Rewatching, I still find the fight more lightshow than CQC choreography, but there was good staging of most of the interesting power interactions. Royal Guard into Faust Hat counter was probably the most smooth, though Clive's Not Judgement Cut into (somehow) outdoing the Time Manipulation was as well.
I think the end of the space clash was just confusing, though; Clive wins the clash and is floating in place with Dante nowhere to be seen (presumably punched down to earth if not drowned out in the SFX), but Clive also falls and somehow hits the ground at the same time, even though he won the clash and was further away from the earth besides. And him getting the SSS prompt was also confusing, made me unsure if actually it was Dante who won the clash.
Excellent SFX elsewhere, though, somehow rivals the multi-million budgets of the games in question. Aside from that one clash, every attack and its effects were readable and distinct, and there were a lot of them to animate. Although I find intricate CQC much more timeless than fireworks. Come to think of it, with how many "bones" animated models have to deal with now -- dubious scripting aside, Kratos vs Asura looked so bad in large part because Kratos's model was so detailed as to be a nightmare to work with -- I'm not sure how feasible it is to do intricate CQC without deliberately cartoony models. It probably won't stick with me as strongly as, say, TJ Combo vs Balrog's tangible physical throwdown, but it's nice that Torrian is also able to stage a fireworks show so cleanly for the most part.
