Dante's Inferno-verse Strategy Guide

 

How to be OP in the Dante's Inferno-verse. I personally consider the comic series canon and the animated film non-canon based on their closeness to source material and the intent behind them, but I will note when I use information from either in case you differ in your interpretation. Neither massively changes things.

Local Scale Threat:

So at first glance, this tier, and really this verse in general seems fairly modest in their powerset. They've got a few strong abilities but nothing too outside of the ordinary. However this is a lie and the verse is way harder to fight then it seems for a reason I will get into.

So at this tier are all the normal damned of the Inferno. Every regular human souls just falling into Hell, complete fodders to the forces of Hell that torment them can tank falling at terminal velocity into Hell, and which such force that the can crack off parts of a stone ledge. This should safelty put all the forces of Hell down to it's simplest minions at wall level. This is consistent with them able to endure literal eternity in boiling blood, in a city eternally hotter "then metal need be for any craft", or burning liquid gold. They are dwarfed in strength by the asterian beasts, the warbeasts of this tier, pitch black hybrids of gorilla and crocodiles. A special class of demons called Beast Tamers ride these beasts, commanding their great strength. They can tear down the large gates of hell, push giant gold blocks, and throw the solid wooden giant head of Charon fall into the distance. Only the strongest beings on this tier outside them can survive even the shockwaves of their blows. They should be easily in the low building+ range.

In terms of speed, most of the hellish forces here lack much in the way of the speed feats but the damned of the circle of Lust, seductresses can move faster then the eye can speed, putting them in the subsonic speed range. As such the power speed limit is low building subsonic.

In terms of abilities this tier has alot of fire manipulation. Fire minions in all their forms are engulfed in hellfire and can only be put out by holy energies, asterian beasts breath fire and so forth. The gluttons vomit out an acid attack. Similarly in the comic the falsifiers spit out virulent diseases with their vomit.  The heretics and pagans can use a lightning attack. Vaious forms of demons have flight. One could try to fight that with ranged strategies although as the enviornment is often actively hostile to people in the Inferno, a better strategy is some kind of advanced movement option to match. Speaking of enviornment, the denizens are frightfully good at using their native land of Inferno to the advantage with things like gorger worms burrowing through the dirt to consume people in surpise attacks.

The strongest thing this tier has at first glance is the seductresses' mind manipulation, able to compel people and bring them close before skewer them with their phallic tendril protruding from their groin.

However the verse has one other thing about it, not usually remembered. The entire thing is higher plane. The entire game is about Dante's dead soul traveled across purgatory, an astral enviornment. The damned are literally damned souls, not physical beings at all. This is more clear in the comic when characters and enviornments are depicted as ethereal and regularly change forms. In addition when Dante asked why he sees the crusaders in Hell, but not the muslims they were fighting he is told "Because this isn't their Hell Dante, it's yours!" implying the whole thing may be a personalized psychological enviornment adjusted to him in particular. This would make sense with how many times he runs across people he personally knows in Hell in important positions. It's even implied combat in hell may be spiritual in nature with Hell Queen Beatrice in the comic saying she would "annihilate Dante's very spirit" with her vengence. Granted she's not on this tier, so it may not apply, but the tier is at least as high as the astral plane, and possibly as high as the spiritual plane. 

Particularly at this tier, that makes this a lot more difficult. 

Fortunately the tier, and most of the verse really has a massive weakness, that being holyness. Holy things harm the damned, and particularly in the comic they were absolutely destroyed just from Dante holding up Beatrice's cross near them. This does bring up a sort of awkward question: whether different types of holy are equalized in vs debates? If you used a character whose powers were holy to Quetzalcoatl, would it still be effective to the damned in Inferno? My best guess, trying to equalize it to other form sof powers, is that holyness can be equalized across verses unless the verse makes an explict depiction between types of holy. Because other gods are not present in Dante's Inferno that means we can go forward on the assumption that holy powers would be similarly effective. 

Now granted having holy powers isn't an auto-win. As mentioned before the enviornment often threatens people in the Inferno and can cause great trouble. Plus the Heretics can nullify holy energy with their unholy magic. But it is a definite major boon, downright neccesary.

