Minor spoilers ahead.

The combat is excellent as always! But that does come with some caveats this time around, which is unfortunate. Thankfully though, most of the game is still the fantastic Bayonetta combat, which is largely the same from Bayonetta 2, but with a few more changes. The Umbran Climax has been removed, in favor of being able to directly summon demons and control them remotely. I found this change to be very fun! As a lifelong Kaiju fan, being able to summon a giant demon to fight mosnters at any time was a treat. The combat is a bit sluggish in comparison to the core combat, which I can definitely see as a problem for people, but I can't say it bothered me. I will stress however, that I didn't use it all that much, only bringing it out if I was in a pinch. I get the impression that if I wanted to get all Platinum ranks, I would need to use it more often, and I can see that definitely being a problem. Many of the chapters also end in massive kaiju battles, which were some of my favorite parts of the whole game. The dev team clearly loves kaiju movies, Sin Gomorrah especially is a walking tribute to both Gamera and Godzilla. You love to see it.
There are also a few chapters where you play as a brand new character, Viola. Viola is kind of rough ti get used to, especially if you're used to the dodge-heavy Bayonetta combat. Viola can still dodge, but she does not receive Witch Time from it like Bayonetta does, instead she has a new mechanic- a parry. The parry kinda sucks, to be honest. The idea is to time a parry right as the enemy attacks to activate witch time. But for some reason, the timing is completely different from Bayonetta's dodge, and is on a completely diffetent button, and I think you have to hold the button down for a little bit to get it to actually activate? I never truly got the hang of it, even after the grueling Witch Time Damage Only challenge she has in Chapter 10. I had to rewire my brain switching back to her after playing Bayonetta and vice versa. I did eventually get a bit better at it because of that terrible challenge, but I never mastered it. On the plus side, I really enjoy her use of Chesire, he gives off big Totoro energy and I am here for it. I also found her moveset to be otherwise really fun to combo with, my only gripe really is that awkward parry.
Jeanne also has occasional short side-scrolling stealth segments, which are inoffensive. They're over pretty quick, and I enjoyed them enough. I feel like my love of Jeanne kind of boosts my opinion of these stages a bit though, so your mileage may vary.

The level design continues the trend started with Bayonetta 2, being even more open and exploration-based than the previous entry. I found this delightful, exploring the environments in the new demon forms was pretty fun, and the optional challenges were (mostly) entertaining. I was compelled enough to do every challenge and find every chest, though I didn't get every Umbran Tear of Blood. Those frogs are easy to miss.
If I were just rating this based on the gameplay, i'd call it Game of the year. But sadly, this game's story really dragged things down.

Bayonetta's stories haven't been all that great to begin with, frankly. Bayo 1's story is nigh-incomprehensible, but had enough fun set pieces and likeable characters to distract from that. Bayo 2's story is half-great, the personal story of Bayonetta rescuing her closest "friend" from the pits of hell and bonding with the father she never knew were genuinely interesting, but the rest of the story fell flat. Bayo 3 goes for a different approach, by barely having a story at all while simultaneously trying to be some epic and grand conclusion to the whole saga. It's structured in an incredibly repetetive way: Bayonetta enters an alternate universe, finds an alternate version of herself, that version dies, Bayonetta has a fun kaiju battle (or rhythm game, which was awesome for the record), then that world collapses. Do that five times, spliced with occasional missions as Viola and side-scrolling spy missions as Jeanne. But during all of that, the characters get little to no development, and we seriously are never told why the hell the main villain wants to combine all universes. To make things worse, we never truly meet the guy until almost the end of the game, and it's presented as some grand twist that the villain is who he is, but since we know nothing about him whatsoever it means nothing to me. The final fight against him is spectacular though, a definite highlight of the game for sure. It doesn't beat Bayo 1's final fight, but really, what could?

And yes, the ending is really as bad as people say it is. It's not earned in the slightest, and the way it's framed makes it seem like nobody on the dev team really thought people were attached to Bayonetta as a character. It's almost like they wanted it to be like Devil May Cry 4, with a brand new character with a brand new gameplay style gets to carry the torch, but it just falls flat in comparison. Very confusing choice. Should there be a Bayonetta 4, I sincerely hope it's like Devil May Cry 5, and everyone is present once again.

I would still recommend the game overall, the gameplay is just that great, but the story is the worst in a series with already pretty mediocre stories. This is definitely the weakest Bayonetta game, but being a weak Bayonetta game still means it's pretty good.
For me, it's 2>1>3.

Bayonetta and Jeanne should have kissed. Fuck you I will die on this hill, I don't mind Bayo getting with a dude (she's always been Bi), but Luka??? Honey, Jeanne is right there. Come on, those egyptian counterparts were totally hinting at it.

Reviewed on Nov 09, 2022


4 Comments


1 year ago

The game almost felt like "we need to compete with DMC 4/5!" Viola felt like a wannabe Nero to me throughout the whole game, but without any of the good character development. Agree with this whole review

1 year ago

based

1 year ago

Jeanne is consistently the most fucked over character in video games.

1 year ago

For the Viola parries and the challenge mentioned I eventually stumbled upon a trick that trivialized it completely and lessened my opinion of Viola's combat even more: You can just spam the button instead of trying to time it and it will trigger 99% of the time, since it is instant, has no punishment for failing and doesn't move you away like Bayo's dodge.