I agree with the Underworld being endless in size, and the human world being a proper universe.
I am somewhat neutral to scaling Nero as lightspeed+ for dodging Artemis' beams. If they are said to be light speed outright, then fine, but they aren't, all its said in the loading screen that she uses light as a weapon. So she weaponizes it, and its properties clearly become different. So we have no way of knowing if they still retain lightspeed. Reminds me of the Marvel character StarHawk being able to manipulate light and even make 'hard light', which was even explicitly stated to have different speeds. Considering that her attacks aren't the first to weaponize light, that this wiki does not grant speeds of C for, the support for this one isn't really there. Unless WoG or some guide statement clarifies it, but overall I'm neither for nor against it. I don't expect to see a change though.
As for the rest?
Sorry, but at the end of it all the closest thing to a solidified universal feat is Mundu's creation feat from DMC1, and that still only works if you go with Kamiya's accompanying tweets, while ignoring other tweets regarding the subject and his treatment in general of nerdy fan questions.
The guy is flippant as hell and is has quite a troll streak. So while he has tweets saying Mundus' creation was a real universe sized dimension, he also has tweets where he answers "maybe maybe not" and "could be" to questions of could Mundus really make an actual universe or if Dante was flying through space while fighting Mundus. Yeah those tweets have been posted before but their importance does not change, he is far too inconsistent for me to rely solely on his word to give Mundus a 3-A plus feat. Even if he decided to keep linking to the same tweet over and over to give his answers, you can easily justify it as him just sticking with an answer and no longer caring about the accuracy of the subject considering how annoyed he was. The game was 15 years old at the time of these questions, I wouldn't blame him if he initially was vascilatting on clear answers because he couldn't even remember the scene fully and then just made up his mind and stuck with an answer. You can even see him giving hilarious answers like "So Big", when people asked him how big the dimension was:
https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/787502731820879872 I'm not willing to just go with the word of someone who is so capricious on twitter as setting the power of a verse he only had one game in, I need something more solid.
Kamiya also downplayed the importance of his word on Devil May Cry (unwittingly or not) in this tweet where he set the ground rules finally after too many questions:
https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/883914700882403328 He said outright "No requests or asking about games which are not my games/not our IP".
Which means he is not comfortable taking Devil May Cry questions since its owned by Capcom, not Platinum games. He's literally been on a blocking spree with anyone asking Devil May Cry related tweets to him.
I'm not willing to just go with the word of someone who is so capricious on twitter as the sole, solid anchor that is setting the power of a verse he only had one game in. I need something more solid, especially when he himself said he would take no more questions regarding the series, which really sets the tone that he aknowledges lack of authority over it.
Shall we talk about how unreliable Kamiya's word is on fan questions in general? Recall that he said in an interview Bayonetta would beat Dante. Whatever your thoughts on that is, lets see how he answers Bayonetta related power questions (an IP that his company Platinum Games DOES own):
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https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/1003293724007231488 Can't even clearly say if Jubileus can destroy a universe.
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https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/776229507946512384 Likewise is uncommittal to placing Bayonetta at Universe or even Galaxy level.
He has a tendency to answer questions to a character/game IP that his company DOES own with the same flippant attitude that he answers about DMC, an IP that he has zero ownership over. Sorry, I'm given no reason to use this guy's twitter as an end all be all for anything related to character abilities. In the end, Kamiya had the opportunity to say it was an actual universe in the Devil May Cry Brady Guide, in a fully published and Capcom approved capacity, but the guide says absolutely nothing about it being a universe.
However, if Devil May Cry 1 was the only game in the series then I would likely relent and go with Kamiya's shakey word on it, hell the series may have gotten even stronger if he stayed at the helm, but the fact of the matter is he left the series after the first game and had zero involvement since then.
If you want real confirmation, then you need to get Itsuno's word on this subject and see if he agrees. He headed the series from DMC2 until now, so in the end his word matters more than anything else. He is also far more even tempered and not volatile or combative, making his word far more trustworthy. But honestly, who knows if he will agree. I believe its no coincidence that after DMC1 there has been nothing in any of the games to give any plausible indication of 3-A levels again, maybe because Itsuno does not know what Kamiya's intention was or he doesn't care and did his own thing. Letting one clear word (with some flippant answers prior to it) from Kamiya set the powerscale of the entire series when there are so many contradictions after his influence was finished would be just like scaling GoW based solely on the word of David Jaffe (who just like Kamiya, directed the first game and had zero involvement after that). The alternative is to get Bingo's word. Things like Nightmare's or Savior's dimension or Void Mundus' battle with Dante are simply far too vague in actual scale to help the cause without clarification.
I'm sorry but DMC5 did absolutely huge damage to the idea of 3-A and above DMC whether you like to admit it or not. Whether you like it or not Post-Fruit Urizen in his bio only had multi-continental at best hype with his "power to shake the foundations of the world" statement, and that's if you take the a more liberal reading of those words. Seeing as visually the greatest thing we see represented is the Qilpoth tree reaching up into the upper atomsphere and making only a city sized fissure, saying the fruit allowed multi-continenal level AP could be argued by itself to be a stretch, but then again we have other shit to fall back on that could support it. No question that 3-A hype is dead in the water from that though.
