Devil May Cry 4 (Special Edition)

I have a complicated relationship with DMC4, and the Special Edition makes that complication worth revisiting. The core loop, chain sword attacks, gun cancels, and juggle combos while a style rank ticks up from D to SSS, is one of the tightest action systems Capcom ever shipped, and running at a locked 60 FPS with uncompressed textures it still looks and feels crisp. If you can get yourself to stop button-mashing and actually learn the rhythm, the game rewards you with something that approaches a kind of violent choreography. The headline addition here is five playable characters total. You start as Nero, a chip-on-shoulder demon hunter whose Devil Bringer arm lets him grab, slam, and launch enemies at will. His Red Queen sword has a rev mechanic that charges fire damage mid-combo, and his Blue Rose pistol handles crowd control. Midway through the 20-mission campaign, control shifts to Dante, who swaps between combat styles and a deep arsenal that includes the transforming war-machine Pandora. The Special Edition layers in three more: Vergil plays through the full campaign solo with the Yamato katana, Force Edge, and Beowulf gauntlets, plus a Concentration mechanic that rewards calm, precise play over frantic button work and a Grim Trick teleport for repositioning. Lady, making her first ever playable appearance in the series, ditches melee almost entirely in favor of the Kalina Ann rocket launcher, a grappling wire, handguns, and a Bullet Gauge charge system that powers up to three tiers of firearm damage. Trish handles Dante's half of the campaign with the Sword of Sparda and electrified kicks, and her autonomous Round Trip attack lets the blade orbit enemies while she punches. Legendary Dark Knight mode floods every room with Musou-scale enemy counts and is available from the start, while Turbo mode bumps the overall game speed up 20 percent, which genuinely changes how the combat feels. None of this fixes DMC4's foundational structural problem. The campaign is built around backtracking, Nero pushes through 11 missions, then Dante retraces every location in reverse. The three bonus characters do the exact same thing over the same environments. There are no new stages. If you hit the campaign's midpoint and already feel the repetition creeping in, Vergil, Lady, and Trish will not cure that boredom. They will, however, give it a completely different flavor. Vergil in particular is close to a different game entirely; the Concentration system means playing him sloppily is actively punishing, and mastering him takes real investment. Lady is the mechanical wildcard, a human with zero demonic power in a roster of demigods, and the way her Bullet Gauges force you to think about charge timing makes her the most unconventional choice. Bloody Palace, the game's arcade-style combat gauntlet with 101 escalating floors, is available for all five characters and is where the real longevity lives once the campaign runs out of novelty. The camera still gets wedged behind tall enemies and geometry in exactly the ways it did in 2008, and the puzzle segments are the same slow speed bumps they always were. The in-game economy has been re-tuned so Red Orbs and Proud Souls accumulate faster, which smooths out the upgrade grind at least. The Steam version supports high-resolution displays without issue. For newcomers to the series, DMC4 SE is a reasonable entry point with enough difficulty range to accommodate different skill levels, though DMC5 is the more polished game if you want to start fresh in 2025. For fans who played the original and want a reason to return, the answer is straightforward: do you want to play as Vergil? Because Vergil is excellent.

Alex · Scout Team

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