It's been a long, seven year road to reach this point. Six years of radio silence, one year of anticipation, a couple weeks of controversy that blew up in Hellena Taylor's face, and we finally arrived at a game that would likely make or break the way a lot of people view Platinum Games as a studio. Did the madmen/women at Platinum pull it off?
My answer is a confident "Yes!" that quitely trails off into a "...kinda."
The star of the show is the gameplay, obviously. The option to equip a different weapon to your arms and legs has been canned, but it's been replaced with something that I am completely down with: several wholly unique and outrageous weapons. A club that doubles as an anti-matter rifle, a trainsaw blade, fire yo-yos, a microphone that you wield as a staff, and more. All of these weapons have unique movesets that share the same commands as all the other movesets, and you unlock more moves via a skill tree. Not a fan of the skill tree! I don't even think there's anything inherently wrong with its execution, I just think it doesn't need to be here, in a game that's already bursting at the seams with options. Demon slave, on the other hand, is an excellent expansion on ideas introduced in Astral Chain. Summoning a demon and giving it commands temporarily takes away control from Bayo, and you can only queue up two moves at a time. What this means is that combat shifts into this crazy back and forth of giving orders, dishing out your own attacks, and continuing your demon's carnage. It also manages to not be completely mindless, as your demons can get temporarily killed, or enraged to the point where they start lashing out at you instead.
There is one more gameplay element I've neglected talking about, and that's Viola. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with Viola's playstyle, but it does feel like an afterthought in the face of enemies clearly designed with Bayonetta in mind. Some enemy attack hitboxes are way too big, Viola's block range feels pitiful, and if you don't activate "Perfect Witch Time", I'm pretty sure that Witch Time literally lasts for less than a second (which is obviously not enough time to get any meaningful hits in). I think my actual problem with her playstyle is how inherently limited her options are in comparison to Bayonetta. As Bayo keeps getting more and more weapons, Viola is still stuck with her singular moveset. It also doesn't help matters that by the time you've made it to Viola's playable debut, you'll have invested all of your resources up to that point into Bayo's skill trees. Whenever the game gave me a choice between the two, I always opted to play as Bayonetta.
My favorite part of this game is, weirdly enough, the stage design. Chapters are still linear affairs, but areas are much more open, and there's so many opportunities to look for extras off the beaten path. Hidden verses are hidden much more naturally; a far cry from Kamiya's asinine "you beat this verse, now backtrack to the very beginning of the stage where there is now inexplicably a hidden verse and a muspelhiem" design philosophy. It definitely helps that there's a ton of extras to collect. Records, art books, 3D models, and most importantly, the Umbran Tears of Blood. There's three of these per chapter, and they each require different strategies to track down and catch. Collecting all of them unlocks extra chapters that can reward you with a variety of things: moon pearls, witch hearts, unique accessories, and even a few demons/weapons. Hiding stuff that could potentially make my Bayo experience more fun behind collectibles is a great way to make me forget the urgency of the story and go exploring.
Now this here is the unsung hero of Bayonetta 3: When replaying chapters, the chapter select lets you begin from several different checkpoints. It shows you exactly what verses you'll start at if you do so, and if you decide to quit the stage midway, it will keep all your ranks. Ranks as a whole now only keep your highest ones. If you get a better rank during a verse on a repeat playthrough, your medal will be permanently upgraded. This negates penalties for using items or continues on your final score for a stage, and your overall rank can only go up. I'm sure there are purists out there who enjoyed the challenge of finishing every single verse in a stage with high marks in one clean run, but I personally applaud the more accessible approach. Now I don't have to spend literal hours attempting to track down a verse I missed.
Something I have to comment on is the game's performance, and I really can't blame Platinum for this. Nintendo owns Bayo's ass, meaning that the game has to be on the Switch. Like it or not, the Switch is an outdated, underpowered piece of tech. Yes, it can do incredible things when you optimize the fuck out of your game, but I legitimately feel like the Switch's lack of power was a limiting factor on how ambitious Platinum could make this game. Even with all that said, the worst crime that this title commits is having somewhat muddy textures, fluctuating between 45-60 FPS when things get too heated, or locking the FPS at 30 in more bombastic gameplay segments. If anything, the game is a technical achievement in spite of its limitations. The visuals are dazzling, the action is ludicrous, and the game barely needs to load at all.
