Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden Comparison

For a while now, I've been really into the character action genre of video games, to the point that there are two series in particular that have really appealed to me in the long haul. So today, I'm going to be comparing Devil May Cry and the 3D Ninja Gaiden games.

Before I get to my points, though, I want to establish why I think these games should be compared because it's not really something people talk about a lot, so I would like to start this by highlighting their similarities so that I can justify comparing them.

Firstly, each of these series has a game that is widely considered to be the best in the genre, so much so that they're compared to each other to see who can win in this debate. For DMC, it's Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition, and for Ninja Gaiden, it's Ninja Gaiden Black. Both of these games are re-releases of a previous title that incorporates extra content and replay value. For DMC3SE, it included Vergil as a playable character and 3 extra boss fights with the Jester. Ninja Gaiden Black featured the hurricane expansion pack and while I don't think that included a new character, the PS3 release of that game, Ninja Gaiden Sigma did, in the form of Rachel. Additionally, Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition features the addition of Trish, Lady, and Vergil to the playable roster, when the original release only had Nero and Dante. Likewise, Ninja Gaiden 2 only had Ryu, but Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 featured Rachel, Momiji from Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, and Ayane from the Dead or Alive series of Fighting Games.

Both also have reboots or formula alterations that were lackluster initially but had improved re-releases later down the line, in the form of DmC: Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden 3. These releases were pretty much average action games in franchises that were known to be far more than average in general. Their re-releases, however, DmC: Definitive Edition and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge made improvements based on user feedback.

Both these series also feature iconic game characters. While some would say Devil May Cry has more iconic characters than Ninja Gaiden does, both star an iconic protagonist in the form of Dante and Ryu respectively. Both of these protagonists have female sidekicks who help them in their various adventures, Lady and Trish for Dante, and Rachel and Sonia for Ryu, although we find out later that Sonia is in fact Irene Lew but I'll get to that in a while. These series also include someone who worked with them in a student-mentor relationship in certain ways, with Nero and Dante being metaphorical in this case, whereas Ryu and Momiji were much more literal in this regard.

Both series feature a wide array of weapons and abilities, rival bosses at certain stages, platforming and traversal, and both are even intended to appeal to hardcore audiences much more than the casual consumer, on average at least.

And finally, each of these protagonists, and certain other characters from these series, appear in other franchises by the publisher that corresponds to them. Dante appears in Viewtiful Joe, Marvel vs. Capcom, and a version of him appears in Playstation Allstars: Battle Royale. Ryu, on the other hand, appears in Dynasty Warriors: Strike Force and Dead or Alive.

That said, I would like to discuss these series in-depth and try to find ways that these series may be able to improve on themselves and even each other.

Devil May Cry was originally released on the PS2 as a project directed by Hideki Kamiya during his time with Capcom. Initially, Devil May Cry was going to be Resident Evil 4. However, rather than push for that, they instead decided to make this a new IP in the form of Devil May Cry and the rest is history.

Ninja Gaiden is somewhat different. Made by Team Ninja and Directed by Tomonobu Itagaki, this game was released on the original XBox as an exclusive title, and was actually a 3-D Reboot of Tecmo's original series on the NES and SNES. At first, many of us assumed that this series was a prequel franchise to the NES titles and, perhaps at the time it was. However, later games in both the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series and new information on those titles have proven that the 3D Ninja Gaiden games have, in fact, rebooted the entire Ninja Gaiden Lore. Although, in this case, the reboot series was far more successful than many other reboots ever get to be. Examples of alterations from the originals include how Ryu is introduced to his partner Irene Lew, the name of Ryu's father from Ken to Jou, Ryu's marital status in relation to Irene has been changed from Married to Ambiguous, Jou is apparently still alive, whereas Ken died early on in his series, and Ryu's relationship with Ayane is pronounced in this series considering that she didn't exist in the original series. As a result, we can conclude that the 3D Ninja Gaiden games are, in fact, a full blown reboot.

Devil May Cry, as a game, featured the following weapons and abilities: Alastor, Ifrit, Ebony and Ivory, and various other guns, along with the Sword of Sparda, and various Devil Trigger forms. These didn't comprise a large list of abilities but for an early PS2 title, and for being the first of its kind, that was acceptable.

Ninja Gaiden on the XBox, on the other hand, featured more weapons and special abilities in the form of Ninpo. The main weapons consist of a Katana called the Dragon Sword, The Lunar Staff, Nunchaku and its scythe-blade variant the Vigoorian Flail, the Dhabilaro, a 100 pound broad sword, and Rachel's War Hammer, which I'm not really certain why it's called that because I was always under the impression that it was an Axe. Of course, there are other weapons but a majority of them are just Katana that function similarly to the Dragon Sword, and one in particular, the True Dragon Sword is a flat out upgrade on it. Because so many of those weapons are swords, with only aesthetic changes or alterations that didn't really do much to the depth or strategy of the game, and other weapons, such as the Dark Dragon Blade and the Vigoorian Flail, are re-skins of previously acquired weapons as well, I won't be putting too much attention on them. That said, even with the overlapping weapons disregarded, Ninja Gaiden still includes 5 total melee weapons, in comparison to the 3 from Devil May Cry.

Devil May Cry makes this up in long range weapons, as Ryu's only long range weapons are a bow with different types of ammunition, an incendiary kunai knife, and regular shuriken, but action games like these are at their best when you're beating the crap out of enemies face-to-face rather than firing at them at long range. That said, one thing Devil May Cry did do better than Ninja Gaiden in this regard was the weapon switching.

