Wow, truly incredible. I've been a big fan since the first game, and somehow the 3rd game is still improving the formula by leaps and bounds. Masterful branching semi-linear level design like 2D Sonic games, great music, beautiful graphics and art direction, and incredibly tight gameplay and controls.

In short, if a rhythm game was mashed up with the wildest Tony Hawk combos.

My only real complaint is that velocity is under explained in game. It's critical but hard to grok.

I've beaten every high score challenge. Few gaming accomplishments have felt this awesome to me. A must play game.

This game is part of the reason I came out as non-binary.

Setsu and Raqio are my enby heroes.

Amazing music and art. Tight "Werewolf" gameplay.

My only complaint is that it's a bit unclear how to get the true ending, which caused the game to drag on for almost 10 hours more than I think it should have.

Lightfall itself was highly disappointing. Neomuna was not fun as a patrol zone, drop rates for weapons were awful. The story. God, the story. Congrats for adding the first(?) nonbinary character to Destiny, but the writing for them was truly atrocious. Caiatl should've been way more important in the story than she was, too. Sadly, this whole campaign is a filler arc from an anime. One big training montage while old man Osiris yells at us.

The complete revamp of buildcrafting is godsend.

The seasonal content hasn't excited me as much this year, but it's still solid enough.

The soundtrack is great but I do prefer the music from The Witch Queen.

Dungeons this year have been pretty good. Ghosts of the Deep is unfortunately a bit of a slog to me, but I still think it's gorgeous and interesting. Warlord's Ruin is genuinely extremely cool and gives me some great Grasp of Avarice vibes. My only complaint is that the final boss mechanics for standing in circles while transferring hex is quite finicky in practice, especially when the AI is so unpredictable, and it really pushes your team super hard on add clear to stay alive. Otherwise two incredible boss fights and just a super original design.

I don't raid much any more, but frankly I didn't like Root of Nightmares. I know it's derided as being too easy, especially compared to Vow, but I just wasn't feeling this one mechanically. The jumping puzzle with the death mechanic especially was an absolute fucking slog. The visuals are great, though, and I love the concept, but it just wasn't as fun as RoN to me.

PvP is still pretty fun. Still too many abilities in PvP I think.

Loot is getting really out of hand and I feel like we're due for another round of sunsetting. Idk we've just got ridiculous power creep in the game but whatever.

Also fuck the layoffs.

I still love playing Destiny, but this year my interest dwindled a lot.

## what i played

i spent 75 hours doing maaaybe half the shrines, a handful of side quests, upgrading my armor most of the way, and beating the final boss

### stuff i liked

- the art direction
- the music near the end of the game is incredible
- lots of cool shrine puzzles
- link is once again a hot little elf twink on display for us
- the sky islands were pretty cool
- the enemy design is so cool looking
- i just want to play a game about bokoblins thanks

### stuff i was meh about

- the framerate got really choppy whenever you do physics stuff, but was playable for most things
- the overall soundtrack direction is too subdued and ambient for my tastes
- frankly i'm not huge on the combat in BOTW/TOTK. the side dodge vs back dodge vs parry mechanics is way too much for me. dark souls doesn't even need this many types of parries. i never bothered mastering or even getting half good at this.
- only 5 full dungeons
- none of the boss fights were very fun to me
- why are horses still so useless?
- zelda has always had side quests but i think the structure of putting map markers everywhere and making lists of side quests and all that makes the game commodified in a way that feels uncomfy to me, and pressures me into doing more tedious shit than i would naturally
- the structure of the whole game is basically 100% flat, like BOTW
- everything is approximately the same difficulty with only minimal scaling
- because of this, dungeons can't really build on previous ones
- and you don't collect new and interesting upgrades over the course of the game
- i didnt really find building stuff as compelling as they must've expected
- on occasion i was like "oh shit!" but it was rare
- usually it was just tedious and boring
- due to the finicky physics and weird abilities, lots of puzzles can be cheesed, and it may not even be remotely clear what the intended solution is... leading to a dissatisfied feeling of cheating the game and/or yourself
- i feel like older zelda games had more unique types of enemies?
- most enemies here are just recolors
- it was tough to manage all 5 companions since they're 100% context sensitive actions :(

### stuff i didnt like

- feels too "epic" for zelda imo, which i associate with being a bit more cutesy and subdued
- too many cutscenes
- dialogue for almost every character is far too long
- shonen anime tropes really undercut the zelda mood for me
- the underground area was a huge bummer for me, and i chose not to fully explore it
- dungeon design is once again lacking. the dungeons are basically completely flat in structure: just do 4-5 puzzles in any order. also it's possible to cheese some of the puzzles via environment traversal. eek.
- the pacing of the final stretch of the game is all out of wack
- mech combat is a huge bummer
- "gloom" sucked because it punishes you for exploring and for not stockpiling certain types of cures
- and it makes you want to just run away from every battle involving it

## verdict

i would've had a lot more fun just loading up a classic 2d zelda and replaying it

I am so conflicted on this game. On one hand it's about a queer roadtrip to defeat fascism, on the other hand, I absolutely cannot get into the combat at all.

