The foundations for its combat are pretty solid. But it's annoying that Witch Time trivializes so many encounters, and you can't disable until you beat the whole game on normal to unlock hard, then beat hard to unlock NSIC. Halfway through your playthrough you feel like the game is giving you a crutch that makes it so that you don't even have to bother putting in the effort to do doge offsets or try to time your parries.
Plus, all chapters constantly have lackluster segments inbetween the enemy encounters. Annoying 'platforming' sections, escort missions, and nonstop cutscenes with arbitrary QTEs thrown in them, even during boss fights, which bring down the quality of the levels considerably. But worse are the bike and rocket levels where it's just one excessively long autoscrolling shooter. I wouldn't mind the game trying different stuff if it was actually enjoyable, but all it does is deter you from the good parts of Bayonetta. Want to play again after unlocking hard mode? Enjoy the replaying the space harrier shit. The other problem with level design is that besides exploration for items, most secret levels are just: "backtrack to the previous segment of the map".
The boss fights feel very limiting, with the exception of Jeanne (and maybe Balder but fuck his level) being the only fun boss. The rest have a very fixed pacing of you waiting in some platform or something, for the giant enemy to do an attack so you can counter/dodge then attack for a short time while it's stunned. The final boss being another example of this, also with an instakill move that may catch you by surprise the first time but, afterwards just be an annoying waste of time that keeps breaking the pace of the fight.
There's a few different weapons and they are fun, but have very few signature moves and end up with a very similar move pool. Unlocking the sai-fung requires more grinding than it should, same for fighting Rodin, and in general there's just a few moves you buy in the store and a pair of accessories that are obviously better than the rest, and buying or crafting items feels counterproductive since the game will just punish you if you use them.
I really enjoy the action, but it's a game that feels like it's trying to stop you from playing every 5 minutes.
Plus, all chapters constantly have lackluster segments inbetween the enemy encounters. Annoying 'platforming' sections, escort missions, and nonstop cutscenes with arbitrary QTEs thrown in them, even during boss fights, which bring down the quality of the levels considerably. But worse are the bike and rocket levels where it's just one excessively long autoscrolling shooter. I wouldn't mind the game trying different stuff if it was actually enjoyable, but all it does is deter you from the good parts of Bayonetta. Want to play again after unlocking hard mode? Enjoy the replaying the space harrier shit. The other problem with level design is that besides exploration for items, most secret levels are just: "backtrack to the previous segment of the map".
The boss fights feel very limiting, with the exception of Jeanne (and maybe Balder but fuck his level) being the only fun boss. The rest have a very fixed pacing of you waiting in some platform or something, for the giant enemy to do an attack so you can counter/dodge then attack for a short time while it's stunned. The final boss being another example of this, also with an instakill move that may catch you by surprise the first time but, afterwards just be an annoying waste of time that keeps breaking the pace of the fight.
There's a few different weapons and they are fun, but have very few signature moves and end up with a very similar move pool. Unlocking the sai-fung requires more grinding than it should, same for fighting Rodin, and in general there's just a few moves you buy in the store and a pair of accessories that are obviously better than the rest, and buying or crafting items feels counterproductive since the game will just punish you if you use them.
I really enjoy the action, but it's a game that feels like it's trying to stop you from playing every 5 minutes.