Part two of my coverage of Devil May Cry V enemies, this time covering the bosses!Again, brief disclaimer -- I wrote the Devil May Cry V reviews in 2021 originally, but after playing the game earlier this year I decided to review this set of articles and re-publish them.
I do actually think that the bosses in Devil May Cry V are not the most interesting, with some specific exceptions. DMC V is also the end of a very major character arc for two of its main characters, and as such a lot of the bosses are actually Vergil himself -- which, while certainly very fist-pumping in terms of how badass it is to fight him and his giant katana with all the story given to us, it kind of falls outside the scope of 'monster reviews' for me to really be talking and dissecting him.
Without further ado...
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Goliath
"Incandescent Colossus"
It's a game with over-the-top designs and over-the-top combat, but interestingly there's not too many unique bosses... though some of the bosses do repeat designs throughout different stages, and they have different mechanics. I do tend to lump all the same designs together... but we'll talk about them when we reach Urizen.
Discounting tutorial bosses and elite enemies that show up as bosses first, our first real demon boss is Goliath here. He's just a big, hulking, muscular ogre demon, but Goliath's not just a big brute. He's a big brute with a secondary mouth, a giant fanged claw in his belly that can vacuum up chunks of the city's rubble inside his mouth, and then launch them at your character, Nero, like giant cannonballs. The fight with him is also spectacular -- after an over-the-top sequence where Nero walks through a tumbling ambulance with open doors, you fight Goliath inside a church before the building crumbles and you take the fight outside.
It's not the most novel boss design, but it's an interesting enough twist to make Goliath feel slightly different from your average 'giant musclebrain demon'. I do like that Nero is outright dismissive and mocking of him, while the supporting ally Nico notes that "if the likes of this fella caused you trouble, you wouldn't have survived so long'. No respect for the ogre man! It is kind of a shame that the game doesn't feature too many 'returning' characters on the antagonist side, or, well, even characters at all. These named demons just... kind of show up with the Qliphoth. The game's fast-paced enough with a lot of moving characters, but I would've liked for a bit more context for these guys.
Artemis
"Illuminating Corruption"
Whoah, okay, you're an impressive one. I really like the design here! Artemis is one of two enemies that are actually our allies -- one of our allies, Lady, is captured by the main bad guy and merged with the demonic weapon Artemis to become the demon Artemis. Demons in the DMC-verse can be distilled into weapons, and in fact Dante and Nero's repertoire is formed out of weapons that were once demons.
Artemis herself attacks mostly from range, menacing Nero for a while by shooting sonic booms as he explores the stage before finally facing off in a giant opera hall, singing and shooting out sonic booms as she flies around the stage. All these bosses and characters have their own unique theme songs, and Artemis's "Lunatic Ray" is particularly fun! Artemis is pretty cool.
Nidhogg
"Parasitic Fiend"
Oh man, this is a cool one! Nidhogg in Nordic myths is a subterranean dragon that gnaws on the roots of the World Tree Yggdrassil. DMCV's Nidhogg here is a creature that also gnaws on the roots of the giant Qliphoth Tree... except it's a parasitic plant-tumour thing with multiple giant serpentine heads which terminate in Venus Flytrap/Deku Baba/Audrey-II esque heads! How cool is that twist? Nidhogg's main body is that lumpy 'humanoid' red form that I thought was a weird flower. It's a bit hard to see here, but its face and torso is a mass of orange lumps with spikes, and it's got two large thorns in place of arms.
Interestingly, we actually find 'immature' versions of the Nidhogg throughout our journey through Red Grave City, because the roots of the Qliphoth tree does actually have little parasites littered through their forms. These parasites essentially act as 'keys' to gates formed out of Qliphoth roots, with the parasites destroying and decaying these roots immediately. This means that the idea that the Qliphoth has a much larger version of these parasites is even foreshadowed.
Even more interestingly, and unexpectedly, Nidhogg himself is sentient, and he's... an insecure, easily-angered dude! It's kind of hilarious how petty and angry he is when he finally gets confronted by one of our protagonists, V. It's implied that Nidhogg probably would've won -- or be significantly harder -- if it had hid inside the Qliphoth's body, relying on its plant snake-heads... but V's taunting causes it to reveal its main body one too many times. Silly parasite!
