| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Nintendo Switch | 9.20 |
| Overall | 9.20 |
|
I never thought we would get a Bayonetta 3 yet here we are. The little action series that could got a big budget and all the attention of a Nintendo published title… hahaha no it didn’t, it probably got a shoestring budget and was sent to die, but us hack and slash action fans get to feast on another genre classic. The second game, while still great, felt like a step back to the first. This third game feels like a step… somewhere, it’s a big step in every direction. Bayonetta 3 is completely crazy, has some of the most amazing moments of the series, with incredible combat all held back by hardware limitations which hurts the overall presentation. There is so much happening in Bayonetta 3 it’s hard to even know where to begin, so I guess I’ll start with the core combat which remains mostly the same. Bayonetta still has a huge variety of weapons, her signature guns, and witch time powers. You still perform set combos, many which end with an extra power attack though this time there is no magic consumption. Instead there is the demon slave system in which you get to summon a massive monster that can be controlled, each with their own move sets to unlock. This is a huge departure to the way combat is approached, you don’t just throw in giant monsters into the mix and expect it to all feel the same, yet somehow platinum made it all work, at least for me. The enemies in this game come in the smaller human sized types which allows Bayonetta to combo to her hearts content and the gigantic screen filling monstrosities which are the demon’s specialty. None of this is required, if you are a sadist you can play most of the game without summoning a demon during normal play (there are a TON of setpieces that lock you into using specific demons but I view these as setpieces rather than the standard action). Purists obviously have a point when they say the beautiful core combat of Bayo 1 is thrown in the backseat for flashy Godzilla monsters. I think plenty of that core Bayo combat is still there, the demons add more to it. Bayonetta is still about not just beating the enemies but doing it with style; racking up a huge combo, doing it quickly and without taking damage. Never before have I had so many options during combat, yes it might feel bloated but damn is it fun when you pull off a perfect no damage, max combo battle. Let me run down the combat options for any normal fight. There is the standard Bayonetta move set, complete with about 10 different weapons to choose from, two can be equipped at a time for instant switching. Every one of those weapons have a special meter when maxed out unleashes a super attack. Also every weapon transforms Bayonetta into a sort of demon for maneuverability, for instance there are spinning blades which can turn Bayo into a spider where she can run up walls or swing through the level. There are about 10 different demon slaves to pick from, three can be equipped at any time for instant switching. Summoning them is done with the press of a button and all of them have some wildly different attacks. The torture attacks take a big seat back but there are still in there, they are now triggered when a summon stuns an enemy. Combat becomes an insane ballet of attacks, dodges, massive monster summons, all with precise controls. The weapon and demon variety truly is something to behold. Bayo gets all her standard weapons like guns, a giant hammer, a whip, but there are is also a microphone stand complete with musical attacks and my favorite a magic set where you summon giant energy creatures out of a hat. With the demons there are the usual suspects like a giant Godzilla like monster, a big wolf type thing, a giant spider, a huge bird. Then it gets crazy with a giant clock tower where every floor unleashes a different kind of attack and you can summon a mech that Bayonetta can ride around. Another is a death train packed to the rim with weapons, as you summon you create the track this train takes and what kind of attacks it does. The creativity these tools of battle blows me away, only DMC has weaponry this wild. Bayonetta 3 still has all elements that make it a top tier action game. Every move can be canceled even in the middle of a combo, that combo can be offset by holding the attack button down so you can safely dodge and continue the combo. All weapons can be instantly switched out of even mid combo. Demons can be summoned mid combo, your combo will finish while you can control and attack with the demon. Normally Bayonetta is stuck during the demon summon but a special equipable item allows Bayonetta to move freely while the demon goes on auto attack, it’s a great way to focus more on bayo combat while using the heavy reinforcements that are very welcome in most fights. This seems like a whole lot to learn and hard to control but every move set is basically the same between every weapon and demon, meaning you just need to learn a set of like 30 moves, that allows you to do everything. What those 30 moves do for each weapon and demon is sometimes vastly different and there is the fun in experimenting with different combinations. Every time I am in a fight I feel completely in control of all my actions, very few action games have this precise reaction time and even fewer have these many options during combat. It’s remarkable and to me puts it second to only DMCV as the best of the best action combat systems. There is just one little issue… I CANT SEE SHIT! In many of the most complex fights trying to