bayonetta has flaws with its pacing and some setpieces feeling interruptive. but everything else is perfect. you can play it for a hundred hours and still have room to further master its mechanics. so many intricacies in its combat and ways to optimize your score. bayonetta herself is such a compelling and fun character and watching her strut through fights confidently in cutscenes will inspire you to play and replay this game until you can dispatch enemies with that same style and precision. best action game ever made.

This game rocks!

Oozes style and charm and of course, the combat system is challenging and so most enemy encounters. I remember this being very fucking difficult at times, that is great but it took me some time to adjust to it's rythm.

The story was all over the place, can't remember what happen much, I wish perphaps it was a bit simpler. But the action is flashy and very rewarding.

Kamiya, you madman.

Fun, fast paced, and ridiculous action game with a large number of combos, deep gameplay, varied weapons, and unique and amusing mechanics. Regular attacks can be extended with gun attacks from the pistols she carries and wears on her feet, variety of combos to chain attacks before summoning a body part or creature for a more powerful move, enemies that have taken enough damage can be finished by summoning torture machines, your whip can pull enemies to you to create openings for other combos, a sword has a variety of charged attacks that allow you to charge the weapon while still being able to perform dodges, perfectly timed dodges temporarily slows time.

The only issues I ever had with the game was how quickly you were expected to mash a button on some of the torture attacks and the large bosses you fight just aren't as much fun as a smaller scale but faster paced fight with Jeanne.

One of the best action games made further improved in the newer PC version that has a better framerate and more visual options.

Ya boi Hideki Kamiya is back at it again breathing new life into the spectacle fighter genre he started with the Devil May Cry series. Bayonetta follows the adventures of Cereza, a member of the Umbra Witches, as she battles an ambitious order of angels using stiletto mounted guns, kinky magic, and demons summoned using her hair.

The premise is of course bonkers but Kamiya is not known for subtlety and things only escalate from there. The game is outrageous from start to finish with musical numbers, gratuitous sexualisation, torturing foes with kink equipment, and tongue in cheek flirtations throughout. Without a doubt the game ends up being far more sexploitation than representation but we're not here to discuss feminism.

Gameplay offers a plethora of A and B combos, weakened foes can be pulled into button mashing events that torture and execute them, and dodging attacks rewards you with 'witch time', a mode that slows everything down and multiplies your combo. Your performance is scored with a letter grade at the end of each stage so you're encouraged to experiment and engage with all the mechanics. The boss fights are the biggest shows the game has to put on with all of the usual gameplay turned up to eleven none of which bored me, but there are long slogs of angels to carve through between them.

The storyline is confusingly intricate and sets the tone with anime tropes a-plenty but the pacing can be all over the place. You start with a musical number, arena fight, a comic book intro, and then dive into the main story. It makes for a bumpy introduction but after that it starts to gain some consistency.

This is a game with spectacle at its core, it's eager to entertain but combat can get samey and beyond the sexualisation the game doesn't have much substance. Making an angel orgasm to death gets a bit tedious after the first few times. Overall you're in for quite a ride but, like your sexuality, unless you're pushing yourself to experiment you might end up stuck in tedious repetition with nothing encouraging you to try anything else.

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

Not going to bother rating this one cause I dropped it so early (chapter 3) but it really wasn't doing anything for me.

Love Bayo as a character, but I just wasn't interested in anyone else, or the overarching plot (and I understand that you might think thats the point but like, I'd at least like Platinum to try) and it doesn't help when the dialogue veers from boring to deeply cringe (never want to hear Bayo say "bust a cap in yo ass" again). Music is okay, presentation is okay and the combat feels alright, but I never really felt engaged enough with it to want to learn all the combos (which seemingly aren't available from the pause menu? If they are I couldn't find it)

Kinda feeling whatever on most of the platinum games I've tried at this point, mgr has so far still been the only exception

I want to love this game a lot, I really do.
A game I bought multiple times, an character-action game from platinum games, it is fun even though it lacks on the presentation side of things. But I have a primitive problem: the controls, I can not change the buttons, at first this seems like a small problem right? But if you play several games this becomes a problem especially when you would like to return to this game again. On the PS3 this game ran terribly, I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge but the anniversary version runs way better on PS4. Just wish I could change the button layout would make this game so good for me.

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.

Unique and very satisfying gameplay and combat system.
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Control/Gameplay - Intuitive controls which will take awhile to get used to/master. However once you get ahold of the combos and combat system it is superb and satisfying as you wipe out the angels.

The angels itself are unforgiving and some difficult to counter, especially in some of the later stages you really have to learn not to take damage as even one combo from the angels is enough to wipe out half your health.

Graphics & Sounds - Solid graphics for its time, insane OST.

Story - Captivating enough story. Not the greatest/emotion filled story line but it provided itself with enough content and progression for the player to move forward with.

Characters - There were decent characters throughout the game, some of worse intentions then others but overall I thought each character tied well with Bayonetta herself.

Replayability - For me, it is a one-time game as there isn't other endings. Replayable if you feel like beating it in a more brutal difficulty than the already tough normal difficulty.

Overall - 3.5/5

This game has some of the most amazing boss fights I have ever played in a video game, and the combat never gets old. It's visuals also still look impressive even in 2023. The story isn't anything too special but the characters are very memorable. There are nitpicks I have about the game though, such as QTEs that can instant kill you if you don't have the reaction time of someone who had 2 monster energies in 1 sitting. And also the on rail sections can get repetitive with repeating enemies and mini boss fights. Other than that I could easily recommend this game to someone who has been interested with it, I definitely look forward to playing 2.