As a fairly casual fan of the series, I don't really like this at all. I wouldn't have a problem with the character design if this were a completely new series, but they just fixed what wasn't broken. Dante himself was probably the most important aspect of the series, and now they decided to change it. This feels like some kid pretending to be Dante, or something.
Still, this has raised my curiosity. I'm really interested in seeing how this turns out.