The verse lacks a lot of concrete weaknesses, although one help for any counter is that none of the damned are maxed in both power and speed. Any subsonic opponent should be able to evade an Asterian Beast one on one (or simply kill their rider and take over the Beast, as Dante does) and any low building opponent should have a clear power advantage against anything else. 

Another advantage a counter can have against the Inferno is the inherently disunified nature of the tier. The creatures of Inferno regularly fight against each with Asterian Beasts stamping out the annoying creatures around them when not controlled and gorger worms eating most of the damned. The enviornment that is a threat to any invader also regularly threatens the damned. A character that can manipulate either people or enviornment can functionally turn the verse against each other.

The final point is perhaps a bit speculative but there is some evidence to support it. As the Inferno is an astral environment, having a strong will seems to bolster one's capacities as happened with Dante. As such having a strong will would be at least helpful to resist the manipulation of the seductress and at most might give a substantial power boost.

So this brings me to my counters. My first counter is 

Eberk from Dungeons and Dragons

Eberk is a Dwarven Cleric of Moradin, which is probably the best race + class combination from D&D to go into the Inferno. Eberk is a cleric of equal level to wizards who can cast the fireball spell, which can create an explosion with a 20 feet (~6.1 meters) in radius. Assuming his spells and might are relative, his power should be comparable to the asterian beasts. Even low level D&D adventurers are able to dodge subsonic arrows at point blank range which should give him speed comparable to the seductresses as well, making him a physical powerhouse of this tier.

Eberk as a Cleric carries the holy symbol of his god Moradin, the dwarven allfather, the forger of souls. His signature 2 strongest spells include spiritual weapon, which conjures a spiritual weapon that is like Dante's "Sins of the Father" magic in nature, yet holy in nature rather then unholy, which would make it far more dangerous. Adventers also have some ability to affect higher plane nature, which means especially his holy nature, Eberk should be able to melee the Heretics, breaking their staffs they get unholy power from with his warmhammer. His other strongest spell is Divine Protection which would give him functional invulnerability to the tier. 

Eberk is a dwarf, a race proud and willful. It's unlikely the seductresses could tempt him with his strong dwarven will and devotion to his holy cause, and he may become stronger in this astral plane. Him being a dwarf is also helpful as Dwarves are famous diggers and he could very well dig around any environment hazards, or create traps in the grounds of Hell to trap the damned. He could very well likely also tame one of the gorger worms and take it for a mount across the Inferno.

The only limitation I could see tying Eberk down is his stamina. Clerics don't get that many spells per day and the forces of Hell are vast indeed. For a counter that is not likely to be hindered by this

Tamahome from Fushigi Yugi.

Tamahome would be a physical powerhouse in this tier. He was able to match Nakago in a martial arts battle, Nakago being the strongest warrior of the God of War, able to blow up numerous police cars at once and set the environment on fire. Tamahome is also fast enough to move faster then the eye casually and leave afterimages. This means he would be as strong as an Asterian Beast, probably a bit faster then even the seductresses, and easily the most skilled fighter of the tier.

Tamahome is one of the 7 celestial warriors of the god Suzaku, each of them bearing one of his 7 holy constellations on their body. The 7 celestial warriors can channel their chi destructively into their aura or project it as beams of energy. As they are holy warriors, this aura which extends from them even as they sleep would be anathema to the damned of Inferno, making it so none save those shielded by the heretics could even approach Tamahome. 

Tamahome has a particular resistance to heat based powers including fire and lightning, giving him resistance to the most common form of attack, most enviromental hazards which are almost fire or lightning based, and gives him resistnace to the heretics attacks giving him a much easier matchup against the heretics.

The only real threats to him are the seductress mind manipulation which may or may not work, depending how you think his aura would be effected, and some of the enviromental hazards. However for what I think would be the ultimate counter to this tier I would suggets

Shadi from Yu-Gi-Oh!

