Devil May Cry 2 is a Stylish Action-Adventure game for the PlayStation 2, developed and published by Capcom in 2003. A sequel to the hit 2001 title Devil May Cry 1, it is set on the island of Vie de Marli (originally known as Dumary Island) and centers on a stoic Dante, veteran demon hunter, and a mysterious redheaded woman named Lucia as they fight to stop the Uroboros corporation and its CEO, Arius, from reviving the demon king Argosax.

After the runaway success of the first game, 2 was greenlit to cash in on the hit status of Devil May Cry. However, the original development team behind the first game - including series creator Hideki Kamiya - didn't return for 2, and so the game underwent a turbulent production with an inexperienced team at the helm, who had the unenviable task of living up to the incredibly well-received first game in the series. This game was the first in the series worked on by Hideaki Itsuno (who would go on to direct the rest of the games in the main series), who had to take over for the game's original director when the development crew was running into hot water and had only six months to get 2 out for release. The game introduced many mechanics that would be refined and expanded upon in later DMC games, such as an evasive action or a Real-Time Weapon Change button, as well as the Bloody Palace arena mode - and Itsuno ended up putting his experience working on 2 to use when developing the next game in the series, Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening.

There's also a Light Novel published in 2003 which serves as a prequel to the game.

This game is also a part of the Devil May Cry HD Collection featuring upgraded resolutions of HD 720p (for PS3 and Xbox 360) or HD 1080p (for PS4 and Xbox One) and other optimizations. Achievements and Trophies were also added.

It was followed up in 2005 by Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, and chronologically followed by Devil May Cry 4.

This game and its spin-offs contain examples of:

• Ability Required to Proceed: Some paths can only be traversed after you obtain specific Movement Devil Hearts for your Amulet and Devil Trigger form.
• Action Bomb: The Spicere are spherical demons that explode after being attacked or approached in close proximity.
• Adaptation Distillation: One can somewhat call it this way from a translation perspective in regards to the prequel novel, as several lines present in the original Japanese aren't used in Tokyopop's versions.
• Airborne Mook: Puias and Flambats just love to fly around, but are easily dispatched off by shooting at them. The former are harpy-like demons, while the latter are flaming bat-like spirits.
• A.K.A.-47: Dante can pick up a FIM-92 Stinger missile launcher which is simply named "Missile Launcher", and a pair of Heckler and Koch MP5Ks which are simply named "Submachine Guns".
• Alien Blood: Msira have blue blood while their Homromsira variant bleed a yellow magma-like substance. Gbusmsira and Jomothumsira go back to blue blood, which the Goat family demons share. Jokatgulm and Tateobesu both bleed purple, while Phantom and Furiataurus bleed magma like the Homromsira. The Infestants, Larvae and Noctperan bleed white, and finally Oranguerra bleeds green. Quite the rainbow of blood colors in this game.
• All Swords Are the Same:
  • In addition to his default Rebellion, Dante can obtain a BFS (Vendetta) and a fencing sword (Merciless), but only the look and damage differ; the combos are exactly the same. The same goes for Lucia's blades. Playing this trope straight proved to be a major criticism against the game, thus the later DMC games either downplayed it, limited it to cosmetics, or completely averted it.
  • The DMC1 Dante costume changes the model of Rebellion into Force Edge, but it's a downplayed example as the sword is also a BFS and still functions the same as the original, apart from just having different sound effects.
• Anachronic Order: Though it was the second game released, it originally took place long after 3, 1, and 4, due to the game's poor reputation. It wasn't until Devil May Cry 5 when Capcom dared to put any entries after this one, and when they did, they also rearranged things to make 2 take place before 4.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Beating the game on lower difficulties just scores you a new outfit for your character.
• Another Side, Another Story: Dante and Lucia's campaigns are played separately and their stories are told from their own perspectives; any plot point that's skipped or brushed over by one character's campaign can be explained by the other. Their level layouts aren't exactly the same either; Lucia has fewer missions but her stages also have some gimmicks and bosses that aren't present in Dante's campaign. However, both campaigns share some common cutscenes where both characters reunite.
• Anti-Climax: Dante is stuck in the Demon World at the end of the game, and while the ending implies he escaped, it's not explained how. The 5 novel, Before the Nightmare, reveals that a random shard of Yamato opened a portal near Dante, and he left the Demon World just like that.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In segments where you are required to equip a specific Devil Heart that enhances your Devil Trigger's movement capabilities, there's always a nearby method to refill your Devil Trigger gauge, ensuring that you'll never be locked out of options. The most straightforward option is a special platform that can quickly give you a full gauge, but the game may also give you some enemy encounters to slowly accumulate it.
  • Dante's Mission 15 and Lucia's Mission 11 require the player to defeat a set number of enemies within two or three minutes respectively to progress. The enemies become weaker with each failed attempt.
  • Dante fights Argosax the Chaos and The Despair Embodied back-to-back. If you die to the latter boss and retry, the game would revive you to it instead of restarting the entire mission from the former boss.
• Artistic License – Physics: The ability to keep enemies suspended in mid-air by continuously firing at them with your standard guns, and the ability to slow down your descent from mid-air by firing any gun regardless of direction, are gravity-defying tricks that debuted back in the first game and retained in the sequels ever since. However, this game makes these gunplay even more absurd as repeatedly shooting a lesser demon gradually lifts it up in mid-air, and firing your guns in mid-air gives you another upward momentum.
• Art Shift: The high-quality character illustrations in this game look very different from the actual models used for the gameplay and cutscenes. At least the first game used the same style for the covers and models.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Charged Attack of Trish's Nightmare-γ fires a swarm of pinballing Frickin' Laser Beams in every direction but don't go straight at the enemy. Considering how the areas where you fight enemies underwater are huge, there's a chance that none of the pinballing projectiles actually hits anything.
