I don't give a dead moose's last shit about Helena Taylor or whether the ending betrayed your fanfiction about Bayo and Jeanne. This game took 5 years from announcement to release and it is a smelly mess.

The combat has been even further dumbed down from bayo 2, giving you Demon Summons to use in battle. Basically, you hit a button and a giant comes in and does some big attacks in the arena. This means, to balance this, all the enemies have been transformed into lumbering giant idiot damage sponges instead of the intelligent dangerous foes they used to be. We're a long LONG ways away from Grace and Glory, here.

The main story sucks too. Half the time you're not playing the damn game, you're doing some obnoxious setpiece mini game. Oh you wanna fight dudes and practice combos? Too bad here's a part where you surf on Godzillas back down a skyscraper. It all looks terrible due to it being too much for the switch to handle, and it runs at an inconsistent framerate to boot. I felt like I was playing a bad rerelease of a 2009 PS3 game.

Thats all I can remember because I haven't played this game outside of maybe a month after release because it was so underwhelming. I still come back to bayo 1 to run through Angel slayer from time to time, I will never come back to this slop.

Insane game made by insane people. Playing 9 months or so after the game had launched, I've heard all about the discourse over the game's systems, over Viola, and of course the ending. Frankly, I wasn't sure what to expect going into it. But as it turns out, the game is insane. And I loved every bit of it.

With a whooping FIFTY FIVE different movesets by my count, the game is constantly throwing new experiences at your face... and it pretty much always works! There's a couple of sections, particularly the spider chase in ch2 and any time Viola has to rely on witch time, that falter, but they are far between and are over in a couple minutes max.

Viola as a whole, although she's a fair step down from playing as Bayonetta, is only around for like an hour of the game. Her parry Witch TIme does suck, but its pretty easy to get by in the main game without hitting it much at all (all of the witch time reliance is in side fights), so it never got frustrating. Really, I don't understand why she's such a sticking point for a lot of people.

As for Bayonetta, she controls better than ever, one of the best controlling characters I've ever experienced. THe Demon Slave system integrates seemlessly into her existing movesets. It was so fun to pull off combos switching between Bayonetta and the demons, and I ended up using a wide variety of them throughout the game.

The story wasn't very good, unsurprisingly. It's better than Bayonetta 2's, probably 1's as well. I could actually understand what was going on for most of the plot, which is a marked improvement. I understand why people were so upset by the ending, but I was left feeling rather ambivalent to the negative parts of it. They'll be back, probably. This series hasn't suggested any reason why they wouldn't.

All the negatives were eclipsed by the one fanservicey section that made me fangirl harder than any game has in a while. It was crazy, it was a unique segment structured for like 2 minutes of gameplay, it felt great. It encapsulated everything so great about Bayonetta 3.

YAS QUEEN WORK MAMAAAAAAA SLAYYYYY
No but seriously, this is such a great game. It’s fun, it’s camp, it’s a total bop. Although we now have this less horny bayo (A FACT THAT IS ACTUALLY EXPLAINED IN THE GAME, MIGHT I TELL YOU) she is still amazing, she’s still serving, still a legend, and still the moment.
Bayo 3 has some of the best moments of the entire saga, from Diva’s Dance references (but make it demonic!) to some of the best showdowns of videogames.
The last 2 hours of the game got me screaming, ugly crying, laughing, and, surprisingly, dancing.

It honestly is a wonderful ending to the saga. Please, PLEASE, do play it. You’re gonna have so much fun.
(Do I wish this was actually a ps5 game? Yes. It would be wayyy more amazing, ‘cause it just pushes the Switch systems right to it’s limits. But if a Switch game is all we could get then I’m effing GRATEFUL)

Certainly way better than a lot of the shit thrown at it that reviewers gave it. Its simply misunderstood. Its mechanics are so cool and so different and out there, but just like Bayonetta 1 it bogs itself down with side stuff and also doesnt teach you the mechanics at all, nor does it really give you a reason to not spam, though I think giving the player the freedom to fuck around with a ginormous move pool is a good thing sometimes, Unless you're on infinite climax. Infinite climax mode is where this game goes INSANE and I love it for that.

