Which Devil May Cry Has The Best Dante Must Die? (2023)

Introduction

A silly video about the hard mode of one of my favorite franchises

DMC5 Turbo Mod: www.nexusmods.com/devilmaycry5/mods/929
Enemy stats obtained from DMC Wiki: devilmaycry.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_Mode
Nightmare 3 and Mundus footage from Matthewmatosis' Devil May Cry commentary. Worth watching if you want some insight into the development of the game and some of it's mechanics: www.youtube.com/watch

Songs in order of appearance:

Statue Of Time - Masami Ueda
We Are Finally Cowboys - Masafumi Takada
Lock & Load - Masami Ueda
Prison Labor - Shoji Meguro, Toshiki Konishi
Raven's Nest - Raito
Django Django - Daisuke Ishiwatari
Shall Never Surrender HR/HM Arrange - Tetsuya Shibata
Tokio Morishima - Masafumi Takada
Season Of The Samurai - Masafumi Takada
Want To Be Close - Shoji Meguro

#devilmaycry #devilmaycry5

Content

One of the most appealing aspects of the Devil May Cry franchise is that it rarely shies away from challenging the player.

Every game has generally tried to have a moderate amount of difficulty, even in its normal mode, but they always take it one step further by allowing higher and higher difficulties for those who want it.

The epitome of this is the aptly named Dante Must Die difficulty a series staple that presents the ultimate challenge for anyone who dares to try it.

While this difficulty is present in every game and has only seen minor changes over the years.

The way each game is designed that their core can drastically change.

How enjoyable this difficulty is I'll, be looking at every Mainline DMC game describing the changes DMD makes to the gameplay that giving an overall assessment of how well this difficulty Works in each game and how enjoyable it is to play on it.

Some quick disclaimers before I start, though first, is that the version of dmc3 I played for this video is the PC version included in the Devil May Cry HD Collection, without a style, switching mod, so I'll be assessing that game's difficulty.

The way was originally intended so to speak.

Second, is in regards to turbo mode for dmc3 and dmc4 I played with those games built-in Turbo Modes, but for the MC5 since I'm on PC I played with a mod that adds turbo mode into the game which I'll link in the description I've become accustomed enough to the pace of Turbo that it shouldn't affect my overall judgment, but I think it's worth mentioning since turbo has a bit of a learning curve all by itself.

So I thought out of the way let's find out, which version of dancing Must Die is the best.

To this day.

Dmc one is likely the hardest game in the series at a base level in its introduction to Dante Must Die is reflective of that in this mode.

After a certain amount of time has passed, enemies can enter their own Devil, Trigger or DT state, which gives them higher damage resistance, higher damage output and makes them hard to stagger bosses.

Take 67 percent, less damage, regular enemies deal two times more damage than normal and bosses deal a staggering five times more damage than normal.

This means that even with a maxed out, health bar most bosses will delete you in just three to four hits and a lower tier enemies that you bullied in the lower difficulties are now scary as hell, because if you don't kill them fast enough, they'll be able to kill you almost as fast as bosses.

Can this kind of difficulty puts to the Forefront? What I think is the most important aspect of DMC one's combat that being efficiency, even though the game does encourage you to be stylish.

That mindset does Fall Away slightly into higher difficulties, sure you can juggle enemies or try to toy with them, but you're, usually better off going for the fastest route, because doing otherwise could hurt your mission rack at best and cost your life at worst.

To be clear, this isn't really a bad thing.

It is still an enjoyable way to play, but it does leave you without much room for creativity, most enemies.

Don't really change enough to be worth talking about, but one enemy that does become a massive pain in this difficulty are shadows, see my go-to tactic for these guys and every other difficulty is to wait for them to use their skewer and spam Ebony and Ivory, while standing on top of them.

To my knowledge, you just have to stay a few feet away from them and there's a decent chance to use this attack but mind you it's just a chance.

