people (specifically tiktok dudebros with masculinity problems) who dunk on Nero for ‘being annoying/not being well written’—based purely off of Nero in the games—are the exact same people who will preach about how cool and well written Dante and Vergil are—purely in the games—when… if you’re not looking at the additional media, none of them are well fleshed-out characters. the games by themselves do a pisspoor job at exploring and explaining much of anything, especially for Vergil, who is practically a phantom in the games and of who we are left questioning just about everything he does, unless you’ve read VoV. which is how you may feel for Nero, unless you’ve read Deadly Fortune and Before the Nightmare.
Nero, Dante and Vergil are all pretty well written if you read the novels. Therefore, Nero himself is an interesting character with more depth than some immediately assume*, if you stop to think for more than two seconds. very clearly, most people who actively denounce Nero’s character are merely doing it to ride the bandwagon of claims that he is a ‘Dante knockoff’ or a ‘Vergil wannabe’. i cannot express how painful it is to see people sweep away every detail about Nero to essentially make him the scapegoat for all of Capcom’s poor writing or consistency flaws. in one breath, they will praise Dante for being emotional and loving his brother, yet in the same, belittle Nero for doing just that with Kyrie, simply with more overt passion.
it really feels to me that Nero’s only crime is passion. terribly ironic, considering a very large part of dmc’s messaging is about heart and emotion and how characters fail because they do not love freely enough (see: Vergil and Sanctus. and every enemy in the franchise). no, this is not me saying you can’t dislike Nero. you don’t ever need a ‘valid’ reason to dislike a character; sometimes they’re just bland or uninteresting to you. but it’s fascinating how some people go out of their way to actively ignore a key character just because they saw someone else call Nero lame and a pussy or ‘too stereotypical and cliche.’
*most people go into dmc with a preconceived notion about Nero, and milk the fuck out of his voicelines screaming for Kyrie or him being hurt at being called deadweight. when in reality, these aspects are not nearly as overt when you actually play the games… unless you’ve been told they are prior to playing, in which case you’ll be ready to quickly call him cringe rather than experiencing the story in full. it’s an interesting phenomenon, that many dislike Nero for being cliche, when you could apply that exact same logic to Dante and Vergil’s intertwined story—if you’re only looking at them from a very shallow lens. i could say that the ‘good twin evil twin’ ‘red and blue dynamic’ ‘half-human half-evilthing that hunts the evilthing’ aspects to them are cliche. but i recognise they’re deeper than just those aspects.
frankly i think it’s absurd that this hate train is one people still ride in 2025. Nero’s character has existed for nigh twenty years and people still refuse to listen.