This game is like Bayonetta but if they decided to make her act like a parody of herself, oh and also if they tried to force a grimdark story in a game about a woman who attaches giant guns to her high heels. Oh and also if they wrote this story so that nobody really has any clue what is going on and where the majority of runtime is just Bayonetta going to a different "universe" (read, country) and meeting an alternate version of herself with about 5 lines of dialogue, an inevitable death scene and barely any personality besides Bayonetta but she’s from Japan or France or whatever. Oh and also if they decided to add a new character with her own playstyle different from Bayonetta but then make her stay pretty much the same both in terms of gameplay and character growth right up to the end. Oh and also if they decided aforementioned character should replace Cereza’s role as Bayonetta in the franchise going forward.

Oh and also if they tried to go for a more realistic visual style like Devil May Cry 5 but on hardware that is obviously not suited to that sort of graphical fidelity resulting in the game looking and running pretty poorly. Oh and also if they decided the majority of environments should be generic landscapes such as grey city, dessert and lava area. Oh and also if they decided cutscenes should all look stiff as hell in combination with the uncanny valley of the facial animations making everything feel like some poorly animated show from the early 2000s.

Oh and also if they decided to add unfun gimmick sections to pretty much every chapter and also replace a majority of major boss fights with so called gimmick sections. Oh and also if they decided a good amount of enemies should be so big and overdesigned that you have no idea what you are looking at or what kind of attack cues you should be looking for. Oh and also if they decided that air-to-ground combos just aren’t a thing anymore meaning if you want to transition to ground combat you have to awkwardly do nothing for a second so your character can make the 2 centimeter long descend back to the floor because even dodging near the ground will keep you suspended in air combat.

I have more qualms with this game in pretty much every aspect you can think of but I lack the words and sanity to write it all down right now. This game’s many flaws float through my head and I have try to fish them out to write a coherent review but there are just so many fish in the river that is my stream of conscious and they all scream for attention, no matter how big or small.

Oh well, at least the costumes are still great.

This game started pretty strong and just started to fall off the more you played the game. This game feels like they were trying to recapture the Bayo charm but failed.

The combat starts pretty strong but ends up being formulaic and repetitive. The thing I don't like about Musou games is that, at the end of the day, it usually devolves into mindless button mashing with characters/weapons being reskins of the same mindless button mashing. There's no weight or importance to different characters in Musous, they're all the same outside of animation differences. This game has the same issue.

I tried every (10 or so) weapon(s) the game offered me and did my best to experiment, but they all ended up playing virtually the same, and it got repetitive. Even the main guns of Bayo don't feel very interesting, as they too follow the same formula of gameplay.

The concept of giving you new weapons to experiment with starts off cool, but as the game progresses, it gets to the point where you are getting new weapons in almost every chapter, and the chapters aren't long enough to warrant experimenting with said weapons. It also doesn't help that you are limited to two weapons at a time. In a game with so many weapons, it feels like they don't want you to use all of them.

The dodging also feels bad in this game, which sucks for it being Bayo's main gimmick, Witch Time. To compensate for kaiju summoning, the camera pans out to very large angles, and the telegraphs for dodging feel nonexistent or difficult to see. Despite this, I do think kaijus are probably my favorite aspect of the combat, and getting big meaty hits in and having them extend your combos, defend you, or just straight up beat the hell out of an enemy does feel pretty cool.

Conceptually, this game's combat is cool, but it just doesn't end up being as satisfying as the previous games' combat. As those games had a much smaller variety of weapons, but felt much more focused.

As far as the story goes, this game doesn't have the same outlandish, wild, goofy, and extravagant charm the previous games had. It does have its moments, but overall it feels like a watered-down Bayonetta. The story was never really my focal point for these games, so I can't say I was really giving my 100% in analyzing it, but I still believe it's not much of note.

As of writing this review, I am at chapter 13 out of 14. My great friend Tony suggested a Pre-Ending review, as everyone seems to despise the ending. I've only gotten a glimpse of what it could be, but I sure don't like it. I will edit this review upon my completion.

Cont: You know what, the ending isn't that bad. It did kinda just happen but it doesn't like ruin the entire series for me like people were hyping it up to. Still staying a 4/10.

