Oh, so Devil May Cry 5 is your introduction to the series? You must be a sucker for pain! Don’t worry: we all love it, we wouldn’t be returning to the franchise if we didn’t! You may feel a bit, erm, embarrassed to be asking about something as simple as how to perform a dodge in an action game, but it’s actually a pretty important question, given the dodge can make or break the experience for you.
Now, this goes without saying that … there is no actual dodge button in Devil May Cry 5. DON’T PANIC! You may find yourself desperately looking for ways to MOVE THE HELL OUT of the way of a hacking and slashing demon, and you actually have a couple of options available to you, and really, it’s not all that complicated.
Jumping … yes. Jumping.
Any experienced Devil May Cry player knows that the game’s fundamentals are essentially built around and fuelled by — you guessed it — jumping.
Not in like a super bouncy or Genji-In-Overwatch kind of jumping. Rather like a … well, there’s nothing quite like it.
Think of it this way: enemies in Devil May Cry come at you in waves. Sometimes within those waves, enemies will move in towards you to attack, and you may notice some of these enemies being completely in-sync with one another. Maybe not perfectly, but close enough that you’d think they were set off by the same cue.
In much the same way the game handles and delivers these attacks, you can avoid them: by timing your jump to avoid damage perfectly in-sync with certain movement cues of the enemy.
Your timing here, then, is obviously important: you want to study the enemies around you, and jump just as their swinging animation hits its highest point before gravitating towards you.
Think of a wrecking ball … a really, really fast wrecking ball. It swings back, and then forward, eventually stopping when it hits its designated target. Thing of enemies in much the same way: they’ll enter into a swinging animation, and then come down on you. Once that wrecking ball hits its highest point, hit jump, and you should avoid — or dodge — contact all together, and lose no health.
It may take some getting used to, but time it just right and you’ll be fine.
Finally, you also want to work the jump cancel into your repertoire.
Actually, like, you know, dodging
Okay so the game actually has a dodge: once locked onto an enemy, flick the left analog left or right whilst press jump. This will initiate a dodge roll, and, if executed in time as the above, you’ll come out of an attack with zero damage.
Ideally you want to perfect jumping and dodging, as minimising the actual damage you receive will improve your rank at the end of each mission.
It’s also going to help you gain an SSS combo, which is the most stylish combo rating you can achieve. This ranking is determined by a combination of weapons used, damage taken, and actual combos within a combo, and how often they’re used.
So, even if you’re dodging enemies like a champion, unless you have some sort of variation in your combat, you ain’t getting that SSS. Ideally what you want is to draw enemies, and move from spawn to spawn, alternating between move set, to weapon combos, and then back again: don’t return to one set until you’ve completed at least two others, ideally three.
Push off enemies that get too close by pressing LB: this is a breakaway move and will help familiarise yourself with the basics of hot to block, whereby Nero will break off his arm and create a buffer between him and a nearby enemy. It’s also another “dodge” move you can use to keep your health up and combo active.
Having any tips on dodging and building up your combo? Sound off in the comments below!