  • Using melee strikes can be this, as they have horrible recovery, and the player often has to end combos with Stinger or High Time to sort of mitigate this because they have less recovery. In harder modes enemies become more aggressive, so they become more difficult to use, with DMD/LMD getting specially rough because of enemies having armor when they activate Devil Trigger. Mission 17 in harder modes is perhaps the worst case of this in the game, as attacking Arius is perfectly possible, but he can attack the player with his revolver and even if the player sees him using it, Dante's melee attacks have so much recovery Dante's won't be able to dodge, Jomothumsira have attacks faster than Dante's, and can come running from offscreen, to do a quick strike and Secretaries are impossible to combo since they are pushed back a lot when hit, and they do a huge dash when attacking (Not unlike the player's), and they start attacking faster the less HP Arius has. All of this combined with the bad camera angles makes melee attacks very difficult, and maybe even punishing to use, and it's best to default to using guns.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Parodied and lampshaded. Sickened by Arius' delusions of grandeur, Dante "crowns" him by riddling his body with bullets.
  Arius: Oohh... No...! My dream... my life...! I was going to be the king of this world!
  Dante: King? Yeah, here's your crown!
• Backtracking: The Uroboros building has sections requiring this method, but those were the well-done variants that change something in the environment and/or open a path to a new area.
• BFG: Dante can tool around with a distinctly traditional Stinger Missile Launcher fired over-the-shoulder.
• BFS: Dante's Vendetta and Merciless swords. The former is about as broad as Dante's shoulders, while the latter is as long as Dante's height.
• Bittersweet Ending: Dante destroys Argosax, but is trapped in the Underworld with apparently no way out, so he rides deeper in on a motorcycle that happened to be there. Lucia, meanwhile, finally comes to terms with her Dark and Troubled Past and is the one to kill Arius for good. But when Lucia finds out Dante's coin is a Two-Headed Coin, she realizes that he tricked her so she wouldn't have to go on what amounted to a suicide mission. Sometime later, Lucia visits Dante's shop, musing about how Dante's sacrifice parallels the story about Sparda Matier promised to tell him, and sadly notes that Sparda came back in the end. Then Lucia hears a motorcycle outside and goes to investigate.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In:
  • If Dante dies on the ground, his sword flies above for a bit and lands point-first near his body.
  • Done dramatically in Dante's fight against The Despair Embodied. As he strikes back against an attack of the demon, his Rebellion gets flung up in the air, Dante seemingly disappears, shoots The Despair Embodied without looking at it, then the camera focuses on the Rebellion after it just stabbed the ground on its way down.
• Blown Across the Room: As Dante "crowns" him by shooting with Ebony & Ivory, Arius' body is blown backwards, shattering the wall behind him.
• Bodyguard Babes: In your second fight against him as Dante, Arius is backed by various women, which according to the Enemy Files, are his "Secretaries". They all happen to be artificially-created demons based off from the same template. Lucia also happens to be one of them, but was discarded for being a "defect" among the bunch.
• Bonus Feature Failure: The Submachine Guns allow Dante to use rapid-fire against his enemies without needing to use Devil Trigger, which sounds great on paper. Unfortunately, they're already outclassed by Dante's other firearms in terms of raw power and function, not to mention that Dante's guns already have rapid fire during Devil Trigger regardless of your chosen firearm, making the Submachine Guns completely redundant. That being said, if the player shoots Arius' secretaries with Ebony & Ivory until they get juggled, and switch to the Submachine Guns, they'll be stuck in the air until the player stops shooting or they die, and this is great in case the player wants to kill one but doesn't want to use Devil Trigger on them.
• Boss-Only Level: Some Missions are so short as they only consist of a boss fight, such as Dante's Mission 6 facing him right against Nefasturris, or Dante's Mission 8 containing the boss fight against Furiataurus.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Completing the "Must Die" difficulty unlocks a cheat code that enables unlimited Devil Trigger regardless of the equipped costume.
• Broad Strokes: For the longest time 2 was a Loose Canon, but as of 5 it's part of the timeline, with 5 taking place after it, and the Before the Nightmare novel having Matier and Lucia show up, and both it and Visions of V mention Dante killed Argosax. What is a case of this trope is Dante's personality during 2, as Before the Nightmare has Matier and Lucia interacting with Dante like he was the easy going smartass in 2, and in the game itself he's mostly quiet and stoic.
• Call-Back: Dante comforts a teary-eyed, distressed Lucia at the endgame by telling her "Devils never cry". This not only parallels his words to Trish in the final portions of the first game, but Lucia herself parallels Trish's origins as an Artificial Demon created by the game's Big Bad. She's good from the start, unlike Trish, but wonders if her parentage and status as a demon means she'll turn on the humans.
• Cash Gate: The first sealed door in Lucia's first mission is a downplayed example as it needs 45 Red Orbs to open.
• Chekhov's Gun: Dante's lucky coin is used in a Fake MacGuffin Batman Gambit to fool Arius.
• Character in the Logo: This game went so far as to have two different silhouetted logos featuring the two protagonists, Dante and Lucia. Dante's version is treated as the primary logo in most covers and promotional materials, while Lucia's version is used as the logo of her disc/campaign.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • The Devil Trigger gauge changes color depending on which elemental Attribute Devil Heart is equipped.
  • Trismagia's heads; the happy one is blue and controls lightning, the angry one is red and controls fire, while the sad one is white and controls ice.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: The game receives a reversed color filter when time is slowed down by the Chrono Heart.