I was very disappointed in this game. The combat has been ruined imo. Bayo herself feels pretty good to play, but you can't equip separate weapons to your hands and feet which reduces your options for combos. The enemies are lacking in variety, design wise. They all look the same.

The enemies have terrible attack cues AND hit you when they're off screen so good luck getting a pure plat.

The big enemies are impossible to stun unless you summon your demon to fight for you which makes the game extremely easy. The demon slaves aren't even fun to play as imo they're kinda clunky.

Instead of controlling the demon slaves you can also use the demons as finishers for Bayonetta's normal combos. But that's only for certain combos, so that incentivizes the player to only use the combos with the demon finishers because the demon slave is the only thing that can stun the big enemies. So since the player is only incentivized to use those certain combos it, again, diminishes how many combos bayo can do. There's also way too many crappy mini games. For real. This game felt like it was doing everything in its power to NOT let you play as bayonetta.

In bayo1 the torture attacks were rewards for the players when they did good in the game and didn't get hit. It felt GREAT to be able to unleash a torture attack because the player had to earn it. In 3, torture attacks happen after bayo pummels them with her demon slave enough times and then she kills like 3 of them with an extremely fast torture attack that has an unsatisfying animation.

Viola was not fleshed out enough. Playing as her got boring quick. She's kinda like Nero in dmc4. Cool concept but not enough depth.

And that's just the gameplay.

The art direction makes everything look grayer than the previous games. Idk how to put this, but bayo has less "cunty" energy than she did in the previous games. It makes the cutscenes not fun to watch. The story is horrendous. The story wasn't good in 1 and 2 but at least they were fun. 3's story is the world's most boring trainwreck, but this review is long enough and I don't feel like getting into spoilers.

Zerei Bayonetta no Bayonettaverso.

Fiquei refletindo bastante se havia gostado ou odiado o que tinha acabado de jogar. Apesar do charme único da série (Bayonetta usando tranças e sambando no meio do combate são coisas que me conquistam pra caramba) e de toda a direção artística, eu tive MUITOS problemas ao decorrer da jogatina:

- As missões stealth da Jeanne (que não seriam um problema de fato se fossem opcionais, porém o jogo te OBRIGA a passar por elas pra história avançar);
- As habilidades não podem ser compradas na lojinha do Rodin, visto que o jogo usa uma árvore de habilidades genérica que todo jogo moderno precisa ter;
- Chefes sem graça;
- A gameplay dos demônios é muito chata e rasa;
- As lutas com chefes em que precisa usar os demônios são TERRÍVEIS;
- A história, apesar de interessante, é mais uma que se aproveita dessa onda de estórias de multiverso, apelando pra fanservice forçado na sua cara (fora que o fanservice só funciona na batalha final quando a Bayonetta do 1º e 2º jogo aparecem, porque a cena do multiverso da lua é esdrúxula pra carmba, as Bayonettas LITERALMENTE só aparecem pra morrer logo em seguida (eu juro que ri na hora)).

Enfim, Bayonetta 3 é um jogo mediano que finaliza uma incrível franquia deixando a desejar bastante.

To put my thoughts of Bayonetta 3 one way, let’s just say… this is like the video game equivalent of a well constructed house with a stable foundation that’s filled with interior design choices that I’m just not a fan of lmao.

When this game was coming out I admittedly didn’t have too much interest in it largely because of me just not having played the first two games at the time, but after playing both of them earlier this year and really enjoying them, I figured… well, why not pick up the third game? I had heard relatively mixed things about Bayonetta 3 compared to it’s predecessors but, hey, as long as the core gameplay and combat of the first two games was still there, it’d be enough to satisfy me.

And on that note, I would say it did… mostly. The core gameplay of Bayonetta 1 and 2 is still very much intact - in some ways even more fleshed out than in the first two games. The combat especially still feels really good and satisfying, still carrying over all the combos and moves that the game really encourages you to experiment with especially with it’s grading system, on top of even greater weapon variety that’s oozing with a lot of creativity and just overall insanity in the best way possible. I guess I could complain a little bit that this game doesn’t give you the option to equip different weapons to Bayonetta’s hands and feet but it doesn’t really bother me that much.

