This game is for Boss Babes.

It's a wild ride from beginning to end with not a single train stop to process what is even going on at any moment. It's go, go, go, go, go and then it ends. Was it enjoyable? Oh, yeah. It has very fun hack and slash gameplay that will make you feel more powerful the more attacks and upgrades you unlock.

While the enemies and combat can get repetitive, you never truly feel stagnant in your abilities because there's literally so much to acquire. Even with that, I downright sucked ass at this game but it was still a thrill ride to get through. The final boss was exceptionally annoying, but it gets outweighed by the ending cutscenes.

I wish it didn't look so washed out and have such a bland aesthetic, but I figure this gets better in the sequels. I went into it with zero expectations and was surprised at every turn. The music goes hard and Bayonetta doesn't give a flying fuck. I wish I was her.

After my previous two reviews I feel like any energy I would’ve had to write a long-form review has been zapped so apologies if this review feels like a collection of thoughts rather than something truly in-depth as I couldn’t find the proper ebbs and flows to get each of my points across. Can you tell I’m trying to hit the word count yet?

You know there’s something to be said about Bayonetta’s portrayal of femininity. The classic female action hero is usually relegated into being nothing more than exactly like their male counterparts. Where, in order to fit the archetype of “badass”, they’re made to act more masculine, as if “girliness” can’t be cool. That’s a huge factor into why a character like Bayonetta is so memorable. She wears a skin-tight leather suit, all her moves look like an elegant dance, and she very often just goes naked to deliver her attacks. Not saying that this form of badassery is better than the other, but it’s really not something you see in games often, and that’s what I find commendable. Now there is something to be said in regard to if this game does this well and venture off into fanservice eye candy that’s grating considering Kamiya’s own comments, but I’m a cis man so there’s not much insight I have into these matters. But judging by this game’s own fanbase, Bayonetta seems to be a feminist icon that’s wildly beloved, and for me her actions in the game certainly didn’t feel grating.

• Going into this right after DMC5, I assumed that it would worsen the game’s combat for me but I can’t feel that it did. It’s fun, it packs a punch. There are really a lot of fun combos you can do now that you have a dedicated secondary attack button. Although I really can’t tell if this game is harder than DMC or not. I died a lot more than I did in any DMC game I should say, but it never felt like it was harder, it always felt easier. I don’t know what’s up with that, I think it may just have something to do with this game’s reliance on Witch Time, although doing more research this game may be too smart guys!!! Cause surprise, Witch Time is entirely optional it looks like. Oops, skill issue on my part? Yeah maybe. Still, I think this game should be celebrated for trying to differentiate itself from DMC when it comes to combat, not shunned.

• Controls can make or break a combat system and for Bayonetta it’s mostly good, mostly. Idk man, having lock on be R1/RB and having dodge be R2/RT is insanely uncomfortable as to get that perfect dodge against certain enemies I’ll need to have one of my fingers be on R1 and the other one on R2 so I can play the to the best of my abilities. It just ends up hurting my hands after a while, so I had to resort to playing with one finger for both actions sometimes which really did hurt how I played as I’m not the fastest with my fingers. Wouldn’t be an issue if this game had remappable controls but it doesn’t, and certainly doesn’t help that I played with a Dualsense.