• Competitive Balance: You can play as either the Jack of All Stats Dante or the Fragile Speedster Lucia. This one is mitigated slightly, however, since they can both be upgraded to become Lightning Bruisers. To be more specific about each character:
  • Dante's Devil Trigger refills the slowest out of everyone else's, but when he uses it, his regular combos become very powerful, stinger and high time become highly damaging and spammable, his round trip when flying is one of his most damage moves, and his guns are replaced by a machine gun-like shooting from his hands, and it does crazy damage. Among his guns, Ebony & Ivory have good damage, and can juggle enemies by itself, Shotgun for quick knockdowns, and Missile Launcher for long range damage, and an explosion with goodspash damage.
  • Lucia's Devil Trigger refills much faster than Dante's, over three times faster, and when flying with Fire Heart, her flying attack is her strongest option, to the point that if the player has enough time to fly when activating DT, it's much better to use it over her regular attacks, but when it comes to "guns", you'll mostly use Throwing Daggers, which have good damage but are a big slow to start being thrown, Darts just aren't really good, and Cranky Bomb, while it refills a lot of DT, and Lucia throws it faster than Dante shoots with Missible Launcher, and has less recovery, it has an awkward angle when Lucia throws it, meaning it'll miss a lot, and it can't be used against enemies who are really far away.
  • Trish is the most unusual character, her moveset is made around DMC1 Dante, so her attacks are faster, have less recovery, and she can cancel out of the recovery of her moves much earlier than Dante or Lucia, and her Devil Trigger, refills a little faster than Dante's, her air raid gets an extra projectile per use up until she's throwing 5 of them, plus her round trip counts as a melee attack, and she throws the sword much faster than DMC1 Dante, so it's much better at building up the style meter, and at damaging far away enemies, but she lacks other guns, notably crowd control related, which can make her struggle in some tigher areas, namely Dante's mission 16/Lucia's mission 12 elevator rides, where she can struggle at dealing with them because of a lack of knockdown gun. Her Devil Trigger also doesn't get the property of doing multiple hits per sword swing like Dante and Lucia do with Fire Heart, making it a lot less useful for Trish, and this, combined with Electrict Heart not giving her any bonus, means Trish has little reason to bother with them, as Ice Heart works just fine with her.
• Content Warnings: The game always opens with a warning about the explicit violence and gore... then Dante shows up and destroys that warning screen.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The prologue cutscene shows a stone statue that's suspiciously similar to the angelic stone statue of Mundus from the first game.
  • Phantom from DMC1 appears as the boss for Dante's Mission 14 and Lucia's Mission 10, though the "Guidepost for the Hunters" text for Dante's mission hints that his appearance is due to a "door to the future and the past" being opened. He also returns in the Final Boss battle as one of Argosax's heads.
  • In the HD Collection, defeating Phantom earns you the "Not Just Any Ordinary Human" achievement. Back in the first game, Phantom asked "You, you're not just any ordinary human. What are you?" to Dante.
  • Griffon, another major villain from 1, serves as one of Argosax's heads. But unlike the aforementioned Phantom, he isn't fought anywhere in the story prior to the Final Boss fight.
  • The Sargasso and Blade demons from the first game appear in the underwater sections of Lucia's disc.
  • Both sides of Dante's lucky coin contain a silhouette of Trish, referencing her character silhouette and pose in the logo of 1.
  • Beating the game on Dante Must Die difficulty unlocks Dante's original outfit from 1, complete with the Force Edge in place of Rebellion.
  • Trish wears sunglasses in her character select portrait and whenever she activates Devil Trigger. This isn't just a random stylistic choice; it's also a reference to the prologue cutscene of the first game wherein she wore glasses as she barges into Dante's shop and provokes him.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: When Dante rescues Lucia from Arius, he grabs onto her, activates Devil Trigger, and quickly flies off a huge distance from the building with her. Though Dante's Devil Trigger form can fly in-game thanks to the Aerial Heart, he cannot fly that fast and high in a short amount of time; he only has a steady flight speed and the player has to constantly press the jump button in order to gain some limited altitude.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: DMC2 has underwater swimming sections just like the first game, but the camera is set from a third-person view instead of the first-person camera from DMC1. The jump button also works differently. In the first game, the player has to hold it to make Dante swim forward. Here, the player has to tap it repeatedly to make the character swim upward.
• Decomposite Character: Mechanically-wise this happens with Alastor. Back in DMC1, Alastor both made Dante faster and allowed him to use flight related abilities, here, both are available as amulets, and they can't both be equipped at the same time.
• Dem Bones:
  • Sargasso are floating demon skulls that either attempt to bite the player character or shoot icicles at them.
  • Bolverk's body is skeletal in appearance.
• Desperation Attack: The secret Devil Trigger transformation (later known as "Majin Form") is a mechanic that grants several desperation attacks. If Dante's health is critically low (indicated by his health bar turning red), activating Devil Trigger will allow Dante to transform into a towering, nigh-invulnerable and vastly more powerful demon behemoth until his Devil Trigger Gauge runs out. In this form, he has a greater damage output and an entirely different moveset; he uses two blades that protrude out of his arms, throws fireballs, and can perform Limit Breaks such as a laser beam of light and dark energy, and a flash of light that deals Area of Effect damage. These allow Dante to mow down the enemies and bosses with the greatest of ease. The only drawback is the increased DT gauge consumption, but it isn't an issue if you're capable of easily killing enemies with this form anyway.
• Diabolus ex Machina: In the penultimate mission of Dante's campaign, Dante sabotages Arius' ritual by replacing one of his artifacts with an ordinary coin. However, in the final mission, Argosax is summoned anyways, as a portal to the Demon World inexplicably opens, forcing Dante to step inside to fight him.
• Disciplines of Magic: There are Pyromancers, Auromancers, and Brontomancers; the three types of wizard demons that use fire, wind, and lightning magic, respectively.
