It's mostly to do with the PR and fans.
PR: When the TGS 2010 trailer came out everyone went batshit-tle on DmC. Then the Unreal Engine was annonced. I honestly don't think people even care about the engines until it was being switched from the MT framwork to a slightly slower Engine. (Which really isn't slow.) Then Tameen "insulted" Classic Dante and doesn't think Bayonetta is cool. Not only that, but also Alex Jones (CAPCOM US worker on DmC) also laughed at some of the fans, while saying "Don't freak out over hair." Explaining the story of this being Dante before he was all Stylish just sounded like tarnish to the DMC fans. Some of the hate blew after the e3 2011 gameplay trailer, but came back as people thought it was "too slow" and was not fast enough. Then the announcement of Dante being "half angel" just set people off, as it showed that DmC was not part of the canon of DMC. Then CAPCOM states it's a parallel world within the series only raging the fans again. But soon the hate was starting to die a bit more down as more fight trailers, the music video trailer, stating it's an alternate game and the demo and newer gameplay trailer came out.
FANS: Fans are to blame as well. Not as much but they count too. when 2010 trailer came fans had a right to be ****ed (me being one of them) because Dante was now a "Crack-addicted, Gay Faggot, Edward Cullen, Sparkling, weak, emo kid." (I Don't think that now) The Engine ****ed people off but it wasn't really that big until the E3 trailer came out. Tameen insulting Dante was the big shot to the knee. But I thought that was just an opinion and DMC fans were being too literal (I don't think Bayonetta's cool either. Sure it was fun but not "cool.") People hated NT because they thought NT stole DMC from CAPCOM, only to find out CAPCOM gave DMC to NT, plus CAPCOM going all Aizen on us saying "We knew that DmC would get hated on. We used fans to get the game more attention from the fans hate" was a complete downhill for CAPCOM's loyal fans. e3 was just fans saying new Dante fought slow and slugish which brought up blaming the UE for that. Half angel statment annoyed fans since it was out of the blue not like the Original DMC. Event Status didn't say much. Some points he made were good, but the rest was just painful yelling. But the hate slwoly died down, however there are still fans out there who will not except the game no matter what and hate the new DmC because of Dante's look, and the fact that it's a new generation of Devil may Cry. Even going so far as to say "DMC2 is better then DmC!" Seriously?
This is why I like sceptics like Cool74. At least he has valid points on why he's on edge for DmC, instead of just hating DmC because of the look.
That's my opinion on this.