• Camera is weird, lock on aims you towards the enemy but this has the downside of having it act all over the place when you’re placed in small areas with more than one enemy.
• The art direction of this game is pretty cool, it took a while but once that whole magical aesthetic clicked, I dug it. Locations are also pretty, at the beginning at least. They really fell off by the midpoint.
• Level design is nothing special. They are all pretty linear levels with easy puzzles. Although the gimmicks in some of the levels ranged from fun to downright terrible, with Mission 14 being the worst of it all. While we’re on the topic of design, boss design is alright. They’re fun to fight, albeit forgettable, but some just veneer riiiiight into that annoying category.
• I’ll start talking a bit about the story now so uhhhh yeah it’s pretty easy to see how Bayonetta has cemented herself as a bit of a gaming icon. She’s fun and likable as a character. Unfortunately I cannot say I find her “hot”, I guess my opinion on white women that I reached in my DMC4 review still stands. Alas…either I am fully gay or my dick don’t work 💔. Heartbreaking.
• The other characters are also pretty charismatic and memorable. Rodin and Enzo are fun, Cereza is inoffensive, Luka is really awesome I like him a lot.
• Not all characters are equal however, as stated previously the bosses are really forgettable and act all the same, even the final boss sadly. Same is true for Jeanne, I really think she doesn’t quite reach the height she could have.
• Despite having a mostly fun cast it’s a shame the story itself is so 🛌. The whole angel and demons along with the light and dark shtick was pretty played out by the time this game was released, so it’s pretty sad to see this game do nothing interesting. Even DMC3, despite not having a super strong narrative or anything, is really rich for me in the rivalry between Dante and Vergil, along with the whole family motif. Can’t say the same is true here.
• The game does place quite a big emphasis on the story, more than DMC4 I’d say, which released around the same time. But like DMC4 I can’t say it’s really all that good. I dunno man, I really have no deeper critiques other than me finding it bland and uninspired and seeing some of the twists coming miles away. Like the end of Mission 14 should be emotional, but I don’t think I care. I’d not care for the story but I feel like the game focuses on it a lot, so in my eyes it’d be a disservice if I just ignored it entirely.

Uhmmmm something something balls balls funny joke here. I’m running out of material. The final boss kinda sucked dick, monkey dick to be specific. Sometimes I really felt like this game wanted to deliver a spectacle but it just didn’t hit me like it intended. Still, a really solid game on its own. I do think I could’ve derived much more enjoyment from the game if it’s combat was better as sometimes it just felt very very annoying, but if I’m being completely fair I need to admit that maybe the fault doesn’t really lie with the game but with me. Bit embarrassing to admit but I was not good at this game, even though I wasn’t bad at DMC. Sometimes the problem does lie with me and I should be man enough to admit that. I’m so sure that one day I’ll revisit this game and end up liking it much more, but as it stands it’s a fun action title I recommend.

Oh yeah, happy pride month.

As someone who owned and actively played on a Wii U back during what might've been the absolute worst time to be a Nintendo fan, I'm surprised at just how many games I didn't bother picking up while the console was still being supported, with one of my bigger regrets being me not playing either of the two Bayonetta games that were on there. Years later, I've still wanted to give this franchise a shot, and since I've been playing quite a few character action games recently, I figured I might as well throw the first Bayonetta into the mix for good measure. This was one of those games that I've heard practically nothing but good things about from both general internet discourse and my actual friends who've played through it, and I think that this general excitement and acclaim towards it might've contributed to just how disappointing of an experience Bayonetta was for me, even if I wouldn't call it a bad game by any means.

For the first few hours of my 10 hour playthrough, I was having an absolute blast with Bayonetta, and most of my enjoyment can be found in the excellent combat system. The vast amount of flashy moves, lengthy combos, and dynamic upgrades made controlling the titular Umbra Witch feel fast, fluid, and buttery-smooth, and activating Witch Time by dodging an attack at the last second was satisfying pretty much every time I pulled it off successfully. Unlike the ranking systems you'd find in something like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta ranks how well you've done in each of the level's individual combat encounters rather than just the level as a whole, and while that didn't really change my approach to fighting enemies all that much (mostly because it was so harsh and required absolute perfection that I just ignored it and did what I wanted), it was still an interesting choice. Although the plot verges on the incomprehensible (especially with how the sound mixing in the cutscenes is so bad that you can't even hear the characters under the sound effects and music), the stylish presentation had me look forward to each cutscene, with the detailed artstyle and gleefully over-the-top choreography working well alongside the lead character's charming personality and the great voice performance from Hellena Taylor. The soundtrack of Bayonetta also greatly added to the game as a whole, and its eclectic mix of genres fit pretty much every scene that the music was used in.

Bayonetta is one of those rare cases where, despite how great the core mechanics are, it feels like every other element of this game is trying to drag that gameplay down to the point where you can't even appreciate it, and a lot of that can be felt with just how bloated this game is with gimmicky nonsense. Whether it comes in the form of clunky vehicle sections, bad platforming, or annoying bosses and enemies that can only be killed using one or two techniques, Bayonetta constantly interrupts you from just getting to the fun parts of the game, and the sheer amount of repeated encounters makes this problem even worse. Even at its best, the gameplay of Bayonetta still manages to get held back, as the genuinely awful camera moves around so much that you can't even see who or what you're supposed to be fighting and dodging (a trend among these character action games that I'm starting to get sick of) and the frame rate can drop so low that it actively ruins your timing for combos and last-second dodges. Bayonetta also has some really irritating quicktime events that occasionally result in an instant death, and since this game decreases your rewards at the end of each level if you die even once, these can end up being straight-up frustrating. The heights that Bayonetta reaches were enough to make me say that I liked it overall, but I won't pretend like I wasn't let down by it or that it wasn't a deeply flawed game, and I hope that Bayonetta 2 makes up for it.