If they don't use, the skewer they'll likely use their shirk in attack, which is fine in every other difficulty, but in DMD this means you can get insanely unlucky and not get the skewer attack before the shadow triggers the DT and it's hard to help you if you have to fight two of these bastards at once, since this game has the shortest boss lined up in the series, so I feel okay with going through all of them to see how much they've been affected by DMV, starting with phantom phantom is maybe the least remarkable of all the bosses in DMD.

If you're familiar with his moveset by this point, then he shouldn't give you much trouble at all.

I personally had a lot of trouble with him, but that's probably because he's always been a pain for me to fight, regardless of how much you struggle or don't struggle in the first match, though the second one is still pretty easy.

If you decide to take the cheesy route, next up is feather face.

Griffin one is kind of a meme, since you can easily skip it and repeat playthroughs, which I did so.

I won't really be talking about it here.

Griffin 2 didn't feel that different from previous runs, though the increased damage numbers did force me to learn how to properly Dodge certain attacks that I could just tank before Griffin three is, oh dear see the main difference that DMD makes to Griffin 3 is that it turns him into a massive endurance test.

After triggering the cutscene, where he falls from the sky, he gets a massive amount of damage resistance, meaning that if you try to kill him safely, you're gonna have to hammer that shoot button for, like eight years to my knowledge, he's the only boss that gains damage resistance like this and if the others do get this, it's definitely nowhere near as much as Griffin does here.

This makes the fights a lot more enjoyable.

Actually it can be tense.

Since you know, Griffin will go down incredibly slowly, but he can delete you in three hits, but it can make the fight a bit tedious.

If you actually know what you're doing it doesn't help that he can use certain attacks that prevent you from dealing damage for a few seconds.

If you want to avoid them, but I still really enjoy fighting Griffin next up is Virgil, just Virgil virtual one and two are honestly on the easier side, even on DMD likely, because of how straightforward most of his attacks are.

These two fights get especially hilarious.

If you can do slash, canceling consistently, I mean seriously if you just keep an eye out for one or two attacks with hyper armor.

These two fights look like a comedy routine, but oh Lord, Virgil three I have my own history with this fight.

Actually back when I first got into the series, I beat this game on DMD and out of every fight in the game.

Virgil 3 was the only one that made me break.

This is the one fight that felt so insurmountable that I actually used holy Waters to beat him because I got so frustrated, but this time I wasn't gonna.

Let that happen so I tried again and again and again trying different tactics with every few failures.

Honestly, at one point, I considered taking the easy way out, but somehow, through sheer force of, will have been virtually honest way, all the while using devil's sword Sparta for that extra poetic touch, it wasn't the cleanest or most efficient, win but God, damn it felt good.

After this we go to nightmare, who is probably the embodiment of that efficiency over style idea that I mentioned a little bit ago, him being a puzzle.

Boss makes this idea a given, but it becomes dreadfully apparent on the MD.

Let's just say: if you're not using effort for these fights, then you got no shot, there's not much to say about these fights in DND.

That can't be said about them in every other difficulty, though, I will say that the last phase of nightmare 3 Peaks an absurdity in this mode, seeing so much [, __ ], going on at once can already be disorienting, but knowing that any of these attacks can take away, one quarter of your health makes it even more hectic after dying to this face a couple times already.

This last bit actually had me terrified.

Your enjoyment of nightmare on DMD will depend on how much you like him anywhere else.

So if you've never liked- and this difficulty won't change your mind- I personally always enjoyed the nightmare fights so in the end, I still consider them fun on DMD, our last stop in the journey is Mundus.

If you've been this game on any difficulty, you know, Mundus can be a pretty tricky fight.

You have to play Space Harrier and then play a unique giant fight back to back with no Health refills on the first phase and only using devil sword Sparta by the time you reach this fight in hard mode.

The bullet hell session becomes pretty easy and it's just a matter of not messing up on phase two, while that's mostly the same on DMD.