There’s not too much I can say on that note that I didn’t say about the first two games, but if anything that’s really just a positive, since combat-wise, this really follows the trend of taking what worked about the first game and fleshing it out more with more techniques, combos and weapons to add to the already fast-paced and in-depth gameplay. And in times when the game was purely focused on combat without any extra gimmicks or anything, I can say that I had about as much fun as I did with the first two games for the most part.

Problem is, I specifically said in times when the game was purely focused on combat because, unfortunately, the rest of the game is kind of a mixed bag. I wouldn’t say there was much of anything here that was particularly bad (except for… certain elements), and as a whole, I’d still say Bayonetta 3 was a good game altogether, but compared to the first two games, I would definitely say this game’s lows were lower and more frequent than what they offered that it kinda took it down a few notches for me as a whole package.

The story is probably the biggest thing about this game that’s been scrutinized and frankly it’s for a good reason. I wouldn’t necessarily say the first two games are particular bastions of good storytelling or anything, but in both cases they were entertaining and in general focused on what they were going for. Bayonetta 1 did feel a bit hard for me to follow at times, but there was just that overall concept of exploring this whole mystery of Bayonetta’s backstory and worldbuilding, and Bayonetta 2 upping the stakes with a bit of a clearer goal.

Bayonetta 3 kinda fails to do any of this for me. The game particularly utilizes the ‘multiverse’ concept, which at first I felt was sort of out of place but especially after talking about it a little bit with a certain friend of mine from the r/Sonic server, I realized that the issue isn’t so much that it’s out of place (in fact, with how much insanity is in the world of Bayonetta the multiverse is something that theoretically should fit right in) but rather it’s just not utilized very well. The closest the game comes to actually using the multiverse concept well is with the French version of Bayonetta and maybe the part during the final boss when both of the versions of Bayonetta from the previous games come in to fight, but these are both later in the game, and for the most part it just basically just feels like “what if Bayonetta BUT FROM A DIFFERENT COUNTRY?” I mean, come on, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time already did it smh.

And beyond that the plot just feels pretty unfocused and meandering. I noticed with this game there was a greater emphasis on story and in general the ratio of cutscenes to gameplay felt a lot bigger than in the first two games, and I wouldn’t have so much of an issue with this, if there was just… stuff going on. The cutscenes just feel drawn out in general, and with a lack of a clear focus on an endgoal or overall ‘theme’, it made the story feel a lot less engaging than either of its predecessors, and half the time I just found myself forgetting about the ‘Alphaverse’ goal.

That isn’t even to mention the ending which didn’t really make me angry, just… really confused. Everything about it just felt completely out of left field with the story doing basically nothing to build up to it’s conclusion. Without spoiling too much, I will say I like Viola well enough as a character but I don’t feel like her ascension felt ‘earned’ in that she had any sort of major character arc in which that would be the pay-off, and as a result it just feels… forced more than anything. And speaking of things that were forced… Bayonetta/Cereza being in a certain relationship with a certain character is something that also felt like it had no build up to it even factoring in the first two games and their interactions.

I also really gotta say, I still don’t know what they were going for with this whole side plot about Bayonetta lying to people about being underpaid and then proceeding to ask her supporters to donate to an anti-abortion charity.

Gameplay-wise I already talked about the combat but, of course, there is more to the game than that with a good amount of new features added. I do have to give them that they did at least do a lot to try and flesh out the formula instead of just sticking to the same tricks as the first two games, but at the same time, the additions they made to the gameplay are pretty… mixed. There are some ideas I really like here but the execution of those ideas isn’t too great.

Probably the most notable new addition is the Demon Slave mechanic where the game gives you different Infernal Demons to choose from that you can summon in battle and control to attack enemies. Truth is there are uses for this mechanic that I actually quite like. Particularly I really liked how you could intersperse them within your combos and use them either to stun enemies that are immune to Bayonetta’s normal attacks, or use them for a final blow, which certainly felt pretty satisfying at times.

