Bayonetta is a great series. The original took the fast-paced well-designed action gameplay of the Devil May Cry series and added a coat of magical, sexy, camp paint to the mix. The games featured great gameplay, a fun character that liked to dance, and crazy boss battles against massive enemies, to a scale unlike most games before, with the first game ending with Bayonetta destroying literally God in the Sun.

This game has been announced probably too early, in 2017 as it had only recently started development. It took a while to get any new info, but it did eventually come, and the hype was pretty high. So yeah I got the game and finished it in 2 days, then took weeks to finally write this review.

Let’s see if the series continues to be very good!

Developer: Platinum Games
Publisher: Nintendo
Release date: October 28th, 2022
Platforms: Switch
Genre: Action

Review

The game starts with Bayonetta fighting some powerful entity, and she dies trying. Some girl named Viola that’s hanging around there manages to get to a different universe to get the help of… Bayonetta. That first Bayonetta actually was the Bayonetta from the first game, hairstyle and all. This is a different Bayonetta. She’s out in New York for… reasons. This is not actually explained. So anyways, some powerful enemies pop up that aren’t from either Paradiso or Inferno (in fact demons and angels don’t really show up, plot-wise), but rather they’re human in origin, and they wreck the shit out of the city. Viola also pops up and explains that they need to find Doctor Sigurd which Jeanne takes care of, while Viola and Bayonetta head to Thule, which is some… place. Said place somehow has power that enables travel to different universes, which they much go to for the purpose of finding Chaos Gears (which are unexplained… things… just McGuffins) and SAVING THE MULTIVERSE. This means going to different universes that the big bad hasn’t yet destroyed to find the Chaos Gears, and also encountering alternate universe Bayonettas. There’s kinda not much to talk about story-wise… Stuff just kinda happens, at random. Characters occasionally are bafflingly stupid, but otherwise, there are extremely predictable plot twists and character reveals… It’s not particularly badly written, but also not particularly well written. I think the biggest problem for the core plot is that it has literally nothing to do with the previous Bayonetta games at all, as far as either themes or relevance to events that happened… especially since they probably didn’t even happen to the Bayonetta you play as (considering the guns from the first 2 games are noted to be “made for a Bayonetta from another universe”). The whole idea of umbra witches and lumen sages and such, that’s just plain gone. It’s all about the multiverse now, and whatever Luca is now. It’s weird.

Up until the very ending, which is bad. I kinda want to go full rant mode… I don’t think I will, but rather, I guess I’ll explain why it was meh without spoiling it. Namely… the game gives us literally no reason to give a shit about Viola, but the story just… gives her everything for no reason. She’s not developed, at all, but we have to believe that she’s really important now. Also she’s kinda not explained. Something about her identity is really obvious, fairly early (and fully confirmed by around the halfway point if you think for half a second), but then the ending makes you question her existence. Her lack of development and the fact that it doesn’t really give us any reason to care about her makes what happens in the ending unjustified. Bayonetta may have had dumb moments in previous games, but this goes above and beyond.

So let’s just go to gameplay, because there’s at least a bit to talk about.

Bayonetta plays and controls largely like she used to. You have feet and hand attacks, as well as a gun/range attacks, most of the combos that used to work in previous games are still here. Holding attack buttons extends the current attack animation to include some of the “gun” attack. There’s a ton of different combos and attack options, though I find keeping it simple to be pretty effective. Bayonetta can dodge, and doing so just as an attack is about to hit you starts Witch Time, which slows down time so you can get a few extra hits on the enemies. The length of Witch Time is determined by how close to getting hit you were when you dodged the attack, sometimes it literally last a second, sometimes you get a few seconds. Basically, core Bayonetta gameplay has not changed from the previous game, and I’m not here to explain how basic Bayonetta plays, it’s a known quantity. Oh and there’s no umbran climax anymore.

What has changed is the new Demon Slave mechanic. In addition to kicking ass the normal way, Bayonetta actually can’t quite use her demons from Inferno normally because the enemies you fight are human in nature and… yeah that’s some kinda arbitrary story shit… So Bayonetta has to DANCE to control the demons. How that manifests in battle is that you can summon one of your demons who emerges from the ground, then as long as you’re holding the summon button, you can control the demon. You can move it around, and use your attack buttons (and certain combinations like 360s and back-to-forward) to launch attacks. You can do one attack and set up a single follow-up attack (and so on when the follow-up attack starts). There’s a meter so your summon can’t last forever, and of course Bayonetta is too busy dancing to worry about enemies attacking her during the summon so you have to be careful. If you set up the summon to do 2 attacks then stop dancing, do some attacking of your own, and then get back to dancing to do more summon attacks. Summons themselves aren’t particularly combo focused (from the ones I tried), but they’re good for quick heavy damage, launching, and some are decent at stun-locking, and then there’s the train which is just wacky. I think they’re a cool combat option, and their raw damage makes them pretty invaluable, but at the same time it’s an extra bit of awkwardness Bayonetta didn’t used to have. Still a cool mechanic that works pretty well.