There are some attack combinations in phase one that make that fight a little bit unfair.

The main one I noticed is that meteors, combined with lightning or arrows almost impossible to dodge on normal and hard.

The meteors follow the same homing pattern that arrows do so it's pretty easy to dodge him with a circle motion at the right pace, but on DMD, the meteors are random.

I think I never found any consistency in how they were shot.

So I struggled pretty hard on this if there is a way to consistently avoid getting hit by them.

I would like to know other than that.

It's the same deal as most of the other bosses.

They're tough challenges that become tougher in DMD, but become much more satisfying to beat as a result, which is honestly the best way.

I can describe this game on DMD.

It's really hard, maybe the hardest the series ever gets, but it rarely steers into the territory of being unfair or tedious.

I.

Think it's a difficulty well worth playing and it sets a great standard for the rest of the series to look back on with all that being said, let's see what the series learned going into DMC too so yeah, the MC2 honestly I did consider doing a DMD run of this game just to be completely thorough, but yeah.

No, a 10 minute session of this game reminded me of why I could barely drag myself to the first boss when I first tried it I'll need to remind you that the game sucks and I highly doubt that DMD makes it any better.

So, let's just move on.

If you take a quick glance at the raw stats, it doesn't seem like the MC3 changed DMD.

All that much the only real stats I could find were enemies and bosses having their health set to 300 percent and enemies and bosses having their damage set to 400 numbers.

Just go up, you die faster, but everyone else dies slower, pretty basic right, but there's two changes.

The MC3 makes that turns this mode into a very different experience, not just from DMC one but from every other difficulty in dmc3 itself.

The first one is that now all enemies in a room can activate DT if you kill a certain amount of them.

This means that the days of grenade, rolling the victory are over and you're gonna have to start Distributing your damage evenly.

If you want to be efficient, though, keep in mind that the time rule is still in place, so you can't be too slow about getting that damage out either or else enemy spawns or DT anyway.

It's something that you don't feel all that much for the first three missions or so, but trust me from Mission 4 onwards.

You need to start being mindful of how much you attack every enemy.

Now, with that new rule in mind, you may be saying to yourself: well damn this seems like an interesting change and all doesn't this mean that I'll always be forced to deal with tanky enemies, even if I perfectly distribute my damage and that's where you'd be wrong.

In fact, it's possible to play through this entire difficulty, while almost never seeing an enemy enter DT.

How is that possible? Well because of one of the best additions dmc3 made to the series Devil Trigger explosion by holding down your Devil Trigger button.

Dante will begin to charge up notches in this DT gauge.

If you release the button at any point during this charge, Dante will release a mid-range explosion from himself that deals more damage the longer you hold down the button for this changes, everything for DMD and every other difficulty.

You don't really get punished for choosing to kill certain enemies over others.

So, while the T explosion may be useful, it's not something you strictly need, but when you're playing with the kind of rules that DMD sets up, having a screen clear, completely changes how you approach most fights.

All of a sudden.

You find yourself scanning the Arenas more than usual, keeping close track of how much health every enemy has left.

Then, when all the enemies are just slow enough and all the pieces are set just right, let go of L1 and its checkmate.

I love.

This kind of playstyle it may not be as flashy or intricate as some of the other things you can pull off in this game, but it's an incredibly satisfying way to play once you get it down.

But there is one problem: if you've beaten this game even once, then you might know exactly what this problem is, and that is that the MC3 has some dog [ __ ] enemies, a ghost for us to say that it has the weakest lineup of standard enemies in the whole series, although it doesn't have the worst enemy, dual hands, suck Soul Eaters suck the Fallen are garbage, and all these only get worse with the health who's getting higher.

What's worse, is that a few enemies that were kind of okay in the lower difficulties are now incredibly annoying to deal with.

Enemas are pretty forgettable and normal and hard, but they can be awful to fight in DMD because they just constantly run away from you, while shooting projectiles that can be tricky to dodge or block properly around.

