You Should Be Modding: Devil May Cry 5

It's an ambitious day, and as a tech writer with over 13 years of experience, I find myself leaning on that ambition as I start a new venture here at Notebookcheck: weekly mod coverage. On Mondays, I'll be covering mods for modern games with "Modern Mondays"; "Tuesday Tweaks" for modern or retro games, and on Thursdays, we'll tackle exclusively retro games (especially ROMhacks and such) with "Throwback Thursdays". 

My tech news coverage here and elsewhere isn't going anywhere, but I don't buy all this fancy hardware just to write about fancier hardware. The juice for me has always been PC gaming, emulation, and all the modding possibilities this platform represents, and for at least some of you, I'm sure that's the juice, too. Why worry about the best gaming CPUs or high-end GPUs if you aren't gonna play anything on them?

But enough preamble: you're here for the best Devil May Cry 5 mods, right? Let's not waste any time and dive right in. Season 2 of Devil May Cry on Netflix is right around the corner, and I wanna get while gettin's good.

Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition on PC: The Essential Mods

Note: Virtually all of the mods listed below require installation through Fluffy Mod Manager and REFramework. REFramework can fortunately be installed through Fluffy without manual setup required, but the others will all require Fluffy Mod Manager and some baseline understanding of File Manager on Windows. I highly recommend making a dedicated "DMC5 Mods" folder where you'll be installing Fluffy Mod Manager and placing the rest of your downloaded mods. More in-depth instructions are documented on their respective mod pages.

I can also confirm that the first two of these mods (and all cosmetic mods installable via Fluffy) actually do function on Steam Deck, but you will likely need to install them from within your Devil May Cry 5 folder. This isn't the case on Windows, though.

SSSiyan's Collaborative Cheat Trainer + Legendary Dark Knights

The most essential Devil May Cry 5 mod, by far, is SSSiyan's Collaborative Cheat Trainer. Don't let the "cheat" in the title fool you: these are cheats more in the sense of traditional cheat codes, not cheats designed to play the game for you at the expense of everyone else.

So, what all does the Collaborative Cheat Trainer actually do? The biggest feature in terms of Special Edition parity is the addition of Legendary Dark Knights, a custom game mode that recreates the musou-like Legendary Dark Knights mode included in DMC4 and DMC5 Special Edition. The mod on PC is totally custom, though, using unique enemy layouts per-mission and providing a more ambitious revamp of the entire game. Plus, it works in tandem with the Co-Op Trainer we'll be discussing below, allowing the hordes of LDK to be tackled by multiple players for the first time in series history.

Other essential features are also available in the Trainer, like enabling the Turbo Mode that's otherwise locked to Special Edition. Prior to DMC5, Turbo Mode was a day-one feature in Devil May Cry 3 and Devil May Cry 4 that boosted the game's speed (and reduced timing windows) by 20% across the board. It's especially recommended for players who find vanilla Devil May Cry 5 too floaty (guilty) or those who just want a more visceral, challenging experience out of the game.

For longtime series fans, one of the most essential tweaks offered by the Trainer is actually the re-introduction of the beloved Devil May Cry 4 mechanic, Inertia. In short, Inertia allows momentum to be carried between attacks, even when animation-canceled by an Enemy Step, allowing for 3D movement techniques and formations limited only by your imagination.

Dante and Raz0rr's Co-Op Trainer

One of the coolest new features introduced with Devil May Cry 5 was the addition of real-time co-operative play...but sadly, it's limited to just two of twenty playable missions, and DLC character Vergil is left out of the fun entirely. The Co-Op Trainer fixes that by making Co-Op function in every mission of the game, and on top of that makes all missions playable with all characters via "Divergence Mode", which is a huge boon for replay value. Some additional graphics settings are also buried within the Co-Op Trainer, like enabling subsurface scattering in gameplay and not just cutscenes. Highly recommended.