• Dutch Angle: Some of the Fixed Camera angles in certain missions' areas (such as the starting area in Dante's Mission 14 and the sinister-looking hallways in Uroboros) are tilted.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The game introduces several elements that would be improved in subsequent games.
  • Dante's Rebellion. In this game, it looks generic and doesn't have any background significance. In later games, it has the skull and ribcage motif in its guard and is Dante's keepsake sword from his father.
  • Bloody Palace. Unlike its future renditions in the series that end after their final floors, this one's 9999th floor loops after being completed, making it endless until you die, and when it's looping, it's mostly boss fights.
  • Certain moves such as Rain Storm, Twosome Time and Fireworks would become series staples associated with Dante's Gunslinger Style instead of being regular combos as they are implemented in this game. However, this game's version of Rain Storm lacks the aerial stylish spinning animation of its future iterations. Twosome time also only knocks down enemies, unlike other games.
  • The dodge mechanic would become Dante's Trickster Style and the cartwheel from 2 was used during 3's development before being replaced with the dash. While 2 lacked the usual dodge mechanic initiated by locking-on and jumping, later games would bring it back. Also while Trickster always has the same dashing animation regardless of the direction it's used, here the cartwheeling has different animations depending on which direction the player uses while aiming, and they cover different distances and have different recoveries to boot. Dante/Trish and Lucia even have different animations and distance covered when side dodging, while in 3 and 4 characters share the side rolling animation.
  • This is the first game to have multiple playable characters. Unlike most of the next games, however, DMC2 has two separate campaigns for its two main heroes, and you have to beat the game with both of them to unlock other difficulties.
  • This is the first game that displays health bars for the Mooks and Elite Mooks (DMC1 only had health bars limited to bosses), but it's shown in the HUD as a vertical bar that's mostly difficult to see because of its usually dark red color, and also, the regular enemy health bar does not show up during boss fights. This is also the first game that displays a visual indicator over the locked-on target. Later games would combine the two HUD elements by repurposing the rim of the lock-on indicator as the target's health bar.
  • The level select feature is only available after beating the game, unlike in the sequels where it's available right from the start or after you beat the first mission.
  • Chrono Heart is one of the many skills that slows down time in DMC, but it's the most unusual since it's directly attached to devil trigger, and only activates once a character hits an opponent with a melee attack, and sometimes it doesn't work initially and the opponent will still move at normal speeds, which's why players use it alongside Ice Heart. Also unlike 3 and 5, this is a skill that is available for every character, while in both of these games it's exclusive to one character (Dante in 3, Nero in 5), and while in 4 everyone can use it, it's an item available in only three missions.
  • This is the only game where a character starts with every weapon skill, upgrading weapons buffs their damage instead.
  • Perhaps because of its rushed nature, but in other games, starting in hard mode, enemies will be replaced by other enemies, on top of getting a more aggressive AI, higher damage and higher HP. Here, enemy spawn is the same in every difficulty, with enemies only becoming stronger and more aggressive.
  • Characters refill Devil Trigger gauge at different speeds, something that was only really done again with Lady's Devil Trigger refilling much more slowly than the rest (Although her own DT is not even a transformation, just her throwing a bunch of bombs), but it's ridiculously extreme here. Dante refills his devil trigger so slowly that even if you only use melee exclusively, it'll take a long time for it to be fully filled up, and Trish's is similar but a little better. And then there's Lucia, who refills her DT over three times faster than Dante, meaning she'll get a full DT gauge after fighting only a few enemies.
  • When aiming in later games, the character will point their gun at the enemy, and while this can happen here, it's based on whether or not that was the most recent attack was a gun or not, and if the player used a sword, Dante/Lucia will have different animations for readying their weapons to strike.
  • Secret Missions are replaced with Secret Rooms, and there are a bunch of differences between them, and later games did not repurpose Secret Rooms:
    • Secret Rooms are always elimination battles against two waves of enemies.
    • The game uses a system where you can only access the next Secret Room if a previous one was completed, meaning you can never get Secret Room 9 if you hadn't completed Secreet Room 8, and you can "save" a secret room from one location and use it in another.
    • The game also divides Secret Rooms between difficulties, with Dante having 20 per difficulty and Lucia having 10.
    • Related to the above, only 10 Secret Rooms for both characters give a blue orb fragment, and while Lucia's first 10 will always give a blue orb fragment, Dante will only get one in every even number room. Any Secret Room after the first third will not give blue orbs fragments.
    • Unlike Secret Missions, the game does throw boss battles at the player in a few Secret Rooms, with Dante's Secret Room level 60 being the most infamous one, since it throws two Despair Embodied at the player in the second wave.
    • Unlike Secret Missions, once you complete a Secret Room, you can no longer access it again.
• Easter Egg: Beating the game on Dante Must Die difficulty unlocks Dante's original outfit from 1, complete with the Force Edge in place of Rebellion. Additionally, most of Dante's sound files are switched from that of Matthew Kaminsky to Drew Coombs, his original voice actor from the first game.
• Easy Level Trick: There are many platforming sections that you are expected to traverse by jumping or double-jumping normally. However, these sections can be done quickly by equipping the Aerial Heart and flying over to the objective while in Devil Trigger form.
• Elevator Action Sequence:
  • The factory stage contains battles where you are swarmed by Flambats while riding inclined elevators.
  • There are short elevator battles while climbing the sky-scraper leading to Arius.
• Equipment Upgrade: Instead of spending Red Orbs to purchase specific skills for your weapons just like how it does in the first game, you spend Red Orbs to directly upgrade your weapon's damage in this game, and each weapon's level is denoted by a number below it if it's not yet maxed out.
• Expressive Health Bar: The border of your health bar flashes or pulsates green every time you recover health, whether by picking up Green Orbs or regenerating through Devil Trigger. Otherwise, it flashes or pulsates red when you take damage. Against certain enemies, the latter cue helps in letting you know if your character is still poisoned.
