Originally posted by Man of...
The shit Dante does in DMC makes the high flyin' shit that Kratos and Hayabusa do look VERY unimpressive. And I'm not even the only dude to say that...Consensus is that Dante is like the most badass motha phucka of all time.
You don't say shit to be badass, you don't have to look like anything to be badass, it's the shit you do that makes you badass. And I have yet to see a character do some shit like that.
And that's fact...
Dante's got the feats of a typical JRPG character. Even then, his are barely to the same degree as even KH's Sora; does that somehow make him more badass? The only consensus to those feats is eye-candy; all style and no substance to show for it. This is something that's becoming more over-used in games than the "quiet and gruff badass" has been in most forms of culture. Rarely is it ever well-executed in gameplay either (if it ever is). That's what Final Fantasy VII had degraded into over the years.
Feats of characters like Kratos or Solid Snake aren't often taken to that high of a calibur, opting for more subtle means of showing what they're capable of. Yes, what one does matters, but how its done is more important, and for someone like Kratos, we see that he has the capacity of someone well-beyond any kind of ordinary human, but they don't have him take it to an unnecessary lack of realism; his superhuman feats have a little more backbone because he's actually serious without taking his character concept to the unnecessarily extreme, which, depending on the personality, can make the character intolerable. Now, I don't hold it against Dante, I like him just fine. He at least mellows out once in a while. I do however hold it agianst someone Nero because they made him an absolute puss in spite of having the same kind of cocky, devil-may-care attitude as Dante, but to the point that he's become nothing more than a bad imitation with even lesser-fitting dialogue, all the while throwing in the most by-the-book excuse of a love story into the mix to somehow differentiate him a little. Didn't work for me.
Feats are an important part of a character's badassedness, but if their character category is to such a level, they're merely annoying or just plain intolerable. It's what made Nero a pussy in spite of his skills.
Not to mention that's the only impressive strength feat that Dante really has. Almost every other strength feat he's done, Kratos has matched/beat.