I'm torn. This has some of the moment to moment funnest gameplay in the series. It also has flatout the worst story. It also has a million setpieces of mixed quality.
You can tell Kaimya & Co. took a lot of stuff from Scalebound to use here and I think that stuff works great! The various Demon Slaves are really fun (with a few exceptions), and the Masquerade system also opens a lot of neat opportunities.
Viola the newcomer is fun but very limited. Her skill tree can be maxed really quickly & the game's insistence on giving every weapon a traversal option with a universal input of R x2 or Fwd+R while putting her main mechanic of parrying on the same button is madness. Her variation on the Demon Slave system felt worse overall as well.
The many setpieces are mixed - the first arc in Japan with like 5 goddamn chase setpieces was awful but later ones like the Queen Butterfly or the Paris shmup sequence were great. I just wish there were maybe....15% less of em.
The multiple AU Bayonettas all have pretty cool looks (that you can unlock ofc). I will say the Chinese Warlord costume was the worst. Far too busy.
The Jeanne chapters were... a thing. I didn't hate them. I didn't like them. I still don't understand, like, a lot of the gimmicks.
I won't get into specifics of the story but my main complaints could be summarized as "one of the most nothing villains possibly ever" and "the mechanics the entire story are based on have almost zero explanation". I also have qualms with it wanting me to be emotionally invested in certain things I had no reason to be.
In conclusion I'm glad we're now 3 for 3 on Bayonetta games being super fun but wildly inconsistent in terms of weird things that hurt the experience.
You can tell Kaimya & Co. took a lot of stuff from Scalebound to use here and I think that stuff works great! The various Demon Slaves are really fun (with a few exceptions), and the Masquerade system also opens a lot of neat opportunities.
Viola the newcomer is fun but very limited. Her skill tree can be maxed really quickly & the game's insistence on giving every weapon a traversal option with a universal input of R x2 or Fwd+R while putting her main mechanic of parrying on the same button is madness. Her variation on the Demon Slave system felt worse overall as well.
The many setpieces are mixed - the first arc in Japan with like 5 goddamn chase setpieces was awful but later ones like the Queen Butterfly or the Paris shmup sequence were great. I just wish there were maybe....15% less of em.
The multiple AU Bayonettas all have pretty cool looks (that you can unlock ofc). I will say the Chinese Warlord costume was the worst. Far too busy.
The Jeanne chapters were... a thing. I didn't hate them. I didn't like them. I still don't understand, like, a lot of the gimmicks.
I won't get into specifics of the story but my main complaints could be summarized as "one of the most nothing villains possibly ever" and "the mechanics the entire story are based on have almost zero explanation". I also have qualms with it wanting me to be emotionally invested in certain things I had no reason to be.
In conclusion I'm glad we're now 3 for 3 on Bayonetta games being super fun but wildly inconsistent in terms of weird things that hurt the experience.