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.
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.