Devil May Cry 3

The gameplay in Devil May Cry 3 consists of missions, in which players battle enemies, carry out platforming tasks and solve puzzles to progress through the story. The player's performance in each mission is graded from D through C, B and A, with top marks of S and SS. Grades are based on time taken to complete a mission, the number of red orbs (currency obtained from defeated enemies) gathered, "stylish" combat, item usage and damage received. The games tracks stylish combat by an on-screen gauge, which is the performance of a series of attacks ("combos") while avoiding damage.

The longer a player attacks without repetition and evades damage, the higher the score. The gauge registers "Dope" after a few attacks, progressing through "Crazy", "Blast", "Alright", "Sweet", "SShowtime" to peak at "SSStylish". If Dante receives damage, the style rating falls; if the gauge is "Crazy" or below, it will reset. Devil May Cry 3's battle system allows a player to link attacks, with each weapon having a set number of attacks.

Devil May Cry 3 starts with Dante's yet-unnamed shop in the early 1990s. A mysterious man, Arkham, arrives with an invitation from Dante's brother Vergil in the form of a demonic attack. After Dante defeats a group of demons, a huge tower erupts from the ground nearby. Sensing that Vergil is on top of the structure, Dante interprets this as a challenge.

He begins fighting more demons during his journey, some of which become his weapons once defeated. Dante is attacked by a woman on a motorcycle who turns out to be Mary, Arkham's daughter, who wants revenge on her father for causing her mother's death. It is revealed that Arkham works for Vergil; they plan to take Dante's half of their mother's amulet and use its power on the tower to connect the human and demonic worlds.

After the mixed reception of Devil May Cry 2, Capcom developed Devil May Cry 3 in a similar manner to the series' more critically acclaimed first game Devil May Cry; its gameplay elements, such as environment size and battle engine, were reexamined. Other aspects of Devil May Cry 2, such as the toning-down of Dante's cockiness and the game's lack of difficulty, were brought back in line with Devil May Cry. According to a pre-release interview with the game's producer, Tsuyoshi Tanaka, the focus of the game's design was a battle system which allowed a player to control weapons in new, "stylish" ways. This coincided with the design of a new type of in-game camera which kept the character in focus, avoiding disorientation in crowded battle scenes.

Devil May Cry 2's difficulty was reduced for greater acceptance in the Japanese market, but this move cost the game support elsewhere. To remedy this, the Japanese release of Devil May Cry 3 had a lower degree of difficulty than the North American and European releases and Dante was a younger, more arrogant character than he was in the previous games.

The review aggregator website Metacritic gave the original PlayStation 2 release an 84 out of 100, and the Special Edition an 87 out of 100. It was included on Game Informer's list of the top 50 games of 2005, and the special edition received a "Game of the Month" award. In 2010, IGN ranked it 18th on its list of the top 100 PlayStation 2 games, and a GamePro retrospective that year rated it the 28th-best game for the PS2.

Reviews typically praised the game for avoiding its predecessor's mistakes and for customization options, gameplay, combat engine and the musical score despite the contradicting plot lines and character arcs. The style-based combat engine was considered to produce fighting sequences superior to games such as Ninja Gaiden and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, and the camera and controls were praised. Devil May Cry 3 was included in the 2010 book, 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.