Bayonetta is a very stylish action game but with a great sense of what makes each character's personality shine through that action. Bayonetta can easily come off as just a sexy protagonist, but as you go through the game she easily becomes a character with a daunting personality that can exude a type of sarcasm towards the enemies that just makes her delightful in my mind. The story can definitely get consumed by its action at first, but the story is continually engrossing as each chapter you complete with the help of the cast in general. The enemies are perfectly designed for this setting and this Bayonetta world in general. The bosses in this game are immaculate! Each one has such grandeur to them but can bring in a sense of challenge at points. When you defeat them though, you get rewarded with a great end cutscene for each of them. This has the potential to be one of my favorite action games I have played as the months pass.

It's an interesting game, originally conceptualized as Kamiya's response to Devil May Cry 4.

It's hard to pin down what exactly he was responding to, but I'm guessing it was the flexibility afforded in DMC4's engine. Bayonetta's approach was to let you stall each hit in a string and to let you resume combos after dodges (via its pioneered dodge offset). The logical conclusion afterward was to force you to land the Wicked Weave (the final hit of a combo) at the end of each combo to stop your scoring from staling.

Meter is also handled differently. The magic in Bayonetta is not an analog of Devil Trigger. While it does gate specific moves, its primary use is Torture Attacks. These deal heavy damage to single targets, but more importantly drop Angel Weapons which are powerful and an excellent tool for rapidly increasing your score.

The freedom afforded by being able to resume combos via dodge-offsetting in this combat system allowed for far more aggressive enemy design than is usually seen in the genre, and gave way to the innovation the game is best known for, Witch Time. Witch Time functions as a set of training-wheels that allow the player to safely attack enemies after dodging an attack. The more narrow the window, the more time given. Though, certain attacks don't give time. These training-wheels are expected to come off, and this is made most clear on the final setting Non Stop Infinite Climax where it's disabled outright. Unfortunately, this part was not understood by many players and Witch Time is included in other games (I'm assuming few people who've played or seen this game played NSIC or understood that it was intended to be played instead of just carelessly thrown in as part of developer sadism), sometimes unnecessarily, and is freely available in them, including Bayonetta's sequels.

Another aspect that is minor in the scope of the game, but absolutely worthy of its own section is Kamiya taking full advantage of Sega publishing to show his reverence for Yu Suzuki's arcade games. Chapter 8's motorcycle section modeled after the Hang-On and Super Hang-On titles with music from Afterburner II in the background, or chapter 14's Space Harrier section complete with enemy-movement patterns, projectiles, and music lifted directly from Space Harrier. Bayonetta is also a game designed to be replayed in the pursuit of score-chasing, and this is reinforced throughout. It's a game made by someone who likes games for other people who like games.

Another innovation Bayonetta brought to its subgenre is the widespread use of intermissions. This isn't new to the genre. Intermissions exist in Devil May Cry 1. They're essentially sections where the player isn't on a timer and can freely explore. They're one-offs in DMC1, and don't exist in any other DMC game. Bayonetta allows for stress-free exploration outside of every fight due to its per-fight grading-system that the chapters take an average from.

The game is no slouch in terms of things to find during those intermissions either. The game is stuffed with health/magic upgrades, crows, files, hidden fights, secret missions, and extra weapons. Not to mention unlockable characters, 1 for scoring and 1 for finishing the Bloody Palace equivalent (Angel Slayer), and of course a super boss fight in the form of Rodin that also unlocks a final hidden weapon.

I think a QTE discussion deserves its own paragraph. There are a tiny amount of them that result in instant death during cutscenes. We're talking less than 5 the entire game. I'm referring specifically to pressing square/X (or Y for Nintendo) during a cutscene. The rest that come up tend to be counterattack opportunities which always use the TA input of punch+kick. I think the amount of griping leveled at these moments is overblown. I think the game would be better without the mid-cutscene ones, but I don't have an issue with the counter-prompts in the game. They don't drag the experience down enough to warrant docking the game for them imo.

