History VideoGame / DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening

-->Life of vengeance, a passive test, Until the grave I will rest, Engage the pressure until it crumbles,\\
The existence of the lifeless black souls, Onward to the sacred battlefield, Where justification and limits are revealed,\\
Hail to a father of divine, To the son the light will shine, From the angst of lost memories, A just revenge to cure misery.

* ActionBomb: Hell Wraths carry organic bombs, which they detonate after receiving sufficient damage. The explosion deals heavy damage to both the player and other enemies, including the Wrath itself, who inevitably dies.

[[caption-width-right:350:"This party's gettin' crazy! Let's rock!"]]

Several years before the events of ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry1'' and ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry2'', a young and arrogant Dante is visited by a strange man named Arkham, who informs him that Dante's brother is looking for him. A great tower named Temen-ni-gru suddenly rises out of the ground soon after, unleashing hordes of demons upon the city. Dante, always ready for a fight, sets off to conquer the tower, encountering swarms of demons, monstrous bosses, a gun-toting lady who refuses to give him her name, and the mysterious Arkham himself, all coming to a final confrontation with his estranged twin brother Vergil.

In February 2020, the game was ported over to the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch. However, rather than being a straight port like its predecessors, the Switch version of ''Devil May Cry 3'' added new gameplay features under the exclusive "Freestyle" mode, like Real-Time Style Switching and the Irregular Full Custom Weapon Switching, features that wouldn't be introduced until ''4'' and ''5'', as well as the addition of Local Co-Op Bloody Palace with Dante and Vergil, a first ever for the series.

* CouldntFindAPen: After Dante bursts forth from Leviathan's eye and lands on a higher floor of the tower, the nearby pillar has a "Welcome" text and Jester's portrait below it, both written and drawn in blood. The camera also focuses on it for a while during that cutscene.

** The weird face-ball thing that Jester spawns [[spoiler:has a red eye and a scarred face just like Arkham. For that matter, Jester's own heterochromia hints at his relation to Lady.]]
* FranchiseCodifier: The ''Devil May Cry'' series has always focused on StylishAction from the beginning, but since the first two games have a lot of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, it's only until ''Devil May Cry 3'' where the series showed significant consistency. Subsequent games would all derive from the gameplay design, mechanics and features of this game; from having 20 numbered missions, the [[IdiosyncraticComboLevels Stylish Ranks]] capping at SSS, an expansive main menu, a [[ConceptArtGallery gallery]], RealTimeWeaponChange for both ranged and melee weapons, StanceSystem, recurring combo animations, and even simple HUD elements such as the gauges being segmented into bars. Story-wise, it also set the foundation for Dante and Vergil's characterizations that are followed by the next games within the main continuity, even if it had to {{retcon}} some plot points from the first game.

* VengeanceDenied: Demon hunter Lady swears revenge against her father Arkham for sacrificing her mother to demons in a bid to become a god. When she later finds Dante standing over her father's corpse, she wrongly assumes he killed him and attacks him for interfering in her vengeance. [[spoiler:Subverted later in the game; Arkham was FakingTheDead, and Lady gets to kill him after all]].
-->'''Lady''': This was my father, my family. This was all supposed to end by my hand!

** Nevan. The [[HornyDevils type of demon she is]] justifies this, but still, she says stuff like ''"Sugarrr"'', makes [[OrgasmicCombat orgasmic sounds when she takes a hit]], and [[KissOfDeath kisses Dante]] to replenish her health.

** "Devil(s) Cry" is a {{Downplayed|Trope}} derivation of the series title. The main theme of ''3'', "Devils Never Cry", has verses ending with the line "Praise to my father, Blessed by the water, Black night, dark sky, The devils cry".

** Though Dante has a habit of dropping the phrase "Devils never cry" OnceAnEpisode, it's not until the end of this game where Lady tells Dante in response to that, "Even a devil may cry when he loses a loved one." [[AnachronicOrder Chronologically]], this would be the first time the phrase is mentioned.

* AStormIsComing: Arkham says this almost word-for-word as he walks off to deal with Lady at the beginning of Mission 4.

* IsThatWhatHeToldYou: A variation. Vergil questions and mocks Lady after [[spoiler:she confronts him in Mission 13 over her father Arkham supposedly [[BlatantLies being manipulated by "a Devil named Vergil" when he murdered her mother Kalina Ann]], tricking Lady into going after Vergil to get revenge.]]

** Dante can acquire the colossal Lahti L-39 anti-tank rifle called Spiral. Although it deals significant damage, it has a slow firing rate and a noticeable recoil.
** Kalina Ann, Lady's trademark rocket launcher with a rather large bayonet attached to it, is nearly as long as she is tall. [[spoiler:She temporarily gives it to Dante after their fight, hoping that it could help him defeat Arkham.]]

** Destroying a jukebox in Mission 3 will inexplicably incite it to play a few notes [[MusicalNod from a remix]] of the battle theme in ''[=DMC1=]''.

* PercussiveMaintenance: Dante to his jukebox in the beginning, although he does leave a dent in it. Later, he needs to operate a machine to open the cage containing the next plot coupon. The machine's key is actually an ornamental spear, so he stabs the machine with the spear. When nothing happens, he kicks it and it works. In the ''Special Edition'', playable Vergil also does the same thing in the latter example because the same animation of Dante is reused when Vergil also interacts with the machine.

* FlamingSword: Agni is a fiery sword wielded alongside the wind sword Rudra.

** If they are still in their "blood" forms, striking the Blood-goyles with melee attacks will just cause them to split and multiply. The "proper" way to damage them is to petrify them with ranged attacks, then only afterwards can they be damaged with melee attacks while they are in "stone" form.

* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: Every time you purchase an item, the price goes up. After five or so buys the price will freeze though.