Weirdest conclusion I came to is that this should've been a cinematic platformer.

No seriously, it's not like this game's good at anything else. They ripped every ounce of legitimate depth the mechanics have, offset's gone, mashing is the name of the game, enemies are missing a lot of telegraphs and the enemy design in general is piss-poor. The pacing is off, the developers who care about the gameplay are gone, the boss design is clearly set for cinematics and nothing else because your toolset is always incredibly limited and not interesting to fight. What do you have left?

The aesthetics are wonderful, the music is killer, the platforming is actually not too shabby thanks to stuff like After Burner and Witch Twist. I feel giddy whenever a cinematic lets me do the BEEG climax button thing and mash an angel or devil into a nice fine pulp. In fact a lot of the cinematic timing is on point, when the clearly underbaked story isn't rearing its head.

It's a shame to see, I quite liked Bayonetta 1.

So you know those issues I have with Bayonetta 1?

The awkward level design, how grind happy the game gets in getting weapons and how it's equivalent of Bloody Palace is locked behind certain missions


Bayo 2 pretty much got rid of all of that and had so much enemy variety. It's the greatest Sequel a game can ask for

I like Bayonetta, the character. I like the attitude, the bombast, the click of her heels. I like fighting alongside her mom best of all.

The trouble is not her design so much as the masters she serves. Here comes another boring boy. Here comes another baroque monstrosity. Scold me with that stone award. I’m fine with that.

What do you do if you appreciate the ‘depth’ of a system but have no desire to master it? What if basic dodging and countering are good enough to get you through? What if you need more than mechanical mastery to climax?