Sign up to disable those pesky ads. What a coincidence. Of the three women you've mentioned, I consider Lucia the less important.
That's because she's part of the worst game of the franchise and holds no relevance towards any of the other three games.
It's natural because in DMC2 Dante is so mature and beyond anyone there, that it's Lucia who was helped (emotionally, as in to grow up etc) by Dante and not the opposite.
That's actually one of the faults of the game. If Lucia was the main character and they focused the story on her all that would be fine, but Dante's the protagonist and as such had to go through something... but he didn't. Lucia had a pretty good story on her own, it just got overshadowed by Dante's appearance in the story. It didn't really help that Capcom had split DMC2 into two seperate discs.
Well, if it wasn't for Lucia, Dante wouldn't take a trip to Hell. So I guess in a way she holds at least some importance.
Why wouldn't he? He would even if she wasn't there. Wasn't that the topic of their last conversation? I'll go. No I will. I am a demon and deserve to die, so I'll go. Let's leave to Fate. Heads I go. *spins* Heads. Didn't you want to hear Sparda's story? I already know. He did the same thing. For me this means he had made up his mind by the time the gate re-opened. When they realize it, you immediatelly see him starting walking towards it too.
I don't think unless it was for Lucia getting in touch with him from starters, getting him to help them at Vie de Marli to fight against Arius, that he would go to Hell. If it wasn't for Lucia, Dante wouldn't know there was an opportunity to go to Hell to start with, he wouldn't know that Arius would open a hellgate.
By that logic, the true hero of this story is Matier. Who raised Lucia and sent her to contact Dante, since by her experience/knowledge the only person who could deal with a gate to the underworld was Sparda, and his son is the next best candidate. It was Matier who talked to him and made him take the job. Lucia just left him a message "find us" in a that gallery/place thing.
Lucia didn't really help Dante's growth because she shared the main character role with Dante instead of being a supporting character like Trish and Lady. had Capcom been comfortable with replacing the main character at that time DMC2 would have been like DMC4 (new main character has most of the missions and Dante only has a few ) or made the story 100% about Lucia with Dante as a supporting role in the story and maybe make him an unlockable playable character with no story (like Vergil in DMC3) but instead we ended up with two half done stories. but none of this is on topic so i should probably try to say something about Sparda's family tree. it seems like Capcom was planning on making Nero Vergil's son and just didn't have time to figure out how to explain it so they just didn't say anything. there is still a significant chance that Capcom will try to use that explanation if they bother to acknowledge Nero ever again. but everyone wants answers and we have all realized that the "Nero is Vergil's son" theory makes no sense so there is a small chance that Capcom might try to come up with a better explanation for Nero (i just came up with another theory about that but i should probably make another thread for it.). currently the official explanation for DmC Dante is that he is Dante in an alternate universe. if they added DmC to the original canon DmC Dante would probably be a younger version of DMC Dante with some vague explanation given for the Angel powers.
I have an odd idea. What if this reboot is set in the future, and this punk kid is actually Dante's son? That would explain where the half-demon came from, at least. Perhaps Dante hooked up with an angel?
Or mabye the new Dante is Nero's son? I mean think of it, the new Dante is half demon half angel. Nero is an demon and mabye Kyrie has an angel form like her brother? The kid could of been named after Dante, after all he did say "not a bad name."
i think Dragonmaster2010 did a thread on how to integrate DmC as a prequel. And i did a thread called weird movie idea that tried to put DmC as a movie sequel to DMC3.