Strength: Dante's specifc strength (represented in how many pounds/tons he can lift) is not known, however he has shown many strength feets.
-Dante can wield massive longswords with incredible ease and speed. During Dante's million-stab move, there appears to be multiple swords (not a million, though xp ). Most of these longswords (dante has had three and one that could be argued as a longsword) are just...huge. Take a look at how long they are compared to his body, and how big they are compared to his hand. Big swords. Dante with his largest sword to date, Sparda.
-Dante has wielded a large motorcycle with the same proficeincy. Note that the scene is brief, and Dante does not perform anything like million-stab. Nevertheless, the cycles weight doesn't appear to hunder Dante at all.
-While using the Ifrit gauntlets or the Beowulf gauntlets, it is assumed that Dante's strength is increased. This is mentioned, however it is not known by what factor.
-Dante raised himself up by his heels only when he was impailed by Alastor and pinned to the floor. He rose up, completely (not using his hands) and pulled himself through the blade.
Speed:This is what I consider to be Normal (non devil trigered) Dante's second most amazing stat.
-Using "trickster" style, dante can teleport almost instantly and dash fast enough to create motion blurs. It should be noted that said dashes are very short-ranged (although he can perform multiple dashes in a row, with a very brief latency period in between). The teleport is only ever used to get closer to enemies, and has longer range than the dash, but is still finite.
-Dante's sword-swinging speed is incredible. Million stab has already been mentioned, but Dante has other tricks up his sleeve. During his first fight with Virgil (in game fight, not counting the manga) Dante and Virigl are both swinging their swords so fast that all one can hear is various clangs and clashes, with Silhouettes vut in the rain being the only visual indication.
-Dante can roll/backflip out of any attack instantaneously. This is really just game-play balance, but plenty of people use gameplay balance in their write-ups, so I say this goes. wink
-Dante can instantaneously block any attack coming at him, even mid-attack, with lightning speed. Once again, gameplay balance.
-Probably my favorite. During the finals scene of Devil May Cry 2, Dante rushes The Despair Embodied (final boss) with his sword out in front of him, ready to stab. The despair raises it's own sword, trying to imaple Dante as he rushes him. Dante jumps a bit, flips around the blade and hit the Despair with the tip of his longsword. Despair flinches, for jsut a second. A blink of an eye. Dante is gone. Despair looks around, and all he sees is Dante's sword spinning around in mid-air, which falls to the ground and stick there
-When using the Alastor sword, Dante swung it around in a practice-combo, performing many hits before some glass falling from the not-to-high cieling hit the ground. Not the greatest speed-feet compared to the other listed, but not bad.
-Dante caught a bullet with his teeth.
Durability/Endurance:In my opinion, Dante's most impressive stat. He is pretty much immortal. I know I shouldn't pick and choose with gameplay balance and cannon, but the difference there is so great (especially if you jack the difficulty level up) that the two Dantes appear to be different individuals.
-Dante has survived being stabbed right through soooo many times. At the beginning of Devil May Cry 3 (arguably the weakest incarnation of Dante seen in video-game cannon) he took four scythe blades through his chest and various limbs. Dante did NOT flinch at all, and actually proceeded to walk, calmly over to one of his handguns and kill everything in the room...with most of the blades still inside him.
-Dante has survived impailment by the Alastor sword, a powerful demonic blade (possibly game-play balance here...may ahve to use your own discression) that rivals the force-edge in power (more on this in equipment section). Dante was deffinitely phased by this, but got up seconds later. After taking a few moments to collect himself, he took up the sowrd and proceeded to pull of some spectacular stunts with it.
-Dante has been shot. A bunch. He has even taken a gunshot wound to the head from a magnum. He released his grip on Mary (who shot him at point blank range) and kinda grunted in astonishment...then was fine. We caught the next shot in his teeth and just got kinda pissed off. That's all the damage done.
-Dante survives all kinds of attacks. Lava, spikes, scythes and tone sof other junk that I can't list, all endowed with carying levels of demonic power.