Shadi is likely physically similar in durability and attack power to the High Priest of Darkness and the Pharaoh who created a dark lightning that was destroying the environment as a side effect suggesting he should be stronger then anything save the Asterian Beasts. Yami Yugi also was able to just materialize behind some deliquents suggesting Shadi may be comparable in speed to the seductresses.

Shadi is an astral, possibly spiritual being himself and would interact with the Inferno as though it were physical matter. However he can also use his nature to teleport where wants, avoiding any environmental hazards. He is renowned for his extreme willpower to the point that until his game with the Pharaoh Atem, his will had not wavered once. Even ignoring this, his millennium items protect him from the brainwashing of the Millennium Rod, which had even superior mental manipulation to the seductresses. 

Shadi carries with him two of the millennium items, items imbued with the dual forces of the light and darkness as within them was sealed Zorc the original darkness and the Pharaoh Atem, the embodiment of the gods on Earth. As they bear a holy power, they would ward off any in the inferno but as they also bear unholy power, they could likely effect the heretics as well. His millennium key allows him to enter the souls of others, changing their personality from within, giving him the ability to control the astral bodies within the Inferno. It can also be used to give visions with which he could likely incite internal chaos within the ranks of the damned. He also carries the Millennium Scale which measures the weight of an enemy's soul against the feather of Ma'at, and if it exceeds it, their soul will be devoured by Ammut, which would be a form of existence erasure against the evil astral beings of the Inferno. He could also use them to intiate a Game of Darkness, brining the rules of a game to life, the loser or one who cheats within being subject to a Penalty Game. As the whole of the universe can be made into a Game of Darkness, it's likely Shadi could do this to at least an entire ring of Hell at once, if not the whole of it. By manipulating the evil hearts of the damned, tricking them to cheat, he can defeat everyone on this tier at once.

However this pales in comparison to Shadi's ultimate power, taught to him by his master the Pharaoh Atem. Shadi posses the prana, the spiritual lifeforce that is derived from the collective unconcious. The prana transcends spacetime and can warp reality or erase the existence of things including duel spirits. Top Tier prana users can affect the entire universe with their prana and Shadi is well high enough to spiritually erase the Inferno with his prana. Of course prana can be resisted, and in fact it can be resisted something fairly common. Prana can be resisted by those with friendship in their hearts, something devoid in the Inferno. As such no one would have any resistance to prana in the Inferno.

Regional Scale Threat:

On this tier exists most of the bossesses of the Inferno, lords of individual circles.

This tier is at least city block in power scaling from the dimension Death, the first boss of the game, making being roughly city block level, as well as the giants of the 9th circle being so large they are mistaken for towers, and Cleopatria being a skyscraper-sized enemy who made her tower rise and created a storm around it. Ths tier could be higher, Phylegas the fire giant is so much more massively then buildings, he's likely multi-city block to town level. Death's dimension extends enough that it's arguably multi-city block level. Cleopatra conjuring a mystical storm may be similar to storm creation feats which would normally take kilotons of energy, especially as her tornado around the storm was coursing with electricity and extended further across the second circle. As such the power of the tier is city block, possibly town level. 

In terms of speed, Cleopatra can conjure lightning with her attacks which Dante can move comparable too, lightning having a speed of around mach 300. Most game bosses are treated as comparable to Dante in terms of speed. 

 This includes numerous fairly conventional fighters, even if their appearence is hellish and distorted like Marc Anthony, Franchesco, and the Malacoda. There are powerful giant beings like Phylegas. The Blind King Minos who condemns souls to circles of hell with his serpent tails is here, and has enhanced smell, able to literally smell the sins of those nearby. Cleopatra is here, controlling wind and lightning and with her own form of mind manipulation. Hell Queen Beatrice is likely here as well as she was relative to 8th Circle Dante. Hell Queen Beatrice can manipulate fire and in the comic turned into a fire, possibly a spiritual fire and claimed she would totally annihilate Dante's spirit. 