There is one accessory you can equip that makes summons control on their own without your input, which is probably pretty useful.

Other changes come with equipment and skills. Bayonetta used to be able to equip different weapons on her hands and feet, and have 2 sets of weapons you could switch on-the-fly. Those days are gone, as she can only equip 2 weapons now, with on-the-fly switching between them. This is an unfortunate downgrade to the overall gameplay, as your moveset is way less customizable than before. I’m a basic boy who only used the default weapons always, but more options for combat is never bad. Then you get 2 accessory slots, and 3 demon slots. You get weapons from progressing the story (as well as some accessories), as well as a few from side-missions. You unlock side missions from getting the 3 hidden animals in each level (a bird, a frog and a cat).

The Shop is downgraded a bit too. No more buying skills, so the items are basically gonna just be a few pearls and hearts, then there’s accessories… and the rest is pretty much just cosmetics. You don’t end up really needing to go to the shop much if you’re not into changing Bayonetta’s costume and colors. Instead of the shop, you get new moves from getting points from killing enemies or whatever, and you have skill trees! Bayonetta has a skill tree, then each weapon has a skill tree, where you buy new combos and new attacks for your summons. In fact, hearts and pearls are now kind of a skill tree thing, as they don’t instantly increase your health and magic anymore.

So now for the completely new thing: Viola! Yeah, she’s not only a personality-lacking character in the story that doesn’t really do anything of note, but you also play as her in a few levels! Exciting! Viola uses a sword. She plays kinda similar to Bayonetta as far as combos, though the attacks are different and all her attacks can be charged. Instead of Demon Slave, she can throw her sword on the ground to summon Cheshire, a cat demon. Cheshire self-controls, but also uses your sword, so while Cheshire is attacking, your moveset changes to fisticuffs, you just punch shit. But Viola has a different thing with her gameplay. She has a dodge, but it’s kinda useless. Instead, a separate button blocks attacks. But if you time the block, you parry, and the timing on your parry is what activates Witch Time. Here’s the problem with this. Most of the game, you’re playing as Bayonetta, who activates Witch Time with the dodge button. That means you’ll keep trying to do that by instinct while playing as Viola. You play so little as Viola that you don’t quite get the time to get used to it (unless you use her in the side-missions and specifically decide to play as her)… I think she shouldn’t have a dodge, replacing that for a block button would be better. Viola overall is okay to play, she’s basically a less fun Bayonetta with the wrong button being used for Witch Time. It’s a bit of a bafflizng design choice, but eh. Also, Viola has her own skill tree, which is why hearts and pearls don’t instantly increase Bayonetta’s stuff, since you can increase Viola’s.

And then there’s sidescrolling stealth levels where you play as Jeanne. These are very similar to Elevator Action in many ways. It sucks balls.

There’s some new content since I played, I haven’t touched it, including new challenges, and a battle against Rodin that costs a pile of cash to unlock. Also it lets you play as Jeanne in the side-missions. Yay.

And I will note the one glitch I got. In one of the China levels, there’s a part where Bayonetta starts walking slowly and it’s meant to transition to a cutscene after the volcano erupts. On a replay of that level, Bayonetta became stuck in that slow-walking mode, and the cutscene never came. No idea why. I had to exit the level and re-redo it. Annoying, but not game-breaking at least.

Also performance is fine. Switch sucks so occasional fairly minor framerate drops don’t surprise or annoy me too much here. It should be 60fps stable, it’s not, but it’s not bad. Whatever.

Overall

If you ignore the story, the gameplay is mostly great. The Demon Slave mechanic adds a myriad of options to battle, but also a risk-vs-reward element because using it leaves you defenseless. A bit awkward but not bad. The stealth levels are not great though, and the Viola levels are fine but not as good as the Bayonetta levels. But overall, gameplay is very good. It’s not as good as the last 2 games overall as many elements feel like downgrades, but for the most part, it’s Bayonetta.

But add the story to the mix and it doesn’t fare as well, because that ending kinda fucks with everything the series has been about for kinda no reason at all, to heavily push a character we were not given a reason to give even half a shit about.

I do recommend this game. It’s good shit gameplay-wise. It’s a shame the story doesn’t hold up, but that’s fine. But I do recommend the other 2 games before this one.

On a positive note, Bayonetta wears jeans in this one.