Reviewing Monsters: Devil May Cry V, Enemies

Note: This article was originally written in November 2021, but rewritten in 2024 after I actually played the game. 

It took me almost three years to do it, but I finally played Devil May Cry V after reviewing its bestiary all the way back in pandemic times. A vast majority of the text here would just be a rehash of what I wrote before, but I decided that there was enough content for me to add after my playthrough that I could rewrite and repost this as essentially a brand-new article. 

Devil May Cry V is the fifth installment of the Devil May Cry franchise, and it's admittedly the conclusion of the saga of two of the main characters -- the brothers Dante and Vergil -- that spanned multiple games. The game does provide a helpful recap of the games and the ancillary tie-in material to get you caught up to speed, but the game itself is honestly not bad at kind of keeping itself self-contained and keeping most of the exposition within the cutscenes of the games itself. You'll be too busy experimenting with the combos of the wacky weaponry and attacks (one of the character uses a fucking Cyberpunk motorbike that transforms into dual chainsaw gauntlets) that all you need to know is "demons bad". 

It also has one of the most badass soundtracks I've ever heard in a video game in quite a while, and there's just a great sense of pleasure listening to tracks like Devil Trigger, Crimson Cloud and Bury the Light while you murder demons. 

As usual with these games, I'm going to first cover the normal monsters, and we'll go to the bosses in a separate article. 

Empusa

"Demonic Insect"

'Empusa' draws its name from a type of shape-shifting phantom from Greek mythology; normally depicted in popular media as some sort of variant on another Greek monster, the Harpy. In Devil May Cry V, they are the most basic of enemies; the footsoldiers of the gigantic Qliphoth Hell-Tree that has sprouted in Not-London Red Grave City. To give a very basic explanation of the premise of the game, a gigantic tree from hell, the Qliphoth, has grown in Red Grave City and these demons are crawling out of it. It's a gigantic tree that also serves as the setting of around 70% of the game, while the other 30% involves you fighting in a hollowed-out city where the Qliphoth's blood-vessel-like roots have taken over. 

And I think that's why they picked 'insectoid' as the basis of the most basic enemies for the Qliphoth demons, it fits the idea that this giant, foul hell-tree is infested with little insects of its own. I love this, and not just because I love bugs, but I feel like it's such a different concept to use humanoid bugs instead of generic skeleton, zombie or imp enemies. 

I didn't think too much of the Empusa beyond 'cool, bug monsters!' until I actually sat down and looked at the model for a bit longer. They have weird wings that aren't quite bird-like, and gangly limbs that would fit more with an insectoid body-plan, but they're otherwise 'humanoid bugs', right? Not quite. Look at those faces! From a distance (and when you're controlling a demon hunter butchering them by the dozens with cyborg rocket arms) they just look like they have a giant wasp head, except fleshier. But the two giant 'fly eyes' are actually just bulbous fleshy growths, and you can see that the 'nostrils' of the face are actually the empty eye sockets of the human skull. The rest of the human skull's anatomy is still there, with its cheeks grotesquely stretched out into a wide bug mouth. Very creative, very creepy! It gives the impression of a bug head that have 'grown out' of this human skull, and that might very well be the case. 

It's a bit harder to realize, but the two blood-red 'bug eyes' are actually attached to two additional human faces that face the left and right of the composite head. We never get a conclusive origin for these guys, but I could totally see the Empusa being created from the fusion of multiple human bodies or souls or corpses that got merged together by the Qliphoth. 

It's very heavily implied that the Empusa go around collecting blood to feed to the giant blood-tree that is the Qliphoth, and you do encounter some of the basic Empusa with engorged abdomen filled with red blood. It's kind of like honeypot ants, famous for their swelled-up abdomens filled with nectar that they share with their colony members with trophallaxis, but instead of feeding other members of their hive, these guys feed their 'host' plant!

They really went hard for this basic enemy, and I honestly still find the Empusas probably the most creative design in the entire game. 

Green Empusa

"Airborne Evil"

It does help that we do have some variants for the basic enemy! It makes extra sense for a colony of bug demons based on ants.