In Ninja Gaiden, you switched weapons on the d-pad by pressing up to bring up a small menu, using the left and right buttons to scroll to the weapon you want, then pressing X to select it. Usually time is stopped while you're selecting but if you're being grappled in some way, for example if you're being bitten by the phantom fish right as you activate the menu you'll be unable to select a weapon and continually take damage until you either die or until the fish let go, usually the former. In Devil May Cry, you just pressed a button, an animation would play, and then you could use the weapon you swapped to. The benefit of having weapon switching that doesn't involve a menu that pauses the game, besides not having any glitches like the one with the Phantom Fish, is that weapons can be exchanged mid-combo to extend the depth, strategy, and complexity of the game. Of course, it's worth noting that Devil May Cry doesn't achieve this but the series does eventually progress to that point. Ninja Gaiden never does.

I can only speculate but I think the reason Ninja Gaiden uses the Menu-based weapon switching in a more free-form manner rather than just having a button press swap out the weapons is two fold: firstly, the number of weapons that can be equipped at once. In Devil May Cry, Dante only ever has two melee weapons to swap between, which means that a single button press to toggle between them is all that's necessary. In Devil May Cry 3, Dante does have more weapons available and a much greater variety. However, it remains that only 2 can be equipped at once. While Devil May Cry 3 had been passed from Hideki Kamiya to Hideaki Itsuno by this point, I think he kept that because he realized that having more than two weapons in the equipment list at a time would make weapon swapping too much of a hassle. In Ninja Gaiden, however, Ryu has his entire inventory on him at all times.

The second reason I think this might be the case is because of the button layout with everything else. In Devil May Cry, Hideki Kamiya designed the game with the trigger buttons, L2 and R2 in mind for swapping out the Devil Arms and Firearms respectively. In Ninja Gaiden, these buttons are used to aim and fire the bow. Of course, you can also fire the bow by pressing the right face button (on the Playstation's Dual Shock controller, it would be Circle) but those two triggers were likely chosen for the aiming and firing to be more like a first person shooter in that regard.

To be perfectly honest, however, I don't think either of those reasons is necessarily good justification for the way the controls were mapped out. The d-pad and triggers could've been altered in function in one way I can think of that does not change the game's control layout or button mapping too much but still improves the flow of the game. This is going to sound like a bit of a tangent but I promise it relates to my point. Let's take a look at Jak and Daxter, specifically Jak 2 and 3.

In Jak 2, Jak had a weapon called the Morph Gun. The Morph Gun had 4 mods, the Scatter Gun, the Blaster Rifle, The Vulcan Fury, and the Peacemaker. Each of these mods would be alternated by pressing a different button on the d-pad, up for the Scatter Gun, down for the Blaster, left for the Vulcan, and right for the Peacemaker. In Jak 3, the morph gun works largely the same way, except now each colored mod has 3 different barrels and functions, which means that you'd have to press the d-pad direction you want 1-3 times in order to get to the gun you're looking for. Now, one would think this would interfere with the flow of combat somewhat. But, as it turns out, the amount of time it takes to swap from the first mod in the color to the last one is a small enough interval that it makes the flow even more dynamic because it gives you more options overall. This mostly applies if you're not completely trigger-happy but it's still largely the same.

I propose something similar in Ninja Gaiden in this regard. Namely, rather than have the d-pad open up a menu to swap weapons, you distribute the weapons across the four d-pad buttons and assign them wherever you think is best. Generally, Ninja Gaiden never has so many weapons that this solution would pose a problem, so I think it's the best way to go. Especially after Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge.

Of course part of the reason I think they went with a menu as well also has to do with the consoles they initially put the games on: namely the XBox and Xbox 360. I can't say for certain, but at least the 360 has been known to have problems with its d-pad in terms of responsiveness, so at the time, my solution may not have been a good idea. My solution works best for the re-releases of these games, the Sigma and Sigma 2 re-releases because those were on PS3, which had much better d-pad function. However, we are currently on a new generation of systems: the PS4 and the XBox One. And while I have no experience with the controller for the XB1, from what I've heard, the d-pad has been fixed, which makes my solution much more viable.

I already told you what the weapons are in Ninja Gaiden but I would also like to talk about the weapons in the rest of the series, and in Devil May Cry, so that we can better understand how this approach would work for Ninja Gaiden but not Devil May Cry. Here's a list of Weapons from each game in the Ninja Gaiden series, note I will not be counting weapon copies:

Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden Sigma: Dragon Sword, Lunar Staff, Dragon's Claw & Tiger's Fang, Dhabilaro, Vigoorian Flail, War Hammer.
Ninja Gaiden II, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2: Dragon Sword, Lunar Staff, Falcon Talons, Eclipse Scythe, Dragon's Claw & Tiger's Fang, Enma's Fang.
Ninja Gaiden 3, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge: Jinran-Maru, Falcon's Talons, Eclipse Scythe, Jinran-Maru & Blade of the Archfiend, Lunar Staff.

*Note: I do not know if Dragon's Claw and Tiger's Fang were in Ninja Gaiden or Ninja Gaiden Black. Interviews with Team Ninja Execs suggest it was a new weapon set in Ninja Gaiden 2 but the weapon also appears in Ninja Gaiden Sigma, which blurs the issue somewhat. Likewise, Enma's Fang is exclusive to Sigma 2, and the Lunar Staff does not appear in the original release of Ninja Gaiden 3.
*Also Jinran-Maru is the katana Ryu uses throughout Ninja Gaiden 3 because plot events cause his body to absorb the Dragon Sword into his flesh, mind, and soul, rendering it unusable for most of the game.