However by far the biggest danger of this tier, even though he is likely the least raw powerful, would be Death. Death is the anthromorphic concept of Death which makes it very hard to fight him. He casually froze time, possibly with his presence, and shunted himself and Dante into a seperate dimension for their fight. Death can condemn souls to Heaven or Hell and seemingly teleport at will. He wields his infamous scythe which can force death onto things, even himself. The angels may be here as well, but there's almost no vs information on them. 

In terms of weaknesses, holy powers are still strong against most people here although I don't think it would be especially strong against Death as Death is not particularly unholy. Best strategy against Death is finding anyone who can affect abstracts and taking his scythe, possibly through something like telekinesis to use against him which is essentially what Dante did against him. Given Death's nature, I have to imagine life manipulation would be helpful so a combination of holy and life manipulation would likely do well. This brings me to my first counter

The Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke.

The Forest Spirit by sheer size in his night walker form should be able to compare to the large enemies of the second tier and can match their stronger interpretation as well as when his night walker form fell it crushed iron town. 

The Forest Spirit is the guardian spirit of the forest who gives life and takes it away. His holy life manipulation would likely ward away any hellish enemy and likely defeat Death. He also has a much higher effective range then anyone in the tier as he could control all the things happening within his forest. 

It's also unlikely any stealth strategy would work on him as animals are granted sentience by his presence and are unquestioningly loyal to the forest spirit. As animals can sense the astral and spiritual forces of the world, so too would the forest spirit know.

That said if they do get an attack off on him, he would likely die as he died to a normal gun. For a more durable counter you could use

Ares from Lego DC

Ares can grow to building sized and sacles to various building to large building feats in the verse suggesting he would not be quite as powerful but relative to the tier. He is also able to react to Lego Wonder Woman whose official description suggests she move near the speed of light, showing he would not be blitzed. 

Ares has mind and emotional manipulation which should be able to affect most of the astral beings of the Inferno, drawing on their power to bolster his own. Either way Ares is a divine power and can hypothetically use holy manipulation. 

Obviously the big fight is Ares vs Death. Ares is a conceptual being that will exist as long as disharmony and violence will. This means that while Death's concept is arguably more stable, it would be possibly very hard to rid himself of Ares, especially as standard tactic for Ares is to telekinetically steal an enemy's weapon. Death's Scythe may be able to kill him but given Ares's relativistic reactions it's unlikely Death would be able to lead a conceptual hitting blow on Ares.

That said while Ares can teleport, he's only ever shown it on short distances. If Death throws him into another dimension, he could seal Ares away. Also Ares has never shown time stop resistance in the Lego continuity. For the best counter, a counter that would be unstoppable to the tier, I would suggest

Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.

Ned is strong enough to physically battle Homer Simpson, who has tanked numerous building level incidents, and a few town level ones. He should also be comparable to Marge Simpsons who overpowered a hurricane that ripped a bowling alley into the air. This puts him comparable to the tier in power, for both a lowball and a highball. In terms of speed, he's comparable to Homer who outpaced an explosion which would be hypersonic and in terms of reaction speed when Homer reacted to actual light.

Ned despite his usually pacifist demeanor, is actually an acrobatic and skilled fighter from his time as a bounty hunter. Homer, a normal human in the Simpsons-verse, killed the Simpsons-verse Death suggesting Ned should be able to interact with Death normally. 

He is also ridiculously holy, to the point that he can simply ask God for things and God will intervene for him.  When his son was Todd was being swept away in a deadly river, he asked God to save him and a tree snapped to stop him followed by God giving a friendly gesture from Heaven. As Heaven is a plane outside of space and time, Ned can get around time stop and spatial/dimensional bfr by asking God to bring him to Heaven. This would also give Ned a level of holy aura protecting him from any of the Damned, not even including the cross he usually carries. Death would simply not have any sins to consign Ned to Hell, Minos would be completely blind fighting him, and Cleopatra's mind manipulation would get nulled. 

Planetary Scale Threat:

At this tier would be the two strongest characters in the Inferno, Lucifer and Dante. Lucifer claimed that once freed he would shake the earth and leave the world a desert, feats that require energy in the petaton range to accomplish. Dante during the 8th and 9th Circles grow much stronger. This is particularly elaborated in the comics where Beatrice comments on how Dante's devotion and will allowed him to turn all the pain and suffering of Hell into strength and by end of game Dante could directly overpower Lucifer.