figure out where you are in the middle of a huddle of enemies while attacks come from everywhere becomes an exercise in frustration. It’s worse when battling the gigantic boss like enemies, which leads to you summoning a giant demon of your own, now you have two huge things that fill the screen and still there are usually multiple smaller enemies trying to kill bayonetta which at that point might as well be in a Where’s Waldo game. Many times I am fighting a boss and Bayo is at the toe of some monstrosity and two regular enemies are attacking me and that giant enemy swings an arm down, which I can’t see cause I just see his giant ass toe. It’s one of those things where the scale of the fights are impressive but detrimental at times. It doesn’t help that the game is an ugly under 720p resolution mess of graphics; and the color scheme of the enemies doesn’t help differentiating them either with all having some form of grey and aqua look. It’s not always that you can’t see shit but happens enough to be noticeable. To mitigate the visual clutter the game does have a bunch audio and visual cues to make sure an attack is always telegraphed. It’s just hard to follow when so much is happening but I appreciate that if I am in the zone I don’t even have to see an attack coming to dodge it. The precise controls of this game makes it so I don’t even to see where Bayonetta is at times and I can still pull off the combo I want. It’s a testament to combat controls that the visual clutter is still very playable, but I do wish they had cleaned it up. When compared to DMC that game frames the action so much better, the screen is so clean, Bayonetta 3 is sloppy in comparison. This series has always gone for wild setpieces and Bayonetta 3 has more crazy epic action sequences than the last two combined. I know everyone wanted God of War to being back the big scale action sequences, well the game that delivered on that front is Bayonetta 3. In the first hour you are fighting a city devouring sea monster while on a giant yacht in a whirlpool as all of New York is destroyed. You will transform as a giant spider swinging and climbing buildings as they collapse. There are epic chases, Godzilla sized battles, flying on giant creatures, this game does not stop with the insanity. It’s action cocaine, nearly every level had me blown away at some final sequence. Yes some of these are QTEs, some are simple platforming sections and there are a few shooting gallery segments which has been a series staple. I love when games mix things up and surprises me and this game does it as good as any has ever done. The action sequences aren’t the only kind of variety we get, there are two other characters you get to control in certain levels. Viola is a newcomer, important to the story and is the simplified action character, kind of like Nero. She has a different move set than Bayo and her demon slave works differently as well. She controls Cheshire, a giant cat monster that is tied to a katana, so if she unleashes it she can do melee attacks while Cheshire auto attacks enemies. She only has that one weapon and one demon so there isn’t the depth of Bayo. The biggest change though comes from her lack of a dodge that gives witch time, instead she has a parry that has to be timed correctly to enter witch time. It’s much harder to activate than Bayonetta so it makes defense harder, the timing is different. Now a recent patch adjusted the timing window, I haven’t tried that yet so that could mitigate that issue. Overall I did enjoy her segments, it offers a different challenge and her combat is still very exciting. Jeanne gets her own levels but these might as well be a different game. There are 4 of these side scrolling stealth action levels where Jeanne explores a base of some sort while killing enemies stealthily and fighting big bosses almost contra style. She can enter air ducks, sneak behind enemies for stealth kills and finds bonus weapons which allow for easy killing. I enjoyed this side game, each level surprisingly got more and more complex and the final one ends with such a bang that I was cheering along. Unlike DMCV, the focus on this game is absolutely Bayonetta, yes you are forced to play as these other two characters but it’s about less than a third of the game and they function so differently that it’s a nice change of pace. Just when you feel it’s time to get back to main combat, bayonetta takes center stage again. The pacing of this game is sublime. The levels are structured differently than past games, they went for more wide spaces with some exploring and simple puzzle solving. Throughout the levels there are chests that you can open to find extra power ups and secrets. Some of these create a small obstacle course for you to complete, it used to be an absolute pain to fail these and have to watch this slow automated opening clip that can’t be skipped that show you the route to take, luckily the latest patch removed that. These simple activities repeat over and over in most every level so it does get repetitive and if you try to do them all it can mess with the flow of the action. I always try to do everything so sometimes I got lost in these larger but mostly bland levels looking for secrets rather than fighting. The second time I played the game I just pushed through the levels ignoring all this side content and it flowed better. Still I appreciate how content is in every level, each one has multiple trips to bonus levels that offer tough combat challenges. Each have hidden verses to find. There are also three hidden animals to find which unlock