Now let's take a look at the Devil Arms in Devil May Cry. Note, I won't be talking about Devil May Cry 2 as I know nothing about it and I don't really want to play it, given its reputation as a terrible game.

Devil May Cry: Alastor, Ifrit, Sword of Sparda
Devil May Cry 3: Rebellion, Cerberus, Agni & Rudra, Nevan, Beowulf
Devil May Cry 4: Rebellion, Gilgamesh, Lucifer

*Note: In Devil May Cry 3, there are other enemies Dante fights that help him in his quest, but those others, namely Doppelganger, and Quicksilver are styles and therefore do not qualify for this list.
*Also, worth mentioning is that Beowulf is entirely optional content, as that is the only weapon in DMC3 that Dante can pass without ever actually picking it up.

I did not include firearms or long range weapons in these lists, nor did I include Styles or Ninpo.

Now, Ninja Gaiden has more weapons overall per game but those weapons are small enough in number that distributing them across the d-pad buttons would improve the flow of gameplay and decrease the amount of hassle in switching from one weapon to another.

Now before I go any further, I want to stress that while I have attempted to suggest how to improve the weapon switching in Ninja Gaiden, I have to say that Ninja Gaiden is not by any means the worst offender. While I'm mainly talking about Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry, I want to stress that Metal Gear Rising was just as bad, if not worse, and Bayonetta also had a much more intrusive way of handling weapon switching.

However, I think it's important to note that Ninja Gaiden probably needs the improved flow more because Ninja Gaiden is much more reliant on fluid, skilled, and perfect execution combat. While Metal Gear Rising had worse weapon switching, it isn't really necessary for that game to have fluid weapon switching, since every enemy in the game can be handled perfectly fine with the HF Blade and the game doesn't incentivise skillful play in the same way. Bayonetta, likewise, is much more reliant on her special powers than Dante and Ryu ever were, so a lack of on-the-fly weapon switching isn't a detriment to that game either.

That said, while I did basically put the d-pad on a pedestal in terms of how well it can help Ninja Gaiden's flow improve, this is impossible to implement in Devil May Cry, especially with Dante because, as of DMC4, the d-pad is reserved for swapping out the styles. This makes giving Dante multiple weapons tricky. Because while Dante can handle swapping between two weapons much better than Ryu ever could, because Dante is reliant on a toggle whereas Ryu is more of a back-and-forth type thing, the more weapons Dante has, the harder it gets to equip the weapon you want when you want it. In this regard Ninja Gaiden would seem to be a step up, except for the fact that the only times Devil May Cry ever come across this issue are in DMC3: Special Edition, where Vergil can swap between Yamato, Beowulf, and Yamato & Force Edge, and in Devil May Cry 4, where Dante only has 3 Devil Arms in the entire game. In both of these situations, the toggling is restricted to 3 weapons so getting to the weapon you want is not an issue. In fact, Vergil probably handles it better because two of the weapons have the same moveset save for an additional weapon that adds an extra element of strategy, which in turn, means that getting to your preferred weapon is much easier than it could've been despite having 3 weapons on a toggle input.

In Devil May Cry 3, Dante has more than 2 weapons in his inventory but only two can be equipped at once. So, even though Dante has a claymore, a 3-pronged nunchaku, dual broad swords, a set of gauntlets and greaves, and a very literal electric guitar, he only ever has two of these weapons on him at any one time. Of course, this decreases the availability of the weapons you want when you want them, as they have to be swapped out at a certain statue rather than in the pause menu, for example, but the 2-3 weapon limit is the maximum number of weapons that this control scheme can support.

Next, we may as well talk about the Firearms versus the long range weapons in Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden respectively. For the firearms, I will be disregarding Devil May Cry 1, as the firearms are handled differently in that game than in DMC3 and 4. So first, Ninja Gaiden.

Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden Sigma: Shuriken, Incendiary Kunai, Bow and Arrow (Regular Arrows, Explosive Arrows, Armor Piercing Arrows).
Ninja Gaiden II, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2: Shuriken, Bow and Arrow, Charge Bow, Howling Cannon.
Ninja Gaiden 3, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge: Lock-On Bow.

*Note: While the Bow, Charge Bow, and the Howling Cannon are all under the same set of games, they do not appear together. In Ninja Gaiden II, the OG release, Shuriken and the Charge Bow were the only long range weapons. The charge bow was created to circumvent the need for the bow to have three different ammunition types for different situations. In Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, however, you are given a regular Bow with regular Arrows, and the Howling Cannon is given to you so that you can do what the charge bow was supposed to do by itself.

Now let's look at Devil May Cry 3 and 4:

Devil May Cry 3: Ebony and Ivory, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Artemis, Kalina Anne
Devil May Cry 4: Ebony and Ivory, Shotgun, Pandora

*Note: I don't think I listed every Firearm that appears in Devil May Cry 3 but I did list the ones I remembered and used most often.

Now, Firearms for Devil May Cry don't actually need to be revised in terms of how they should be swapped from one to another, primarily because it abides by the same rules that the Devil Arms do, which makes it unnecessary but also because I don't think firearms and long range weapons are important to combat, at least not all that much.

In terms of how to handle long range weapons in Ninja Gaiden, however, I'm not really certain how to tackle that issue. On the one hand, if we go off of the differences in 2 and Sigma 2, the solution that would work for Ninja Gaiden 2 would not work for Sigma 2 because there's an additional weapon, namely keeping the aiming and firing of the bow and charging on the triggers and maintain the shuriken on the right face button. This would be impossible to do with the Sigma 2 layout because the charge bow has been split between the bow and the cannon. The obvious solution would be to keep the charge bow and go with that solution in future games.