The Green Empusa here gives the vibes of a housefly, with the two 'side-skulls' being more clearly demarcated, and textured like a fly's compound eyes. It's also a bit easier to see the the two separate 'fly eyes' as being chunks of people's skulls, yeah? The Green Empusa also has a swollen, pustulent abdomen, as well as sickly-looking giant butterfly wings. The Green Empusa will always be flying around, and while they can spit poison at your characters, their main role is to spit 'healing nectar' onto their fellow Empusae. I always like it when a video game monster's healing abilities are explained in some way, instead of it being 'just because'. There's a fair bit of honeypot ant inspiration to these guys, too, which also gets a bit clearer with the rest of the Empusa family. 

Red Empusa

"Bloodgorged Scavenger"

The Red Empusa are a bit of an interesting case! They're a bit of a 'rare enemy', because they won't actually fight you. They actually try to escape! Unlike regular Empusae, their abdomen is so swollen by the crystallized blood (or 'red orbs') that they can't even fight, and they're just running to scuttle away and get those blood back to the Qliphoth. 

Again, it's very much based on honeypot ants and their specialized worker ants, where some of them have their abdomen so bloated with nutrition, and their only purpose is to be a walking honey-storage to disgorge them out to the young in the nest. I do find this to be interesting -- some regular Empusa do have bloated abdomen, but not to this degree. And this Red Empusa's wings seem to have degenerated and even its head seems to be riddled with crystallized blood. 

Empusa Queen

"Vermin Empress"

I actually wasn't sure that I'm looking at until I found the 'face' of this thing -- it's the same 'screaming skull with two giant Predator mouthparts' that the lesser Empusae have, but the Queen's body is shaped more like a monstrous praying mantis or a lobster. It's a lot more threatening looking, and much larger than its emaciated minions. The Empusa Queen kind of serves as a miniboss of sorts. The official art makes it a bit harder to see, but the Queen has a massive carapace that runs down its dorsal part, and a series of purple petals around her skull-head that makes it look like some sort of twisted, natural crown. It does really look impressive as a bug enemy. 

The entire Empusae race literally just exist to serve the Qliphoth as collector ants, so instead of the 'baby factories' that most hive queen enemies tend to be lumped into in video games,  these ladies act more as elite combatants. Very cool design, really what I'm thinking of when you say a 'demon insect from hell'. The Empusa Queen is a berserker in combat, getting super-crazy if she sucks enough blood, and will happily slice through any demon in her way to get to you -- even shown in the first cutscene that an Empusa Queen menaces our heroes. Hey, worker ants are disposable, after all!

Qliphoth Roots

"Blood-Slicked Vegetation"

So let me talk about the Qliphoth first, which is a giant hell-tree that sprouts out in Red Grave City, killing almost all of its inhabitants. This tree is gigantic, literally reaching into the stratosphere when it's fully blooming, and the vessels running around this titanic tree are filled with blood -- way too much to have came from just the inhabitants of a single city, so I have to assume that a significant portion of it came from hell itself. It's later revealed that the entire tree is just a method to synthesize the Qliphoth Fruit, which comes once every 1000 years and grants power... at the cost of a fuckton of blood. 

The roots of these tree tendrils stab and drain blood from unfortunate humans, and as you walk around the bombed-out ruins of Red Grave City, you get to see the drained-out husks of escaping humans that crumble upon the touch. The roots or vines themselves are engorged with blood, and they serve as static enemies in many parts of the game. A group of roots around a pulsating core acts as the tutorial stage boss, but the Qliphoth roots show up so many times in the game that it's hard for me to think of it as the boss. 

Pyrobat

"Winged Deception"

They could've just made Pyrobat a photorealistic bat, but they made an effort to make this feel like a 'demon bat'! The wings are pretty standard as far as demonic bat-wings go, but the body is like, something straight out of Alien. I love how exaggerated they make the large wings of a bat, looking positively demonic as it sprouts of this Gigersque, almost serpentine main body. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the face, but I do know that there are a lot of bat types with weird faces. I guess this is hell's equivalent of a leaf-nosed bat? Really cool ridged ears and face design, and I love that it looks so weird. 

In combat the Pyrobats aren't the most impressive, basically the only real thing that makes it special is that it's always flying. 

Hellbat

"Insanity Ablaze"

A more powerful version of the Pyrobat is the Hellbat, whose 'combustion chamber' is on its spine, so it's consistently on fire. The general anatomy is around the same with the Pyrobat, but without the spikes on its shoulders. It's got a face like a molten human skull, that's quite grisly; and you can almost see the skeletal structure on its body. 