They are a moderately fun Challenge on the lower difficulties, but in DMD their health gets so blurred that dealing with a room full of them just becomes tedious.

That's not even going into how certain rooms in the game are just bad, regardless of difficulty and DMD just makes them even worse, like the chessboard or like in Mission 11, where someone had the great idea to put you in a room with a hell, Vanguard and multiple Soul Eaters great, the game becomes a series of extremes.

The longer goes on, the other gets some pretty sweet rooms where you can place The Mastermind or you get rooms that are going to tempt you into using holy Waters, because they're so obnoxious.

As far as bosses go, there's not really anything.

I can say about them in regards to the MD, the Bad Bosses just get slightly worse.

The decent bosses are still decent and Virgil is still better than all of them.

Right.

Overall Dante must die and dmc3 has tons of potential yeah.

The mode gets a really dragged down by the shittier enemies in some of the bad rooms, but there's a lot of Promise here.

Itsuna and his team just have to keep the rules as they are, but improve everything around those rules.

If they can pull it off, they might just make the best hard mode in any action game.

So where'd the mc4, take us much like the MC3.

The mc4 doesn't seem to have changed DMD all that much at a passing glance here: enemies take 30 less damage than normal.

The player takes 200 more damage than normal, and bosses can now enter a desperation mode with their low on health, which is basically just them entering DT.

As far as return rules Go, the game still gives enemies DT after a certain amount of time, and now they actually added a glowing Aura to enemies to let you know when they're about to DT, which is pretty handy.

Dt explosion still exists, but announcers are for Nero and is more about using juggles and iframes, rather than as a screenplayer critically the rule of enemies automatically entering DT wants a certain amount of them.

Are killed seems to be missing a bit disappointing at first, but soon you might see why this isn't so bad Nero's levels are generally pretty okay in DMD you're still dealing with the bad gimmicks.

The game throws at you and the occasional shitty enemy, but it's not much worse than how it is in any other difficulty.

So, for the most part, it's still pretty fun as far as bosses go.

These actually feel as tough as they should.

Maybe it's just me being Rusty from not playing the game for a while, but I did die to all of them more than once, and it rarely felt unfair or well I'd, add to all of them except Echidna for some reason who I actually beat on.

My first drive must have had an anti-woman buff you're, another worthless, [ __ ] as Nero DMD is fine, so it might be reasonable to assume that the entire game is also fine.

Right I mean it's dmc4.

It has plenty of issues, but it's still a pretty solid game.

Well, that idea goes down the drain.

Once you reach the second half of the game, I often hear the Dante's portion of the game isn't good, because the enemies don't feel like they're built for Dante, while I agree with this I.

Don't think most people realize just how far that statement actually goes.

Some parts of this game on DMD get [ __ ] up as Dante.

You may not feel it at first, but once you start at Mission, 13 you'll know exactly what I'm talking about with no charge shot and no devil bringer some enemies become an absolute chore to fight and that's not even get into the actual bad enemies.

Faults Are, more obnoxious than ever, basilisk are insanely annoying to deal with since they're, constantly running away and Dante doesn't have a snatch equivalent hell, even the blitz, an enemy that normally isn't that bad becomes absolutely terrible here, since they had the great idea to put in the same room, so it just doesn't synergize well with other enemies at all, especially this arena in Mission 13., but the enemy that destroys any potential for Dante to be enjoyable in this difficulty is the Chimera easily the worst enemy in the entire series.

In any circumstance, these guys are horrible, literally created for the sole purpose of ruining your combo.

Even when you get the advantage, but there's usually some ways around them, with Nero charge, shot get rid of them pretty easily and with Dante on the lower difficulties, they tend to die fast enough that you can sort of forget how bad they really are, but with Dante on DMD, you get to see just how poorly thought out these guys are they're an enemy that actually discourages you from getting close on a difficulty that gives them far more Health than normal.