On the other hand, a solution for the bow may not even be entirely necessary, because in Ninja Gaiden 3, the Lock-On Bow is the only long range weapon Ryu has. You can debate the qualities of the Lock-On bow as much as you want and only time will tell, but if future Ninja Gaiden games maintain the Lock-On bow, it would seem that that particular problem may have resolved itself, for better or for worse.

While both Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden use long range weapons, those long range weapons are used for very different purposes. In Devil May Cry, the guns are primarily added for the purposes of adding to the close range combat in the form of juggling and chip damage. While the guns can be charged, doing so turns the ammo of the guns from hit-scan to projectiles, and because the aiming is done with the hard lock-on, this means that projectiles are more likely to miss at long range, making close range the better option.

Ninja Gaiden, by contrast, primarily uses the bow for sniping enemies that Ryu is unable to hit with the basic sword. Ryu is unable to rapid fire any of his long range weapons and as a result are not good for close range combat or crowd control. The closest thing to a Devil May Cry type long range weapon would be the shuriken, which can be rapid fired in sets of 3 and do chip damage. The problem that they have, besides the problem that Devil May Cry's projectiles have, is that there is a cool-down between every set of three shuriken thrown, which really only makes them useful against weak, low health enemies that are not attacking you or are unable to attack you, and to be fair, there is at least one particular hallway in Ninja Gaiden Sigma where this was the case.

The benefit that Ninja Gaiden's long range attacks have for being much more about sniping than anything else is that it allows Ryu to deal significant amounts of damage to far off opponents without them noticing and without them dodging if you have MLG aiming skills. Devil May Cry has some projectiles that deal heavy amounts of damage, like the Sniper Rifle in DMC3 but that weapon could only be fired straight and even if it could be aimed, it would've done so with the hard lock-on rather than any actual aiming skill, which diminishes the long range fighting a bit.

While I did state earlier that character action games are at their best while you're in the middle of a horde of enemies killing as many of them as possible and being cool while you do it, Ryu is nonetheless a Ninja, which means the aiming mechanic may be necessary to get across the whole stealth assassination thing, which really didn't become a thing until Ninja Gaiden 3. In Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, the problem with the stealth section that it had was that it could not be skipped and you had to do it with the sword. Of course they made it mandatory because Ninja Gaiden is level and mission based rather than open world like some other more stealth focused series but allowing Ryu to snipe some of his targets in a more Soulsborne kind of way would be a better use for the aiming than the state it's currently in.

I'm not even saying that one way of handling it is better than the other. I'm simply pointing out that, if Ninja Gaiden is going to have an aiming mechanic, it should be put to best use. And the best use of an aiming mechanic is at long range where you can snipe enemies without getting hit by enemies that can clearly aim and fire much faster than you can.

The Lock-On bow presented a middle-ground between the hit-scan projectiles of Devil May Cry and the aiming and sniping mechanics of previous Ninja Gaiden games by having the bow automatically lock-on to a certain target when you were aiming and then fire an explosive arrow at them, which was usually enough to defeat most enemies. Of course, you could try firing the bow by jumping into the air and just hitting the circle button, that will lock-on just as easily, but the projectile fires much slower and is more likely to miss if you do that. By aiming, the bow not only locks on automatically but it also slows down time and keeps the arrow moving at the same speed, creating something that's a mixture of the sniping power of the charge bow and the hit-scan of DMC firearms.

The last primary difference between these two game franchises is the supernatural powers, namely the Styles and the Ninpo. So I'm going to go over these in one final set, so let's get going.

Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden Sigma: Art of the Inferno, Art of the Ice Storm, Art of the Fire Wheels, Art of the Inazuma,
Ninja Gaiden II, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2: Art of the Inferno, Art of the Wind Blades, Art of the Piercing Void, Art of the Flame Phoenix
Ninja Gaiden 3, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge: Art of the True Inferno, Art of the Piercing Void

*Note: These Ninpo are not listed in the order you get them, so just be warned about that.
*Also, Art of the Piercing Void is listed in Ninja Gaiden 3 and Razor's Edge, however Ryu only uses it in the latter. It is in the former but only during multi-player.

Now for Dante's Styles. I won't be counting Devil Trigger, as Ryu really has no equivalent to that game mechanic.

Devil May Cry 3: Trickster, Swordmaster, Gunslinger, Royal Guard, Doppelganger, Quicksilver.
Devil May Cry 4: Trickster, Swordmaster, Gunslinger, Royal Guard, Dark Slayer

Now, what is the main difference between Ninpo and the Styles? Probably that Ninpo is always supernatural in nature, whereas Styles are not that clear cut.

Now, in the beginning of DMC3, and when he becomes playable in DMC4, Dante has four styles: Trickster, which is a dedicated dodge button, Swordmaster, which is a secondary attack for the Devil Arms, Gunslinger, a secondary attack for the firearms, and Royal Guard, which is a block and parry button.

