This review contains spoilers
Combat is great, when the game actually lets you engage in it. Bayonetta feels the best she's ever felt here, and the weapons in this game are amazing. One of them is a shameless rip-off of DMC5's motorcycle weapon, but that's ok, because it's fun to use! Viola is also pretty fun, but just feels a little unfinished, and she only has a few chapters so you don't spend much time with her. Here's where the positives end, because literally the only good things about this game is the combat and art direction (which is good! I mean, the framerate is crap, but the resolution is 900p and the special effects can look pretty cool. Aside from the grey city and Halo 1 island at the start of the game, the rest of the game can look quite pretty.)
HOWEVER, the game is filled to the brink with minigames, and it is just insanely overkill. I say this as someone who enjoyed the ones in Bayonetta 1! In Bayonetta 2, minigame sections were toned down and basically just there to give yourself a break to breathe. in 3, holy crap, there are so many, everywhere, back to back. Many of them feel terrible to control, are boring, and most of the time just feel like generic AAA set pieces with no flavor. Some of them are so bad it's offensive. I'm not sure who looked at the Spider summon and decided he deserved a godawful PS1 bootleg platformer section, but that was so bad it should be considered a hate crime.
The campaign is structured in an episodic format, with you going to a universe, getting a MacGuffin, and leaving after confronting the Big Bad of this game, to fight him again later. Here's the thing....you NEVER get an honest to god, real boss fight with this antagonist until the very end of the game. You do get to fight him, but only through minigames! Excited for the big confrontation with this scumbag? Nah, here's a rhythm game. Nah, here's a bubble bath minigame. What?
The only boss fight in this game that's actually quite fun is with the new rival character, Strider, but his placement in the campaign is sporadic and sparse. This leads to a really bad pacing issue going through the campaign, where things are just randomly thrown around in random places and nothing ever gets to feel particularly satisfying about Bayonetta's journey through the game. This is capped off by one of the worst final chapters in any action game, ever, which is filled with minigames, a boss fight with an adds phase like a typical AAA game, and a terrible, unfulfilling drawn out fight with the Big Bad. It felt like I was back on Namek waiting for 5 minutes to pass before it blew up, or I was fighting Perfect Cell and watching him get back up with asspull after asspull after you think he's beat, then he's not, then he is, then he's not. Then the ending comes, then a crappy boss fight comes, then the ending comes for real.
Story is also one of the worst video game stories I've ever seen in my life. It feels like a really, really bad fanfiction. Like, I'm talking 10 year old's first fanfiction.net story bad. Luka is literally only in this story to breed and die, Jeanne dies to the most obvious backstabbing of all time after accomplishing nothing and dooming the entire world, the Big Bad is a literal nobody who literally has no motivations, he is just evil to be evil, Bayonetta feels weirdly serious and out of character, the writing feels like a weird Kingdom Hearts parody written by people who hate Kingdom Hearts, and everyone dies, every universe dies, fuck you, Bayonetta is over, it's Viola's game now, Bayonetta 4 coming soon, please look forward to it, we really didn't want to make this game!
HOWEVER, the game is filled to the brink with minigames, and it is just insanely overkill. I say this as someone who enjoyed the ones in Bayonetta 1! In Bayonetta 2, minigame sections were toned down and basically just there to give yourself a break to breathe. in 3, holy crap, there are so many, everywhere, back to back. Many of them feel terrible to control, are boring, and most of the time just feel like generic AAA set pieces with no flavor. Some of them are so bad it's offensive. I'm not sure who looked at the Spider summon and decided he deserved a godawful PS1 bootleg platformer section, but that was so bad it should be considered a hate crime.
The campaign is structured in an episodic format, with you going to a universe, getting a MacGuffin, and leaving after confronting the Big Bad of this game, to fight him again later. Here's the thing....you NEVER get an honest to god, real boss fight with this antagonist until the very end of the game. You do get to fight him, but only through minigames! Excited for the big confrontation with this scumbag? Nah, here's a rhythm game. Nah, here's a bubble bath minigame. What?
The only boss fight in this game that's actually quite fun is with the new rival character, Strider, but his placement in the campaign is sporadic and sparse. This leads to a really bad pacing issue going through the campaign, where things are just randomly thrown around in random places and nothing ever gets to feel particularly satisfying about Bayonetta's journey through the game. This is capped off by one of the worst final chapters in any action game, ever, which is filled with minigames, a boss fight with an adds phase like a typical AAA game, and a terrible, unfulfilling drawn out fight with the Big Bad. It felt like I was back on Namek waiting for 5 minutes to pass before it blew up, or I was fighting Perfect Cell and watching him get back up with asspull after asspull after you think he's beat, then he's not, then he is, then he's not. Then the ending comes, then a crappy boss fight comes, then the ending comes for real.
Story is also one of the worst video game stories I've ever seen in my life. It feels like a really, really bad fanfiction. Like, I'm talking 10 year old's first fanfiction.net story bad. Luka is literally only in this story to breed and die, Jeanne dies to the most obvious backstabbing of all time after accomplishing nothing and dooming the entire world, the Big Bad is a literal nobody who literally has no motivations, he is just evil to be evil, Bayonetta feels weirdly serious and out of character, the writing feels like a weird Kingdom Hearts parody written by people who hate Kingdom Hearts, and everyone dies, every universe dies, fuck you, Bayonetta is over, it's Viola's game now, Bayonetta 4 coming soon, please look forward to it, we really didn't want to make this game!