• Eye Scream: The player can inflict this on Infested Tank and Infested Chopper, as they both have a large, exposed eye, and doing so will do more damage.
• Fake Difficulty: Rather than there being a button to hold to lock-on to enemies, as most of the sequels would do, your character locks onto the nearest enemy automatically (and there is a button that can be held to turn this off). This causes two major sources of frustration; firstly, all attacks made are directed towards the enemy that is currently locked on to, even if you are aiming in the completely opposite direction. Secondly, You can control the lock-on by the right analog stick, but this is poorly explained, players might not figure it out at all. These particularly make some of the Flunky Bosses more difficult since your character will spend half of the time attacking their mooks. The game also prioritizes only two enemies at times, which can make a pain to aim at flying enemies like Puia if you would rather eliminate them first.
• Fakin' MacGuffin: Dante fools Arius by switching his own coin with the Arcana Medaglia. All according to plan.
  Dante: A false coin, for a false god.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Goat demons appear as Elite Mooks and are collectively called the "Goat Clan". They come in three variants, from the weakest to the strongest; Goatlings, Blood Goats, and Abyss Goats. The latter two tend to fly and utilize magic during combat.
• Fictional Document: Each mission's start-up screen contains a passage from "Guidepost for the Hunters" alongside its Chapter and Clause numbers. These briefly foreshadow what you're about to encounter during the missions, but they're narrated in a subtly cryptic manner; the "Hunter", "Protector" and "King" subjects mentioned in these passages refer to Dante, Lucia and Arius respectively, while the other bosses are mentioned using their descriptions or Meaningful Names.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • There are three Attribute Devil Hearts that imbue you Devil Trigger form's attacks with fire, ice or lightning.
  • Trismagia splits itself into three heads, each of whom command one of these three elements.
  • The three types of "Mancer" demons subvert this trend. Pyromancers, Auromancers, and Brontomancers use fire, wind and lightning magic, respectively.
• Flat Character: Except for Arius, all other bosses are individually just another enemy for Dante and Lucia to defeat. They have little to no additional traits aside from some short characteristics mentioned in their files, and most of them neither have personality nor spoken lines. Even if Trismagia does speak and mock Dante near the finale, that's all there is to his characterization.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere:
  • While all the bosses in this game (except for Arius) are nothing but gigantic monstrosities that show up out of the blue to attack Dante and Lucia, special mention goes to Phantom's appearance. Aside from a short text implying Time Travel, there's no significant build up to it, only a cutscene depicting him falling from the sky. Dante doesn't even make any comment about him, despite having killed him some time in the first game.
  • Griffon is one of the heads of the Final Boss Argosax the Chaos along with some other bosses, including the above-mentioned Phantom. However, what makes this worse than Phantom's is that unlike all the other bosses, Griffon was never fought in the story and, in fact, did not even make an appearance in the whole game, which means that he literally comes out of nowhere to be a part of the final boss. Quite possibly the most baffling version of this trope ever.
  • Not even the slightest prior mention was given to The Despair Embodied's existence in the story. It simply bursts out of a cocoon that ejects from Argosax's withering husk and immediately challenges Dante. His Japanese description at least mentions it's Argosax's true form.
• The Goomba:
  • The Finis demons that are easily prone to knockback than any other type in the game.
  • The Msira demons that generally have lower health than their elite variants.
  • The Flambats that die in one shot.
• Gratuitous Italian: Used badly with the "Arcana" MacGuffin. First, in Italian, the noun precede the adjective (so it should be Spada Arcana or Medaglia Arcana). Second, Calice and Bastone are male nouns, so they should be "Arcano". Third, the plural form would be "Arcani".
• Gruesome Goat: Goatlings, Blood Goats and Abyss Goats are among the demonic enemies that Dante and Lucia fight. They have a goat-like head and legs, humanoid torsos and bat-like wings, and are both ferocious melee fighters and adept mages.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The game doesn't tell you that there are different movesets or additional combos for each character, let alone how to do them. Specifically, the in-game "Actions" menu doesn't even list half of what you can do. This trips up even experienced DMC players, since some combos here are implemented differently compared to how they work in the rest of the series. For example:
    • Dante's unlisted moves include a shoulder check move (performed with the same input as Lucia's Lush), an aerial combo, and different combos with a shotgun. The game also outright lies about how one of the moves is performed (Rain Storm's control tip only says that it can be done against an "enemy right below you", while in fact, it can only be done right when Dante falls upside-down from moves like Air Hike or Wall Hike even if there's no enemy around). And most importantly, the movelist doesn't mention Dante's Desperation Attack (commonly known by fans as the "Majin Form"), or any moves you can perform with it.
    • Lucia's movelist doesn't mention a frontflip kick (performed with the same input as Dante's Stinger), different aerial moves, several moves with her ranged weapons (downward Darts throw similar to Rain Storm, or how to actually throw Cranky Bombs), and Devil Trigger-exclusive moves that are done by pressing the "melee" and "shoot" buttons simultaneously.
    • Trish's movelist doesn't mention the non-Devil Trigger Round Trip, any of Trish's barehanded moves, or the Devil Trigger-exclusive Vortex attack.
  • Secret Rooms need some effort or a walkthrough to find since they aren't easily indicated by cues. For example, Dante's Secret Mission 1 is accessed by going through a gate that looks no different than most of the doors found in other buildings.
  • The game has a secret way of gaining more orbs in battles if you drop the style meter in a specific order. If you do it three times (Like say, C>D>E), the next enemy you kill will drop three times the amount of orbs, and if you do it six times (Like E>E>D>D>A>A), the next ten enemies will drop ten times the amount of orbs, both with a cap of 3000. This doc explains the patterns available.