Elder Geryon Knight
"Abyssal Cavalry"
Named after a demon from Dante's Inferno (and I recognize the name from the D&D Demon Prince), the Elder Geryon Knight is a demonic knight called Cavaliere Angelo (who we'll cover below) riding a badass undead horse mount called an Elder Geryon. That's a pretty cool horse; it's got an almost reptilian, almost dinosaurian skull. I don't think I've ever really seen that. The Geryon horse actually has time-manipulating abilities, allowing it to temporarily slow down time (and it gets turned into a weapon that allows you to do that) which. An older boss in the third game was just a regular Geryon, also able to control time. I'm not sure why burning-blue horses can control time in this world, but why not?
After defeating him, the Elder Geryon gets turned into a weapon by our heroes, while the knight runs off to menace our hero another day. I honestly don't have a whole ton to say about this one, it's a cool demon knight riding a cool demon horse.
Cavaliere Angelo
"Voltaic Black Knight"
While V fights the Elder Geryon Knight, it's Dante, the main character of the first four games and the most fun playable character to play, who fights the Cavaliere Angelo alter on when he's just alone without his horse. Technically this fight takes place after the next boss on this review, but I think it makes more sense to review him here. And... Cavaliere Angelo has one of the most badass boss themes in this game. I really like 'Voltaic Black Knight'!
The design himself is... it sure is a cool demon-man. We have a lot of cool demon-men in this game, though, including the 'Devil Trigger' forms of our heroes (none of which I'll be covering here) so I really don't have a whole ton to say here. He's got a lightning sword. I like that his bat-wings fold around his shoulders like a cape, and he's a modernized version of the 'Nero Angelo' boss I mentioned in the previous article. Cavaliere Angelo is another boss that has one of our allies embedded within it, Trish. After Dante beats the shit out of Cavaliere Angelo and rescues Trish, for some reason the remnants of it gets turned into the Cavaliere, a badass motorbike that can transform into two gigantic buzzsaws. This game is wacky and I love it.
Anyway, Artemis, Goliath and Cavaliere Angelo get used by the next boss to fight V as 'Metaphysical Infernal Phantasms' when V is trapped into an illusion, dubbed with the prefix 'Mirage' and coloured entirely white. Those sure are extra boss fights, I guess.
Gilgamesh
"Marauding Titan"
OH MAN! This guy. I think he's my favourite boss in this game? It's a toss-up between him and Artemis. 'Gilgamesh' itself isn't even the name of the monster itself, not really. It's the name of a super-metal from hell, and apparently a whole bunch of it got fused with a mass of Qliphoth matter, turning it into a gigantic four-legged giant beetle kaiju made up of demon metal and demon plants, looking like something straight out of Godzilla or Pacific Rim or something. It's got the same Qliphoth root tumours running up its legs, and two giant tendrils tipped with sharp blades, and it's got like flowers for a face. It's a giant monster that just wanders around towering over buildings and factories, menacing both V and Nero throughout their journey through the city by destroying parts of the terrain and attacking him with individual giant limbs.
It's also a bit hard to see, but the 'knees' are actually angelic statues, like the ones you see on the side of buildings. Its head is a mass of vines and flowers, and its back is covered with a thick carapace that sprouts giant thorns as you fight him. Those long flower-vine antennae can generate shockwaves.
The boss fight against Gilgamesh is probably my favourite, with Gilgamesh just wandering around a warehouse complex while your hero jumps around and tries to hit him in his many weak points, grappling up and striking and trying to deal as much damage before Gilgamesh retaliates with spikes or shockwaves.
Those long flower-vines are able to generate shockwaves just because, and Gilgamesh makes life a bit of a hell for your playable characters as it disrupts you from a distance until you get up close and personal and cut Gilgamesh down to size. Of course, while fighting Gilgamesh, you have to climb up to him and stuff!
Malphas
"Diabolical Amalgam"
A weird one! Named after a raven demon in real-life demonology, it's a bit hard to tell what's going on with Malphas here from a still image. The real Malphas is the humanoid form at the back of this bird, except she's not really a 'she', but a 'they'. Malphas are three creepy witches merged together, like a fucked-up version of the Fates or something. In addition, there are a bunch of stone runes jutting out of it.