A bit surprising is when you knock down a Hellbat from the sky, where its abdomen will start to cartoonishly swell up like a tumour before exploding. A rather typical video game enemy thing to do, but I still find it rather well-animated and pretty nasty.

Hell Caina

"Cleaving Vanguard"

We now start with the three 'Hells', which are humanoid enemies. The Hell Cainas are actually the easiest to take down in my experience, and are basically the 'demonic minion' trope you'd expect from this game. Their design is pretty basic and a lot less impressive than the Empusa and Antenora, being a shambling skeleton dude with a giant scythe. Again, like the Antenora's butcher knives, the scythe at least looks very impressive. 

According to the lore, the Hell Cainas normally can only appear in the mortal plane by possessing dolls or lumps of clay, though none of these actually come into play in the game. Presumably, with the Qliphoth tree growing and destroying cities, the Caina can bypass all that and just menace humans.  

Hell Antenora

"Brutal Berserker"

Both the Caina and Antenora are named after a section of the hell-river Cocytus from Dante's Divine Comedy, the Hell Antenora is our basic humanoid enemy -- a bit tougher than the Caina, and a bit harder to stagger. The giant butcher knives are a very distinct visual identity, and I really like those. Interestingly, while the Antenora are stronger than the Cainas, the lore implies that the Antenoras are lower down the rung than the Cainas, who torture them to madness. 

The design isn't really anything to write home about in a demon-slaying game. The Antenora is hunchbacked, has rags around his face, and wields ratty-looking butcher knives. Apparently the Antenoras are demons that got tortured by the Cainas (our next entry), and if you knock them down, they'll enter a berserker state where the weird purple veins (?) in their torso glow and they don't care about who they slash in their way to get to us. Interestingly, the humanoid enemies like the Antenora are actually programmed to attack certain enemies such as the Empusa Queen above or the Behemoth. I really do wish we got to learn a bit more about these demons of hell, but in DMC V they're mostly just window-dressing. 

Hell Judecca

"Demon Horde Commander"

Also named after another segment of Cocytus, the Hell Judecca are humanoid enemies that like to attack from a distance with those glorious scythe-claws.

A pretty cool design -- it's a bit hard to tell, but the Judecca's upper torso is less of a proper torso and more of a mass of random bones held together by the mass of purple... veins? I assume everything tendril-like in this game are veins. It's got a lot of 'blood vessel' imagery. These veins basically writhe around the Judecca's torso and block most of your ranged attacks. Most importantly, the veins trail out like arms and end up in gigantic burning scythe-blades, which leads to a very impressive-looking and badass visuals. They can also teleport around the battlefield a bit, and if you leave them too long they'll summon Cainas and Antenoras. 

Sadly, other than some snarky commentary from one of the supporting characters ("how does this even work?") we don't get too many details on what they are -- are they multiple demons or dead souls clumped together? Is the true Judecca the blood-vessels puppeteering the body? 

Riot

"Brutal Instinct"

I like this guy a lot! So far, we've got bats, bugs and generic zombie-humanoid-demons. The Riots fill in the niche of an animalistic, reptilian demon-spawn role. I love the Starcraft Basilisk-esque mouth, as well as the gloriously goofy blue tongue.

Again, a humanoid lizard isn't the most novel thing in these games, but I really like the Riot. The skin stretching across the skull, and the lower jaw that splits apart, and how long those claws are, really does make the Riot look cool without being too badass. They're simple enemies that jump around and leap across the map to attack you, but I do like how they look. 

Chaos

"Barbed Discord"

These guys show up a bit later in the game, and are basically a stronger version of the Riot. It's got gigantic bone-blades running down its spine, like what a child's attempts of mixing up a stegosaurus and a velociraptor would look like. It's got a very creepy snake-like head with mean-looking fangs. It's a bit hard to see when it's spinning around and stuff, but those hollow eyes and the giant, slender needle-like fangs are really very cool. Being a demon, the Chaos doesn't need to follow the law of physics and are able to roll up into what's basically a demonic organic buzzsaw wheel and spin around the battlefield. 

In maybe my favourite 'enemy intro' segment of the game ever, Dante sees one of these brutal spinning demons... and just uses the high-speed blades to shave his chin. The characters are beyond the scope of this review, but the wacky-woohoo-pizza-man is definitely my favourite of the three (or four in New Game +) playable characters. 

