And when I feel like it, I just transform into a huge fire spider that looks like it came straight out of Dark Souls to climb up walls and swipe through my foes. My main weapon of choice was the Ignis Aranaea Yo-Yo, which you get fairly early on in the game, and it transforms Bayonetta into a cool skater girl who skates through hell and hits enemies from range with giant fiery yo-yos on her arms. To make things even more interesting, Bayonetta gets a whole host of Demon Slaves and weapons to collect over the course of the game, each of them coming with their own skill trees for you to progress through. Before long, Bayonetta 3’s fights become a matter of switching between weapons to pull off fun flashy combos, then activating Witch Time and using your Demons to finish off your foes. The key here, then, is not to completely rely on your Demons whenever your mana bar is filled, and instead use them in-between your combos, or as a finisher. Playing well with the Demon Slaves requires you to strike a good balance between regular attacks and Demon attacks, as whenever you summon a Demon, Bayonetta is rooted in place and completely open to her enemies. Weave those together with the Infernal Demons, however, and combat becomes a lot more exciting. It has that level of quality you’ve come to expect from Platinum, and combat is made even more dynamic thanks to the ability to summon Infernal Demons to your aid at any point in time.Ī lot of the classic Bayonetta-isms are present here, including Witch Time dodging and your usual, shoot, punch, and kick buttons. As discussed briefly in my preview of the game, Bayonetta 3’s combat feels smooth and fluid. That being said, where Bayonetta 3 falls short in story and characterization, it makes up for in spades in gameplay and spectacle. It was difficult to establish any sense of urgency throughout the journey, and while I enjoyed running into old friends, there was very little about the story that actually spoke to me. Perhaps most egregiously, the big bad of Bayonetta 3 is also woefully underdeveloped. Image Source: PlatinumGames via Twinfinite It’s clear she’s meant to be the argumentative, antithetical punk girl serving as a foil to the calm, cool, collected Cereza, but that dichotomy often falls flat and veers into silly slapstick territory. Presented as a bit of a cocky loudmouth, Viola is tolerable at best, and grating at her worst. Familiar faces like Enzo, Rodin, and Jeanne show up, of course, but their narrative impact bear little weight in the grand scheme of things.Īs the new shining star of the series, I found myself wishing that Viola got a lot more development than she did in this game. Little time is dedicated to Viola’s own backstory and journey, which makes some late-game revelations fall flat. With the relatively short runtime of the story (I clocked in at around 12 hours for the main missions), everything just feels very messily and hastily put together. Cereza is then sent on a journey across the multiverse to collect five Chaos Gears, which are essentially just your usual plot MacGuffins, which will allow her to unlock a path to Singularity itself. But I suppose that’s par for the course when you delve into trippy multiverse stuff, and that’s exactly what this game does.īayonetta 3 wastes no time in setting up the plot: you meet a young punkish girl named Viola, who tells you that the world is in danger of getting destroyed and taken over by a mysterious entity called Singularity. While the story has never been the strongest aspect in the Bayonetta games, it feels especially weak and haphazard in Bayonetta 3. Bayonetta 3 is a chaotic, unhinged experience that’s unapologetically messy at times, but it’s so easy to look over those flaws once you’re taken in by Cereza’s charm. No matter what, you can always count on her to be her same bejeweled, headstrong self –unafraid to stand up for the weak, and always with a fabulous strut to go along with her cause.
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