In terms of speed, during Dante and Lucifer's final fight, Lucifer almost escapes Hell in seconds, likely moving through the 9 terraces until Dante plunges him back down to the bottom of Hell. This has been calced in the 4 digit mach range.

Lucifer in particular has a massive range of abilities including the abilities he likely gave to his worshippers the heretics. Lucifer has manipulation of space and dimensions, creating a warped space with possibly 4 spatial dimensions in the gluttony circle, and creating a portal to Hell. Lucifer has a form of corruption, though it seems to require people losing bets with him or consuming the food of the damned and so may not be combat applicable. He showed necromancy, raising the dead and manipulation of fire, wind and lightning. Lucifer has showed clairvoyance, knowing of distant events like Dante's sins in the crusaders while he was with Beatrice and showed this to her. He has domain over souls and can consign them to Hell and he is resistant to most of Dante's abilities. He also projected a shadowy avatar while his giant form was trapped in the ice of Judecca. This shadowy form displayed the above abilities.

When freed, Lucifer displayed more abilites. He had such an immortality that Death's scythe did not affect him and he casually caused it to disintegreate with a gesture. He also displayed teleportation and likely possesed some form of sealing as his plan as stated in the comic was to trap Dante in the same sealed state he was in, making him the next king of Hell. He has shapeshifting, and at the end of the game seemingly changed into the red cross that was sewn on Dante's chest. In the animated film he had more abilities including telekinesis, precognition and telepathy (showed Beatrice the future evils of mankind, including future wars), and the ability to manipulate one's perception, keeping the damned from percieving the present. He also stated in the animated film he would plunge the cosmos into chaos. This could be universal power, universal chaos hax, or just poetic language. In the last case it obviously means nothing. In the first case it's a pretty big upgrade power-wise. In the second case it's an extremely difficult hax to get around as it is literally universal chaos hax. Lucifer may also have some level of spiritiual manipulation, as he claimed that the sins of man would be the bedrock of his return, and in the comic that he would use that to break the barrier to leave Hell.

He was only defeated by Dante. Dante had a soul blacker then any in history, and also a holy power within him, his love. This allowed him to use both the scythe of Death, and the cross of Beatrice, unholy and holy magic. He has a number of holy and unholy skills along with his magic including attack reflection, unholy upside down jewel-encrused crosses that piece enemies, and a healing protective aura with angel wings. His scythe can cut through the very fabric of Hell itself. Dante can also grow in strength with his devotion as mentioned above. He turns the pain and suffering oh his struggle into devotion towards redemption, which bolsters his astral strength. He grew rapidly during the 8th and 9th circles. He can use the cross to absolve an enemy or the scythe to damn them. When he does this he absorbs them as pure spiritual energy to regain health or mana depending on which. This leads into Dante's strongest ability. Dante can release the spirits within him, the benevolent spirits he absolved and just as he saved them, so too can they save him. He used this power to seal Lucifer back into the 9th circle for all eternity.

So how do you fight this? Purification while it can be helpful to some extent against Lucifer is not the catch all it was in prior tiers as Lucifer has resistance to holy manipulation and granted it to his worshippers. The biggest weakness I notice for this tier for both Lucifer and Dante is a lack of range, both normally and in terms of powers. Lucifer has a lot of abilites but outside his possibly chaos manipulation, none of them are shown on a massive scale. Large scale mind manipulation or space manipulation etc. would probably work on both of them as would hitting them from outside their range. 

In addition, both Dante and Lucifer have a personal weakness. Lucifer, and this is made even more clear in the comic, is impotent, unable to create real change due to his seal. Lucifer is consigned to Hell, and in his sealed form is vastly weaker then normal, his power severaly limited. Sealing/Binding, or exploitng his inability to move freely in general, would be good tactics to use against him. For Dante, the main weakness is psychological, in particular his emotional short-sighted. All of Dante's sins were things not thought out, but spur of the moment decisions made due to the heat of the moment. All of his desire for redemption, to save Beatrice come from a similar source, and when he thought it was truly hopeless, he willingly gave up his quest and merely asked Beatrice that she someday forgive him for what he had done (where on this act of humility, Beatrice's cross freed her.)

