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1) He's a ruthless, merciless, selfish, and utterly twisted, Machiavellian, motherfucker capable of great cruelty and vindictiveness and is portrayed as the farthest thing from a moral paragon as possible. A being to be feared rather than loved, but nevertheless respected.
2) He's not universally loved. People who are not antagonistic to him have expressed their dislike of him on occasion. And that some of his friends(Miyuki included) sometimes think that he's way of thinking is a little warped (his inability to understand "good will" for one thing).
3) The story doesn't just revolve around him and actually gives the other characters subplots and agendas of their own. Heck, even some of his friends like Mayumi are technically aligned with rival factions.
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But then again, most of his friends only want to take advantage of being with someone like him, which really takes away the sincerity of friendship in the series. As you said, Tatsuya's friends actually belong to other factions. 1 and 2 aren't really de-suifiers. For example, Kirito also has moments where he's not nice to others, but he's still regarded as a Stu. Especially for #2, any author worth a read would use a main character's superior intellect as a source of conflict with his peers. That doesn't mean that him having a superior intellect is completely justified.