This was longer-winded than I'd have liked, but there was a lot to cover. It's one of the best games in its genre, though it's not my personal favorite. Goty 2009, and a 5/5.

Estou há 8 dias sem conseguir escrever esse texto. Não que eu precise, eu quero, mas não consigo organizar o que dizer. Peço perdão se tudo parecer completamente desconexo.

Acho que o que mais me assusta é que Bayonetta foi um jogo muito formador de estética em 2010 quando joguei pela primeira vez. Só que eu nunca, jamais, havia percebido isso. Foi um jogo que me deu sinais que preferi ignorar.

Meu alinhamento nunca foi gostar do jogo só porque a Bayonetta é gostosa (mesmo eu sabendo quem eu sou hoje em dia isso ainda não é o motivador). Imagino também que esse não é o alinhamento de muita gente que gosta dele também, porque a Bayonetta é sensual, é sexual, mas não é... erótica? Nada do que ela faz é para o jogador, é só uma demonstração de poder e de autoestima, algo que Bayonetta nunca deixa de esbanjar. A própria nudez que ela apresenta ao invocar demônios não é algo particularmente erótico. Usando outro exemplo da Platinum, acho Nier: Automata muito mais apelativo nesse quesito.

Me sinto indigna de falar o que ela representa pra mim, mas isso é um problema que percorreu minha vida toda e que me impediu de seguir em frente por muito tempo. Bayonetta apesar de se resumir a femme fatale por talvez 1 hora de jogo, logo começa a ficar mais humana em sua interação com os outros. E é nesse aspecto que ela é tão forte, pois ela não deixa de ser confiante, nem forte e nem vira dependente, mas sim mais compreensível. Eu demorei 10 anos pra entender porque o pensamento "queria ser que nem ela" não era esquisito.

Lembro com certo carinho de um conhecido meu falando que dava graças a deus que podia mudar a trilha sonora do jogo, pois não aguentava a musica de menina. Indiferente do quão boba é essa afirmação, Bayonetta de fato me abriu os olhos pra quantidade de coisas que eu tenho capacidade de gostar, e seu ecleticismo entre pop e musicas épicas com corais cria uma diferença tonal que adoro até hoje.

Bayonetta é joguinho de boneco e combo, possívelmente o que mais gosto de todos que joguei, e é divertido estiloso e charmoso. A estética é extravagante, quando não chique, o que só potencializa todos os personagens humanos terem proporção de desenho de moda, algo que não é muito comum no âmbito dos jogos. Mari Shimazaki não teve medo algum de impor seu estilo. Eu sempre lembro da história do Kamiya pedindo uma rebolada perfeita enquanto a Bayonetta andava, mas tudo que esse jogo passa é um extrema feminilidade que não é feita só pra agradar o tal do male gaze.

Uma sensibilidade grande em equipe pra que esse jogo não virasse só mais Um Jogo De Gostosa, e sim Um Jogo Para Gostosas (Todas)

I love being a lesbian and seeing lesbians save the world. In reality this game was very fun! It is pretty unabashedly itself and it is an intoxicating feeling when I play a game that is so hellbent on just showing all of itself off. Where it just wants to show all it's character and do it's own weird thing. I think this game just oozes a lot of charm and makes up for a lot of things I have faults for. While I do thing the combat is extremely fun I'm happy the game ended when it did because it feels like a dmc1 situation where there's definitely more there but if you're just a first time player the game can feel a little shallow. High level game play for this game truly is something sick to watch. I also loved the spectacle of it all and the crazy situations you're put through. Definitely excited to play the next two games and was indeed confirmed that Kamiya does love space harrier

My first exposure to Bayonetta, as I'm sure is the case with many others, was through her addition to Super Smash Bros. on 3DS/Wii U. I was lucky enough to find a 360 copy of the game at GameStop very shortly after the fact, and I picked it up excitedly. Keep in mind, this was back in... 2016? I was a dumb little kid back then, with absolutely zero experience in the genre of hack n' slash. Yet I loved it! I absolutely loved the game back then, as awful as I was at it. Unfortunately, that love could only get me so far. Dumb child wheatie made it all the way up to Chapter XIV, before reaching an absolute barricade. I could not, for the life of me, manage to beat Jeanne that final time. A couple years later, I wound up selling that Xbox 360, to be replaced by a PS2 due to my growing interest in its absolutely stellar library.