Obviously you don't have to see a planet/star/galaxy/universe be destroyed to output that level of energy in fiction, but that's what lore is for, and even in lore/bio statements they were so conservative that all they could muster was 'shake the foundations of the world' levels of hype for post-fruit Urizen. Sorry, that 3-A dream is dead for now. And before DMC5, the anime also did huge damage to the idea of 3-A+. Abigail was repeatedly put on the same level as Mundus by statements, and we know he scales because when he initially awakened he left Dante ko'd in the Underworld. And how strong was Abigail? His hype was literally only stated to be 'world conquering', by himself and Dante, and he has an at best arguable Tier 6 feat and even then it was indirect since it was from him opening portals. And what makes it worse, is you cannot use the 'he was just holding back or compressing the scale of damage that's why we saw no universe scale stuff', that is blatantly false. We know that because it was a trash tier demon named Sid who had received the full power of Abigail and he was absolutely drunk with power when he received it, so he had zero reason to do any of that. Sid as Abigail was going all out, and while going all out all he could muster was evaporating some very large cloud formations, and then only indirectly.
And then we have the Demon God scene in the DMC3 Manga. Yes, I know there are arguments about whether the scanlation or the official English translation was more accurate, but one thing remains consistent; The giant spear (the Temen-ni-gru tower) had to be struck twice in the Earth to get embedded as deep as it was. That is still a huge knock on AP. Not to mention the page before that said back in the days when the demon world/heaven had more easy access to the Earth, 'great rents were torn in the Earth', which only strengthens the multi-continental or lower AP standings.
DMC4 also did great damage to the 3-A idea, since the full power Savior gets reasonable scaling from Mundus, and how strong were his punches? It literally takes him several blows to destroy the large floating debris that Dante fights him on (or one, if he does one of his stronger blows like the axe kick). Those pieces were as large as Savior's chest at most. Is this low-balling compared to other feats in verse? Sure, but in comparison its a far bigger jump to claim Savior is suddenly 3-A. I just don't believe, as unimpressive as Savior looked, that he would suddenly be able to solo Pyron and the Darkstalkers-verse as a whole. Not buying it.
In the end, this is Capcom. A company that is known to not be shy about cosmic+ level feats, not just in lore, but actually representing it. Okami, Asura's Wrath, Darkstalkers, Mega Man, Dragon's Dogma, all Capcom series that have anywhere from multi-solar system, to Galaxy+ to even + to possibly low multiversal level of feats or at least lore depending on which one. So why can DMC not manage it even as late as DMC5? Darkstalkers is a clear galaxy+ level verse, hell Pyron by sheer size alone is vastly larger than the milky way, and that was a series Itsuno directed too. So if Itsuno doesn't shy away from clear cosmic+ scaling, (such as from his directing on Darkstalkers and Dragon's Dogma, which he also directed) why did he not even approach planet levels in DMC5 even by the lore? Seriously, all he managed to show was a multi-mile tall tree that created city wide seismic activities and some possible multi-continental hype through a bio for post-Qilphoth fruit Urizen. So even in lore statements he did not show anything of note.
Maybe Itsuno simply doesn't seen DMC-verse as being that powerful. And if that were the case, him being the current leader of the series means far more than Kamiya's single point of input from 18 years ago and his shakey statement on twitter. Sorry. But that makes more sense to me.
And if I think about it more, 3-A would put the DMC-verse effortlessly above Asura's Wrath. Wyzen is basically a fodder in the grand scale of things in Asura's Wrath and even a weak boss like him is literally planet sized. And I'm supposed to believe DMC is a 3-A verse when even in the 5th frigging game a several mile tall demonic tree that created city sized seismic activity is the best thing we see scale wise? And then even lore wise in DMC5 all we have at best is planet shaking hype, which again is only planet shaking if you read it that way. And yet I'm supposed to believe Urizen is 3-A and someone like Wyzen, who could crush the planet if he wanted to, is below him? In the end, both are Capcom games, but the difference is Asura's Wrath in a single game had feats that easily visually surpass anything DMC has done in the last several games or anime, by immense orders of magnitude. Sorry. But it makes no sense for the DMCverse to be nigh uncountable orders of magnitude stronger Asura's Wrath, which is what a 3-A tier would mean for DMC.
Hell, there are ways to reconcile it to where Mundus' creation without it actually upgrading the verse's AP to 3-A
-For one, Mundus could be a "glass cannon" type of reality warper whose creation abilities do not represent how much energy he can output in an attack nor how much he can tank in return.
You can also speculate that his creation ability is something he can only do within the Underworld, since no other Mundus+ level Entity has done anything remotely similar while on Earth, and even post-fruit Urizen only had planet shaking at best hype. I mean in the end both Dante's and Mundus' (Dante admitted it would be both of their burial places) life was in danger from Mallet Island exploding, lest we forget. And no, we can't say the explosion was massively more powerful than it looked, because the biplane Dante and Trish rode out on just barely escaped the explosion and its flight path was not disturbed by the shockwave. Likewise plenty of rubble got thrown up by the explosion, crashing farther out into the ocean near the biplane as it started to pull up from sea level, and the explosion didn't even create any noticeable waves. All things considered it was quite 'gentle' for explosion, almost more like a mere collapse and conflagration than an explosion.