Now, while the way Dante's styles are implemented allows him to do things much more easily than Ryu's Ninpo, it's worth mentioning that this does not necessarily mean that Ninja Gaiden is lacking in any of the mechanical ability that the Styles provide. Ninja Gaiden already has two attack commands for each of his melee and long range weapons, even if the long range weapons have basically the same function on two different buttons, Ryu already has a dedicated block and parry function which negates the need for a Royal Guard type thing to be added, since it's already there, and Trickster is a dash, that can also do air dashes, that can also do a wall run. In some way, all of those things are in Ryu's moveset by the time of Ninja Gaiden 2: Ryu could wall run and wall jump since the first game, no problem, block and move the analog stick works as the dedicated dodge, and while Devil May Cry has a dodge roll as well, I would argue Ninja Gaiden's is more intuitive because it doesn't require any weird directional inputs in order to use, you just block, point the analog stick where you want to go, and Ryu will go there. And the air dash is pretty much Ryu's Flying Swallow technique, except the flying swallow has the added bonus of dealing damage to enemies, dashing back and forth additionally at an enemy to deal more damage, and in some cases, it will even behead them. So in that sense, the Flying Swallow is a bit of a mix of Trickster's Air Dash and Rebellion's Stinger move.

In Devil May Cry 4, Dante gets Dark Slayer, which ignoring the fact that it has the same name as Vergil's Style, what the style is at its most basic level is the weapon Yamato. Nothing more. And, while that does give Dante more options, Ryu has more weapons on average anyway, and we already discussed how Ryu could go through his weapons on the d-pad, so giving him an additional one would only play into that.

It's the last two that are tricky. Quicksilver and Doppelganger. Quicksilver is a time stopping mechanic. If added to a game with the style cycling from DMC4 it would be a nice addition to make beating the game easier a little bit, but by itself it's a one press command so it's not that deep. Of course one could use it to prevent enemies from attacking, making you basically untouchable but Ryu's Ninpo do that during their charge time anyway, so it's not really a point on Dante. Doppelganger is the one that is really interesting. Doppelganger makes a second Dante that can fight with you and, if you happened to have two controllers while the style was active, a second player could take control of that Dante and two people could actually coordinate. While the multi-player idea is used in Sigma 2 in the form of online co-op, the doppelganger style itself is generally really good for crowd control because it hits more than one enemy at once, assuming they're all in the same direction.

The way Ninpo are used in Ninja Gaiden is to hit the top and right face button simultaneously. It only allows for one Ninpo to be active at a time, and there isn't really a way to modify this so that more than one could be used. Not that it matters much, since Ninpo are essentially a way of dealing lots of damage and killing enemies fast when you're pinned to a corner, which is something that happens a lot in Ninja Gaiden; if you're a filthy casual like me, that is.

So to modify the control layout to support future Ninja Gaiden games, and their ability to have full flowing fluid combat, I suggest the following, and I'm going to use the Dual Shock example again because I'm not familiar with other control layouts:

Left Analog Stick Moves, Right Analog Stick Adjusts the Camera, Square Light Attack, Triangle Heavy Attack, Circle Long Range Weapon Attack, X Jump, D-Pad Cycle Through Weapons, L1 Block, L2 Aim, R2 Fire While Aiming, and R3 to Reset the Camera.

That leaves two buttons free: L3 and R1. What did these buttons do before? Well, L3 never did anything prior to Razor's Edge. My guess as to why this is would be that Team Ninja probably doesn't understand that the L3 and R3 buttons are just as intuitive as the back buttons without taking up a finger for something else. My guess is supported by the fact that adjusting the camera was left on R1 before. I moved that to R3 because that makes more sense to the gaming populous, as far as I'm aware, and it also frees up a button that could be used for something else.

If you wanted to adjust these control schemes somewhat to accommodate mechanics that are already there without removing them, I would have the right and left buttons cycle through your melee weapons, up to cycle through your long range weapons, and down can still be used to activate whatever healing item you have equipped. Personally, I wouldn't go with this because healing items have slowly become less and less useful as time goes by: in Ninja Gaiden 1 and its re-releases, it was a big deal because that game was hard as balls and you needed a way to maintain your health. In Ninja Gaiden 2 and Sigma 2, you still needed to manage your health but now you receive healing essence from some downed enemies and your health also completely regenerates up to the red spot in the bar at the end of every wave. In Ninja Gaiden 3 and Razor's Edge, it was even more useless to have healing items, because you always had a Ninpo on you (Art of the True Inferno) that would fully heal you and clear an entire room full of enemies and, if you didn't have that in Razor's Edge, your skill tree allowed you to heal yourself with the Ki you already possessed, making healing items worthless.

Needless to say, what I would do is do some modification of what Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge did. Namely, what was in that game was, if you unlocked it, you had a heal that you could activate by pressing L3 and holding it. What I would do instead is turn the heal into a regular Ninpo, like all of the attack oriented ones that were activated with Triangle+Circle, and just dedicate L3 to Ninpo in general. This would mean that you could use the left and right buttons to cycle between weapons, the up button to alternate long range weapons, and down to alternate Ninpo. In fact, we could even go a step further: if future releases keep the Lock-On bow, this would negate the need for any other long range weapon, so instead make the up and down d-pad buttons together cycle through different Ninpo, and right and left to cycle through weapons, and that solves the issue entirely.

Or, to put it another way, let's say Ninja Gaiden 4 has the following:

Weapons: Dragon Sword/True Dragon Sword, Falcon Talon Replacement, Dual Katana, Vigoorian Flail, Broad Sword, Lunar Staff
Ninpo: Art of the Inferno, Art of the Fire Wheels, Art of the Wind Blades, Art of the Divine Heal, Art of Substitution, Art of the Piercing Void

This way you could assign three weapons onto the left and right d-pad buttons, and 3 Ninpo to the up and down d-pad buttons.