It wouldn't be for another few years that I'd even learn the first Bayonetta was on PS4, and even then I was little skeptical after hearing the horror stories of the PS3 release. After some research, a bit of convincing, and the necessary funds to buy the game on sale in its 10 year anniversary bundle with Vanquish, I was once again in possession of Bayonetta... and then I put it off for another 2 years.

But hey! I finally did it! I managed to make my way through its entire campaign over half a decade later, and I'm glad to say I still enjoy it just as much as I did back then. Potential new record for the longest it's ever taken me to finish a game, if you don't count Wall-E for the DS.

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Bayonetta follow a very simple philosophy. If you don't get it, you will get fucked. Similar to the Devil May Cry series, it heavily encourages replay value not only through unlockable difficulties, but through absolutely brutal encounters, whether it be with regular enemies or actual boss fights. As weird as it sounds, I really like stuff like this. It might be the fighting gamer in me, but I love the feeling of improvement a substantial amount, and that's what games like Bayonetta want. What might seem like an impossible task thrust upon you in your weakest moments, can be turned into a remarkable turn of the tables with proper knowledge and adequate experience. Bayonetta achieves this fantastically, and knows how to make it feel even better.

yhea here she goes again Accompanied through each and every battle is some of—and I mean this—some of the greatest songs of any video game I've ever listened to. To the point where I cannot begin to describe it in any more words than beautiful. Even outside of battle, it holds one of my favorite tracks (combined with one of my favorite settings in general) in Rodin's otherworldly bar, The Gates of Hell. One of the few games I can happily include in my regular playlist, I just wish I could include more of it (i lub u fly me to the moon).

I do wish, more than anything though, that I could've gotten more into the boss fights. A very large majority of them tended to boil down to waiting for the big Angel Monster to throw down their hand, dodge, wail on them for a few seconds while they're slowed down until they pull back to repeat the process. It's why I can say I enjoyed all the Jeanne fights the most, since they were some of the only ones where I felt involved and active all the way through. To add to this, frankly too many times does Bayonetta include a short little cutscene in the middle of its boss fights, that are abruptly interrupted by a Quick Time Event that will 95% of the time catch you completely off guard, and kill you in an instant. While I did praise the game earlier for incentivising replays and improvement, it can still get a bit frustrating taking such a hit to your ranking not due to being bested in your fight, but simply by not having the split second reaction time that is asked of you so often.

It's still peak though. God, it's so peak. It was so fun playing those first 14 chapters again, reminiscing on everything I could still so vividly remember, even after all these years. While I wasn't the biggest fan of everything what came after, I still enjoyed every minute of this game at least a decent amount. If I wasn't already looking forward to its sequel, I would love to just do it all again in hard mode while it's still fresh on the mind. What a cool game. One of the greatest of its kind, and I've heard even better of the second.

I don't want to cum on or in Bayonetta.

Mr. Platinum, CEO: "Alright Kamiya, but if we buy the rights to Fly Me To The Moon, you better make sure to use it"
Kamiya "Scorecel" Hideki, smiling deviously and winking with both eyes: "Sir, that won't be an issue"

Bayonetta is a Devil May Sonic Like where one man put in 5000 action game experiments and hit on about 3000 of them. You will have to swallow the remaining 2000.

In Bayonetta, you fight by clutching the controller as if it had no buttons and hope the wet noodle slopping around on screen does the combo you had in your brain. For all you know, the controller isn't connected to the console, but to a display in another room where another guy is putting in inputs to control the character on your console. For some reason Kamiya wanted it to feel like this, as he famously hates feeling good.

If you're a bit of an arcadegoon, a combofreak or in your medal era, this might be the better DMC. For everyone else, it's the PS3 DMC that doesn't have Nero.

My first experience with Bayonetta was on the PS3 version. Suffice to say I did not have a good time. I revisited the game with Nintendo's port and holy shit I had so much fun.