But when it comes to their combat on their own… ehh yeah I’m not a fan. Not only do the mechanics feel a lot more limited than what you can do as Bayonetta herself, but in practice it just feels incredibly sluggish and clunky, at times outright disorienting since the camera is still focused on Bayonetta rather than any of the creatures which is especially compounded with all the things that come on screen at times. I guess you could just say I don’t have to use it in combat but… unfortunately that’s kind of untrue especially if you’re going for the best scores and medals since the game often incentivizes you, at times basically requiring you to use it with certain enemies with shields, lots of health or as I said, immune to your normal attacks without at least stunning them.

Not to mention there’s times where certain demons are used to just progress through the level either through a ‘gimmick’ section or just solving puzzles, and even in the latter case a lot of the puzzles just feel kind of there as a secondary justification of the infernal demon mechanics (you have to aim the bird at the fans… cool, I guess?). Even some of the demon puzzles that are more interesting conceptually suffer because the controls of the Infernal Demons aren’t too great as it is. Like, the train is cool and all but it feels like it just halts your gameplay and the way the tracks basically appear automatically one after the other make it kind of difficult to ‘aim’ the train… which, well, you sometimes need to do to take out multiples of those nest things to progress through certain sections.

To backtrack a bit though, I mentioned ‘gimmick’ sections and… yeah that’s also a problem have with this game. One thing I criticized the first game for was how the gimmick sections it had (the motorcycle and Space Harrier sections to be specific) felt overly drawn out at times, and while there’s nothing here that’s quite as bad/drawn out as the Space Harrier section of the first game, I feel like they’re way more frequent here in general than in either of its predecessors and none of them are particularly… good. Granted there’s none that made me feel annoyed or frustrated or anything, but there’s the 2D Jeanne ‘side chapters’ where you take control of her in some Metal Gear Solid gameplay which didn’t feel that interesting and all of these levels just blended together in my head, a rhythm minigame boss (again, Sly Cooper already did it smh), the Godzilla ass boxing matches with sluggish controls, a boss where you fight the enemy by trapping it in bubbles (???) among others. Admittedly, none of them felt particularly bad or anything (except for maybe the Godzilla fights) but… they’re not great either, and they largely just made the game feel bogged down when I just wanted to get back to the actual combat itself. I already mentioned how the story felt unfocused, but all the different gimmick sections this game offers manages to make the gameplay feel unfocused on top of that.

There’s also Viola as a new playable character, and while I liked her well enough in the story, her gameplay just kind of feels like Bayonetta but worse. There’s not really any variation in her playstyle compared to Bayonetta’s, with the only exception being that she has her own ‘Infernal Demon’ in the form of Cheshire that Bayonetta doesn’t have… which is also the only one she can equip, but other than that, the few ways they try to differentiate her from Bayonetta feel inconsequential at best and just worse than Bayonetta at… worst. Like, instead of activating Witch Time by dodging, you activate it by blocking, which… all that really does is confuse me when I’m going between them. It also means that Bayonetta and Viola both have their own health and magic meters, which you have to upgrade through the skills menu rather than having them upgrade automatically. But considering you play as Bayonetta way more frequently than Viola I don’t really feel like there’s much of a reason to upgrade at least beyond one or two levels.

The stage design also kind of takes a turn for the worse in my opinion. I do respect them adding a little quality-of-life improvement in that you can show a ‘waypoint’ to give you direction for where you need to go, but in the context of this game it feels like something they added to solve a problem that was introduced by this game. What I mean by that is, it feels like the stages are built to be ‘bigger’ in scope but feel both confusing and pretty empty at the same time. Like the other games there are collectibles sprinkled throughout each level to incentivize exploration, but with how big and empty the stages can feel at times, I just didn’t have the motivation to really go out of my way and search for stuff for the most part, and beyond that the levels didn’t really feel like they offered any particular ‘setpieces’ or design elements in general to make them stand out from one another (which is even more odd considering this is a game with the multiverse concept and stages based off of different parts of the world… again, underutilizing the concept).

