Seven years after release, Devil May Cry 5 hasn’t really been dethroned. Plenty of action games have arrived since, some excellent, but when people argue about what the genre’s ceiling looks like, this is still the game they point to. Capcom’s RE Engine handles the visual side, the three-protagonist structure handles variety, and the ranking system makes sure you never quite feel finished with it. The Sons of Sparda arc closes here, and it closes loud.
Quick Verdict
A high watermark for character action. Combat depth is the headline three protagonists with genuinely distinct toolkits, not just palette-swapped movesets and the presentation backs it up. Linear level design and some pacing wobble are the only real complaints worth making.
What You Should Know
- Combat carries the whole thing. Nero, Dante, and V play nothing like each other. Nero’s Devil Breakers turn his right arm into a rotating set of disposable gadgets, each one with its own combo extensions. Dante runs four styles (Swordmaster, Gunslinger, Trickster, Royalguard) on a hot-swap, layered over a weapon roster that includes the motorcycle-blade Cavaliere and the punching weapon Balrog. V is the experiment that worked you don’t fight directly, you direct his three summoned demons while staying back, then move in for the killing blow yourself.
- The RE Engine pulls its weight. Faces, demon designs, environment lighting all of it holds up against games released years later. Performance is steady on every platform it shipped to, and the Special Edition added ray tracing and a Vergil campaign for the current-gen versions.
- Story tone is exactly what it should be. Campy, melodramatic, frequently absurd, occasionally landing a genuinely earned emotional beat. It wraps the long-running Sparda family business cleanly enough that you don’t feel cheated, but with enough ambiguity that the door stays cracked open.
Where It Stands in May 2026
The franchise is in an odd spot. Devil May Cry 5 sold over 10 million copies and remains the highest-selling game in the series by a substantial margin, which by any normal measure should have made a sequel a foregone conclusion. It became the highest selling game in the franchise by a wide margin, mainly due to its exciting and deep action gameplay, with a sales rate only outpaced by Monster Hunter Wilds at the time of release. Instead, the series has been quiet on the gaming side since 2019.
Part of the reason is personnel. Director Hideaki Itsuno, who effectively rescued the franchise starting with Devil May Cry 3, left Capcom to start something new meaning whoever takes a future DMC project on won’t be him.
That said, Capcom hasn’t shelved the name. At a recent investor meeting, the publisher reiterated its plan to expand on dormant franchises including Devil May Cry and Dragon’s Dogma, with COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto outlining intentions to revitalise the series through sequels, remakes, ports, or new entries. Remake rumours have been doing the rounds for months. Nothing’s confirmed, nothing’s dated, but the IP is officially on the “we want to keep going with this” list rather than the “we’re done” list.
The animated side is where things have actually moved. The eight-episode second season of the animated Devil May Cry series premiered on Netflix on May 12, 2026, returning after a first season that debuted in April 2025, hit the Top 10 with 5.3 million views in three days, and earned a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score. Showrunner Adi Shankar has already confirmed a third season is in production. The first season had a measurable knock-on effect on the games titles from the series on Steam saw player counts boost up to 20 times following the show’s debut which is the kind of data point Capcom’s marketing team will have noticed.
The Three Protagonists
- Nero: The most accessible of the three, but accessibility shouldn’t be read as shallow. His Devil Breakers are the headline feature: snap-on prosthetic arms with one-shot abilities ranging from time slowdown (Ragtime) to a giant grabbing claw (Buster Arm) to a rocket punch you can ride. You carry a limited set into each mission, can’t swap freely, and breaking one mid-fight forces you onto the next. It turns combat into a kind of resource economy on top of the usual juggling and sword-charging.
- Dante: Twenty-five years of franchise muscle memory poured into one character. Four combat styles, swappable on the D-pad in real time, each with its own button-mapped moves. Pistols, shotgun, sword, gauntlets, hat-weapon (yes), motorbike-sword. Mastering Dante is less a learning curve than a long ascent there’s no obvious endpoint, and high-level play looks unrecognisable from how a new player handles him.
- V: The divisive one, and the most interesting design swing in the game. V is physically frail. He summons three demons (a panther, a bird, and a giant golem) to do the fighting, while he reads poetry from a book and stays out of melee range until enemies are weak enough for him to finish off with his cane. It’s slower, more positional, more about reading the battlefield than executing combos. Some players bounce off it. The ones who don’t tend to rate the V missions among the game’s best.
What’s Genuinely Worth Praising
The ranking system. Every combat encounter scores you in real time D through SSS based on variety, style, damage taken, and how long you sustain the chain. It’s the engine that drives replayability. You don’t beat DMC5 once; you beat it, then beat it on Son of Sparda, then on Dante Must Die, then chase S-ranks on every mission, then try Bloody Palace.
The sound design. Each character has a custom battle track that intensifies as your style rank climbs, which sounds gimmicky written down but works absurdly well in practice. Nero’s Devil Trigger became a meme for good reason.
The bosses. Fights against Urizen, Cavaliere Angelo, and the final encounter are paced and choreographed at a level most action games don’t approach.
Where It Comes Up Short
Levels are corridors. That’s the honest summary. There’s a small amount of branching, the occasional hidden item, but nobody’s playing DMC5 for exploration. If you want a stylish action game that also has a world to roam around in, this isn’t that game.
Pacing across protagonists is uneven. The game decides when you play as Nero, Dante, or V you don’t choose. Most of the swaps work, but a couple feel arbitrary, and if V’s playstyle doesn’t click for you, his missions will drag.
The story leans on knowing the previous games. New players can follow it, but a lot of the emotional payoff lands harder if you’ve spent time with these characters before.
References
- Vice – Capcom Confirms Future Devil May Cry Plans Amid Remake Rumors – https://www.vice.com/en/article/capcom-confirms-future-devil-may-cry-plans-amid-remake-rumors/
- ComicBook.com = 2026 Doesn’t Bode Well For Devil May Cry Fans – https://comicbook.com/gaming/feature/2026-doesnt-bode-well-for-devil-may-cry-fans/
- GamesRadar+ – Capcom wants to “nurture” dormant game series like Devil May Cry and Dragon’s Dogma – https://www.gamesradar.com/games/devil-may-cry/capcom-wants-to-nurture-dormant-game-series-like-devil-may-cry-and-dragons-dogma-with-sequels-remakes-ports-and-more/
- Yahoo Entertainment – Devil May Cry Season 2 Returns to Netflix on May 12 – https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/devil-may-cry-season-2-110000420.html
