Yeah, having been a moderator for Capcom at that point in time..it wasn't fun..I met the guy you're referring to at E3 in 2012. He was a nice enough guy, I told him exactly what I thought (the gameplay from the demo was fun, still do not like the design though..and that's how I feel about the game itself, fun gameplay, story and designs are pretty bad tho)
It was honestly Keiji Inafune's fault, for the most part, since he had this idea that Japanese gaming was on the decline and that Western style games were the future..so he wanted to take Capcom's series and make them Westernized (this can be seen plainly in DmC and the cancelled Mega Man X reboot, Maverick Hunter). They had designs that looked more in-line with how Dante originally looked, but Inafune kept telling them to go further away from the 'Japanese' style and make it more and more Western.