I mean even the hidden challenge verses don’t feel quite as well designed or interesting as the original. At best they just feel kind of there, pretty inconsequential, and at worst they can be pretty tedious and annoying rather than actually challenging. Pretty much all of the ‘tricky terrain’ challenges felt annoying with the dash mechanic feeling hit-or-miss and let’s just say the less I talk about Chapter 10 Verse 1 the better.

Also, if I complained about Bayonetta 2 Wii U being pretty all over the place performance-wise, well… Bayonetta 3 is even worse. While I like the art style for what it is here, it does feel somewhat dull in its color palette compared to Bayonetta 2 and the textures are pretty low quality, which is mindboggling because good lord the framerate can be all over the place. I use the term ‘can be’ specifically since it did mostly seem to run at 60FPS, but there were a pretty non-insignificant amount of times where I just immediately noticed slowdown and frame drops that stuck out like a sore thumb. Like, I get the Switch was never the most powerful console or anything, but I can’t help but feel like they could’ve optimized the game more to run more consistently.

Now, I know I’m sounding pretty negative with this review overall, but let me be clear - I still enjoyed my time with Bayonetta 3. This is a similar situation with Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time where at the end of the day, the core gameplay of it’s predecessors is still very much there, and definitely still really fun. I mean, the combat is a large part of what made the Bayonetta games appealing, and all things considered that aspect is just as fun as it was in those previous titles. It’s just that this game has more flaws to it than it’s predecessors and they definitely stick out to me more than the games I had played up to this point - so of course I’m going to have more to talk about with them. But despite all my issues, I would still recommend this if you enjoyed the first two games (albeit maybe not for $60), as it is still a well-made hack-and-slash even if it’s issues do take it a few notches down for me compared to Bayonetta 1 and 2.

I think Bayonetta 3 is symbolic of what can go wrong when there's too long of a development cycle. Bayonetta 1 and 2 had a vision which was always apparent even when it wasn't perfectly executed. Bayonetta 3 feels like many games at once... and leads to it feeling overcooked and overdesigned, losing a lot of what made the first two games special.

What I loved about Bayonetta was the grace and dexterity of a fast-moving protagonist, exploring the surprisingly long levels, seeing a variety of enemies in different situations, fast and frantic platforming, and some well-timed surprises. In Bayonetta 3, Platinum Games tried to one-up themselves in every aspect but ended up compromising much of these things.

The elephant in the room are the technical limitations of the Switch. Even when the game wasn't running poorly you could see how it limited the creative vision for the game. The game was based around summoning large Kaijus and Infernal Beings to take part in the fight so that every fight was a big showdown. However, this meant only a couple of enemies on the screen at a time, typically one big oversized boss and possibly some other repeated scrubs surrounding them. The drawback is you never feel quite so overwhelmed because the battlefield is never filled in the way it was in Bayonetta 1 and 2. It also makes the game feel like one large boss-rush as they are constantly emphasizing one enemy at a time in these fights. In order to damage larger enemies, Bayonetta must use the infernal beings, which hitches the frame rate and slows the pace down. The game feels balanced around spamming these summons, and as a result Bayonetta's combos feel weak in comparison and it feels like the game is constantly slowing her down. Specifically Gomorrah's fights feel painfully slow and there are a couple of sections that amount to rock-paper-scissors and are excruciatingly long. It's very clear this game values spectacle over smooth combat.

Outside of battle, there’s too much fog of death in this game, and the game feels like it’s pushing you into it constantly while you’re platforming. The worst of this is early on when you get the spider and have anti-gravity platforming, as well as any time that ‘weather’ effects blow you into the fog or a room has fog covering the floor. The other problem is that during typical platforming there aren't enemies chasing you down, so it feels like there is less danger or urgency. The exploration as well feels far more formulaic than in the past, with repeated patterns for how secrets are hidden.

I respect that they are trying a lot of new things, like the elevator action sections, door puzzles, inter-shmuptions, and the Audioshield-esque game in Paris. But combined with the ever escalating action sequences it all added up to a lot of noise and having so many different set pieces diminished the memorability of all of them. They got carried away with making everything ‘special’ that nothing feels meaningful. This is also evident in the story, which they clearly tried to raise the stakes and involve mystery but it resulted in a confusing case of "too much too soon."

