YMMV / Nikolai Dante

• Complete Monster: Dmitri Romanov is the ruthless patriarch of the Romanov dynasty, and despite having been imprisoned by the previous Tsar, surpasses any justifiable actions. After losing to Vladimir Makarov in a duel for the throne of the Tsar, Dmitri forces his sister Jocasta to have his children via genetic engineering, breeding them to be the most ruthless killers in the empire. He has his eldest son, Valentine, bear a Flawed Prototype weapons crest, which physically and psychologically scars him beyond recognition. After Katarina Dante reneges on a job for him, he beats and rapes her just so he can break her, resulting in Nikolai's conception. After gearing up for war, he orders Konstantin to murder Julianna Makarov just in case Nikolai manages to save Jena from Richard Hawksmoore so that the conflict will go ahead anyway, then callously throws the lives of his army away to the Tsar's guns and even personally shoots survivors for losing. Even after the war and his suicide, he transfers his consciousness to Arkady and secretly plans his revenge over a number of years, at which point he kills Viktor's wife simply because she's from a poor background, strips Dante of his weapons crest, burns Jocasta to death, and forces Jena to marry him. To further pour salt into the wound, he forces Nikolai to watch the ceremony and sends a surgeon to castrate him while it happens. Even his first act as Tsar is not to rebuild the empire, but his own personal winter palace.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Loads special mention however to Nikolai taking backstabbing a little too literally to Konstantine
• Growing the Beard: The Great Game is where the story really began to come together.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Selina Solaris, a Captain Ersatz of Catwoman more than slightly resembles Halle Berry.
  • An evil Russian named Vladimir Makarov? Where have we seen this before?
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Lulu's cyberdemon swarm. They can devour a grown man alive in seconds. Lulu even slaughters a passenger liner by concealing them within the crew and passengers and letting them loose, killing everyone.
  • Valentine's actual appearance underneath the holo implant. Because his crest is a Flawed Prototype, the Healing Factor does not work, meaning that every time he uses its abilities, it scars him further, making him look like a skeletal horror. This drives him insane and, when Nikolai destroys his holo implant, he abandons any pretence of sanity, instead opting to become a hammy Omnicidal Maniac.
• Paranoia Fuel: Nastasia pulls this on Nikolai by implying that she could have poisoned either (or both) glasses of wine they share.