This game is incredible, while still not on the same technical level of the first, this game does A LOT to compensate.
Long review, so tl;dr: This game is awesome, weapons and mechanics are crazy enough to make me question what the hell did I want to use, THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD OPTIONS. really fun on the first run, and made me feel like I was experiencing Doom Eternal's difficulty on NG+, which makes it even better on replay. The worst part of this game is the fact that it is a Switch exclusive.
I won't get too much into the story, it is bad, yes, but I was expecting a story that existed, not a good one. It tried to accomplish the same goal DMC5 achieved, but B3 went too fast and got things rushed. Still, Viola is a character that grew on me, I like her as much as I like the rest of the series' cast.
Now for gameplay, it feels very familiar to the previous games, but does some changes that, despite the questionable balance, are very welcome. The fundamentals are still there, offense, defense and movement work as it always did... while you're with Colour My World.
I thought Bayo 2 weapons were crazy, this game did not hold back on showing me what crazy is. Weapons don't work in pairs anymore, only full sets, what sets back flexibility, but does compensate a lot on the creative value of each weapon, and there are a lot of them, each one accompanied by a associated demon which Bayonetta can summon, give two commands while standing still, and get back to normal action, both weapon and demon have elaborate movesets, with motion inputs and little mechanics. On top of that, each weapon has its own movement maneuver and one even has an additional defensive mechanic.
While a lot of these are present in prior games, Bayonetta 3 exaggerates to a very fun result. On the other side, Demons are not very balanced, the reworked magic gauge feels a bit too generous for them, even more when max upgraded, and the camera for some of them can be a obstacle at times.
Contrary to B2's Umbran Climax, the demons, despite very strong, are not a "win button", they can be punished and destroyed with poor use. Each weapon also has a "super move", they do a lot of damage and get you invincible during its cutscene, but takes a long time to charge up.
For Viola, she's cool to play with, and has a very shifted way to play, but her fundamentals feel incomplete and seems a bit dissonant to the character itself.
She can charge up melee and ranged attacks with the sword, an throw darts with the shoot button, these are cool to pull off and have their value. She has a single summon that acts independently and has limited range, that being around the sword she throws on the ground. She cannot activate Witch Time by dodging, only parrying with the sword, which would be okay if she did not lose most of her defensive capabilities while having Cheshire summoned. Still, she's cool to play with, and some fights can get very Metal Gear Rising-ish, which is not a bad thing at all, but for a "in training" character, she feels very "specialist".
For difficulty, this game is the most forgiving of them all in terms of ranking, deaths and items don't subtract your score anymore, only the damage you take, which disappointed me at first sight, but, the game was so damn fun that I completely ignored this after some time and took as many retries as I needed, which, something that needs to be praised, is the speed that the game puts you back into action after you die, a 5 second game over back into the beginning of the verse, no confirmation or loading screen. THIS. IS. A. BLESSING, and plays big part on the next point. I wish a great life to the people who took this decision and made it happen.
I completed my first playthrough on Hard, and it was very fun, however, when I stepped into Infinite Climax, I felt like I was playing Doom Eternal on Nightmare once again. Everything felt so right.
The absolute majority of combats on Infinite Climax felt challenging enough to get me dying from 10 to 40 times and avoiding any form of frustration, with very few exceptions, like Chapter 10 Verse 4, this one is pure evil. The fast retries play a huge part on this due to the time saved between deaths, which got me right where I wanted to be as fast as possible, much like Doom Eternal.
A step up from B2 this game made is that, Demons and Supers do not feel necessary to complete combats on Infinite Climax with Bayonetta, with few exceptions that are the enemies that pushes Bayonetta away and has to be dealt with by a demon, fortunately, these are not very frequent.
The demons allow an absurd amount of damage, but the weapons output is enough for the fights to feel just right. All major fights on IC I did with Bayonetta alone and it was great!
Witch Time is still present on IC, a experience like the first game's IC will still be exclusive to that game. Though it can be partially mimicked with accessories, the blazing fast fights can be there, and are manageable with Bayonetta alone, but WT's reward cannot be ignored.
Most enemies and bosses feel good to fight, with the clear exceptions that are Virga and Murus, these two can be damned. Though not memorable like Angels and Demons, Homunculi serve their purpose.
The exploration took a big hit since you do not need to search for weapons anymore, but I still found myself searching for secrets even on replay. The Umbran Tears serve the bigger purpose of unlocking secret missions for upgrades and accessories, which is great.
Minigames are much more frequent, although much shorter, a good trade, as they now are fun the first time, and still are on replay, a nice step up.
Visually the game looks good despite the very monotone scenarios, character models their textures are better than ever, but it pains me to know that this game will be locked on the Switch for undetermined time, some other textures feel painful to look at and the framerate is not stable, though fps issues were quite meaningless during my time with the game.
Overall, this game is a much more fun experience than Bayonetta 2, and doesn't have the things that deeply annoy me on the first game, so it might be the candidate for new favorite. It was definitely worth the extremely long wait, and I will be playing it again in the near and far future. I just wish it was not a Switch exclusive, so performance could be better, and more people would have access to this game, the latter also applies to Bayonetta 2. An unbelievably fun and complete package.
Most importantly... WHO THE HELL HAD THE IDEA TO HAVE A GODDAMN TRAIN AS A WEAPON? THAT WAS BRILLIANT AND HAD ME EXTREMELY HAPPY.