The story is bad, I know many have spoken about how it falls apart at the end but it's pretty bad all the way through. The whole multiverse bullshit is over-saturated and uninteresting to begin with. I think the only way to play this game is to believe that it is “Bayonetta 3’s” game, and that it doesn’t impact the other two preceding games. Because otherwise, it means the earlier games aren’t really about anything any more. Those games were self contained and had good consistent worlds and this one just decided to make it fuzzy for some reason. Bayonetta's characterization in the final scenes is disappointing, but the story is so incoherent it blends together for me.

Overall I did not enjoy this experience, and while it's not the direction I would have chosen for this series, I understand why it is like this and what is coming next. I just think Bayonetta might not be for me.

had a year to think about how the camp and power fantasy of the game gets reduced heavily once bayonetta becomes the ideal traditional mother (i.e., biological) despite acting as a maternal figure in the previous two games (to herself, to an older child). bayo becoming less ridiculously sexual once she has a blood successor despite that being a beloved element of the series because of her ownership of it? that's a bit fucked up!

speaking of viola, this a completely fumbled their attempt at a protagonist switch where you don't play even half the game as viola and they had to make her parry window more forgiving in updates. absolutely done dirty, i cannot see this holding. you had dmc as a blueprint, but decided no.

giving luka powers when his likability rested on him being an every man that somehow always managed to survive these crazy situations because comedy was a choice. oddly enough i'd buy him and bayo having. a kid together if i was a wacky comedic sperm donor situation, but as an actual couple, as a family unit? man, what.

again, my enjoyment of the game was heavily based on gameplay elements, i think less of the plot and characterization as time goes on.

This game is so, SO good and its combat and mechanics are an improvement over Bayonettas 1 and 2, but its story stumbles and the artistic design/realistic direction they took for this game really hurts its excellence.

Still, tons of stuff to do, fantastically amazing combat, excellent voice acting all around, and lots of collectibles/replayability. I managed to achieve all the main story's bewitchments/achievements, and all that's left to do is do all the Phenomenal Remnant chapters and achieve whatever bewitchments are there. And the secret Golem fight. And also Pure Platinum this game, if I hate myself enough.

Great game. Shame it came so close to being the best Bayonetta game; it had all the makings of the best one yet, but isn't quite there.

I really hope the REALLY GREAT mechanics of Demon Slave and Demon Masquerade don't go the way of Umbran Climax from Bayonetta 2 -- that is to say, I don't want them just gone and never used again (unless Bayonetta 4 pulls a fast one on us and reintroduced a less insistent/gameplay and progress-dependent version of Umbran Climax).

I would really love to see Demon Masquerade and Demon Slave remain mainstays of the series, but perhaps rebalanced so that they aren't required to progress so often, and that you can just use it when you want to. That was the same problem with Umbran Climax in Bayonetta 2: because it was the main mechanic/gimmick of that game, it was pushed hardcore and everything was centered around and balanced with taking UC into account, complete with an incessant flashing element on screen practically screaming at you to use UC and wouldn't go away until you did.

DS/DM is a little more forgiving with respect to the UI elements (it isn't flashing at the bottom center of your screen until you use it so it can be dismissed), but all the same, the game expects you to constantly make use of it, which in turn made the garbage camera struggle to keep up and also have you constantly get hit from off-screen in a way that Bayonetta 1 would have never let you suffer through.

Camera was awful, the enemy/Homunculi designs were garbage, and the out-of-the-blue and out-of-left-field romance between Bayonetta and Luka really fucked the story and made it infinitely worse than it would've been otherwise. The story wasn't necessarily bad, but that forced romance sure was.

Cereza x Jeanne 5evr.

Really looking forward to Bayonetta 4 (and hopefully more spin-offs like Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon!), and while I'm slightly worried now that series creator Hideki Kamiya (of Devil May Cry, The Wonderful 101, and Resident Evil 2 fame, among others) officially left Platinum Games 6 days ago on October 12th, I just need to remind myself that he's been a bit hands off after the first game and focused more on scenario writing, and Devil May Cry continued on just fine without him, and even got better (DMC3 a is testament to that.)

Bayonetta 4 can't come fast enough. #Bayonetta4in2024