a special bonus level. There is so much to do and there is basically no way you will find it all on the first time you play the game. This is a game that encourages replaying and it makes it easy to do so as every level can be selected not only just to start the level but pick where in the level to begin. This lets you try to get higher scores, find a secret you missed, or just replay an awesome segment. Of course there are multiple difficulty modes, infinite climax being the hardest where enemy loadouts change and they are far more aggressive. All in all it took me a good 20 hours to get through the game the first time and I missed plenty. I am playing through it again, getting higher ranks and playing through the bonus modes one of which is a challenge “tower” with loads and loads of combat levels. The amount of content in this game is astounding. As with any action game I have to mention bosses because they many times make or break a game and I’m a little split on this game. In the past Bayonetta games there were a good mix of massive screen filling bosses and the intense one on one standard sized boss with a move set that mirrors Bayo. My favorite in all these games are always the smaller normal sized boss battles that test your reflexes to the max. In Bayonetta 3 there are really just one or two bosses of this type and one of them repeats over and over. It’s an excellent fight, this boss is extremely aggressive and timing is tight so when mastered it feels like a great accomplishment. The majority of bosses are of the giant variety which mostly requires the demons to fight. I do love developing a strategy of which demons to use and how to best approach the fight but it’s not as thrilling as the smaller scale fights. I appreciate the spectacle of every boss though, it puts the new God of War to shame in how wild these segments are. One thing to note is these bosses aren’t of the bash your head against a wall for an hour until you learn the pattern type of boss like souls or even the new GoW. Only one or two will require a chunk of time to learn, it’s more about beating them in a flashy way. Oh that’s right there is a story to this game, I forget. Jumping on the popular trend of the moment, this game explores the multiverse! Bayonetta goes through time and multiple dimensions fighting along side other alternate Bayonetta’s. The story is mostly nonsense but it does give the game reason to go all over different locations and time periods which I appreciated. It’s the game in the series with the most diverse locations, I loved every time the story moved to a new dimension cause I had no clue what was coming next. There is some controversy within the hardcore Bayonetta lore fans which involves Bayonetta’s relationships and what came before, I am not going touch that with a ten foot pole here because I don’t give a shit. I acknowledge for some the story can be viewed as a betrayal of the story that came before, fair enough. I just want to kill stuff and the games story gives me more than enough of a reason to do so. It’s a damn shame a game of this scale is stuck on ancient hardware. This is an ugly game; some switch games look good with a certain art style, this looks like a PS3 game at best. Frame rate is paramount for a game like this and well it fails miserably at reaching 60 but it does stay above 30. For most of the game it has a stable frame rate but when it hits one of those world ending setpieces it chugs so bad. That visual spectacle that is happening all around the action fails to feel that important when it looks like a game from 15 years ago. This game deserves better hardware, that said even if it got better hardware who knows if it would have had the budget to take advantage of it. For now Bayonetta is still a franchise that is stuck in the style of the PS3 generation. This series has always had a great soundtrack, an odd one for an action game as it forgoes the usual hard rock or techno for classy piano bar music. There is a variety of musical styles that fit the different locations and situations, it’s all really good stuff. At one point of the game there is this musical mini game, I don’t want to spoil much but I loved it. It’s missing a Frank Sinatra song though. There is controversy with the voice acting as this time Bayonetta is voiced by Jennifer Hale and not the original voice actress. Hale does an admirable job recreating the voice; overall everyone reaches the level of voice acting you expect from a game like this which is not exactly trying to win awards. Bayonetta 3 is a wildly ambitious sequel held back by extremely outdated hardware and presentation. The core gameplay remains as tight and deep as ever before. There are going to be debates on which Bayonetta game is the best in the series, I still love the first, I think it had the clearest vision and execution. I do think this one is better than the second one, and does many things better than the first like the level and weapon variety. In terms of action games few are as wild and unpredictable as this game, I could not believe what was happening on screen so much of the time. It might be sloppy in areas, it has some technical issues all holding it back from all time action game classic but I think it’s still one of the best in the genre. |
|
Posted by Dvader Mon, 23 Jan 2023 00:59:41
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:39:15
I am only an hour into it. I think that it is a demonstrably bad game. An I fear that Platinum is dead.
Log in or Register for free to comment
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*