Much like the first game Bayonetta 2 thrives when you are put in a room with a bunch of enemies and have the freedom to beat them into a pulp however you want. Also much like the first game there is not nearly enough of those moments.
In Bayonetta 2's search of spectacle it seems to forget what makes these games so much fun to play in the first place. The first place this manifests itself is in the Umbran Climax system which gives you big flashy powerful moves as a reward for dodging attacks. This looks really cool and feels really powerful at first, but it also means that the enemies are designed around you having this big fuck off power, and as such your regular moves often feel like they're doing next to no damage.
Also in service of offering over-the-top set pieces a lot of fights take place with you floating in space fighting a giant enemy, which looks really damn cool, but kind of sucks to actually play. During these segments I find it really difficult to gauge your position versus the enemy's, and there are certain moves that are just useless, so I found myself just doing basic combo strings and still whiffing tons of attacks. This doesn't feel great, and there are a lot of these sections! In fact there are so few levels where you just progress linearly through a stage as Bayonetta fighting groups of enemies that I started to miss the reused levels of the second half of the first game.
As far as things I liked go I will say that I really loved the weapon selection here, the scythe, the whip, the chainsaw all felt really good in a way that most of the weapons in the first game didn't for me. Bayonetta 2 is also much nicer to look at than the first game, both because of the extra spectacle, but also because the color palette isn't as 7th-gen-esque. The enemy variety is also a huge step up too, keeping all the guys from the first game and throwing a bunch of new ones into the mix is really great.
Overall, this is kind of a mixed bag as a sequel, but as a follow up to a game that has a ton of its own problems I guess that's appropriate.
In Bayonetta 2's search of spectacle it seems to forget what makes these games so much fun to play in the first place. The first place this manifests itself is in the Umbran Climax system which gives you big flashy powerful moves as a reward for dodging attacks. This looks really cool and feels really powerful at first, but it also means that the enemies are designed around you having this big fuck off power, and as such your regular moves often feel like they're doing next to no damage.
Also in service of offering over-the-top set pieces a lot of fights take place with you floating in space fighting a giant enemy, which looks really damn cool, but kind of sucks to actually play. During these segments I find it really difficult to gauge your position versus the enemy's, and there are certain moves that are just useless, so I found myself just doing basic combo strings and still whiffing tons of attacks. This doesn't feel great, and there are a lot of these sections! In fact there are so few levels where you just progress linearly through a stage as Bayonetta fighting groups of enemies that I started to miss the reused levels of the second half of the first game.
As far as things I liked go I will say that I really loved the weapon selection here, the scythe, the whip, the chainsaw all felt really good in a way that most of the weapons in the first game didn't for me. Bayonetta 2 is also much nicer to look at than the first game, both because of the extra spectacle, but also because the color palette isn't as 7th-gen-esque. The enemy variety is also a huge step up too, keeping all the guys from the first game and throwing a bunch of new ones into the mix is really great.
Overall, this is kind of a mixed bag as a sequel, but as a follow up to a game that has a ton of its own problems I guess that's appropriate.