I won't lie, there is some weird stupid shit in this game that you can clearly tell comes from Kamiya not having anyone take him aside and tell him that his idea isn't the best. But the combat system is so fantastic that I don't think it significantly hurts the game. I know some people disliked the After Burner, Space Harrier and turret sections and that's fair, but they didn't really bother me enough to detract from my enjoyment. The QTEs though? Yeah those suck. But even with those rough edges this is still a great action game that I find myself addictively revisiting, refining my play every time and being actively impressed with some of the stuff I can pull off once I get going. I'm not crazy about every boss fight but the Jeanne fights and the final two are some of the most engaging I've ever played in an action game.

If you're a DMC fan, please keep an open mind going into this game. Don't think of it as off brand DMC or "DMC but better." I must stress that it is a SPIRITUAL successor, it keeps the same flavor of style and genre but executed very differently. Also whatever version you play, do NOT touch the PS3 port as it is glitchy and janky as shit. I can't vouch for the PC or PS4 versions but I'm sure they're fine.

Bayonetta is pretty much everything you could want out of an action game.

The game's combat is right up there with the best games in the character action genre with how much experimentation the various weapon combinations give you and it doesn't take long until you start stringing together combos that destroy an enemies whole healthbar in one go. What makes Bayonetta stand out though, is how equally fun it is to dodge attacks as it is to execute them due to the game's witch time system which has Bayo slow down time if you manage to narrowly avoid an attack. Visually, it's sick with how elegant it makes Bayo look as she dances around her enemies and is also a cool way of rewarding the player for learning an enemies timing and attack pattern. Getting these timings down is going to be pretty necessary since Bayonetta can be pretty challenging at times but never does it feel unfair or annoying (except for the Golem enemy, fuck that thing), if anything it just made the game feel more rewarding to beat.

With gameplay this good, I'm confused as to why the game has some gimmick stages like one where you ride a motorbike which drags on and on or one which is just a poor man's starfox level. These don't really do anything for the game other than take attention away from its strengths and it feels like Kamiya just wanted to cram stuff in there without thinking if it would make sense. I think the same can apply to the game's presentation, it's just a bit all over the place like with the board game-esque chapter select screen or the way some cutscenes are presented as if they're on a film reel. There's no real rhyme or reason to these and it comes off as a little jarring but it's not a huge deal.

On the topic of cutscenes, when they're not concerned with telling the story and are just showing Bayo being badass, they're awesome but the game does try to have a story and I couldn't care less for it. It's just really hard to follow since you see things only from Bayo's perspective and she suffers from amnesia so things that don't make sense to her also don't make sense to the player and it's hard to get invested. I stopped caring about it not long into the game.

In conclusion though, you don't play these games for the story, you play them for the combat, the bossfights, the spectacle and overall fun factor and Bayonetta checks all of those boxes.

Platinum peaked with this game and it’s been downhill ever since.
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Okay quick proper review below since I went through both this and Bayo 2 again now:

Bayonetta 1 was my first taste of the character action/spectacle fighter/hack-and-slash/stylish action game genre many years ago when I picked up a switch and at the time I finished it for the first time, along with the second game, I fell in love with the series. So much that I ended up playing the second one more than this one for... obvious reasons. Bayo's design appealed to me more in 2 than 1 but also I liked 2 at the time more for various reasons like better levels and more weapon options, though today I can say the first game makes a better long term impression overall, especially with the combat.

The combat in Bayonetta 1 to me stands as the best in the series as it is not weighed down by unnecessary gimmicks/mechanics added in the later two games. Just focusing on pulling off quick and stylishly sick combos with dodge offsets, wicked weaves, and witch-timing to make the score go brrrr. This exercise can be very thrilling in most of the regular enemy encounters as they provide a good amount of challenge without going too far, sometimes. Telegraphing is pretty smooth with light flashes and sounds indicating when an attack is about to connect, though the camera can still be a pain in keeping an eye out on everyone. This wasn't an issue with the boss fights except Jeanne's sometimes, but I also think the boss fights aren't too thrilling outside of Jeanne's and I didn't feel that kinetic energy of the combat when taking them on. They're incredible as set pieces and spectacle, but I never really connected to them, which is mostly something I feel towards the series in general and not just Bayo 1.