For the most part I really enjoy the writing. That meme about writers who use subtext being cowards is totally relevant here.

I particularly enjoyed Act III for diving deep into Sam's psyche. I ran out of steam in Act IV, the final part of the game, against the final boss no less.

The combat system is... very weird to me. I've heard that it's like FFXIII, but as someone who hasn't played many FF games, this doesn't help me at all.

The tutorial is pretty short, and by Act III I had played the game so poorly I soft locked myself. See, I was like 4 levels below the boss I was trying to fight, so they literally instant killed all of my party members constantly, and I didn't have enough money to buy gas so I could keep grinding to level up. This game is weirdly a resource management game with the money in a way I've never felt so oppressed by before. I genuinely had to restart the game from Act I because I had been foolish enough to repeatedly save in the same slot, despite the game offering like 50 save slots or something.

So the second time around I minmaxed leveling as hard as I could... without making myself completely out of money since I could mess up the game again. AND I turned on Story Mode combat difficulty. Which, frankly I find the name a bit offensive. It's not like you can simply button mash your way thru boss encounters on that level, at least not the final one. See, the upgrade system is the whole way you level up, and there's lot of spells and if you don't read them all very carefully you can end up with a pretty shit build. I think that's what happened to me at some point and it was making the game a lot harder.

Sadly, the encounter rate just gets too high, and it literally interrupts party dialogue. Gracefully the game resumes conversations where you left off, but I found myself dreading the interruptions. Even on Story Mode where you apparently get more money, I constantly was running out of money for upgrades if i wanted to keep enough money to not run out of gas and lose the entire game.

Eventually I just looked up a Lets Play to watch the final boss play out. Also, apparently at some point the game was patched to prevent you from using your entire item collection during fights, because it was considered messy/confusing. As far as I can tell this was a massive nerf to your combat ability. You have to constantly remember to restock the items in your 5 slots, and it's hard to balance which items you want to take to each fight. In particular Act III and Act IV bosses have some items you really want to have around and I had to restart both fights because I hadn't taken the right loadout.

Anyways, the writing is definitely cheesy at times, but I like the parallels to fascism, LGBT rights, and ineffective liberal government "status quo" woes. Oh, and all the stuff about social media in Act III again was great.

Sadly, my lasting thought about this game is that it needs a massive balance tuning. Maybe I'm "bad" at the game or something, but it just didn't click and I kept feeling frustrated. I wish this game had just been a visual novel instead.

A short and sweet Metroidvania! Gorgeous art and lovely tunes.

Fun level design, cheeky writing, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Combat is fast, fluid, and easy. The focus of this game is exploration and collecting.

As with most Metroidvanias, there's some point where I got lost and looked things up... sadly the game doesn't seem very popular, so I had to just watch a Lets Play on YouTube to get thru it.

A complete misunderstanding of what made the first Bayonetta game fun

When I think of Bayonetta, I think of fast, fluid combat. There's a lot going on, but the signature "Witch Time" mechanic of temporary slow motion when dodging an attack with precise timing allows you to embody the hero: seeing thru the chaos and enacting an elegant balet of fists, feet, and bullets.

Sadly, I don't think the directors of Bayonetta 3 and agree on that as the core of the Bayonetta series. It seems that they were more caught up in the spectacle of Bayonetta.

The game opens with a literal apocalypse, and abruptly thrusts you into a story where multiverse theory is real, and new protagonist Viola can hop between universes to battle Singularity, a villain who is absorbing power from every universe in order to challenge Paradiso & Inferno (Heaven & Hell).

In the opening moments of the game, Manhattan is completely destroyed by a cataclysmic wave created by an enormous kaiju-sized aquatic beast. Many games would wait a bit to up the ante like this, but Bayonetta 3 starts at "11" and doesn't let up.

I did not enjoy the pacing of the story because of this. The stakes immediately feel at max and never let up, causing no single moment to actually feel important.

From a gameplay perspective, it honestly feels like Platinum has become bored of the bread & butter smooth combat they're known for. A massive amount of this game is the player controlling either boss-sized beasts (which move as slowly and unresponsivly as you would imagine), or full-on Godzilla-sized kaiju creatures.

The first two Bayonetta games had their occasional frustrating QTEs that could result in instant death, as well as novelty levels based on shmup games and driving games of old. I never liked these levels, but someone at Platinum sure does.

