Capcom has several titles that can be considered as the developer’s trump card, but perhaps the most well-known among the older audiences are the Resident Evil and Devil May Cry series. The latter came about after it was initially supposed to serve as Resident Evil 4, before it got a life of its own.

Due to their shared history and occasionally similar themes, there’s a valid comparison to be made over which series excelled in a particular category. While they’re both quality franchises that have excelled in their respective departments, here are five things each where either series has one-upped the other.

10 DMC: Coolness Factor

There needs to be a certain draw for new fans to be pulled into purchasing a game, and here Devil May Cry has it won in spades. Everything about the series is supposed to be “cool,” in that it is geared toward flashy styles and theatricality.

You’ll find thousands of artworks by fans owing to the presentation found in the series and cosplayers devoted to the characters, as the games are made with the intention to appeal every way from visuals to phonetic quality. The Resident Evil series can’t be considered to have that eye-popping style that makes gamers want to emulate them, at least not as much compared to Devil May Cry.

9 RE: Horror

With enemies that showcase brutality and gore, Devil May Cry is meant to carry a horror theme along with the action, but it doesn’t land nearly as hard as the Resident Evil series does in this category. These games can scare the daylights out of players, especially the early ones that were credited as being particularly thrilling.

The latest main entry, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, reaffirmed the series’ intention to make horror a priority, and even the action-oriented titles had this down pat. The Devil May Cry games do a good job in setting the stage for scary events, but the execution isn’t that great.

8 DMC: Story & Dialogue

Being immersed in a new revelation about Dante or Nero is part of the hook of playing Devil May Cry games, and no fan plays these games only for the fighting. The series has done a great job in bringing twists and turns in the plot, with particular praise to be handed out to the dialogue. The cheesiness is deliberate here, making the protagonists likable despite their status as demons.

Meanwhile, the Resident Evil series has always had a rather tame story in each entry where new or returning characters are placed in situations that could be considered interchangeable from one game to another.

7 RE: Innovation

The remarkable thing about the Resident Evil series is how it reinvents itself after every mainstream release. This was first seen in Resident Evil 4, which shifted from the fixed camera angle of earlier games to an over-the-shoulder perspective. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard then evolved further into a first-person feature.

The games have also dabbled with genres, as earlier ones were horror-based before shifting to action; the recent ones have a mixture of both. Devil May Cry games have remained largely the same, with only a few innovations like Nero’s Devil Bringer, but overall there hasn’t been that much imagination.

6 DMC: Boss Battles

Being a hack-and-slash affair, the Devil May Cry series has excelled in bringing exciting boss bottles, all of which contain increasing levels of difficulty for them to be challenging for gamers. This practice has become a hallmark for the series, with bosses of different strength levels surprising the player.

The Resident Evil series has tried numerous times in making boss battles a thing, only for these sequences to become the less-memorable parts of the games. While they do contain strategy, they’re just not as expressive as the Devil May Cry series makes its boss fights.

5 RE: Replay Value

The fact of the matter is that the Devil May Cry games have far too much backtracking involved, meaning you have to retrace your steps and play through the same levels again. This ends up taking away the replay value significantly after finishing the game.

With a story mode that lasts a heck of a lot longer than its counterpart, the Resident Evil games are prime for second plays. These games also have a learning curve that takes longer than usual, and players tend to return in order to master their abilities and uncover further secrets they hadn’t picked up on in their original run.

4 DMC: Character Quality

The style of the series means that Devil May Cry characters are too interesting not to get attached to them. The brash and cocky types of Dante and Nero are supplemented by darker characters like Vergil and V, thereby bringing together a well-rounded cast whose connections to one another forms the basis of the intrigue.

The Resident Evil games have a much larger collection of characters, but the downside here is that they don’t interact with one another with as much personality. On some level, you could swap one character for another and the game would still play out the same way.

3 RE: Longevity

At some point or another, you’d think fatigue would set in on a series and fans would get bored. However, that’s just not the case with Resident Evil, which has had about twenty or so titles in total as of writing. The series has managed to remain critically and commercially acclaimed despite so many releases, enabling it to have a permanent impact on the gaming industry.

Meanwhile, Devil May Cry has only about a third of titles of its own, during which there were extremely long gaps in release. Devil May Cry 2 also received unanimously mixed-to-negative reviews, meaning the series hasn’t had the same kind of reception the Resident Evil series has enjoyed.

2 DMC: Graphics

No matter which generation these games have been released in, the graphics have been much better for the Devil May Cry series. This might be due to the Resident Evil games featuring larger in-game environments, but the graphics department still belongs to its counterpart.

Character models in this series have been gorgeous to behold, with extra care given to the features that are used during gameplay. The backdrop of the demon world fits beautifully with the Gothic nature of the games, and overall the Devil May Cry series has done well in bringing graphics and the theme on the same length.

1 RE: Gameplay Variety

There’s only so much you can do in a Hack-and-Slash game before it becomes repetitive, and the reality is that the Devil May Cry games mainly have to do with the player slashing away at demons. This is why the Resident Evil series has the replay value it does, since these titles can feel completely different with gameplay variations.

You’d think you were playing an entirely different game simply by using a different gun in your playthrough, or when the game changes things up by making the player escape rather than fight. The differences in level design from one place to another also offer a new perspective, and sometimes the style of controlling one character feels unique in its own way.

NEXT: Resident Evil’s 10 Scariest Villains Ranked