  • The style ranking itself. In this game you need to get 3.5 points to get an S rank in style, and it works on averages. Once the style bar gets to S and it drops, you get 5 points (Which can increase by one point if you attacking for a while without repeating moves too much), but every rank has a point, including the unseen style rank E, which gives 0 points, and each higher rank gives one more point, so if a player gets to Showtime twice, but starts and drops the combo meter to E twice, the game will calculate (5+5+0+0)/4, and it will result in a final score of 2.5, below the requirements to get a S rank in style. In other words, it's better to not fight at all at times to keep the average high. This is also why Lucia's mission 7 is so notoriously difficult to get a high style rank, (Specially in LMD), the fight against Tateobesu has no dodge to keep the style up, and the game did not change the style timer or disable it in underwater levels, so the player will most likely get the unseen rank E style and drop it constantly, making the average worse. Another thing is that dodging an attack does start the style bar, even if it's the unseen rank E, so dodging an enemy's attack and ignoring them afterwards will make the average worse. Attacking is also not necessary to get a score, as the game only cares about the rank starting and dropping, so you can for example, play Dante's mission 2, dodge until you get Showtime, and complete the rest of the mission without hitting a single enemy, and you will get S rank in style.
• Haunted Technology: Dante and Lucia encounter a species of insect-like demons called the Infestants, which have the power to merge their bodies with technology or machinery. Some battles require you to destroy several infested tanks and an infested helicopter that the Infestants are controlling.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: After defeating her, Arius demands Dante to hand over the Arcana in exchange for Lucia's life. Dante surrenders them to the floor and rescues Lucia, much to her slight disappointment. However, a later twist reveals Dante secretly swapped his coin with the Arcana Medaglia.
• Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: This game's Stylish Ranks are: "Don't worry", "Come on!", "Bingo!", "Are you ready?" and "Showtime!!"
• Imperfect Ritual: Subverted. Dante attempts to sabotage the ritual to summon the demon king Argosax by replacing the Arcana Medaglia with an ordinary coin, but the spell still creates a portal to the Demon World anyway.
• Informed Attribute: Once you start playing as Trish, checking out the upgrades menu will show that Sparda Sword and Luce & Ombra are fully upgraded, but that's not true, their upgrades are dependant on Dante's Rebellion or Lucia's Cutlaseer for Sparda Sword, and Dante's Ebony & Ivory or Lucia's Throwing Daggers for Luce & Ombra, and there's no way for Trish to upgrade them, so if the player hasn't done so yet by the time Trish is unlocked, they'd have to switch to the other characters, upgrade those weapons, save the game, load it, then switch back to Trish.
• Interface Spoiler: The HD Collection introduced an Achievement System for the first three Devil May Cry games, but these also include unhidden spoilers such as the names of the bosses, or the existence of unlockables and extras such as additional weapons or alternate playable characters.
• Irony: Vendetta is just a decorative sword, despite this it's Dante's strongest one.
• It's Okay to Cry: Lucia becomes a Death Seeker after discovering she is a creation of the villain Arius and fears she may turn on her friends. When she tearfully suggests sacrificing herself to destroy the Final Boss, Dante once again repeats his "Devils Never Cry" line and assures her that she is worthy of living, in a similar context to his assurance to Trish from the first game; that there is nothing wrong with her showing emotion like a human.
• Level in Reverse: Lucia's first mission basically makes her retrace Dante's first mission in reverse.
• Living Structure Monster:
  • The sealed doors would attack Dante or Lucia if you got too close, but otherwise left you alone until you got rid of them by solving a puzzle and/or killing some enemies.
  • Nefasturris, the "Tower of Sin", is an enormous demon which is summoned into the human world using an entire skyscraper as a conduit.
• Loose Canon: By and large, Devil May Cry 2's impact on the franchise's canon has been kept to the barest of minimums. Prior to the timeline re-arrangement around Devil May Cry 5's release, DMC2 was stated to have been set long after the events of Devil May Cry 4 in such a way that it was deliberately kept out of any ongoing story arcs at the time. Capcom then reslotted DMC2 between DMC1 and DMC4, but even so, it still has no relevance to the latter game's plot anyway. DMC5 reuses or recalls significant plot threads touched on in DMC1, DMC3 and DMC4 but nothing much from this game aside from minor references (the only major relevance of DMC2 in anything related to DMC5 isn't found in the latter game itself, but in its Before the Nightmare prequel novel). Ironically, its biggest influence in the rest of the franchise are related to Trish, who's not even part of the story, but her using a moveset that is similar to Dante's, using Luce & Ombra, and having her Devil Trigger being her just putting on sunglasses, all come from this game.
• Male Might, Female Finesse: Co-protagonists Dante and Lucia; the former's style of swordplay features strong (if not somewhat slow) attacks while the latter is less powerful than Dante but is quicker and more agile than him. Trish, however, is a "female might" inversion by virtue of being based on Dante's playstyle from the first game.
• Map Stabbing: In the prologue cutscene, Lucia called for Dante's help but doesn't explain why when asked about it. Instead, she throws a dagger towards a map of Vie de Marli (the game's main setting), subtly inviting Dante to go there.
• Marathon Level: This is the game that introduced Bloody Palace to the franchise, a mode that features a very long series of enemy and boss encounters that you're expected to finish in one session. This game's iteration of the mode has 9999 levels, but you can skip up to 100 levels at a time by choosing harder fights.
• Masked Villains, Unmasked Heroes: The Secretaries are female demon Mooks under the command of the main villain Arius. Their attire includes a bird-like feather mask. The Deuteragonist Lucia is actually one of the Secretaries herself but is a good guy and doesn't wear a mask like them.
• Monster and the Maiden: The novel has Dante teaming up with a human woman named Beryl. She is actually a prototype of Lady from the third game, being a female devil hunter with a BFG and a father who becomes a demon.