Bayonetta 3 features:

• 1v1 skyscraper-sized kaiju fighting game (and you have to play it twice)
• A stealth minigame featuring Jeanne that plays out like a mediocre Xbox Live Arcade game
• Several different "shmup" sections that are completely inscrutable (some are "airplane" style and others are "on rails")
• A rhythm game during a boss fight
• A "treasure hunt" game with a proximity sensor, with absolutely no explanation

The game is constantly name-dropping weird things that are never really explained, but also not interesting. I'm definitely a "show, don't tell" kind of person when it comes to stories, but I was frequently confused and uninterested in this game due to the amount of "Arch-Eve" and "Arch-Adam" nonsense being spewn.

Another thing about pacing: these weird mini-games popup in so many missions I lost count. They are frequently used as the capstone verse of a chapter to make a boss fight feel "epic", but given how boring these modes are it feels more like a punishment than an epic finale.

In short, I do not recommend anyone play this game. And frankly, I'm confused as to how it currently has an 88/100 on Metacritic. I've seen many people say the game is "fantastic" until the story gets bad, but frankly I didn't like this game from the opening hours thru the finale. It's just not fun and not what people expect out of a Bayonetta game.

TO THAT END, I really wanna talk about the story and go into spoiler territory:

Serious spoiler territory starts now

Um, so you may have heard by now that Bayonetta falls in love with Luka, the bumbling moron who follows her around in the first two games and is infatuated with her.

Unfortunately, this is true, and the setup for it is basically nonexistent.

One of the main story concepts of this game is watching Bayonettas from other universes die, and Luka has a tender moment with Bayonetta as she's dying and being dragged to hell. Luka holds her in his arms and comforts her, and she eats it up like a romanceable little lady, in stark contrast to her behavior in the other games.

I knew about this ahead of time, so I was bracing for it rather than taken by surprise. It's really stupid and feels like it was written by someone who wishes they could marry Bayonetta, and who imagines Luka as the self-insert character.

Also, Luka is actually extremely powerful in this game. It's hinted at early on but eventually everyone realizes he can transform into a crystal werewolf thing that beats the crap out of Bayonetta with ease. He has some weird narration about how he's always felt useless or something and this power grew in him. Like what a weird character arc no one was asking for.

Which, let's back up and talk about Bayonetta's sexuality for a moment. When the first game came out, it was highly criticized for the hypersexual portrayal of Bayonetta. This was at a time when Feminist Frequency was highly relevant, and the male gaze was the phrase of the day.

Many people suggested that Bayonetta's design is that of pure sexual fetish: she's basically a walking sexy British dominatrix witch action figure.

I tend to think this is a pretty accurate assessment of Bayonetta's design, but a new opinion started to emerge around the time of Bayonetta 2. In that game, her BFF Jeanne is hinted at being her lesbian lover (they go out shopping together and talk about going home together... also Jeanne sacrifices herself to save Bayonetta in the early game, and much of the story content is Bayonetta literally going thru actual Hell to save Jeanne; y'know, just "gal pal" stuff).

So there was a new popular head canon of Bayonetta as the lesbian witch full of female empowerment.

I tend to think that her repeated humilation of Luka in the first game is less of "I'm not into men" and more of "I'm a dominatrix lol", but perhaps some people saw it as an affirmation of her sapphic-only love interests.

I personally think this is nothing more than a head canon, and that what sapphic quality the Bayonetta series has is just more of a result of Bayonetta's hyper sexuality and all the combat-capable protagonists being women.

This is not to say that I dislike the head canon. I think it's cool if you see a super hot woman kicking ass and you're like "it me, the power lesbian". That's cool and I'm happy for you. I just don't think the creators of Bayonetta ever had that in mind, and I think Bayonetta's newfound love for Luka is more evidence of that.

And OMG I completely forgot the other thing about her love for Luka. Well, now we're going neck deep into massive endgame spoilers for Bayonetta 3, btw.

The new main character Viola is literally Bayonetta and Luka's daughter from another timeline lol.

And Bayonetta "passes on" the family name to Viola, who is referred to as Viola Bayonetta by Rodin at the end of the game, where she's seen wearing Bayonetta's glasses and Luka's scarf before going out to hunt demons.

For me, the story has never been a motivating or key factor for the series, so I don't really care. It just feels like more mediocre decoration as I expected.

The real issue for me is that the core gameplay is just embarrassingly NOT THERE and constantly replaced with half polished mini games.

Based on timing from announcement to release, Bayonetta 2 was in development for around 2 years, whereas Bayonetta 3 took 5 years. I feel like they must've had some internal development hell with this game, because it is jam packed full of ideas and feels incredibly disjointed.

Random note: I uploaded my score after beating the game and apparenlty I had the 23rd fastest run on "standard" difficulty. Kinda surprised to see that, since I wasn't really trying too hard lol.