In addition to spinning around, the Chaos can also spit out globs of neurotoxin from sacs in its chest, which it reverts to if your character manages to smash all of the spine-blades that it uses to spin. 

Fury

"Breakneck Predator"

Appearing much later in the game, I actually forgot the Fury was in the game at all until I looked at a list of enemies. It's honestly pretty cool-looking, even if I do like it less than its two lesser siblings, Riot and Chaos. The Fury is a more human-like-proportioned lizard demon, with giant blood-red Wolverine claws and a scale arrangement that looks almost like samurai armour. This less primal look does admittedly feel like they're less 'my taste' than the Riot and the Chaos, but I have to still admit that it looks pretty cool. 

The in-game lore theorizes that the Fury became evolved into a reptile version of the Predator because of its desire to kill faster, somehow developing space-time-warping abilities by its sheer desire to kill. That's commitment! In-game, the Fury is actually a fair bit trickier than most enemies, having multiple attack patterns of teleporting around the player to try and get an assassin's strike in -- and really skilled players (of which I'm not) would be able to abuse some counter mechanics to break the Fury just as it's about to deal a stealth strike. 

Scudo Angelo

"Dark Knight Soldier"

First showing up as the minions of a boss, the Scudo Angelo are apparently created to mimic an entity called the Black Angel, by 'transubstantiating' an unwilling human into demon flesh. I do like how weird the armour of these guys look, looking organic without being obviously made up of flesh. I'm not sure what they look like. Bone? Coral? Chitin? None of those answers really work. I like the very humanoid face just sitting all irritated in the middle of the shield, which also implies that the weapons of these Scudo Angelo guys are also 'transubstantiated' human flesh. 

I don't have a whole ton to say about the Scudo Angelo; these Angelo guys are a reference to a series of enemies in the previous games but they don't actually show up all that much in this one. The lore of them being a mass-produced version of the Black Angel, Nero Angelo, is cool, I guess.

Proto Angelo

"Fractured Commander"

The 'boss' of the Scudos are the Proto Angelos. The first Proto Angelo you face is actually a boss of the level, flanked by four Scudo goons, and you fight him on a theater stage that breaks off and slides down the side of an impossibly long cliff of the Qliphoth-fucked terrain. That fight against five eyeless demon knights on a sliding theater stage was very memorable. 

Proto Angelo himself? Eh. The Proto Angelo basically has the same lore as the Scudo Angelos, only that he's the commander and has a cape and a two-handed sword. I've said most of what I can say about this enemy with the Scudo. It does have a pretty cool face design, I must say. 

Death Scissors

"Shears of Annihilation"

We're done with the three 'families' of common enemies, and almost every one else are basically one-offs. I really did feel like we probably could've used a couple more enemy types, if we're being honest -- maybe weaker versions of Malphas or King Cerberus, to mention the bosses, but I do like a lot of the wackjobs that we get here!

The Death Scissors here is a classic enemy, one of the few returning enemies from previous DMC games (which I may review at some point in this site, but that was what I said in 2021). The design is pretty simple, a ragged black cloak-ghost with a porcelain mask for a face, and a skeletal-mannequin pair of hands holding a big fuck-off pair of shears. In addition to obviously trying to use these giant scissors to cut you up, the Death Scissors can also fly through walls, and one of the first Death Scissors you meet actually come out of a painting drawn of it. It's also got a pretty creepy cackling laugh. 

The Death Scissors are a bit trickier to defeat if you're just being a button-masher -- attacking it head-on just breaks the scissors, causing it to wield the remaining blade like a giant sword or scythe. But at some point, their masks will grow red as it contorts in anger (and porcelain masks with blood-tears are always creepy), and any shot at the mask will instantly kill the Death Scissors. Very interestingly and creepily, despite their cloaked shadowy bodies being invulnerable to damage, once they're destroyed you get to see a glimpse of a mannequin-like 'true' body dissolving as the Death Scissors die. 

Baphomet

"Elusive Incantor"

Baphomet here is... okay, I guess. Basically almost all of the enemies in this game get up in your face to attack you, and the ones that don't go invisible or use a shield to get up in your face to attack you. Baphomet here (named after a common demon name) is one of the few that attack from a distance, being magic wielders that shoot ice magic and create shields. It's honestly one of the more boring designs of the enemies in this game. Some nice texturing to create this emaciated, wretched goat-man, but otherwise I find Baphomet honestly kind of forgettable. 