-Dante took multiple lightning attack from Trish, an artifical being created by the demon-king Mundus. It stands to reason Mundus would make his cohorts fairly powerful. This attack caused Dante to cry out in pain, but didn't do much afterwards.
-Dante has been shot through by the energy spikes of Mundus. Tough attack; first time we ever see him actually stumble back and appear to take damage. He then activates his Deus Ex Machina power (something that happens so often in the series that I think it's actually a power now; like divine protection or something), and Devil-Triggers using Sparda's power. He's fine after that, and takes even more powerful attacks from Mundus, everntually being impailed again...this time not being anywhere near as hurt (apparently, some of the Sparda DT's power stayed with him). He is then bombarded but Mundus' meteor-attacks while standing up. Dante just keeps on getting up, even though he is enveloped in fireballs that shake the ground as they hit.
-Survived a punch from Beowulf in DMC3 (remember, weakest form of Dante) which is increadible, because Beowulf was one of the first enemies he encountered that ha fought Sparda (Sparda is mac-daddy powerful...stuff diesfast around him) and lived to tell the tale (minus one eye). Dante is knocked back, and after the fight appears slightly winded, but Beowulf poses no serious threat.
-In DMC2 (most powerful, yet most boring Dante xp ) Dante takes all kinds of punishment from extremely high-level demons, and some advaned human weaponry. He is absolutely fine, appearing bored most of the time.
Intellect:Hm...dante has solved some puzzles in game, not that they;re overly difficult (think Resident Evil style). He doesn't have the aire of the brainy booky type, but there's no reason to expect that he is just some meat-head. At any rate, his combat intelligece is quite high.
Fighting Skill:Tons. Dante has fought countless lesser demons and many big-name upper demons. To date, he has defeated...(without so much as breaking a sweat)
-Cerberus. Guarded the entrance to the Temi-ni-gru tower.
-Agni And Rudra. Two very powerful demon swords...er, swordsmen.
Nevan. A succubus/vampire. Apparently, she knew Sparda back in the day. Wether she fought with him (and survived) is unknown, but if she did that would make her the first opponent Dante faces that has lived through a Sparda-encounter.
-Beowulf. Fought Sparda and lived.
-Geryon. Horse demon that can slowdown time.
-His own brother, Virgil. This falls out of the "without breaking so much as a sweat" category. Dante faced Virgil six (seven, kinda) times in video game cannon. The first, was at the top of the temi-ni-gru tower. Dante lost this encounter. the second time, Virgil was equipped with Gauntlets and Grieves forged from the soul of Beowulf and imbued with his power. This fight was a draw, as Mary and Arkham/Jester interveined. The third time was at the entrance to the demon world. Virgil had lost Beowulf, but now had the Force Edge, which was a powerful sword with a portion of Sparda's power at the time. Dante won this encounter. It should be noted that between each encounter, Dante was constantly battleing lesser demons and "boss" demons (the ones mentioned above) while Virigl just say around and stared off in some random direction, looking cool. Basically, Dante was wearing himself down between each fight, but did progressively better (loose, tie, win). These encounter all took place during DMC3, which is a prequel game. In DMC1, Dante faced Nero Angelo, which was Virigl forced into the service of Mundus. It is believed that Nero Angelo is many times more powerful than Virgil was in DMc3 (partialy due to the fact that he has been imbued with Mundus' power, and partially because Nero Angelo is present as a secret character of sorts in DMC3, and is an absolute tank compared to the demons of that timeline). Dante faced Nero three times (a fourth encounter in the demonic bio-weapon, Nightmare...but that was a shadowy copy-Nero, with arguably inferior stats). The first fight was a clear win for Nero, the second forced Nero to retreat, and the final ended with Nero/Virgil finally dieing (?). It should be noted that during teh final battle, Nero took of his helmet, revealing himself as Virgil. It is believed he gained a significant increase in power during this phase, as he is one of (if not the) hardest bosses in the game, and has many new moves at his disposale, incluidng the ability to summon his phantom swords.
