Bayonetta 3 Review

Bayonetta 3 is a decent enough game overall, I don't think the game is amazing and I wasn't expecting much out of the game to begin with. I am not a big fan of "character action" games but I do get a decent amount of casual enjoyment out of them, the gameplay in these kinds of games I would probably start to dislike if I played more of them outside of the base campaign. While the gameplay is a solid time, the story however is just awful and the game really spends a lot of it's time trying to tell it. I'll start with that first.

I never really liked Bayonetta as a character all that much, she isn't terrible but I find her overly flamboyant way of expressing herself to be rather obnoxious and she rarely if ever takes anything seriously even Dante from it's brother series Devil May Cry took things more seriously than Bayonetta does or at least by comparison to her. What I dislike about the story is how long the cutscenes last and when my Switch controller kept disconnecting during these long cutscenes, this is what lead to me spending a decent amount of time complaining the story. The game's story throws a lot at you and it feels like you have to give a crap about Bayonetta lore and it's characters in order to be invested. You have Luka turning into a Hulk wannabe, Viola being Bayonetta's daughter and the torch being passed on to her, alternate universe Bayonettas, an end of the world plot involving the multiverse and it seems like this whole story is trying to do what stuff like Into the Spider-Verse and Turtles Forever tried to do with it being a high stakes story with lots of franchise fan service. Ratchet Rift Apart is another comparison to make as a gaming example. It's not because I am not a big fan of multiverse stories, or that I am a bigger fan of the above mentioned franchises' stories so I care about them more by default, it's that the game's story has this weirdly inconsistent tone where Viola has an alternate universe Bayonetta get killed in front of her and people are dying yet the game has so many weird and goofy antics going on at the same time. Bayonetta also acts just like her cocksure self like usual and it's hard to feel like anything is at stake. The story is bad and while I never liked Bayonetta's story, the writing is worse than usual and the game spends so much time telling a story the devs think will move people.

The gamplay is the same Bayonetta gameplay as 1 and 2, I am not familar with the "hidden depth" of the first game but I doubt even if I had the patience to learn it, I doubt my overall thoughts on the core gameplay of the series would change. The combat is enjoyable in the moment and it's fast paced and rewarding enough to feel involving with how satisfying it is to pull off Witch Time and timing your dodges but at the same time, this is basically what you do when playing these games, it's punch, punch, punch, dodge, rinse repeat, the games give you a lot of combos but the basic combo where you can mash the punch attack is the easiest one to do and does the most damage, so as a result I never want to do anything more intricate since they are harder to pull off and the basic punch combo is the path of least resistance when it comes to offensive and the key to combat is making sure you got Witch Time down, the combos are irrelevant, DMC3, 4 and 5 may have so many issues specific to them that prevent me from enjoying them a lot but Dante's moveset is more vast and gives you more to pull off and has more cool stuff to do by comparison to what Bayonetta can do. There are new stuff specific to this game like the monsters but I find them rather cumbersome to do unless if I want to quickly knock down a big enemy's health bar super quick, I like that the monsters specific to each level does give the levels some situational depth even if a lot these moments are one offs, I do appreciate them since it gives the levels more personality along with the added emphasis on platforming. Viola and Jeanne are okay, Jeanne's levels are so short that they don't get too grating and the shump style levels are decent fun. Viola is okay but her playstyle is just Bayonetta with parrying rather than Witch Time, I prefer her over someone like V. The game also feels a lot easier and harder at the same time to past games, easier in that you can carry so many healing items and harder in that enemies have bigger health bars and hit a lot harder, I never got a game over during the traditional fighting sections but I also feel like if the game never let me carry so many healing items, I'd be getting game overs left and right. I also think stages can drage on too, for example you fight a really challenging boss you think the level is wrapping but no, then you got to do a mini game and then the stage wraps up.

Overall, Bayo 3 is a decent game, and that's exactly what I got, as a casual fan of the series, it was what I expected it to be. For a game stuck in development as long as this, it could've been worse.