Naxshe's Ray-Tracing Config For DMC5

Last but not least, one of the most essential mods for restoring Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition functionality on PC is Naxshe's Ray-Tracing Config for DMC5. Sadly, this one is also one of the more contentious mods on this list, for a few different reasons. The main reason is that it requires you to donate to Pascal Gilcher's Patreon in order to access his ray-tracing plugin for ReShade/GShade. This config used with that ReShade/GShade plugin (GShade recommended) effectively performs SSGI (Screen-Space Global Illumination) on the entirety of Devil May Cry 5, making the PC version look much more in line with the RT-enabled Special Edition on current-gen consoles.

Sadly, it's only a partial fix. While I do personally use and enjoy this mod, full ray tracing support including ray-traced reflections won't come to Devil May Cry 5 on PC unless Capcom actually adds it. Additionally, I sometimes have difficulty launching the game on a first attempt or getting the more essential Trainers to function when I have GShade enabled. I can really only recommend this one to the most dedicated modders. The majority of players will likely have a better experience skipping past this one and opting for Co-Op Trainers graphical enhancements instead.

Other Great Devil May Cry 5 Mods: Custom Weapon Replacements and New Outfits

There are far too many custom outfits and weapon replacements for me to possibly list here (including ports from DMC Pinnacle of Combat and Monster Hunter World), but a notable downside of Devil May Cry 5 compared to previous entries in the series (especially Devil May Cry 3) is the lack of alternative costumes for the playable characters. "Super" outfits that grant unlimited Devil Trigger and "EX" outfits with alternative color palettes exist, but those are still quite lacking compared to what we used to have.

Fortunately, the advent of platforms like Nexus Mods and mod managers like Fluffy Mod Manager have made it fairly easy for players to address these gaps. The developers don't want to give you cool outfits anymore? That's what modding's for.

Dante Dark Slayer + DDS Kalina Ann by akasha51 

Fans of Devil May Cry 4 may recall that Dante could actually wield his brother's sword, Yamato, in that game. 

With these mods combined, you can now restore and enhance that functionality with Devil May Cry 5 by replacing the Devil Sword Sparda in your loadout with Yamato, complete with its moveset intact, sans Dimension Slash/Judgement Cut. If you want access to Judgement Cut, the additional DDS Kalina Ann mod allows you to replace the single Kalina Ann Rocket Launcher in your loadout with Judgement Cut. It's a little different from the dedicated fifth Style in Devil May Cry 4, but these replacements make good use of what would otherwise be unnecessary duplicate movesets in Dante's kit. Although, you will need to have completed Dante Must Die and unlocked the "Irregular Full Custom" skill to equip multiple swords or rocket launchers simultaneously.

DMC2 Dante by tabdmc

The most-hated Devil May Cry game by far is Devil May Cry 2, but you know what no one complains about? Dante's outfit in that game. It's pretty nice. The EX Color on this mod also makes the fit and Dante himself all-black, if you're into that.

DMC4 Nero by vainuss1

As cool as Devil May Cry 5's updated Nero design is, I wouldn't fault you for missing the Devil May Cry 4 rendition, especially the Prototype Nero skin included with Special Edition. Fortunately, this DMC4 Nero mod pack restores that look perfectly, and works well with thezippotm's Nero Effects and Glow Color Pack.

Devil Hunter Vergil by djheretostay

So, this one's fun: it's a totally original Vergil design! Minor plot spoilers for Devil May Cry 5 ahead, but by the end of the game, Vergil's turned over a new leaf after spending most of the game split into Demon and Human halves. This design takes inspiration from both of those separate characters and rolls them together with Vergil's DMC5 design, giving a nice look at what the future may hold for this character in the mainline Devil May Cry series.

As for what the future holds with Vergil within the Netflix Devil May Cry series? Truthfully, as a series fan, I'm not particularly optimistic due to how egregiously the canon has been changed over on the Netflix show. I'm sure there will at least be some cool action sequences in there, though. It's still probably be more enjoyable than the actual Devil May Cry 2.