• Monster Arena:
  • Secret Rooms pit you against several demons that you have to kill.
  • This game also introduces the Bloody Palace; a gauntlet-style arena where you have to defeat waves of enemies to progress.
• Nerf: Compared to DMC1, Dante's Stinger has a stronger knockback, but its general effectiveness is bogged down by its shorter range and a noticeably longer delay before he stabs, to the point that in harder modes, enemies like can hit Dante out of Stinger after Dante already started it, something that would never happen in any game before or after.
• No, I Am Behind You: How Dante finishes off The Despair Embodied. He charges at the entity with his sword, and Dante's opponent counter attacks. When the dust clears, the Rebellion falls into the ground and Dante is nowhere in sight. The Despair Embodied then checks his surroundings. Cue Dante, standing right next to him with his gun pointed at the side of his head. Dante smirks and then pulls the trigger, right as The Despair Embodied gives an Oh, Crap! reaction (well, as best as a being with no eyes can), and the shot shatters the Demon King into countless pieces.
• Nostalgia Level: Lucia's levels replicate some gimmicks from the missions of DMC1. Strangely enough, these aren't present in Dante's levels even though he's the only playable character from that game.
  • Lucia's first mission begins with her needing 45 Red Orbs to get past through a sealed door. Dante's first obstacle in the first game is a red door that requires 45 Red Orbs to open.
  • The Evil Heart attaches itself to Lucia and slowly drains her health, just like how the Guiding Light slowly drained Dante's health in 1 before it's removed.
  • There are underwater levels just like in the first game, although they are only available on Lucia's campaign. She gets to fight Sargasso and Blade demons from DMC1, and the latter type can swim around just like how they did in that game.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Primarily present in the Background Music of levels, cutscenes, and boss battles during the latter half of the game.
• Opening Monologue: The game starts with a narrator's recap of Sparda's legend and a brief introduction to his son, Dante.
  Narrator: In a time, long since past... In an age of darkness, when the Earth was overrun with demons... and humans were powerless under their rule... Humanity's hope... lived in a demon, named Sparda. With a spirit unlike any other, and wielding the sword that bore his own name... Sparda eradicated the demons... And now... the Legend of Sparda, has been inherited, by his son... The demon slayer... Dante!
• Parrying Bullets: In Lucia's disc, one magical wall has to be destroyed by deflecting its fireballs back at it using melee attacks.
• Powers as Programs: The properties of your Devil Trigger form vary depending what Devil Hearts are equipped on the Amulet.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Dante gives one after defeating Arius for the second time.
  Dante: "'King'? Yeah, here's your crown..."
• Product Placement: There are alternate costumes that were based on actual brand clothing designed by a company called Diesel, which helped promote the game in Japan.
• Random Events Plot: The plot is rather rushed and underdeveloped for the most part, where things just, happen. The most nonsensical moment is when Lucia meets Arius in mission 6, where he teleports her somewhere else to fight Noctpteran, after she kills it she's then teleported somewhere else, which just happens to be nearby a Megdalia that Dante just happened to go get.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: You could switch between your firearms on the fly by pressing a certain button.
• Recurring Riff: "Dance With Devils", the intro theme, has its octave changed to serve as "Evil Tower" (the theme of the battle with Nefasturris) while its guitar riff and Ominous Latin Chanting respectively are featured in "Shoot The Works" (Dante's second battle theme) and "Cry For The Moon" (Arius' boss theme).
• Retcon:
  • Rebellion's importance was changed in later games. In DMC2, Rebellion is only vaguely called a "standard sword", Force Edge was originally a memento handed down to Dante by his father, which is still kept in DMC2 as Dante's DMC1 costume still calls it a memento. DMC3 changed the sword to Rebellion and Force Edge was stuck in the Demon World in DMC3 until Dante takes it back with him in the end.
  • As a whole, Capcom originally took DMC2 to exist as the distant last game in the timeline while the other three games at the time happened in close enough proximity that they had connecting threads to one another. However as Devil May Cry 5 neared, Capcom rearranged it so 2 now sits between 1 and 4.
• Replaced with Replica: The main villain Arius wants to gain the power of a demon named Argosax and needs four sacred relics called the Arcana to open a portal to the Demon World. One of these items, the Medaglia, is a small coin which Dante swaps out with his own coin in an attempt to ruin the ritual. As a result, Arius fails to attain Argosax's power in time and is easily bested by the devil hunter. A few moments later, a portal still inexplicably opens, forcing Dante to hop in and defeat Argosax.
• Respawn on the Spot: This game introduced Gold Orbs to the series, which are items that let you revive on-the-spot with full health regardless of where you died.
• Rewatch Bonus: During the cutscene where Dante hands over the Arcana to Arius, if you look closely at the Medaglia, you can see it's actually Dante's coin. This is way before his Fakin' MacGuffin trick is revealed.
• Rise to the Challenge: In Dante's fifth mission, the Infested Chopper chases him as he climbs a burning tower. The floors below are also slowly being engulfed by rising flames. Fortunately, the flames won't instantly kill you, but deal periodic damage if you don't climb back up.
• Same Plot Sequel: This game essentially rehashes the same plotline as the first one. Devil hunter Dante is invited by an Action Girl to a remote island in order to stop demonic forces from raising an ancient demon sealed away in the Demon World by Dante's father Sparda. The Action Girl is later revealed to be a demon created by the Big Bad. Dante comforts her by telling her "Devils never cry" and, after defeating the Big Bad, the Action Girl joins Dante's agency. The main difference between Trish and Lucia is that the former was actually working for Mundus then turned good at the end of DMC1 while Lucia defected from Arius before the beginning of DMC2's story. In the Final Boss fight of his campaign, Dante also kills The Despair Embodied with a powered-up shot from his handgun, just like how he defeated Mundus in the first game.