Meanwhile, the rest of Malphas is a nasty tumour-demon chick, just waddling around with its face comprised of bulbous tumours for eyes, a giant knobbly nose and very human teeth. The bird's wings are skeletal and very creepy as it flaps around, and the end result of a 'rider' merged with her/their steed is always creepy. Nico's description of Malphas doesn't make it any nicer, speculating that the bird and the women were originally separate until the women (the 'Malphas' entity, I guess) merged herself with the nasty bird... which is just a chick, and can grow even bigger. My god, look at that bird face. It's really fucked up!
Malphas is one of the few minions of Urizen who are actually malicious and going around sabotaging our heroes, instead of just stumbling upon them in their journey or are non-sentient like Gilgamesh. Malphas sends all the Angelos after our heroes, and later creates a pocket-mind-dimension to trap V in and have him fight against the aforementioned mirage bosses. When V finally confronts Malphas, the fight is fast and brutal, and she can heal up the bird, teleport around, and cause it to go into a berserker state. Pretty nasty!
King Cerberus
"Gatekeeper Unleashed"
Not actually the most impressed with this one, concept-wise. Dante fought a regular Cerberus before, and now he fights King Cerberus. I kind of wished we had weaker Cerberus minibosses before in order to foreshadow this. The series of levels that the King Cerberus ends is basically a replication of hell as it's told in Dante's Inferno, which I thought was cool. I also find the weapon that King Cerberus gets turned into -- a spinning nun-chuck/sansetsukon weapon held together with invisible chains that spins around Dante like a bangle -- to be the second-most-coolest thing after the bike weapon. It's got three elements!
...and so does King Cerberus himself, with each head governing fire, ice and lightning. This allows you to predict his patterns, and explains why Dante can use those elements when fighting. The game doesn't really have anything like Pokemon that interacts with element types, though, so it's glorified window-dressing.
I actually am surprised at how little I have to say about King Cerberus. He sure is a cool setpiece, with cool animations, but I normally have more to say about non-humanoid enemies... and I just have nothing here.
Urizen
"Nefarious Usurper"
Okay, Urizen, the big guy. It's a huge spoiler on what Urizen really is, so I'm not going to spoil that, but what he's presented to us as -- the big new demon king -- is worth talking about. Urizen is basically a giant plant-demon-man tied to the Qliphoth's roots and having smaller versions of the Qliphoth vines running all around his body. You actually fight Urizen five times throuhgout the game with various characters at different parts of the journey, and for the most part you fight him while he's sitting on his throne, not even bothering to fight you. He just shoots badass demon magic powers, while that spinning mass of crystallized blood just flies down and absorbs all the attacks meant for him.
Eventually, your characters do enough damage to his spinning blood-crystal, and Urizen gets off the chair and fights you as a giant humanoid with Qliphoth tendrils and tentacles growing out of him, but it's still essentially the same design. He's a cool monster, and the tentacle animations are really cool, but otherwise that's all it's got going for him.
Eventually the Qliphoth plant matter sloughs off, leaving Urizen in a sleeker, eyeball-covered humanoid form, but this is the least interesting of the Urizen designs. It's hard to discuss Urizen further without going in-depth into the plot and heavy spoilerage, but he sure is a big demon man. He's really tall, too, but... yeah, I really don't have a whole ton to say here. He's a very serviceable final boss and main antagonist.
Vergil
I am still skipping the boss fight against V's familiars, since they're just weird-looking shadow animals (plus Nightmare, who's a big glob golem). They are less 'enemies' and more characters in my head, anyway. Neither am I covering regular Vergil, who's just a cool anime guy. But Vergil's Devil Trigger technically shows up several times in the two final boss fights against him, and it's the most monstrous and the coolest of the four Devil Trigger designs in the game. Regular Vergil is just a cool guy with a huge katana. Nothing wrong with that, but not exactly a 'monster' design.
Devil Trigger Vergil? Monstrous arms, legs, and chest, energy blades jutting backwards from his lower arms like jet blades, and a head that's a... hammerhead shark with engine flames coming out of the 'hammers' for some reason. I get that the blades are probably a representation of Vergil's preferred weapon of choice, the great katana Yamato,
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That's Devil May Cry V. It's a bit of a shorter review on my part, but it's been a fun one!
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