So who would be a good counter? My first idea for a counter is

Angemon from Digimon.

Angemon scales well past digimon like Meramon whose mere presence was dying up all of Southeast Asia. While he would be at a power disadvantage, it's like Angemon could hurt Dante or Lucifer with a concentrated attack. He owuld also well be able to compete in speed as Digimon weaker then Angemon have feats of outpacing lightning by a good margin. He also has relativistic reactions

Digimon fight on the plane of pure data, to protect and affect each other's digi-cores, their essences or spirits. As such Angemon should be able to fight the same spiritual plane as Dante and Lucifer. He also has a far more versatile pool of attacks he does as opposed to Dante and Lucifer who focus on the same general attacks. Angemon's attacks are all holy light themed, and are particularly strong against those who are of the dark which would include both Dante and Lucifer. As a virus buster digimon he has the power to delete them outright, which would get past Lucifer's immortality and resistance to death.

He can also freely travel through dimensions which means he can easily teleport away from any attack the tier throws at him by teleporting into another dimension before teleporting in again and attacking them. 

That said he is at a power disadvantage pretty notably and could be caught off guard by some of the abilities of this tier like Dante's sealing. For a more consistent counter, you could use

Lucia Nanami from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch

Lucia scales to the power of the original Aqua Regina's whose appearence in Mikeru dimension made i fade in and out of existence, a dimension large enough that Mikeru planned to fuse it with the whole human world. She's also stronger then a mermaid princess who was going to drown the world with the seas of the dark ocean. Thus she should be comparable, if not outright superior in raw power to Dante and Lucifer. Her speed is only hypersonic, but it's kind of irrelevant here for reasons I will go into.

As the new Aqua Regina, Lucia has the same abilities of the old Aqua Reginas. This includes the ability to see past the boundaries of space and time. She was able to see all the people praying for her across he Earth and at Lucia's birth, the Aqua Regina before her appeared and foretold that she would become the next Aqua Regina. Thus she would know when to strike them while they would not know of her existence. She has inter-dimensional teleportation as Aqua Regina teleported into Mikeru's dream dimension of her own accord and could easily teleport into Hell, when Dante or Lucifer is not suspecting her.

Lucia's main form of attack is her singing. The song of the mermaid princesses has purity and beauty so great that it brings suffering to all evil. Lucifer as the great evil would be massively damaged by her song and at least incapacited for a moment. This would give Lucia the chance to use her sealing, as the Aqua Regina has sealing strong enough to seal the entire Panthalassa clan, on him. However it would be even stronger on Dante.

Lucia's song is essentially an extremely powerful form of emotional manipulation, the song of the mermaid princesses reaching into the hearts and purifying all hostile intent. It would force Dante to face his own sins and would probably similar to the end of the 8th circle where Dante gave up his quest for redemption. 

However while Lucia has some hax resistances, she is slower and can't resist all the abilities of the tier or defend against all of them, relying entirely on hit and run tactics. For the best counter I would recommened

The Idea of Evil from Berserk

The Idea of Evil is very difficult to quantify. It is an abstract force, a dark god created by mankind attempting to justify it's own suffering. It sits in the abyss and controls all fate and causality of the Earth through the power of the collective unconcious of Earth.

Just off the bat if Lucifer or Dante doesn't kill The Idea of Evil immediatly, it will control their fate and causality, a form of hax they have no resistance too. Lucifer doesn't have feats of affecting abstracts, and Dante's scythe can only hit a few people at once while the Idea of Evil is omnipresent across humanity. It is also a conceptual representation of evil, and as such Lucifer would find it impossible to banish from himself, and for Dante to do so means losing much of his abilities and become vulnerable to being killed by the Idea of Evil.

