The trilogy of the PS2 Devil May Cry games has always been the best in the series. Even DMC2 has some good spots such as Dante's design, the soundtrack (specifically Shoot The Works), and atmosphere, but this review is gonna be split between each game.
Start with DMC1, in my opinion its the hardest one in the series to master because of it's limitations and just overall difficulty. Then play DMC2 if you really want, doesn't matter that much. Then play DMC3 all the way up to Very Hard, after that, I recommend a mod that adds Style Switching and freedom of weapons like DMC4 & DMC5 (The Crimson Mod!) for Dante Must Die and further combos, playing around, etc.
On to the games in themselves.
Devil May Cry (2001): This game is my favorite in the entire series, I've spent countless hours replaying it on my PS2 and trying to beat it as fast as possible and find every way to instantly kill an enemy or to deal with them in the most effective way (my personal best is 1:04:04!).
To be honest, this port doesn't really do the PS2 game justice in preserving the atmosphere and visuals of the game, the textures are off, lighting seems way different, all that. Then the game locks at 60fps, which is a real bummer for the high end PC gamers who want to have their 120fps gameplay of a 2001 game, some spots lag the game and drop those frames though, which is really annoying. Then the mapping of the buttons (Y for melee, X for guns, A for jumping, etc.) is really odd compared to the PS2's Circle for attack, Triangle for jump, and Square for guns, but I see why they did that for consistency between the three games.
10/10
DMC2 (2003): eh, it's alright. Music's good, Dante's outfit is amazing, some areas look nice, other than that its meh.
5/10
DMC3 (2005): OOOOHHHH MAN where do I start with this game?
Story is good, it has the best gameplay in the series (even better than DMC5's Zero-Gravity combat!) and the Crimson mod unlocks the game's full potential. Though, the textures are once again not good, for example Dante's hair in cutscenes doesn't have that natural look, instead it looks like a lego hair slapped onto him, every other texture is ok, I guess.
After learning so much about this game both on the PS2 and this, it's the best gameplay wise in the series, along with the mods that the community provides to further enhance the experience to make it what could have been if they had came up with style switching 3 years prior.
10/10
Overall, as a port it does a mixed job of being a port, but it's easy access to the 2 greatest games in the series, can't complain.