There are...aspects I like about the story. The multiverse shenanigans are great fun, in my opinion. Visiting all these different worlds and fighting alongside/against their version of Bayonetta is kind of ingenious. I like reading the secondary materials you collect, getting an idea of how daily life in these universes went down before everything went to shit. Where the story actually falls short for me are our main characters, which is a pretty damning place to stumble. Bayonetta feels so disconnected from the rest of the cast, probably due to how she's getting involved with whatever multiverse she finds herself in at any given moment. They game alludes to there being something more to the relationship between Viola and Cheshire, but it never goes into detail on that, unless it's meant to represent (endgame story twist that I'm still having difficulty accepting). I don't hate Viola's character, by the way. I have a soft spot for archetypes like her, honestly. That tryhard attitude, the "it's not a phase, mom" fashion choices; I enjoy her antics more than most. However, I don't think we spent nearly enough time getting to know Viola to justify the ramifications of this game's ending. I have no idea what they did to Luka, wrapping him up in the multiverse nonsense, giving him new abilities for what feels like really contrived reasons. And man, the villain plain sucks in this. He shows up at the eleventh hour with little buildup. We barely know anything about him, and then suddenly he reveals himself to be the bad guy. While I watched the (initial) credits roll, I was genuinely convinced I had arrived at a "bad ending" or something, but nope, that's just how the game fucking ends. It feels like we're missing a game's worth of plot to fill the gap between Bayo 2 and 3. I would genuinely love to know how Platinum Games managed to create a story that feels both overcooked and half-baked.
Honestly, I'm mostly relieved that Platinum never seems to stray too far from what they do best: their over-the-top, mechanically dense gameplay. The story definitely bothers me, but my feelings of confusion fade the moment I'm back in the midst of battle, having a grand old time. Good luck trying to follow up this plot though, Platinum. You put yourself in the worst position possible for moving forward.
My answer is a confident "Yes!" that quitely trails off into a "...kinda."
The star of the show is the gameplay, obviously. The option to equip a different weapon to your arms and legs has been canned, but it's been replaced with something that I am completely down with: several wholly unique and outrageous weapons. A club that doubles as an anti-matter rifle, a trainsaw blade, fire yo-yos, a microphone that you wield as a staff, and more. All of these weapons have unique movesets that share the same commands as all the other movesets, and you unlock more moves via a skill tree. Not a fan of the skill tree! I don't even think there's anything inherently wrong with its execution, I just think it doesn't need to be here, in a game that's already bursting at the seams with options. Demon slave, on the other hand, is an excellent expansion on ideas introduced in Astral Chain. Summoning a demon and giving it commands temporarily takes away control from Bayo, and you can only queue up two moves at a time. What this means is that combat shifts into this crazy back and forth of giving orders, dishing out your own attacks, and continuing your demon's carnage. It also manages to not be completely mindless, as your demons can get temporarily killed, or enraged to the point where they start lashing out at you instead.
There is one more gameplay element I've neglected talking about, and that's Viola. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with Viola's playstyle, but it does feel like an afterthought in the face of enemies clearly designed with Bayonetta in mind. Some enemy attack hitboxes are way too big, Viola's block range feels pitiful, and if you don't activate "Perfect Witch Time", I'm pretty sure that Witch Time literally lasts for less than a second (which is obviously not enough time to get any meaningful hits in). I think my actual problem with her playstyle is how inherently limited her options are in comparison to Bayonetta. As Bayo keeps getting more and more weapons, Viola is still stuck with her singular moveset. It also doesn't help matters that by the time you've made it to Viola's playable debut, you'll have invested all of your resources up to that point into Bayo's skill trees. Whenever the game gave me a choice between the two, I always opted to play as Bayonetta.