Neither Dante or Lucifer really have the area of effect on a conceptual level to kill the Idea of Evil, while it can casually fate them to seal either other or the like, manipulating their emotions or sealing them inside the abyss which it can do by turning off someone's individuality so they become nothing alone. And it would be essentially impossible to affect with almost any hax they have not just due to it's conceptual nature but due to it's nigh omnipresence and it residing in the abyss, a seperate astral dimension that neither Dante or Lucifer can reasily reach.

Universal Scale Threat:

So this is something I was sort of skirting around when thinking about this, but this verse clearly has the Christian God in it. Like it's not implied or anything they just straight out talk about him at points, like Lucifer saying God was the real evil and that he rebeled for reason and justice and the like. The problem is God never appears in Dante's Inferno, so assessing him for vs standards is quite hard. The compromise I came to is: While I was preparing for this blog I found numerous things suggesting the verse could be a lot higher then it currently is, and this tier is sort of the "if this verse was really highballed" tier.

Lucifer states he was the "Morning Star" strongly implying that the angels are the stars. St. Lucia who is an angel is treated as comparable to Dante, though it's unclear whether this is pre 8th circle Dante pre-Redemption Boost and thus scales to regular Bossess or 9th Circle Dante and thus scales only to him and Lucifer. Angels and redeemed Beatrice can see down into the 9th Circle from Heaven in the comics. 9th Circle Dante also easily took down the ice giants in the comics, whose fall would "shall Hell". This is notable because at least one circle of Hell is shown to have it's own sun. If this statement is taken at face, this would make the ice giants who should be on the tier of the bosses, should be stellar+ to multi-stellar.

Lucifer also has numerous statements suggesting he may be a universal threat. He has the aforementioned statement of plunging the cosmos into chaos. In the game Lucifer stated that they would soon witness the end of the universe and stated that all that is good shall be gone from the universe forever. So possibly universe level.

In terms of speed, again Hell contains circles that have their own sun meaning Lucifer's feat of nearly escaping would be FTL to some degree.

All the prior characters with their powers and feats were created by God, as well as presumably the universe? As such God scales to all the abilities mentioned prior. He also has a form of conceptual manipulation and reality-warping to create metaphysical "rules", what vs battles wiki called "Law Manipulation" as it's stated in all 3 versions tha there are rules of Hell, with one in particular (not a single soul may leave this place) being specifically stated to be "forbidden....by HIM" (Lucifer points upwards)

So how to fight this? Well outside of law manipulation again, while there are a lot of abilities here, they're not on a very high scale. In other worlds having at least low resistances can go a long way and having a single high level hax can be surprisingly effective if it can work on conceptuals. There's one hax in particular that might be really strong, that being large scale spiritual or mind hax.

I say this because at one point Lucifer states that with the spirits Dante had gathered, the two of them could rule the three kingdoms of the afterlife, presumably including God. Now I'm not certain about this, because obviously the Devil could be lying, but being able to manipulate people on a wide scale to use their sealing ability doesn't seem like a bad idea in the first place. Plus numbers can really help if the opponent doesn't have a good area of effect. 

Simialrly spatial manipulation on a cosmic scale might be really strong for similar sealing purposes or just to avoid the small area of effect attacks. God also doesn't seem to have had any fights against any equals so skill based characters might do fairly well here. 

Things brings me to my first counter

Giygas from Mother

Giygas is many times stated to be able to destroy the universe and is coterminous with all of spacetime meaning speed is somewhat irrelevant.

Giygas is an abstract entity extending over all of spacetime meaning that it would be very difficult for the verse to even harm him, let alone beat him. Giygas has a vast arsenal of his own. Most notably he has a planetary form of mental manipulation, which he could do even in his vastly weaker form of Gigue, which not only should work on anyone but could possibly force them to use their sealing power as his psychic power seems to extend into the spiritual, affecting those with evil hearts greatest and altering morality.

Giygas is particular for his spacetime manipulation, existing in a personal dimension of darkness, able to attack and affect anywhere in time and be unaffected. Combine this with his passive existence erasing aura in the future, rendering things into the void means that almost no power used on him would be effect as he could null them or avoid them via spacetime trickery.