Long review, so tl;dr: This game is awesome, weapons and mechanics are crazy enough to make me question what the hell did I want to use, THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD OPTIONS. really fun on the first run, and made me feel like I was experiencing Doom Eternal's difficulty on NG+, which makes it even better on replay. The worst part of this game is the fact that it is a Switch exclusive.
I won't get too much into the story, it is bad, yes, but I was expecting a story that existed, not a good one. It tried to accomplish the same goal DMC5 achieved, but B3 went too fast and got things rushed. Still, Viola is a character that grew on me, I like her as much as I like the rest of the series' cast.
Now for gameplay, it feels very familiar to the previous games, but does some changes that, despite the questionable balance, are very welcome. The fundamentals are still there, offense, defense and movement work as it always did... while you're with Colour My World.
I thought Bayo 2 weapons were crazy, this game did not hold back on showing me what crazy is. Weapons don't work in pairs anymore, only full sets, what sets back flexibility, but does compensate a lot on the creative value of each weapon, and there are a lot of them, each one accompanied by a associated demon which Bayonetta can summon, give two commands while standing still, and get back to normal action, both weapon and demon have elaborate movesets, with motion inputs and little mechanics. On top of that, each weapon has its own movement maneuver and one even has an additional defensive mechanic.
While a lot of these are present in prior games, Bayonetta 3 exaggerates to a very fun result. On the other side, Demons are not very balanced, the reworked magic gauge feels a bit too generous for them, even more when max upgraded, and the camera for some of them can be a obstacle at times.
Contrary to B2's Umbran Climax, the demons, despite very strong, are not a "win button", they can be punished and destroyed with poor use. Each weapon also has a "super move", they do a lot of damage and get you invincible during its cutscene, but takes a long time to charge up.
For Viola, she's cool to play with, and has a very shifted way to play, but her fundamentals feel incomplete and seems a bit dissonant to the character itself.
She can charge up melee and ranged attacks with the sword, an throw darts with the shoot button, these are cool to pull off and have their value. She has a single summon that acts independently and has limited range, that being around the sword she throws on the ground. She cannot activate Witch Time by dodging, only parrying with the sword, which would be okay if she did not lose most of her defensive capabilities while having Cheshire summoned. Still, she's cool to play with, and some fights can get very Metal Gear Rising-ish, which is not a bad thing at all, but for a "in training" character, she feels very "specialist".
For difficulty, this game is the most forgiving of them all in terms of ranking, deaths and items don't subtract your score anymore, only the damage you take, which disappointed me at first sight, but, the game was so damn fun that I completely ignored this after some time and took as many retries as I needed, which, something that needs to be praised, is the speed that the game puts you back into action after you die, a 5 second game over back into the beginning of the verse, no confirmation or loading screen. THIS. IS. A. BLESSING, and plays big part on the next point. I wish a great life to the people who took this decision and made it happen.
I completed my first playthrough on Hard, and it was very fun, however, when I stepped into Infinite Climax, I felt like I was playing Doom Eternal on Nightmare once again. Everything felt so right.
The absolute majority of combats on Infinite Climax felt challenging enough to get me dying from 10 to 40 times and avoiding any form of frustration, with very few exceptions, like Chapter 10 Verse 4, this one is pure evil. The fast retries play a huge part on this due to the time saved between deaths, which got me right where I wanted to be as fast as possible, much like Doom Eternal.
A step up from B2 this game made is that, Demons and Supers do not feel necessary to complete combats on Infinite Climax with Bayonetta, with few exceptions that are the enemies that pushes Bayonetta away and has to be dealt with by a demon, fortunately, these are not very frequent.
The demons allow an absurd amount of damage, but the weapons output is enough for the fights to feel just right. All major fights on IC I did with Bayonetta alone and it was great!
Witch Time is still present on IC, a experience like the first game's IC will still be exclusive to that game. Though it can be partially mimicked with accessories, the blazing fast fights can be there, and are manageable with Bayonetta alone, but WT's reward cannot be ignored.
Most enemies and bosses feel good to fight, with the clear exceptions that are Virga and Murus, these two can be damned. Though not memorable like Angels and Demons, Homunculi serve their purpose.
The exploration took a big hit since you do not need to search for weapons anymore, but I still found myself searching for secrets even on replay. The Umbran Tears serve the bigger purpose of unlocking secret missions for upgrades and accessories, which is great.
Minigames are much more frequent, although much shorter, a good trade, as they now are fun the first time, and still are on replay, a nice step up.
Visually the game looks good despite the very monotone scenarios, character models their textures are better than ever, but it pains me to know that this game will be locked on the Switch for undetermined time, some other textures feel painful to look at and the framerate is not stable, though fps issues were quite meaningless during my time with the game.
Overall, this game is a much more fun experience than Bayonetta 2, and doesn't have the things that deeply annoy me on the first game, so it might be the candidate for new favorite. It was definitely worth the extremely long wait, and I will be playing it again in the near and far future. I just wish it was not a Switch exclusive, so performance could be better, and more people would have access to this game, the latter also applies to Bayonetta 2. An unbelievably fun and complete package.
Most importantly... WHO THE HELL HAD THE IDEA TO HAVE A GODDAMN TRAIN AS A WEAPON? THAT WAS BRILLIANT AND HAD ME EXTREMELY HAPPY.