Can't wait for multiverse narratives to die in a fire.

Bayonetta 3 is a good action game but a huge step down for the Bayonetta franchise and perhaps the biggest disappointment I have ever felt in a game. Not only is the story an incoherent, embarrassing mess (not that the other two had a high bar to overcome), but unfortunately the gameplay is completely bogged down with the new focus on summoning gigantic monsters in every battle, which creates a clusterfuck of visual clutter and takes the fun and speed out of the otherwise flawless combat system with great new weapon additions.

Platinum really had to sign a monkey's paw deal with Nintendo it seems. On the one hand the franchise was saved, but on the other hand it was confined to the shackles of technological jail that are Nintendo's consoles, meaning that Bayonetta 3 might actually look and feel worse than Bayonetta 1 on the 360 did, which is such a bummer.

I am not hopeful at all for the future of Bayonetta, unfortunately. The story and character decisions did its part, certainly, but most importantly it feels like I have lost the confidence in the belief that Platinum has a coherent vision for the franchise and knows what the strengths are, because Bayonetta 3 certainly did not play to them.

Requiem plays it safe as far as sequels go and continues right where the first game left of. Even if it features more sprawling and detailed environments, it is the type of sequel where I won't remember in a years time what was part of the first game and what was the second game. This isn't a bad thing at all, ultimately I also enjoyed it about equally as Innocence, even if it has nice improvements in combat and character variety.

Where I would have wished for more refinement are the puzzles and some of the rat sections. It happened multiple times that a puzzle or general progression hinged on me noticing an interaction circle somewhere or not missing a crucial piece of dialog that is not repeated, leading to me banging my head against the wall in trial-and-error, not seeing the specific solution to a problem the game wants me to see to progress.
The rats are the bread and butter of A Plague Tale and offer a great twist on stealth mechanics. The tech is honestly impressive, but unfortunately not waterproof. The organic nature of the rat system often led to infuriating frustration where some rogue rats would still be on a cleared path, killing Amecia, you being centimeters away from a light source still dying trying to make one step forward or rats being on a path they are not supposed to be due to some mechanics I won't spoil, leading to the need for wasting a fire pot to clear a tiny patch of rats, alerting all the enemies. These were minor frustrations but were what ultimately held me back from enjoying it more than Innocence.

In the end though, A Plague Tale is incredibly easy to recommend, which hasn't changed with Requiem, offering a tight narrative with impressive set-pieces and digestable stealth gameplay, even I, a person with very very limited patience for any stealth in games, could arrange myself with. It's the little AA sibling of Uncharted and The Last of Us and is just as enjoyable, even if obviously not as refined.

Still just as exhilarating as it was when I first played it as a teenager on release. With this replay I could finally remedy a big regret of my gaming career: Actually beating the final boss and finishing the game on hard difficulty, which I just couldn't do in 2013, as the difficulty spike was just too brutal.

In the years after its release Rising became a cult classic and with good reason - the game is not only a phenomenal action game with some of the best uses of music in combat but is also infinitely quotable through the narrative in between that doesn't overstay its welcome.

There are definitely some rough edges where the game pulls you away from what the fun part is by introducing various stealth sections to somehow prove that it is a Metal Gear game, I guess. And the weapons and items you get are really not that interesting at the best and annoyingly clunky and useless at the worst, providing some unnecessary fat in an otherwise remarkably lean experience. At the end I don't feel like faulting the game for anything, though. It is so full of character and charm, that it just gets away with it, cementing itself as one of my favorite games of all time.