The only caveat is I'm not sure he could resist the holy purification abilites that could revert him to Gigue, vastly weakening him. Even in that form he would still be something of a threat given he would still have planetary mind hax but his reactions only being lightspeed means he would likely be blitzed by beings far more powerful and hax. He also can't particularly take advance of any skill weakness as he himself is completely mindless. For a counter that could use the skill weakness, you could use

Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat

Shao Kahn can merge two realms into one, each one being stated to be endless by someone with divine perception showing that he would have a large power advantage over the DI-verse. In terms of speed he would be somewhat at a disadvanage but should be somewhat comparable as he would be relativistic scaling from Kotal Kahn's sunlight attack.

Shao Kahn is an incredibly skilled fighter and is a master of soul magic which allows the draining of souls and spiritual energy, which he did to the entire Earth at once. This dura-ignoring hax should allow him to one shot plus give him the ability to amplify his power. If a few dozen souls gave Dante and Lucifer the ability to rule the afterlives, Shao Kahn absorbing billions would make him clearly absolute in terms of power level.

Shao Kahn in the novel was stated to be able to merge life and death, and scales to Raiden who existed "outside" the laws of time and thus was not duplicated across time. He also scales to Ermac whose massive supply of souls gave massive resistance to soul and mind hax as well as can resist the magics of sorcerers of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi. All this means that a lot of the haxes of the verse would not work on him especially given his more common tricks like attack reflection, regen and creating inter-dimensional portals to spatially manipulate attacks away.

Furthermore Shao Kahn has the ability to fuse souls and make beings from them, including clones of him. While it's unclear how many this requires, it at most requires the souls of one world. Meanwhile Inferno and Paradise collectively contain the souls of all who had ever died. For comparison the people living currently make up about 7% of the people who have ever lived, meaning that from absorbing those souls, which requires no greater range and should take at most seconds means that Shao Kahn should be able to create dozens of copies of himself.

That said some of the abilities like reality warping on the conceptual plane would be difficult for him to beat. For the best counter to the verse I would suggest

Rayearth from Magic Knight Rayearth

Rayearth was able to overpower the power of Mokona who casually created universes, suggesting Rayearh could do something similar to the God of DI-verse. Rayearth in a weaker form was able to match the speed of starships that could travel across a star system rapidly, suggesting it should be relative or superior in speed.

Even the power of Mokona who could create the laws of each world, freeze time, dimensionally BFR , and erase existence was overwhelmed by Rayearth. This is because Rayearth is born of the wills and friendships of the three Magic Knights, a will that used the power of Cephiro where will controls all, and can even warp the reality of the world.

Rayearth is the culimination of the hopes and the collective wills of all of Cephiro, and can use their power, suggesting it could use the power of the spirits of DI-verse Earth. Rayearth used this power to destroy Debonair, the Dark Pillar, the embodiment of the despair of all of Cephiro, resisting Debonair's emotional manipulation and corruption. 

With magic resistance granted by the magic resistance of the Magic Knights, the ability to travel through dimensions at will, resistance to the godlike warping powers of Mokona from sheer willpower, and resistance to the spiritual/psychological powers of Debonair by the combined wills of Cephiro, Rayearth legit resists every ability of the Dante's Inferno-verse and can hit conceptuals due to not just hitting the embodiment of the despair of all Cephiro but by being able to channel the wills of all of Earth, or through dimensions to Cephiro which can warp even the laws of the world. This means at best they can beat Rayearth by raw power, but Rayearth can heal itself if it takes non-critical damage via Fuu's wind magic. 

Rayearth is also incredibly skilled as it is piloted by the three magic knights including Hikaru whose matched the greatest swordsman of Cephiro in combat and Umi who matched the greatest swordswoman of Chizeta in combat. Fuu can also use wind magic to bind enemies and Rayearth can likely do the same on a cosmic scale.

And if need be, Rayearth can split into 3 Rune Gods, each strong enough to at least be difficult to deal with but taking out their ability to affect them all at once.

And that's how to be OP in the Dante's Inferno-verse.