ANYWAY there's so much more I could write about this game, but it's an actual miracle if you've read this far, so I'm going to wrap this up.

PLEASE go play a better character action game instead:

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PC)
• Devil May Cry 5 (multiple platforms)
• Bayonetta 1 (Switch)
• Nier: Automata (multiple platforms)

THE WITCH HUNTS ARE OVER

ADDENDUM: I've been informed that Bayonetta's original designer (who is a woman) may have intended Bayonetta to be a lesbian from her initial creation. I wouldn't be surprised if this was de-emphasized from her character strategically due to misogyny and a desire to reach a "larger" (more cishet male) audience. My interpretation of Bayonetta's lesbian sexuality as a head canon is not meant to be offensive to Bayonetta's original designer, but as a contrast of people's interpretations of some ambiguous presentation in the games.

### Stopped playing after a couple chapters ###

+ Great music
+ Good art
+ Weird murder puzzles
- Writing is soooo boring
- Pacing is awful
- Framerate is distractingly low
- Literally none of the suspects are even named characters; the stakes are so low
- Everyone from ch.0 goes away and the new cast is even less interesting with less setup
- ch.2 is just the same gimmick so many times
- Shinigami is soooo fucking annoying she needs to talk like 75% less
- Main character is overly stupid in a way that feels annoying rather than just being a stand-in for the player not knowing answers
- Amnesiac MC is so overdone and really doesn't do anything to endear me to him

wall kick mechanic is really obnoxious. it's like wall jumping but you do it way early or else you won't go as far.

getting super lost about where to go with no map to reference.

not enough save points.

quit after 90 minutes.

### What is it?

It's like a life simulation game mixed with a narrative heavy RPG. Kind of like Disco Elysium. No combat, just dialogue choices and different environmental interactions.

Each day you roll a number of dice when you wake up. You choose which dice rolls go to which actions you take that day. You have to balance condition, energy, money, and a few other resources as you do tasks.

You are an android emulating the consciousness of a real-life human. You live on a space station and deal with life under extreme interplanetary space capitalism.

### What I liked

+ World is believable and engrossing
+ The character art is really nice
+ Music sets the tone really well
+ Lots of freedom with how to approach things
+ Cycle-based (one "day") time system lets stories take time to unfold naturally
+ Failure is handled well and is very interesting (reminds me of Dungeon World)

### What I didn't like

- Awkward controls (obviously designed for mouse input)
- Sluggish framerate

### More thoughts

I could not stop playing this game. It's relatively short, like 10 hours if you're a completionist. It was really engaging to me, and I liked every ending I was able to get. I stayed up late last night and cried a bit during the endings. Definitely the hit narrative RPG game of the year for me.

It's also on Game Pass, so check it out there if you can. It's on most platforms, so give it a shot!

Charming but frustrating. The idea of this game is better than its execution. I would love to be a Ghostbusters Luigi, and the co-op is great in theory.

The game design and controls feel like relics of the GameCube era. Discovering how to damage many bosses and mini-bosses is an exercise in patience and experimentation that rarely feels rewarding.

The act of pointing Luigi at a target to shoot/blow/suck/grab is nothing short of torture. I understand the desire to keep the camera perspective as-is to retain that dollhouse graphical vibe, but they need to modernize controls atop that somehow. Maybe you could overlay a reticule on-screen and have Luigi automatically aim at it? I don't know.

The graphics and art direction are great, sound design is fantastic too.

But ultimately the combat is too hit-or-miss, and exploration feels nearly meaningless since the only things you can buy with money are more lives (the game isn't too hard, especially in co-op) or hints for... more meaningless items to gather?

Sometimes cracking the puzzles was fun, but other times you were left wondering why you should both.

I cried so much playing this game.

Once you get past the slice-of-life opening bits, it opens up into a weird sci-fi thriller.

Time travel, WW3, death of loved ones. The stakes are very high.

CAVEATS: There is a character who is probably trans, and the game does not handle them very well. The main character is attracted to them, but rejects this due to homophobia. Said character also has their genitals groped by the main character in one scene.

Holy shit this game is so cute.

The vibes are off the charts. The art direction and rendering style are fantastic. The music always delights. The characters are cute and the dialogue is fun.

The challenge level is just right to keep you wondering and exploring without getting stuck too long.

This game is just about a little mushroom trying to get home to his family!

You collect lots of items, jump, glide, climb, and solve minor puzzles along the way.

This is a 5-10 hour delight. Maybe a bit more if you wanted to 100% the game.

There are lots of "skins" you can unlock... maybe like 10? I unlocked about 5 of them. Just adorable.

If you like old school 3D collect-a-thons, you should play this!

I mostly played on PC but it also ran great on my Steam Deck.