Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition review

If you missed Gamestyle's review of the original Devil May Cry 3, have a look at it now, and it'll tell you most of what you need to know. Special Edition includes the whole of the original DMC3, plus a few extra modes and goodies, all for the price of a budget release, which is pretty special indeed. But for the purposes of this review, Gamestyle is looking at the game solely as an extra.If you're familiar with the game, the first difference you'll notice here is being asked to choose between the Gold and Yellow continuity systems. The colours refer to those of the rare and valuable orbs the protagonists can collect. The yellow orb system is identical to the one used in the original Devil May Cry and in the normal edition of Devil May Cry 3: if you die, using a yellow orb lets you begin from the last checkpoint. Without a yellow orb, you'll have to start the whole level again. The gold orb system, as seen in Devil May Cry 2, is more forgiving. A gold orb will resurrect you there and then should you die. Without them you still have an infinite number of checkpoint restarts. It all depends whether you think the yellow system is for masochists or the gold one for pansies.A handful of other things have been buffed and polished for Special Edition. Hard mode has been nerfed, and a new Very Hard mode added to compensate. Keen-eyed players of DMC3 will notice a few differences in enemy distribution too (Dullahans where there were Arachnes, mostly). The Jester, previously only making an appearance in cutscenes, has been added as a boss, but he's disappointingly easy despite his battle designs being very imaginative (at one point he rides atop a grinning moon which rolls around spitting bombs at you). The excellent new Turbo setting speeds up the game by 20%, which, when added to the fact that the NTSC version is running at 60Hz (around 15% faster than the original PAL 50Hz version), makes the action very frantic indeed. The honour of best new addition, though, must go to the Bloody Palace. One of the few really good ideas from Devil May Cry 2, the Palace sees you fighting your way through level upon level of arena combat, with death the only way out. The further you can get and the more demons you can slaughter, the bigger the reward in the form of red orbs (the DMC series' currency).The selling point of Special Edition is the fact that you can now play as Dante's evil twin Vergil. How sad, then, that his missions are identical to Dante's - which makes no sense whatsoever in relation to the story - and all cutscenes (bar a different opening one) are completely absent, thereby making his experience feel very flat and disjointed. Vergil's certainly an interesting enough character to deserve his own game, but this isn't it. He doesn't get his own storyline, and his mode doesn't reveal anything about the Devil May Cry universe. It gets worse: when playing as Dante you are required to battle Vergil, so playing as Vergil obviously requires you to battle Dante. But all Capcom have done to this end is change the main colour of the character model from blue to red. 'Dante' looks otherwise identical to Vergil, and even has the same voice and weapons. This is so rubbish it's almost funny.Though his game is just a mangled version of Dante's, Vergil himself isn't just Dante draped in different polygons. Vergil refuses to use firearms, as he doesn't believe them to be worthy weapons of a true warrior. His 'guns' are flying swords he magically summons, which target themselves at enemies (DMC veterans will remember this attack as the one Vergil uses in the guise of Nelo Angelo in the original Devil May Cry). They're rather poor, being much slower than Dante's handguns and slower to lock on. Vergil also only has one discipline (Dark Slayer, which sounds like the sort of thing 12 year-old goths call themselves). It's similar to Dante's Trickster discipline: with suitable use of the circle button in conjunction with the thumbstick and lock-on, it allows Vergil to teleport towards enemies, a few feet above him (the nearest thing he gets to a double jump) or a few feet below or behind him.Vergil has only three melee weapons, but unlike Dante he can carry all of his in the field at once. He's also noticeably stronger than his brother, which makes up for his sub-par projectile attacks. Yamato the katana is his only unique short-range weapon; it refills devil trigger (the series' beserker mode) quickly and can execute fast combos. Its basic slashes are excellent for hitting many close enemies at once, and you can eventually unlock the time-dilating slicy thing Vergil performs as the antagonist in boss battles. Yamato's headlong charge attack is not very good when you're behind it, though, as the enemies have usually moved by the time you've reached where they were. Vergil also wields Force Edge the claymore, which behaves identically to Dante's Rebellion. No real complaints there, as it's a solid and reliable blade regardless of its name. Vergil's third weapon is a set of gauntlets and greaves called Beowulf. This is one of Gamestyle's favourite weapons when playing as Dante, but in Vergil's hands (and feet) this thing is absolutely superb. It's faster, and its attacks are devastating and ruthlessly pound the baddies into the ground. Whizzo stuff.If you were planning to pick up Devil May Cry 3 anyway, you might as well get the version with all the extras, but Special Edition may or may not be worth getting if you already have Devil May Cry 3 (it depends how fanatical about the series you are). If you felt you could take or leave DMC3, there's no reason for you to get Special Edition. It's like buying an album and then finding an extended version with a few extra tracks - whether it's worth re-buying depends on how much you like the band. Special Edition tweaks rather than revamps the original game; but what did you expect for a budget price release?