My favourite Dante is the original DMC1 Dante. He was cool, powerful and great with words(except the infamous "light" scene alright
). His clothes were the best - I loved using him with his old attire in DMC3. The fact that he had something fun to say about almost every object you talked to was great as well. He had the best DT. (Because it looked like armor and I loved how it was only an aura until you performed an attack or a move).
As character he was also great. He had the attitude "you can try to hurt me, but after that is my turn and you're not going to like it" and it wasn't arrogance because it was true.
He was in the greater adventure we will ever see in DMC. Doing almost exactly what Sparda did, by going inside the Underworld and defeating the Demon Emperor easily in his own game.
Plus he had great voice. Don't misunderstand I like the DMC3-DMC4 voice actor a lot. But the first one was somehow more original in someway. He seemed so Dante to me.
I liked how he was confident but with reason since he really did beat the enemies he taunted with ease. And he was really cool when he took on Mundus with a serious face. "Silence!!!" is my favourite (serious) Dante line.