Even with that said, the first attempt at the combat here is excellent and opens up to so much variety with weapons throughout further replays and playing the game on harder difficulties if you like pain. Normal kicked my ass originally and still does on some stages but it becomes very manageable after finishing the game for the first time and accessing more gear and having all the health and magic upgrades. While I don't think it succeeds the heights of its obvious genre influence of DMC, the combat in Bayonetta is so damn fun and enticing that I kinda prefer it more than the other at times. If the game was mostly only the combat and the characters, it would be a perfect game, and yet there is quite a lot of things attached to it that slightly bring the game down to me.

So this game can be brutal. Enemies launch attacks right at the end of cutscenes, numerous instant death qtes plague the beginning of the game, enemies are hyper aggressive and hit hard while still coming to grips with the controls, the drab environment itself is fucking deadly to you, two levels in particular are notorious for awful gimmick sections that do not belong at all here, you get points off in normal difficulty if you use any sort of items even with the game being stingy with healing, and Bayonetta 1 in general is very rough around the edges with its platforming and design in general, except for the combat. Even when used to all of this, it can still be pretty aggravating when the game randomly throws these curveballs that fuck up my score or health, and having to restart all the way from the beginning every single time. It's not the worst but considering how much this game apparently was taking influence from DMC4 during its development, the lack of polish in some areas of Bayonetta come off a little bizarre.

Even with these gripes, I still can't knock this game too hard as it introduced me to a genre I know and love today. I love the Bayonetta series and still really enjoy the first entry and some of the later two to certain degrees. Looking back retrospectively, it is a bit sad that the first game still remains the best in the series as the later games add many elements that fundamentally improve and smooth out the experience, and even make it more exciting and fun to play without being interrupted with some of the shit Bayo 1 pulls. Yet, Bayo 1 to me still feels like the only game where the combat mechanics, enemy design, and (sometimes fair) difficulty coalescence so neatly together even when other areas fall apart a bit. Bayo 1 is no DMC 3 or 5 and I'm still hoping the series finally gets a game of that quality, especially after the catastrophe that is Bayo 3, but even if it doesn't I can say the series stands tall with a wonderful entry in the action game genre.

While I am playing Bayonetta 3, I would like to give my thoughts on the first two installments. I will very likely play Cereza and the Lost Demon eventually, but for now, enjoy this first part of my Bayonetta retrospective.

I had a love/hate relationship with this game the first time I finished it. The core combat was immensely satisfying, but I disliked how often you had to perform tasks unrelated to it. The gimmick levels were too long, the environmental puzzles repetitive, and the platforming sections awkward. I thought the game didn’t have enough enemy variety and hated late-game foes like Kinship and especially Grace and Glory. The gotcha QTEs during cutscenes that can instakill you are atrocious and shouldn’t have been included.

I still stand by most of these complaints, but my opinion on Bayonetta changed after beating it on Hard and Non-Stop Infinite Climax (NSIC). You’re probably wondering why I did that considering all my grievances. Well, from what I understood, Bayonetta is meant to be replayed. Your first playthrough is an elaborate tutorial for the “real” game. I still felt rusty with the combat and I also heard the higher difficulties change the experience in interesting ways. I wanted to at least try out Hard mode. Getting past the Prologue was a nightmare without the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa, which allows you to parry almost any attack with good timing. This item alone made the combat much more enjoyable, but I also got more comfortable using Dodge Offset to unleash Wicked Weaves more often. I am by no means a Bayonetta master, but I was shocked by how fun the higher difficulties were. In most games, the increased challenge would have lead to more frustration. Enemies would simply have more health and deal more damage. Bayonetta, however, bucks this trend. Enemy health and damage remain untouched, but enemy placement is changed up, especially in the early chapters. While I think there was room for improvement, I was very happy to see these changes.

Nothing, however, could have prepared me for NSIC. In a radical twist, Bayonetta’s signature Witch Time is disabled! Although I heard about this prior to reaching NSIC, I was doubtful the game would be fun under that condition. There were a few enemies I found tedious to kill without Witch Time, such as the shape-shifting Golem, but for the most part, it played similarly to Hard mode. It’s a testament to how excellent the combat really is.

Despite the non-combat sections lacking depth and/or polish, Bayonetta is a kick-ass game. It set a new standard for 3D action games and helped to cement Platinum as the king of the genre. Without Bayonetta, we probably wouldn’t have Metal Gear Rising, Nier: Automata, and Astral Chain.

THE SHADOW REMAINS CAST!




oh what a day…