I remember thinking this one was a pinnacle of 2000s edgy cheese. Weedy poet Dante Aligieri turned into a stone-cold badass Villain Protagonist a la Kratos is amusing enough as it is, but then there's the fact that he just slaughters his was through the staff of the afterlife (including killing the Grim Reaper!) with rather, uhh, little examination of what the consequences for that might be. Pure Narm Charm power fantasy.
I remember wondering if, had the series made it to Paradiso, Dante would've got to beat up God.
Personally, I've always been really curious where a sequel would go.
Dante's Inferno is VERY well trod ground and had quite an impact on popular culture in basically every depiction of Hell ever.
Purgatory and Paradise? Not so much. The other two installments are unheard of really.
Which, interestingly, means that a sequel would have A LOT more room to play around in and potentially do more interesting things in my opinion.
What a shame in my opinion. The original was peak 10s edgy bullshit... but I also think there's room enough in the world to indulge that from time to time. Guilty Pleasure and some "So Bad It's Good".
Does it have some rather fucked gender/sex politics? Sure. As do most games from that era and most of it is so blatant that I can really only just roll my eyes and move on.
As a bonus, I feel places like Purgatory and Heaven would have quite fewer cop outs to indulge such gratuitous sex appeal too.
Not quite sure where you'd take Dante's character arc though. We kinda met every villain and checked every box of the guys from Dante's past I could imagine we'd meet. Unless Dante absolving his father, Beatrice's brother, and the others meant they were sent to Purgatory for a Round 2?
The whole concept was flawed from the start if there were to be any sequels involving conflict or combat.
In the original, sure, Hell is a multi-leveled pit of demonic activity that Dante needs to overcome. And let's pretend, for the sake of the narrative, that Beatrice is somehow unjustly trapped here and needs to be saved. He saves her.
And that's where the conflict ends, because the whole plot of The Divine Comedy is going from Hell to Heaven. Dante saves Beatrice from Hell, and takes her to Purgatory, and...what? She's already in the place she needs to be to prove her virtue. Conflict solved, lady goes to Heaven, or at worst has to do some penance first, all is good in the end.
The whole plot of the poem is just not suited for a game involving combat of increasing difficulty, because that's just kind of the opposite of how better and better afterlives should work.
Does anyone actually read these?Well, if you check the concept art, they are pitching it as Hell invading Purgatory.
Which was also... like, the clear sequel hook in the base game- Lucifer didn't get defeated and simply hitched a ride with Dante.
I think that's as good a justification as any to continue it in a violent hack and slash. I don't know what you'd want otherwise?
If you really wanted to dig into story reasons for things, easy answer would be to have Beatrice replace Virgil as Dante's guide. Boom. Beatrice is your companion for the story. If the larger scope plot is Satan invading Purgatory and trying to reach Heaven, then inter-personal story could be Beatrice and Dante actually having to sit and talk about the consequences of their relationship.
"Hey, so... you uh... Kinda went and cheated on me with some random woman in the Holy Lands, didn't ya? You couldn't have just given her what she wanted and not slept with her?"
"Well, I didn't think my wife made a fucking deal with Lucifer himself behind my back. Who the fuck takes any deal with the devil??? Especially someone so pious and well read on the bible???"
It's one thing to acknowledge your sins and failures and find personal peace and salvation to them, it's another to achieve redemption and reconciliation for them- to do the next right thing...
Y'know... kinda what Purgatory as a 9 tiered mountain is about... Purgatory is the actual plane of redemption here...
We didn't meet the woman Dante slept with in hell, right? What if she's on Mount Purgatory on her own path? What if... idk, Satan whispers in her ear or empowers her to confront Dante?
The lack of easy combative and violent options from the source material sounds like creative freedom to me rather than creative constraint.
I remember when this game first came out. The most memorable thing for me was the game's rather unique take on Cerberus.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Having read the thing, oh wow this Dante might be the biggest Failure Hero I’ve ever seen. He STARTS the game by accidentally letting Hell invade Purgatory, then as it proceeds accidentally starts a civil war among the angels, accidentally gets all his allies killed, accidentally gets Bea possessed again, and ends it by accidentally letting Hell invade Heaven!
There’s some cool stuff in there, particularly the art and the ability to switch between a physical and spirit form, but story-wise this seems to very much follow its predecessor into So Bad, It's Good-ville. Which might be intentional for all I know.
I believe that's a continuation from the first game- St. Lucia was a figure mentioned a few times in the first game, though I cannot remember the exact context? I think she was related to some DLC of some kind? She's a Christian Martyr who had her eyes plucked out.
I'd also point out that it doesn't seem this game got terribly far into development and plot issues might have gotten ironed out as development occurred- I would take things in a broadstrokes of "Well, a third game has to hit Heaven so we need Lucifer to eventually get there somehow and it has to be player involved".
Edited by InkDagger on Nov 6th 2025 at 5:33:29 AM
I dunno, when you remember the book is also a fanfic, where Dante wrote about his enemies being tortured in hell and his mentor and heroes being in heaven saying how swell he is and how his enemies totally suck and they had it coming had they mended their ways and been like Dante, it's kinda fitting?
Like, OP Self Inserts hadn't been invented yet, had they, Dante might've gone for it.
Point. In particular the fact that, in the poem, ALL the great heroes and saints of yore agree exactly with Dante's politics is amusing.
Still, poem!Dante is a decent dude, and totally nonviolent. Like, even if he had a scythe the size of a horse, the idea of using it as a weapon would probably horrify him.
Game!Dante is just nasty even by edgy-00s-antihero standards; IIRC he promises his wife he'll be faithful when away at war, then promptly cheats on her, murders his mistress to cover up the affair, perpetrates a civilian massacre, and kills his best friend when he objects to that.
RL!Dante was also a veteran who fought at the Battle of Campaldino. So I don't think he was that non-violent - but again, Poem!Dante is his self insert.
What's funny is Poem!Dante lists amongst his big sins that he's not modest about his poetic skills, and considering how the Divine Comedy would go on to shape the popular image of the afterlife, it makes this very funny. Like, even by his wildest dream he never imagined that level of success.
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TBF, the whole point is that Game!Dante is one of the damned. His whole journey through Hell forces Dante to confront his own sins. Game!Dante eventually realizes what a horrible person he was in life. By the end, he gives up on his own redemption and only cares about saving Beatrice. Though he still gets a chance at redemption anyway.
On a different note, one thing I liked about this game was that the Cross is actually the better weapon compared to the Scythe. The weapon that gets more powerful when you absolve damned souls instead of simply slaughtering them is the stronger one.
Of course, that could be because the scythe was an imaginary construct that never had any real power in Hell.
Edited by M84 on Nov 6th 2025 at 10:28:24 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedThe game was over the top but it really worked when it came to the voice acting. Not just from always epic Graham McTavish, but the voice of Lucifer as well.
You can really hear the utter contempt he has for Humanity being God's favoured creation over him in the delivery.
Edited by Avenger09 on Nov 6th 2025 at 3:26:19 PM
I really like the way he delivers the "I am so sick of you" line in the game's last cutscene.
It gets across just how done Lucifer is with Dante and humanity in general.
Edited by M84 on Nov 6th 2025 at 11:27:47 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised

Details have recently been released about the cancelled sequel Dantes Purgatorio which can be read on ign.
Gotta say, I really like the look of absolved Dante.
https://www.ign.com/articles/inside-dantes-purgatorio-the-cancelled-sequel-to-eas-dantes-inferno