It has recently come to public attention that Devil May Cry 5 includes microtransactions that let you purchase red orbs.

Red orbs can be used in the game to acquire new skills and progress your character. In addition to what reported by GameSpot, we can also add through our own observation when we tested the game that they can be used to revive in the same place if you get defeated, with increasing prices depending on how many times you use this feature within the same level, and how much life you want to revive with.

The question many of you may be asking yourselves is: how many red orbs can you earn simply by playing the game, and are they sufficient to skill up effectively?

To let you come to your own conclusions, we played the game ourselves and calculated how many orbs can be earned simply by playing The level featuring Dante showcased at Tokyo Game Show.

Do keep in mind that the numbers below may not be final, as progression often gets tweaked for balance during development.

I started the level with 4,377 orbs, and by the final boss, we had reached 26,843 (of course counting the orbs we during the level). This means that by merely killing stuff and breaking red clusters we accrued 22,466 orbs.

I didn't even go too much out of my way to find every red cluster hidden in the level, meaning that there are probably more available if you take your time to explore.

Being the scrub that I am at Devil May Cry, this was achieved without any particular skillful play. It's my evaluation that almost everyone on Earth can achieve similar results or better.

On top of that, you received a sizable number of bonus orbs after killing the boss depending on your stylish rank. A rather crappy B rank provided nearly 20,000 orbs. This means that a single level played by a scrub like me can easily net you over 40,000 orbs in the current build. Finishing with higher rank can (if you're extremely good, which I am not) earn twice that post-mission bonus, pushing you around 60,000.

Of course, you also need to know how many orbs can you spend to correctly quantify their value.

The revive feature costs 1,500 orbs if you want only 30% of your life back, 3,000 points if you want 100% of your initial non-upgraded life, and 7,500 if you want every bit of it, upgraded life included. The second time you use a revive in the same mission those values grow to 7,500, 15,000, and 37,500 respectively.

If you don't want to spend orbs, you can simply go back to the latest checkpoint.

Most abilities I saw in the progression menu cost between 8,000 and 10,000 orbs at tier 1, and the tier 2 ability I saw costs 20,000 orbs. The top ability of one of the available lines (that I saw) costs 35,000. One specific exception is the top ability of another line, which costs a whopping 3,000,000 orbs is not an attack used in combat. This one is, at least from what I could see, an exception regarding price, and everything else I saw was much, much more affordable.

This is pretty much all the data I have, and hopefully, it'll let you gauge the game's progression and the influence of microtransactions with a better knowledge base.

Personally, I feel that red orbs are provided very liberally by the game, and playing normally shouldn't require making any purchase, at least going by the level I played. I certainly can't see myself spending a dime on this. While I am a scrub, I don't pay for cheats.

Once again, do keep in mind that nothing of this is final until the game releases, but it should give you a better idea of what kind of balance Capcom is currently aiming for.

If you want to see more about Devil May Cry 5, you can enjoy a video showing Dante in action on Xbox One X, another showcasing the Japanese voice cast, the latest screenshots, and the latest trailer. You can also read about the Deluxe Edition, the PC requirements for the game, and Director Hideaki Itsuno's comments on how Ninja Theory's DMC influenced development.

Devil May Cry 5 releases on March 8th, 2019, for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. If you’d like to reserve a copy, you can already pre-order it on Amazon.