With the player being under pressure to kill enemies as fast as possible, or also become even more dangerous, although, while playing with a character that is at his best at close range, do you see how this might be an issue? Let's just make this even worse, since getting hit by one spawns you in a room with five of these I, didn't get hit by faults too many times, but after the first time, I just reloaded a save whenever it happened, I am not dealing with a room for these Abominations horrible design.

Decisions aside, the bosses don't really change at all for Dante.

They still feel horribly out of sync with Dante's moveset.

Only now they die slower.

You can only spell out the ancient technique of DT Distortion, of course, popping DTA the moment in attack lands but I'm, not very good at it.

Admittedly, I did pull it off once or twice on the Savior, though so it's Gotta count for something right.

Thank you.

Overall.

Dmc4 doesn't really bring anything new to the table as far as the MD goes, though, with how Russia development for this game was I can both understand why this mode wasn't iterated on more and also be slightly grateful if they didn't do a one-to-one copy of dmc3's.

The MD tell me it's a really good idea to have a mode that encourages smart tactical play when half of the game is spent fighting enemies that don't fit the playstyle of one character, probably not, but hey things might search will get better now, after all, we're now at dmc5 that one almost universally agreed to be excellent, maybe with all the love and time that was put into that game, we'll end up with a DND that creates a truly unique experience, while leaving out most of the bad stuff right foreign, the MC5 is probably on par with the MC3 and how many changes are made to a bmd formula, while the only raw stat I could find is that enemies take 50 less damage.

The game does bring a few interesting changes to the rules of the MD.

For starters, enemies can sometimes enter DT.

After taking enough damage and sometimes enemies begin fights with DT active already, sadly, it seems like the rule of enemies entering DT after some of them die is still gone, though I can't say it's too bad, since classic DT explosion died with it now, mostly replaced by the super strong sin: Devil Trigger for Dante and Virgil and Nero keeping his launching properties and iframes from dmc4 okay.

But how does it play? Well, it's mostly just the MC5, which is excellent.

In fact, one of the first things you'll notice, is that enemies don't die in two seconds in this difficulty.

I'd honestly forgotten how fragile enemies were, even in Sonic Sparta difficulty so having enemies that you can actually do intricate combos on is pretty refreshing.

This is a quality, that's Universal to every character, since the game was pretty well balanced.

Around Nero, Dante and V.

Most of the issues on DMD are Universal rather than one character.

Clearly getting shafted like last time by Universal issues, I'm mainly just talking about specific enemies and believe it or not, I, don't think Furies are one of them.

Instead I'd say there are only about three enemies that become an issue in bmd those being judges, behemoths and, to a lesser extent, protoangelos like the Arachne and dmc3.

The main issue these guys have is that their increased Health mix to dealing with them pretty tedious judek is teleporting all over the place becomes even more annoying and behemoths turn to maybe the tankiest standard enemy in the whole series, meaning that almost any fight that involves them is going to have you leaving them for a lot.

Since you know, killing them is going to take a decade.

The least offensive one here is proto-angelo since he's actually a pretty fun enemy to fight in most difficulties.

It's just that their damage resistance becomes insane once you push them into low health.

So not only can you take a while to finish them, but it becomes a lot harder to pull off a stylish ending hell.

I have a clip of me standing here for like two minutes trying to get a cool finisher against one in mission 7 and failing over and over and over, despite the lock-on gauge, clearly showing that he was low on health too.

Oh God, now for bosses things, don't really change enough to be worth commenting on, but I will highlight two examples that stood out to me.

The first is that these Boss Rush in Mission 14, is actually a bit hard now, at least for the first two fights.

Normally, the fights aren't bad if you're smart with your boss order, but on DMD, even my most reliable boss order was pretty hard to get through.

Probably a mix of my inexperience with VM, the boss is being tankier as well.

The other notable boss here is Virgil and all I can say about him in DMD.

Is that he's had his absolute best here? Just changing his health and damage numbers are enough to make his fight incredibly tense and it makes the little victories you get all the more satisfying.