That leads to what R1 might do. And before I get to that, I want to discuss one major difference between Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry that I haven't really discussed in full yet: the way they handle lock-on. In Devil May Cry, 3 and 4 anyway, you had a hard lock-on that was activated by holding R1. For the most part, Ninja Gaiden has used a soft lock-on, or an auto-lock if you will, where the enemy you were pointing at was the enemy you were locked on to. While this was fairly well handled for the most part, it made doing back inputs impossible because Ryu always turned to the direction the analog stick was facing. In Devil May Cry, that would happen if you weren't locked on to anything, but the hard lock-on allowed pulling the analog stick away from the target and a button press to be used as an extra input. For example, Back X would do a dodge roll, Back Triangle would do High Time, and Back Circle also had other uses besides the default neutral and forward positions depending on the Style in question.

Giving Ninja Gaiden a hard Lock-On is not mandatory, in the sense that there's not really a whole lot of people pushing for it, but if one is added, it would allow back inputs to do different things. Back Square could be a spin attack that serves as a light "get off me" type move when enemies gang up, back Triangle could be used as a dedicated launcher so that pressing square then triangle would not be necessary to initiate the Izuna Drop, Holding Back while initiating the Izuna Drop could give Ryu another Izuna drop variant for him to use that might be more useful (Such as Momiji's Izuna Falcon which is largely considered to be the best version of that move, or Ayane's Lightwing Izuna if all you want is an animation change), back Circle could be a rapid reload of the bow to improve the fire rate and number of targets hit, or it could just be used as a way to improve the camera in the next Ninja Gaiden, as Team Ninja has always seemed to have trouble with that in particular.

The camera is something that Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden have both generally done not-that-well but for very different reasons. In Devil May Cry 1, 2, and 3, the camera was fixed where it was and would change depending on where in the level you went, like the early Resident Evil games. As far as combat goes, this isn't as much of an issue as it likely could've been, but it makes traversal a hassle sometimes because the camera angle could change at any time as you were traveling and if you weren't aware of when or where it would change, it could mess up your flow immensely. Devil May Cry 4 added some light camera control with the right analog stick but it was very minimal, it didn't do much to make traversing easier. The lock-on helped to keep you focused on the fight but the camera never adjusted its position to allow you to just point the analog stick forward or backward. Instead, what happened was, in order to execute a certain move, provided you had it unlocked, you had to press the analog stick forward or backward, not in relation to your view, but rather in relation to where the opponent is.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you're playing Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition, you're playing as Vergil, because everybody loves Vergil, and you're locked on to an enemy. In terms of where the camera is located, the enemy is on the bottom right corner of the screen. What that means is that, if you want to do the forward directional input, the analog stick has to be pointed diagonally down-right, and if you wanted to do the back input it had to pointed to diagonally up-left.

The reason I bring this up is because, if the lock-on is going to require you to point the analog stick at the target rather than the direction you're looking, and the opposite as well, then that's only slightly better than what Ninja Gaiden has been doing because Ninja Gaiden also required you to point at the target, only they didn't force you to hold a button to make the option available to begin with.

This is all down to how the cameras are implemented most of the time. Devil May Cry has a camera that is mostly fixed and is high and to the left or right of where your player character is, with slight adjustment to accommodate the battle. In Ninja Gaiden, the camera is behind the back but zoomed out somewhat so you could get a good feel of where all your enemies are.

The detriment in terms of Ninja Gaiden's camera is that, because it's behind the back, and controlled by the analog stick, there's a good chance that it could get caught up on something and prevent you from seeing what's happening, causing cheap shots. I never experienced this in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, which was the game most noted for that, and I didn't experience it in 3 or Razor's Edge either. But several other people did in Sigma 2, which leads me to believe the camera was corrected in 3 and Razor's Edge.

In this way, a hard lock-on would benefit Ninja Gaiden much more than Devil May Cry because it would put your lock-on target in front of you at all times, and would make using the directional modifiers easier to use, which would in turn, simultaneously increase the skill ceiling and decrease the skill floor.

To increase the skill ceiling is something that would benefit the hardcore players by adding more moves, which would give them more to practice and more to get good at but the reduced skill floor would allow the Ninja Gaiden games to be easier to get into for casual audiences as well. And when I say that, I mean that in the most "deep but accessible" definition of the term, and not the way Ninja Gaiden 3 handled it by increasing the amount of scripted moments, Quick Time Events, and reliance on other trends that became popular during the last generation of consoles. The reduction in the skill floor that I am offering is one that would make the difficulty curve more natural and the game as a whole more fun without having to appease both the casual and hardcore audiences in the worst ways possible, which was done in Ninja Gaiden 3 and Razor's Edge respectively.

This does not necessarily mean that Devil May Cry's camera has to be changed, at least not all that much. If Devil May Cry's camera is changed to one like in the over-world of any given Disgaea game, where it's top down but can be shifted to cover areas that have not been seen with a certain direction, that would make aiming at enemies easier without having to decrease the depth of the games as a whole.

Or, to put it another way, if Devil May Cry's camera is mostly top-down and spins to point at whoever you're locked onto that would effectively do what Ninja Gaiden's camera with a hypothetical lock-on would as well. From there, simply allow the camera to go up or down depending on the right analog stick and just let the camera sit there as you're doing what you're doing.

Of course, both of these solutions for both respective games would require the camera to be zoomed out and it would require testing so that the camera never gets caught on anything but I don't think these are demanding goals. Especially considering how much each of these franchises is worth, I think it's safe to say that a good camera and lock-on system is the bare minimum to expect from franchises that are consistently as good as these two are.

I would now like to go back to the Styles and Ninpo because they also have some minor problems as well. In Ninja Gaiden, any of the games, you had a large number of abilities, but they generally ranged from single target (Piercing Void), Single Target with AOE (Inferno), Multi-Target (Flame Phoenix), or everywhere within a certain range of you (Wind Blades). Some had other effects, like making a protective barrier (Fire Wheels), or attacking in the compass directions (Inazuma) but these are generally more details than descriptors.

