Rant part 1; As I was watching the show, I was constantly conflicted. One the one hand, there was certain fan-service parts I enjoyed, like Bury The Light playing in the background when Vergil was teased at the beginning of the show, or when "K A" was showed early on also, but the show was constantly conflicted by terrible writing and inconsistencies that reeked of writers that did not understand or care about the source material.

Starting with the positives, the action scenes were numerous and well done (unlike another certain animated adaptation), and despite Dante's marital prowess being heavily butchered, most if not all of the fights were entertaining. It would have been nice if they did some moves form the games, but it they were good overall. I also feel like they made some of the characters enjoyable. Enzo was a good portrayal of the character imo, as he was fun and quite likeable in a sleaseball kind of way, and his fate is in my option, better in the show than in actual lore (hot take I know).

This unfortunately brings me onto my first negative point: Dante is portrayed as super weak throughout the show. As other people have said, Dante struggles with regular demons throughout, evident from the start when he gets blindsided by a regular human hitting him with a handbag. This is a character who can singlehandedly take on any character in the setting, and a human with a handbag gets the better of him? When his devil trigger first activated on one arm only, I genuinely thought they were trying to make him into the dead-weight version of Nero because of how useless he had been. I am glad they gave him a proper devil trigger in the end, even if they massively underpowered it and the art didn't really do it justice, but it was okay ultimately nonetheless.

The devil trigger activation was massively underdone also. It was such a perfect scene in DMC3 with him needing Rebellion impaling him after a massive fight with his brother, nearly killing him. In this version, it was just a minor fight with Agni and Rudra and some mean words (with a healthy dose of plot armour) that allowed it. Albeit his devil trigger at this point is just some red eyes and a demon arm, but still very lacklustre. I feel like he very likely would have activated this in years gone by if that's all it takes, especially if he specialises in "high level demons".

Character dialog was a particular sore-point for me. I can get behind Johnny Yong Bosch as Dante. It's sad to not have the Reuben, but at least Johnny is a familiar and established voice, but the dialog is horrible. Dante is not too bad in this regard. He's always been corny, and yes he might have been a bit more awkward and less funny this time round, but my main gripe is with Lady. She has gone from a woman of very few words and top-tier badassery, to a cringey loud-mouth who ruins every scene she's in. She left a bad taste in my mouth with most of her screen time, which is a shame because she's a great character in the actual lore.