To attempt to put your finger on the one thing that has made the Devil May Cry cry franchise the phenomenon is today is impossible. There are too many factors that make this demon slaying action series one of the most unique and distinctive in its genre. But if you just HAD to pick one thing, it would be how few limits the games adhere to when it comes to designing the epic boss fights.
Bosses are the flagstones of any action adventure game, usually designed to be set pieces that wrap up parts of a story. DMC’s do far more than that, often becoming both a pop quiz to test your lexicon of skills against and a conceptual maypole for all of the areas various visual and sonic themes to tie around. The absolute best DMC boss battles do this perfectly, and have no qualms being weird in their attempts to be memorable.
Bob Barbas
The Ninja Theory remake, DmC: Devil May Cry, attempted to rebrand the outlandishness of the series, giving the madness a method. Dante no longer existed in nameless dark cities with no cultural impact – now he was very much in a real world, complete with its own ultra conservative, political talking head on a big cable news network. Bob Barbas would serve many roles: a fictional analog to a real life figure that players can relate to, a cultural antagonist to Dante that demonized and condemned the sort of lifestyle Dante lived, and being an actual demon to actually attack and attempt to destroy the Son of Sparda.
The Bob Barbas boss fight is one of the best in the series for just how well the whole sequence plays with the “TV News” theme. Bob’s face is front and center, a tangible metaphor for the supposed cultural relevance of his visage. After awhile, you’re left to fight random monsters for a time, but through the scope of “on the scene” footage via news chopper. It’s absolutely brilliant in its execution.
Nightmare
Like Barbas, fighting Nightmare is like having two different boss fights at once. When caught in the black slime’s “grasp,” it pulls you into itself, dropping you into a dark world, where you have to fight an assortment of bad guys to break yourself free. Among those bad guys can be previously defeated bosses, which is an incredible bummer.
If it isn’t porting you to demon dimensions, it can still put a hurting on you in various other ways. The only way to destroy it is to damage it’s core, which you can’ access without finishing the elaborate process of shutting off generators. This was an incredibly involved and meticulous fight that made an amorphous pile of goo seem like the most sinister monster in the game.
Belial
Sometimes, DMC bosses could still surprise you without being terribly clever. Enter the fire demon Belial, who made up for what he lacked in trickery with overwhelming force. Besides being absolutely massive, Belial’s presence was hard to ignore because his aura literally lit the shanty town you meet him in ablaze. Whenever he passes by the rickety old walls of any giving mining shack, it immediately ignites. Brawling with this beast is a spectacle when paired with the sight of a dozen houses dynamically burning to ash around you.
As mentioned, he isn’t anything special mechanically. He swings a big sword pretty slowly, and beating him doesn’t involve much more besides hitting him in the face a lot, but Capcom doubled down on spectacle with this fight, and it pays off handsomely.
Mundus
When it comes to combining spectacle and substance, though, look no further than Mundus. In the reboot, the Lord of Hell grew to Godzilla proportions after fully realizing his powers. Grappling from rooftop to rooftop while he kicks over buildings is an experience not found in many other games.
In the 2001 classic, Mundus is equally as imposing, but the fight to defeat him is a far more complex. The fight begins as a giant angelic statue of Mundus soars into space. Not to be outdone, Dante transforms into a demonic Beetleborg and follows him. A crazy rail shooter replaces the first act of this fight, and serves as a welcome change of pace and a well received injection of “epic” that any final boss deserves. It settles eventually into more standard DMC fare, but not without delivering a few more twists (and a couple of false ends) to keep the player guessing.
Savior
Another example of “going big” was DMC4’s Savior, an enemy so massive Dante needed help to slay it. Much of the battle takes place on its actually body, the mega demon’s arms and shoulders big enough to be battlegrounds. It’s angelic look clearly was inspired by Mundus, and it’s probably not a complete coincidence that part of this fight takes place in the sky.
The fight itself makes players stretch their platformer muscles in ways they didn’t expect to in a DMC. Navigating between floating debris while this big guy shoots an assortment of killy death projectiles keeps you on your toes, and really sells the larger than life craziness of this enemy (or this game, for that matter.)
Leviathan
Maybe the biggest enemy in the DMC gallery was Leviathan, a giant demon whale that orbited the Temen-ni-gru Tower of DMC 3 and eats Dante like Pinnochio. A whole chapter is devoted to escaping the beast, who you have break out of the hard way. Nothing says “this creature means business” like playing an entire stage just to get to its heart.
Vergil
If anyone means business in the DMC universe, its Dante’s twin brother Vergil. He is commonly depicted as Dante’s foil – a stone wall to his somewhat juvenile humor, and a patient and calculating counter to his reckless abandon. He is always portrayed as Dante’s relative equal, usually matched closely enough to to bring the best out of Dante.
He isn’t a towering demon or some unspeakable horror, but he is incredible power in an unassuming package. Every fight against him, be it in the pair of wars featured in Devil May Cry 3 or the big finish in the latest DmC, are great tests of skill and endurance, and are usually showcases of the most stylish and bombastic moves in the game.
Overall, Devil May Cry knows how to make an entrance. It also know how to keep the party going, and when its time to call it, it knows how to create the right boss fight send it home with a bang. Did we miss a fight that brings out the best of DMC? Comment below or tweet @Cursegamepedia!