-Leviathan. Though he detroyed it from the inside out (back under the "without breaking so much as a sweat" category).
-Mary. She was an adapt demon hunter with many firearms and explosives at her disposal.
-Doppelganger. Dante's shaowy copy, that was in a constant state of devil trigger. Datne defeated it by using environmental advantages and abusing the doppelgagner's rather low intelligence and experience.
-Arkham, after gaining the power of Sparda (kind of an incomplete power, though). As well as fighting arkham a few times as his "Jester" alter ego.
-Phantom. A massive magma-spider that survived an encounter with Sparda.
-Griffon. A massive bird like creature that also (presumably) survived an encounter with Sparda.
-Nightmare. A biological/demonic weapon with tons of annoying attacks and shadowy clones of Phantom, Griffon and Nero Angelo at it's disposal.
-Mundus. The Demon King. Dante did not kill Mundus, rather he sealed him away. Mundus was the main target of Dante's father, Sparda (a demonic swordsman of great power) and all Sparda could do was seal him away as well.
Too many random bosses in DMC2. The storyline wasn't as though out as the other games, and we don't have an accurate power-rating for them. There are a few stand-out examples, though.
-Bolverk and his attack wolfs, Frecki and Geri. Bolverk fought Sparda and lived. Another amazing feet. Dante fought him two or thee times.
-Arius. Not really too tough, as he's only human. Arius could summon many demons to aid him, and his artificial secretaries were very powerful.
-Argosax the Chaos. An incomplete form of the demon-god Argosax. Tough fight. Dante took him down.
-The Despair Embodied. Kind of a random boss...I'm not too sure how it came to be. I believe it's the perfect form of Argosax, but I cannot be sure.
It shouldbe noted that the last three fights were back-to-back, meaning he fought arius and his little demon entourage, fought an incomplete god, then fought a perfect god all in a row. This time, he killed said god, as opposed to locking him away.
Dante has shown amaznig profficiency with all types of weapons, making up his own custom combo attacks and special moves, to a great effect. He's also an expert marksman and adpet with all firearms he picks up on his travels. He is capable of targetting and firing perfect-accuracy shots during a spinnig, rapid fire frenzy against bird-like targets that were constantly swarming about him, changing vector at random.
Techniques/Powers:Phew, I'll get more of this later.
-Devil Trigger. Dante is a half demon, and for a short period he can activate his demon blood and transform. During this state, he gains a marked improovement in speed/power and during some tranformations (transformation appearnace/powers are dictated by which demonicly imbued weapon Dante carries at the point of transformation) gains limited flgith ability. His endurance during this state is much higher than normal and he can regenerate easily. In it's earliest stages, it only gave mild stat boosts and regeneration, but as Dante's powers matured he inherited powers from the demonicly imbued weapons. (Ex Ifrit, normally just charged his punches and kick with hellfire. When Dted, Dante could hurl incredibly powerful fireballs (remeber, hellfire>normal fire....by a looooooong shot in the Devil May Cry universe) and create a field of fire around him that obliterated most of the upper-but-not-"boss" demons in one shot only).
During DMC2, his DT was perhaps the most overpowered. He couldn't use it often, and when he did it was short-lived, but the DT was insanely powerful, capable of just ripping stuff apart. He also gained what fans have naimed the "desperation devil trigger." (DDT) When Dante's health falls below a certain point, he can transform into a super-DTed form. It matters not how much enrgy he has stored up, it will always shoot up to full when he change into this form. The DDT is completely incinvible to all attacks, and can obliterate even the last boss in a few seconds of continuous fire. DDT can fly, shoot demon-energy fire balls and summon two energy swords from it's gauntlets. Dante has shown no real skill or finese in this form, just incredible brute force.
Gear:
Soon to come.
Notes: Soon to come.
History: Soon to come.
