Bayonetta 3 is the textbook definition of too many cooks in the kitchen. It throws the kitchen sink at you, not realizing how badly it kills the pacing, storytelling and replay value.

So much of this game is bad. Yes, playing as Bayonetta against monsters is better than ever, but its also the Bayonetta game with the least of it. Viola and Jeanne stages are atrocious and ever frequent. It took me a year to slog through this 13 hour game because I dreaded having to play for 30-45 minutes playing a mission with a character that isnt fun. (Jeannes levels are way shorter, but they're the jankiest and ugliest to make up for it).

The less said about the story, the better. Seriously. Even if I ranted about how Platinum massacred Bayonetta as a character and sandblasted at least 80% of the original's camp comedic writing away for self-serious multiverse bullshit, it wouldn't help. The joy of Bayonetta 1 was that the ridiculously fun gameplay was matched in energy by over the top, funny cutscenes with lovable characters. Just...fuck Bayonetta 3 for doing this.

The aliasing in this game is genuinely hideous. Like, everything is shimmering and jagged and the lighting is weird and the textures are shining like a students first unreal project, its a mess. I know its not the end of the world, but I had to play on a CRT to hide how ugly this game is. (To my TVs credit, it worked wonders and made it look decent).

Most importantly of all, Bayonetta 3 keeps thinking the player hates playing Bayonetta. Every chapter has some stupid puzzle mechanic or new gimmicky demon to learn to use for 10 minutes, or a shitty boring shmup section, or bad platforming, or clunky kaiju fights that actually remove happiness from the universe statistically; Bayonetta 3 is an unfocused mess of gameplay ideas that got thrown in as a first draft. Much like this meandering review.

To wrap up my rant, the game is still a begrudging 2 stars because playing Bayonetta is still good fun. Its not as constant as I'd like, but around 40% of the total experience is good. I wouldnt buy it for 60 dollars when DMC5 launched at the same price and is also Bayonetta 3 except they nail it on every level and don't kill the franchise.

I know the reception isn't that bad, but with a dev hell stillbirth like this and the departure of Kamiya, Im not expecting a new game starring "the next generation". Fuck man, did Platinum not notice how hard Capcom had to sell the fans on Nero to make him popular? What made them think Bayo 3's ending was a good idea?

Final rant: Why is the enemy design dogshit? Remember the Joy fight? Now everything is just nickelodeon slime dinosaurs and mannequins.

This game fucking sucks.

Okay. So we all know Danganronpa was never exactly the most well written series. It's always been a bit trashy, and hey, if ya want an over-the-top schlocky murder mystery game, the games are right up that alley. Like the goal or not, they had one and set out to achieve it. This game seems to only have one goal: waste the player's time.

You are Komaru Naegi, an annoying twerp with an arc more predictable than a parabola. Alongside her is Toko Fukawa, a character from the first game, hell bent on rivaling Komaru in that aspect. Presumably soon after the events of the first game, a bunch of Monokumas come to kill Komaru, but is saved by Byakuya Togami. He gets kidnapped, however, so it's up to our vexatious duo to save him, stop the Warriors of Hope, and get out of the Monokuma-ridden city.
The barebones idea of the plot isn't horrible. No, the real problem is what's contained in between the bread. The original series benefitted from having a colorful cast of characters who all interacted with each other, which led to a lot of lines that were funny or at least amusing. Granted, even in the original games, not everything stuck the landing, but the humor in this game makes the original series look like Monty Python in comparison. Most of the interactions are between Komaru & Toko, AKA "I'm so normal ooooooo" and "I'm so horny and bitchy ooooooo". They try to do character development but not only does it have less subtlety than American politics, but it's also beyond shallow and predictable. And then we have a generic power-hungry resistance leader, the most pointless character in the series with Kurakuma... and the Warriors of Hope.
Their gimmick of "Oh we're kids abused by adults who now want revenge" isn't... the worst idea in the world. But when the writing is this bad it fails spectacularly. I'll be honest: I like fucked up, tasteless, edgelord humor. But the thing is that fucked up, tasteless edgelord humor... is still humor. And a child having a PTSD attack because they were raped, beaten, or broken to the limit as a child isn't funny, it's just... awkward and gross. I can't tell if this game is trying to make a serious commentary of how bad adults can be or if they were genuinely trying to be funny, but they utterly fail on all possible fronts. Add in a (weirdly not as slapped in as expected) Nagito Komaeda, and you got just... an unfunny, predictable, tasteless, chiche, and yet still oftentimes fucking boring plot. This might be the worst written game I have ever played, and the last game I've beaten was fucking DmC: Devil May Cry.