Both versions of this fight are great and both of them give me a bit of Hell, although it's obvious, as neros is noticeably easier than Dante is mostly because devil Buster can get you a good chunk of free damage on top of trivializing Virgil's doppelganger.

Well, as this tradition with Virgil, his fights kick ass and they become even more Kick-Ass as they get harder.

Overall, the MC5 does DMD pretty well, it's probably tied with dmc1 for the DMD.

That has the least amount of problems sure and makes the bad enemies worse, but that's kind of par for the course for this mode and then dmc5, specifically those enemies don't become nearly as annoying as their equivalents did in DMC, 3 and 4.

Besides, even if the mode isn't all that creative, it's still dmc5, which means you're gonna, have a lot of fun so now that we've gone through all of them.

Let's answer the question which one of these games has the best Dante Must Die, while Churchill isn't the mc4 so which of these three is the best all in other qualities that make them stand out.

The MC1 remains pretty consistent on top of making all of its bosses noticeably more challenging and more enjoyable.

Dmc3 gets dragged down by some bad enemies, but still creates a really interesting gameplay style.

When everything clicks into place, the MC5 doesn't do anything radical, but changes just enough from the lower difficulties to make DMD the definitive way to play it.

In my opinion, now considering how much I complained about dmc3's problems and considering that I do enjoy dmc5 far more than the MC1, the crown should belong to five right.

No, as I said before, while DMC 5's DMD has the least amount of problems out of any other game, it also doesn't change the game all that much for almost 90 of it.

It's just dmc5, but slightly harder.

Much like the MC1 I can't say that playing on DMD changed the way I approach, fights I didn't feel compelled to learn anything new or to change up my play style.

It was just me going through the usual motions.

Only now it's slightly more enjoyable in some parts and slightly less than others.

For that I think I'm gonna give the price of best DMD to the MC3.

The place out of this game encourages you to use is, unlike anything else in the series, it's one of the few times in recent memory, where I felt compelled to pay attention to think about all my moves carefully and to get into a flow, those both efficient and stylish, and that's another thing.

While the rules make this mode restrictive, they don't destroy style altogether, it's still more than possible to pull off sick combos.

You just have to be more considerate of your damage, which you should be doing anyway.

This is what stopped me from making the same criticism I made towards DMC ones, DMD in that game, you're generally, better off sticking to the same kind of attacks for most fights since so those are the safest and most efficient way to play for more direct comparison.

Think of it like this, if you want to be effective in DMC one DMD, the best thing you can do is grenade roll most of the time and occasionally swap out of that strategy for specific enemies.

If you want to be effective in the MC3 DMD, you have to know how to use the T explosion to its fullest effect, but before you Precision to use it, you can do whatever you want.

You can use whatever weapons you like, whatever style you like and be as aggressive or as passive as you like, so long as you're, always working towards this game-ending move sure it doesn't always work.

Almost one third of the enemies are now more annoying than ever, and the ratio of good to bad fights is probably around 45 to 55, but when it works, it's on par with the MC5 as the most fun you can have in this series.

Maybe you disagree.

Maybe you think the MC5 should get it simply for being the best game overall hell.

Maybe you think DMD sucks in every game.

The lower difficulties are where the games actually shine.

If you take away anything from this, video I want it to be this Dante Must Die can still get better.

There's plenty of potential here to craft the best hard mode in any action game.

It doesn't have to be as restrictive as 3 or as Loose as 5.

It just has to shine a light on the depth of gameplay that everyone loves from the series and hey if you're watching this you've never played DMD in any of these games.

I encourage you to try it.

It won't be easy and it sure, as hell, won't be perfect, but I'm sure you'll get something out of it.

Maybe you'll learn a new mechanic or maybe you'll find your new favorite way to play these games.

If you can offer more opinions on what makes a DMD good or bad, then maybe Dante can die more stylishly than ever.