The first game was the worst offender in this regard because it had the largest number of Ninpo in the series, but many of them overlapped in what they did, with only differences in visuals. The most egregious example, if I had to pick one, would be Art of the Ice Storm and Art of the Inazuma, which were both multi-target abilities but one was ice based, while the other was lightning. While I don't necessarily hate visual flare, in most video games, for example JRPGs, a benefit of having spells of different elements, particularly Fire, Ice, and Lightning are that enemies had different resistances depending on what you hit them with. As a result, if an enemy was resistant to fire and ice but vulnerable to electricity, the lightning spell would be optimal. Likewise, if an enemy was resistant to fire and lightning but vulnerable to ice, the ice spell would be optimal. The addition of status effects would also allow different spells to have different effects like damage over time, halt regeneration, paralyze, or death counter.

Because most Ninpo are instant kills for regular enemies, and seem to do the same amount of damage to any given boss, the 4 ranges I mentioned earlier are the only real ways these Ninpo can be differentiated from each other. If Art of the Ice storm hits multiple enemies and the Art of the Inazuma does as well, the only reason to pick one over the other would be visual effects.

Of course none of this accounts for the specific attack patterns of each ability. For example, art of the ice storm hits four targets in front of you, while Art of the Inazuma hits four targets in the four compass directions from your character's body but if we do factor that in, then that would mitigate the usefulness of any Ninpo under the Multi-Target umbrella because there doesn't seem to be any lock-on to speak of. This would mean, that the AOE attacks would be the most useful because they're more likely to hit against bosses, and will clear the screen when dealing with mobs.

Ninja Gaiden 2 was better in this regard. Ninja Gaiden 2 had a smaller number of Ninpo overall, but they were all unique. Art of the Piercing Void was a single target Ninpo that did more damage than any other and also had penetration effects but it was hard to aim because of how narrow its hit-box is. Likewise, Art of the Inferno does less damage but is more likely to hit because the fireball is so much larger. Art of the Wind Blades was less likely to kill any enemies but it would usually knock one or two limbs off, which would leave them vulnerable to the instant kill execution attacks, which are a staple since Ninja Gaiden 2 was introduced. Art of the Flame Phoenix did more damage overall than Art of the Wind Blades but it had auto-locking on specific targets, which meant that the ones it hit would die but it was not guaranteed to clear the screen.

This meant Ninja Gaiden 2 was much better about the variety of Ninpo Ryu had access to.

Razor's Edge only had The Piercing Void and the True Inferno, which made it obvious which one was better if you actually played that game, the choice was rather clear.

Devil May Cry never really had access to special moves until Itsuno introduced the Style System in DMC3. Namely, that whatever style you had equipped was what decided what the circle button did. As I said before most of the styles introduced in DMC3 and 4 were default mechanics that existed in Ninja Gaiden for quite a while since their inception. As a result, the only two styles that could be considered Special Moves, and therefore comparable to Ninpo, are Doppelganger and Quicksilver.

These two are comparable to Ninpo in two ways: first, they are abilities that are not strictly basic mechanics that already existed in some way, such as an attack button, a dodge, or a weapon. But also, these are the only two styles in DMC3 that use up Devil Trigger, the way Ninpo use up Ki. So, for the sake of this comparison I will only be talking about these two styles.

Doppelganger created another Dante to help fight with you and also allowed two player co-op. This meant that, against regular enemies, crowd clearing was less of an issue, especially for higher skilled or more single-target focused weapons like Nevan and Beowulf respectively. Against bosses, this meant a higher damage rate and, if both Dante's hit the same target with the same moves at the same time, your damage output is effectively doubled without decreasing your speed.

Quicksilver, by comparison, is a time-stopping mechanic. It doesn't really have any usage beyond PRESS O TO WIN but if you used the time stop right as your enemy was winding up for an attack, you could stop time and then hit them without having to worry about damage. In this way, Quicksilver is much better than the other styles for a "no damage" run, especially on difficulty modes like "Heaven or Hell" or "Hell and Hell" where the entire mode is essentially a "no damage" run but outside of that it really wasn't all that deep. To be fair, during timed challenges where a clock is ticking down, that type of thing would've been useful, like Light Flash Freeze for Timed Challenges in Jak 3 but I don't really remember too many moments in DMC3 where that would've been necessary or even useful in that particular way.

Obviously Dante's Special Move Styles are smaller in number than Ninja Gaiden's Ninpo, but they offer a wider difference in terms of how they function. As a result, it's clear to me, and likely the rest of you who are reading this by now that DMC's Styles are limited in the amount of Special things that can be done, while Ninja Gaiden is largely lacking in variety on a game-by-game basis.

So, now it's time to ask, if we were to add more Styles/Ninpo to Devil May Cry 5 and Ninja Gaiden 4, what would be first on the list? Well, for both, the obvious answer, is to bring back previous styles and Ninpo that worked in previous games: so for DMC5, bring back Doppelganger and Quicksilver for Dante, and for NG4, bring back Art of the Inferno, Art of the Wind Blades, Art of the Fire Wheels, and Art of the Divine Heal.

Dark Slayer should not be given to Dante in DMC5 because that style in DMC4 was just Yamato, which is now permanently in the hands of Nero, based on the ending of DMC4 and likely, Nero would return in DMC5 anyway but I'll get to that in a moment.

