I got into a petty argument on another small board over it, writing down why I'm so disappointed with Vergil.
So frankly my hot take is I hate it, while some other guy was fine with it and threw lore at me, to prove me wrong and that I would do the game injustice, what kinda triggered me.
At the end of the day this is no math with clear right and wrong.
(It's still done quite poorly tho.)