-The Qilphoth Fruit having the power of illusions and Mundus also eating it really damages the credibility of the visuals. You can easily say that the outerspace and storms etc afterward were just illusionary backgrounds, and whatever the actual area they were actually moving through was screened over underneath. During Dante's fight with post-fruit Urizen you notice a glass shattering affect in the background showing that their fight in front of their old house was indeed an illusion. And you see a lot of glass shattering effects throughout your fight with Mundus as well if you notice during the storm section. An interesting parallel.
And finally, there is also something I have to call out as clear and unadulterated head-canon at best, and rather dishonest at worst. Dante at no point ever, EVER, "flew to another planet". Never stated or implied anywhere whatsoever. Pure headcanon. Firstly, Dante cannot fly unless he transforms into his devil form and he did not do that here during this 'flying' scene. He literally jumped up a meters and suddenly he found himself coming up from under a cloud cover (And remember that Mundus then had meteors come from ABOVE those clouds later to end this segment). Only after he reached the top of his jump did he transform into his devil mode and only THEN did he start flying, and that was horizonally through the storm clouds, not through this supposed outerspace from the scene before.
Let's start with the very beginning of the scene at Mundus' chapel. As soon as Mundus shifts the imagery into this 'outerspace', Dante was still standing flat footed as if he was still on solid ground from the chapel scene before. No, he was not 'floating' as a couple of people weirdly claimed before, he was standing perfectly flat footed and still, just like he was still on solid ground. If he was actually floating around in space his coat would be swaying all over the place and he wouldn't have been perfectly planted in the same position looking at and talking to Mundus. And then he literally crouched down and jumped. He pushed off as if he was still on solid ground, and he only jumped up several meteors, he did nothing remotely close to travelling mass intersteller distances. That is a massive stretch. Proof?; We even have a timeframe for his jump. Dante's jump is accompanyed by a grunt from him, and during that grunt he only travelled maybe a dozen or so meters, and in the next frame he was suddenly in the clouds. Unless you are telling me his grunts are MFTL too and took place across an attosecond or something like that, I think we can clearly chalk this up to Dante only jumping up several meters and Mundus changing the scenary to his whim.
Anything other than this straightforward explanation requires far, far more evidence. As always, the taller the claim, the taller the evidence, and there is no evidence for MFTL Dante in this scene. None whatsoever.
The idea that Dante jumped past the light of the stars is very bad, seeing as when he transforms into his Sparda form he can't even outrun the light from the strokes of lightning. Seriously, each frame of his flight shows several lightning strikes on screen. If this is the best avenue to MFTL Dante its dead in the water when we see Dante get tagged by Mundus' beam spears during this flight scene. How fast are Mundus beam spears? They are slow enough to only travel maybe 100 yards at best in the time it takes for lightning to flash and disappear. Seriously, look at this from 7:07 - 7:10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jvwzkwmFn0 As you can see, Dante dodges the first beam spear and a bolt of lightning passes in the background and disappears before the beam spear gets out of visual range. Still a speed feat for the beam saber but less than even relativistic, let alone less than MFTL.
Sorry, there can't be a MFTL feat here when there is an anti-feat of this magnitude in the same boss fight.
And to go back to the illusion point briefly, not only is Dante loooking like he is standing on solid ground as if he was still at the chapel, and not only is Dante's jump accompanied by a brief airburst (why is there an airburst in space, exactly?), just also take a look at these 'stars'. They look nothing like actual stars. They are moving around them, and no, it has nothing to do with any camera movement before someone says that. The camera is stationary; literally centered on Mundus, or Dante, or both at once.And yet the stars are swirling around them. But by itself I wouldn't think too much of the movement, but not only are they moving around, the entire 'cosmos' looks like a layer of sparkly liquid. Look at it, it looks nothing like gas clouds/nebulas in between points of light. This whole skybox has the consistency of a thick waxy liquid that's undulating and flowing slowly, and the points of light look to be bending and twisting with the surface of that liquid. It literally looks like the blobby wax in a lava lamp, with sparkly dots sprinkled in said wax. And no, this has nothing to do with technical limitations, we see a proper night sky in DMC1 at some points and it looks nothing like this.
All in all, I disagree and I will stick to Tier 6 DMC. Mostly neutral on the lightspeed+ scaling from Artemis, depends on if its agreed that her weaponized light still moves at lightspeed or if the speed gets effected from it being weaponized. If there is a clear statement that her beams still move at the speed of light then great, but other than that even in the beginning cutscene she releases a barrage of beams that that bend and have explosiveness to them. So their properties are clearly affected. And she already released a vertical stack of them and rubble on the ground and time to be kicked up and moved while the beams were still moving.
All that being said I'm not trying to sound harsh though, the road to 3-A+ DMC is not closed per se. We need to get Itsuno's word on the matter. And/Or Bingo's word, and getting clarification on what the specific scale of the Void Mundus novel fight may be a good way.