My favorite part of this game is, weirdly enough, the stage design. Chapters are still linear affairs, but areas are much more open, and there's so many opportunities to look for extras off the beaten path. Hidden verses are hidden much more naturally; a far cry from Kamiya's asinine "you beat this verse, now backtrack to the very beginning of the stage where there is now inexplicably a hidden verse and a muspelhiem" design philosophy. It definitely helps that there's a ton of extras to collect. Records, art books, 3D models, and most importantly, the Umbran Tears of Blood. There's three of these per chapter, and they each require different strategies to track down and catch. Collecting all of them unlocks extra chapters that can reward you with a variety of things: moon pearls, witch hearts, unique accessories, and even a few demons/weapons. Hiding stuff that could potentially make my Bayo experience more fun behind collectibles is a great way to make me forget the urgency of the story and go exploring.
Now this here is the unsung hero of Bayonetta 3: When replaying chapters, the chapter select lets you begin from several different checkpoints. It shows you exactly what verses you'll start at if you do so, and if you decide to quit the stage midway, it will keep all your ranks. Ranks as a whole now only keep your highest ones. If you get a better rank during a verse on a repeat playthrough, your medal will be permanently upgraded. This negates penalties for using items or continues on your final score for a stage, and your overall rank can only go up. I'm sure there are purists out there who enjoyed the challenge of finishing every single verse in a stage with high marks in one clean run, but I personally applaud the more accessible approach. Now I don't have to spend literal hours attempting to track down a verse I missed.
Something I have to comment on is the game's performance, and I really can't blame Platinum for this. Nintendo owns Bayo's ass, meaning that the game has to be on the Switch. Like it or not, the Switch is an outdated, underpowered piece of tech. Yes, it can do incredible things when you optimize the fuck out of your game, but I legitimately feel like the Switch's lack of power was a limiting factor on how ambitious Platinum could make this game. Even with all that said, the worst crime that this title commits is having somewhat muddy textures, fluctuating between 45-60 FPS when things get too heated, or locking the FPS at 30 in more bombastic gameplay segments. If anything, the game is a technical achievement in spite of its limitations. The visuals are dazzling, the action is ludicrous, and the game barely needs to load at all.
There are...aspects I like about the story. The multiverse shenanigans are great fun, in my opinion. Visiting all these different worlds and fighting alongside/against their version of Bayonetta is kind of ingenious. I like reading the secondary materials you collect, getting an idea of how daily life in these universes went down before everything went to shit. Where the story actually falls short for me are our main characters, which is a pretty damning place to stumble. Bayonetta feels so disconnected from the rest of the cast, probably due to how she's getting involved with whatever multiverse she finds herself in at any given moment. They game alludes to there being something more to the relationship between Viola and Cheshire, but it never goes into detail on that, unless it's meant to represent (endgame story twist that I'm still having difficulty accepting). I don't hate Viola's character, by the way. I have a soft spot for archetypes like her, honestly. That tryhard attitude, the "it's not a phase, mom" fashion choices; I enjoy her antics more than most. However, I don't think we spent nearly enough time getting to know Viola to justify the ramifications of this game's ending. I have no idea what they did to Luka, wrapping him up in the multiverse nonsense, giving him new abilities for what feels like really contrived reasons. And man, the villain plain sucks in this. He shows up at the eleventh hour with little buildup. We barely know anything about him, and then suddenly he reveals himself to be the bad guy. While I watched the (initial) credits roll, I was genuinely convinced I had arrived at a "bad ending" or something, but nope, that's just how the game fucking ends. It feels like we're missing a game's worth of plot to fill the gap between Bayo 2 and 3. I would genuinely love to know how Platinum Games managed to create a story that feels both overcooked and half-baked.
Honestly, I'm mostly relieved that Platinum never seems to stray too far from what they do best: their over-the-top, mechanically dense gameplay. The story definitely bothers me, but my feelings of confusion fade the moment I'm back in the midst of battle, having a grand old time. Good luck trying to follow up this plot though, Platinum. You put yourself in the worst position possible for moving forward.
Hooblashooga
1 year ago