According to developer notes, three were apparently plants to connect the Baphomet enemy to the brutish 'Goat Clan' demon enemies from Devil May Cry 2, but that's not even mentioned in the in-game texts. Boo!

Behemoth

"Unstoppable Appetite"

Unlike Baphomet up there, the last three on this page are pretty wacky! The Behemoth are these two-legged beasts of gluttony that is so hungry that they eat their own fellow demons. The other demons have even taken to chaining up this guy's mouth. It just lumbers around like a sad hippo, trying its best to knock enemies around while its tail and mouth are chained up.

Of course, since it's a video game enemy, the mouth-chains inevitably get broken and it extends its two giant massive tongue-feet and starts to try and eat you. Since the Behemoth is utterly indiscriminate, you can even ride them for a while and direct them to eat other demons in your way. It's hilarious, actually. The gameplay of DMC-V is quite chaotic, but if you do slow down and try and see what's going on, when a Behemoth's chains get broken the other intelligent demons will actually panic and try to attack the Behemoth!

Once you get a better look at the Behemoth in motion, it doesn't look too exotic. It's just a weird crocodilian monster with some parts swapped around. But it's a very fun design. I love how the tongues are so bulbous and act more like an extra set of legs. I love the texturing of his utterly nasty set of teeth, which look like they can really fuck up any body parts that get shoved in front of it. 

Lusachia

"Chorus of Malediction"

Ooo, a cool one. I had to double-check that this isn't actually a boss! The Lusachia is just an amorphous mass of screaming mouths attached to rocky or moss-like growths, with two hands and a tail jutting out of this massive... amalgamation of flesh. Apparently, the Lusachia evolved to have multiple mouths just so that it can cast more magical incantations, while the rest of its limbs have atrophied. I mean, sure! I guess it fits some kind of twisted logic. The more mouths you have, the more magic spells you can speak, right? Doesn't matter if you turn into a lump of flesh and mouths, all you need is more mouths so that you can mouth while you mouth! 

The Lusachia is basically a better version of a Baphomet, able to cast a whole ton of different spells due to its many, many mouths. It can teleport and also summon garden-variety stuff like fire, ice and lightning spells, but also 'malefice', a spell that takes a bit longer to cast but is extremely damaging to your characters. Neat!

Nobody

"Abnormal Avatar"

Um what? Yeah, this one looks like someone's nightmare transcribed into a monster. Look at this thing. Just look at it! It's a mishmash of ribcages with legs arranged like a spider-being. And there's a golden mask with a 'tongue' of flesh on either side of this vaguely dog-like body. Jutting out from its center is a meaty, nasty arm that picks up... a green smiling face-mask? The in-universe characters themselves are baffled at what Nobodies are, with Nico's entry theorizing that they are 'half-formed, like they broke out of the egg too early'. The Nobodies in DMC V are actually toned down from their original DMC 1 appearances, which look even more insane!

They will do a happy dance while they're not fighting, which adds to the creepiness. These things are apparently intelligent. Oh, and those detached eyeballs in the picture? That's the Nobody's ranged attack, where it can grow additional eyeballs ('decomposed organs', according to the first game's bestiary) that the hand will pluck and rip out of the body and chuck at you like bombs. What?! The Nobody's attack patterns change as it changes masks. It's got one mask for melee attacks, another for ranged attacks, and its most dangerous 'berserk' state causes it to grow larger and wild. All the masks are creepy in their own way -- the brass mask, the wildly grinning green mask, and the mass of madness that is the berserk state. 

That arm that juts out of the center of the body is also such a weird anatomical choice, and I really appreciate how fucked-up it looks. As many characters in the game notes, it's actually deceptively strong, with the Nobody being one of the few non-boss enemies able to actually grapple with the main characters and win. 

Pretty creepy design, and a stand-out compared to the rest of the bestiary, and a great one to end off this 'common enemies' page. Like the Proto Angelo, you actually fight a bunch of Nobodies as a boss at the end of a stage before they show up as rare enemies in subsequent ones. 

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This was fun to do! We'll go over the bosses next week. When I finish the game myself, I might go back and re-edit this article with some additional blurbs on how I feel about facing these enemies myself.