At the VERY least, it isn't the worst looking or sounding game I've ever played. For a Playstation Vita game, it actually looks quite good. The game runs at full or near full resolution (surprisingly rare for the Vita) and a mostly steady 30 FPS. I do admit they translated the Danganronpa art style quite smoothly to 3D... for the most part. It also sounds good, though that's partially because most of the tracks are remixed or even ripped directly from the previous games.

Yep. I'm out of good things to say now. Back to negativity!

Imagine, if you will, Resident Evil 4. Now imagine if Resident Evil 4 was mixed with... Portal? Now imagine if you took out all the challenging and interesting puzzles from Portal, and removed all the fun combat mechanics from Resident Evil 4. Congratulations, you have created a recipe for absolute low-end mediocrity. Komaru has a bullhorn gun that can house 8 different kinds of "truth bullets". (kinda weird they call it that when truth bullets were abstract concepts instead of real things in the other games but whatever.) She can use these for combat, as well as solving Monoku-man puzzles scattered through the game. The combat is just fucking boring. Aim for the eye, kill. that's it. There are knockback bullets and a machinegun fire, but at the end of the day the game severely lacks in combat variety even despite the numerous enemies. None of them require any fun strategy to fight. Same with bosses, do the thing, attack their weak point, get massive damage, and they die. Even the final boss was piss easy and uninteresting. You can also swap to an invincible but time-limited Genocide Jack as a last resort move, and she's somewhat fun to control, but too limited in usability to save the game. As for the puzzles, they're tolerable. I can actually have some fun figuring out a good strategy. Sometimes the AI breaks but most of the time it's fine.
I think that if they leaned more into the puzzle aspect, maybe change the game from an action shooter to a more stealth-based game with heavy shooter elements, (something like a mix between Resident Evil 4 and Manhunt) and made the Monokumas more sparse but more deadly, I feel like that would be a more tonally consistent gameplay style. Instead of bad combat, make the goal avoiding confrontation and utilize your gun with numerous powers to break past them. It wouldn't fix the game but it'd salvage the good idea with the bullhorn gun with numerous puzzle-solving capibilities.

I feel like I should mention how Chapter 3 is one of the worst... things I've ever experienced in a video game. When you need to mention to the player that they are not actually witnessing child porn, you have fucked up. It's gross and uncomfortable. Also provides the one minigame in the game not tied to the main gameplay and quite frankly, once I experienced it, I had to go outside, take a breather, and let sink in the fact that numerous artists, programmers, and a director got together to make a minigame so gross I'll just say look it up on your own time.

This game is bad. One of the worst I've played. Every cutscene until the last provides next to nothing of note to the Danganronpa lore. The gameplay provides nothing interesting. The story is beyond abysmal without ever reaching the point of funny bad. There isn't a single likable character. Chapter 3. This game was a waste of time. To anyone interested in playing, just look up the final cutscenes online. Believe me, I'm saving you so much pain. Outside of that last cutscene, and some impressive graphics, this game provides nothing positive. Nothing.

2.4/10. If you do decide to play this game, play it on PS4 or PC for a higher resolution, though the PS Vita version still isn't bad. Also, reconsider that decision.