• Secondary-Color Nemesis:
  • The Secretaries are "mannequin" demons created and commanded by Arius. They all dress in plum leather outfits. Lucia, being the only good Secretary, wears white, gray and brown.
  • Possessed Arius has sickly green skin.
• Sequence Breaking: Some paths can only be traversed after you obtain specific Movement Devil Hearts for your Amulet and Devil Trigger form. These are mandatory on your initial playthrough with the specific character, and they normally involve activating Seal Spheres, defeating the enemies, and obtaining the Hearts before you can proceed to the path. But because Devil Hearts are carried over in a New Game Plus, it's possible to skip portions of these sequences in your next playthroughs. For example, you can just step on the DT platform and fly up in the starting area of Lucia's Mission 2; the switch for the Aerial Heart becomes optional because it's already present in your inventory.
• Serpent Staff: The Arcana are four sacred relics that were once used to imprison the demon Argosax and are now being sought out by Arius so he can absorb Argosax's powers. One of the Arcana is the Arcana Bastone, a staff with the wings of a caduceus and the single snake of the Rod of Asclepius.
• Shout-Out: In the HD Collection, passing 9000 floors in the Bloody Palace mode earns you the "Over 9000!" achievement.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Trismagia threatens Dante to "repent" prior to their fight. Dante, unfazed, counters by telling him to shut up and die.
  Trismagia: The Son of Sparda. You must repent your sins!
  Dante: Don't speak, just die!
• Sprint Shoes: The Quick Heart increases Dante's/Lucia's movement speed when in Devil Trigger, while Desperation Devil Trigger/Majin Form does this for Dante regardless of what Heart he has equipped.
• Stab the Scorpion: Dante points his handgun towards Lucia in the prologue cutscene, only to reveal that he's about to shoot the Puia demon behind her.
• The Stinger: Lucia hopefully waits for Dante in his Devil May Cry shop after he made an apparent one-way trip to the Underworld riding a motorcycle. Remembering how Matier parallels Dante's decision to that of his father, Lucia monologues that "Sparda did come back". Lucia flips Dante's lucky coin one more time, then heads out when she hears the sound of a motorcycle engine nearby.
• Surprisingly Super-Tough Thing: The "Red/Blue devices" (Basically, switches in the form of a pedestal with an intricate circular object layered in its surface) can only be activated by the playable character's only means of interacting with the environment: attacking it. They won't break even if you use the character's strongest attack, though they'll activate faster if you do that.
• Superboss: Dante's very last Secret Room involves fighting The Despair Embodied in a far more cramped area compared to the fight in the story, and after they are defeated, you have to fight two more at the same time.
• Tarot Motifs: DMC2 has Dante and Lucia searching for four MacGuffin artifacts called the Arcana, which are named after the Italian names of the four minor tarot suits: Medaglia (coins/disks/medals), Spada (swords), Calice (cups), and Bastone (wands/staffs/batons).
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Some of the Finis enemies fight with razor-lined shields that they throw at you.
• Timed Mission:
  • After defeating Furiataurus, Dante has to escape before the factory explodes.
  • In Mission 15 of Dante's disc, you are given 3 minutes to defeat all enemies before you can progress. Lucia has an equivalent of this in her eleventh mission.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The impending eclipse serves as Dante and Lucia's deadline because Arius plans to revive Argosax using the Arcana during that time period. You can also see it in some late-game missions where the sky is fully visible.
• Two-Headed Coin: Dante repeatedly flips one as he teases Lucia and Matier over whether he should help them or not. He hints that the quirk may come from his father. The coin later becomes a Chekhov's Gun in retrospect as Dante uses it to fake the Medaglia sought by Arius.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Just like the first game, there are underwater sequences here, and both your speed and your melee capabilities are severely limited (even with the Aqua Heart equipped). Oh, one boss is also fought underwater. These are only available in Lucia's campaign.
• Updated Re-release: The Devil May Cry HD Collection is a compilation of DMC1, DMC2 and DMC3:SE, featuring upgraded resolutions of HD 720p (for PS3 and Xbox 360) or HD 1080p (for PS4 and Xbox One) and other optimizations. Achievements and Trophies were also added.
• Wall Crawl: The Msira demons can crawl on walls just like lizards.
• Warrior vs. Sorcerer: The Big Bad of the game is Arius, an Evil Sorcerer who seeks to claim the power of an ancient demon. He is opposed by Dante and Lucia, the game's heroes. Dante fights with a sword and a pair of guns while Lucia is a Dance Battler who uses two short swords and a bunch of knives. The two heroes are a half-demon and an artificial demon respectively, but have no spellcasting knowledge, instead using their weapons, fighting skills, and mystical items in tandem with their superhuman physical abilities.
• Wham Episode:
  • In Lucia's sixth mission, she learns that she's actually an artificial demon created by Arius, the secretary demons look just like her, and her actual name is "Chi".
  • In Lucia's final mission, we learn that Dante's lucky coin is actually a Two Headed coin, which retroactively means that he always planned to help Matier and Lucia from the start, and that he doesn't want to let Lucia go through an apparent one-way trip to the Demon World.
• Whatevermancy: This naming theme is combined with a subversion of Fire, Ice, Lightning, resulting in Pyromancers, Auromancers, and Brontomancers for the three types of wizard demons that use fire, wind and lightning magic, respectively.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: DMC2 presents a completely fictional location like Dumary Island where it is completely impossible to determine where it's located. Dumary Island looks like it's Mediterranean inspired as it's said its inhabitants are composed of people who came from it.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning:
  • The Electro Heart imbues your attacks with a mix of white and blue lightning.
  • Just like in the first game, Trish uses yellow lightning.