Likewise, Art of the Divine Heal was a Ninpo that appeared directly as a Ninpo in Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword but did not appear as a Ninpo in Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3. Therefore, I opt for Art of the Divine Heal to be a Full Heal Spell that functions largely the same way other Ninpo do in mainline Ninja Gaiden games, just with the modified control scheme that I have presented. Art of the Fire Wheels would serve the same purposes as the ring of Summoned Swords Vergil had in DMC3SE and 4SE, Art of the Wind Blades would set up for Executions, and Art of the Inferno is just standard fare by now. Art of the True Inferno should be left out entirely because it clears out enemies and bosses far too easily and requires no skill to execute. If it must return, modify it from crowd clearing cutscene to "Fuck you, I'm a Dragon!" Art of the Piercing Void is optional, if you want the penetration but if it must return, and I suspect it will, I recommend its hit-box be increased somewhat so it's not completely useless in any given encounter.

So, after bringing back what worked before, and incorporating them into the current set of controls (Namely the Style Cycling from DMC4 and our current Weapon and Ninpo cycling that I proposed here), where do we go from there?

Well, in DMC5, we are now assuming that Dante now has six styles: Trickster, Royal Guard, Sword Master, Gunslinger, Doppelganger, and Quicksilver. So it is important to stress that where these are located is very important to skill management and the overall skill ceiling and skill floor. So, I would recommend placing Sword Master and Trickster together on the same button (Up, I would guess) so that alternating from a Trickster Teleport to a sword attack is not that much of a hassle. I would put Trickster first, that way, when you press up to do the Trickster teleport, you can either press Up again to go into Sword Master, or hit Down to get to Gunslinger. I would then put Royal Guard on the Left button, and I would put Quicksilver and Doppelganger together on the Right button.

Alternatively, we could put Quicksilver on the same button as Royal Guard, so that alternating from a block to a time-stop and vice versa would be easy, and we could put Doppelganger together with Gunslinger, so that activating that wouldn't be that hard, especially during Bullet Storms or Bullet Rains or Bullet Hells. If we do that, then that frees up the Right directional button for two more styles. This would be ideal.

Once we have our Right button available, what do we give Dante for his two additional styles? Bearing in mind, our two additional styles should be Special Styles like Doppelganger and Quicksilver so that we can improve Dante's overall flare and power output. In terms of what they would be, though, that's actually rather tricky. If we choose a projectile, one could argue that that's already covered by charged shots from the guns. A damage or durability buff of some kind is already handled by Devil Trigger, which would render that moot. As a result, we probably want to think fairly outside the box for this one, or at least outside the box as far as Devil May Cry is concerned.

One thing that came to mind as I spent hours writing this was a single-press input that improves the area of effect on Dante's melee attacks. Initially, this sounds like a damage buff, which would be disqualified due to the existence of Devil Trigger. However, when I thought about this, I inevitably came to Bayonetta and her Wicked Weaves. The way she is able to summon giant versions of limbs to break guards and nuke enemies, something similar could be done with Dante. Not in the form of hair, of course, but in the form of an ethereal body. Think of Bayonetta's Wicked Weaves with visuals that are relatively similar to Nero's Devil Bringer and Devil Trigger and you get the idea.

Of course the rebuttal to that is going to be that only Nero can do that so Dante shouldn't be able to. And, while one may have a point with that, something I want to bring up is Nero's heritage. No, I'm not going to go on a rant about how Nero is Vergil's son or anything unnecessary like that, but Nero's ability to wield Yamato coupled with his white hair both do suggest that he is part of the lineage of the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda. While the how and why of that are debatable, if Vergil and Nero are both capable of their own versions of Summoned Swords, then in theory Vergil, and by extension Dante, should also be capable of ethereal limb generation.

So visually, how would this look? Well, to put it simply, whatever type of attack Dante throws would have a wide area of effect around it that visually looks like a larger version of what he's attacking with. If he's attacking with Rebellion, it would be a large sword. If he were attacking with something like Gilgamesh, it would be large fists or feet. This would be simple and not that hard to implement but also not a complete retread of anything else in the series.

And, should any of you decide you want to leave a comment with a suggestion for an additional style to take up the second right d-pad spot, I'll go ahead and let you.

As for the Ninpo, we have Art of the Inferno, Wind Blades, Divine Heal, and Fire Wheels. That gives us four very distinct Ninpo to work with, namely a large Fireball, an Execution setup, a full heal spell, and fire balls that spin around Ryu to protect him at close range (if that's not how it works now, that's how I'd like it to work). For additional Ninpo, I would recommend Art of Substitution. While that is not a Ninpo we've ever seen in the main playable series, cutscenes in Dead or Alive: Dimensions suggest that Ryu is capable of this Ninpo to the point that he can turn a wooden log into a living, fighting, sentient copy of himself, which could be used like the doppelganger style in DMC3 except the Substitute would have its own life bar. Think of playing co-op with two Ryu's in Sigma 2 and you get the idea.

As for an additional Ninpo, again, I will allow you guys to come up with your own if you deem that a good idea.

There are other differences that I could go over, like Dante's possession of a Devil Trigger while Ryu doesn't have one or how the Ninpo bar works in comparison to the Devil Trigger Meter. However, I will say that Ryu does not need a transformation unless there's a way it can be written in and fitted onto the current control scheme that I've suggested, and the Ninpo meter should go back to the way it was in NG1 and 2 where one Ninpo would use one slot out of however many you had, which would make combining Ninpo with flowing gameplay much easier, along with maintaining a risk-reward system in terms of whether to use a damage Ninpo or the Divine Heal.

That's all I have to say. Thanks for reading.