It's difficult not to compare this game to DMC5. They wanted the weapon variety of Dante, the demon summoning of V, and the self contained alternate protagonist of Nero. You illustrated many of the shortcomings of these desires: there's no incentive to weapon switch since they all have the same tools available, the focus on demon summoning compromised Bayo's own fighting prowess, and the way they try to make Viola feel different from Bayo just makes her a less enjoyable character in every way.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 Yeah, and Nero freaking earned his MC title through many hardships. They tried to make Viola surpassed Bayo but I felt like it was just handed to her like a silver platter. That last battle just came out left field. So many rush development in one game.
Its kinda like that moment in 2 where we meet Rosa and they just...fight together but don't really say very much. I was hoping for more than that but instead we just watch everyone die. What a bummer dude
Yeah Jeanne levels were really weird and forgettable. It’s like playing a weird version of Elevator Action. Not to mention playing as Viola is a forgetful character too.
Playing as Viola really did feel like they were trying to integrate Sekiro's Deflect mechanic, but she ultimately just felt like another Bayo weapon, except as a character with her own separate chapters.
When Bayonetta 3 showed off the giant monsters for the first time as a gameplay mechanic I theorized that Platinum was repurposing ideas they had for that cancelled game Scalebound. Playing the game now I realize maybe there was a reason Scalebound was cancelled in the first place.
@D C This game was pretty much Platinum desperately throwing all of their ideas from a bunch of failed projects into a blender and hoping that something good would come out the other end.
@@lupinthenerd439 It's not, Bayo 1 and 2 just offer an overall better and more authentic experience that Bayonetta is about, gameplay-wise. The stories have always been kinda meh with some big wows mixed in.
10:15 Back when I played Bayo 1 for the first time in 2009, I did think that she made the demons out of her hair, but it was actually explained in the game's lore that her hair served as a conduit to summon actual demonic entities (each demon has their own description in the bestiary as well), so it has been like that from the very beginning and not a change introduced in the sequel.
My biggest gripe with Bayo3 is that it doesn't make me excited for its inevitable sequel, just dread. I don't want to play as Viola again, I don't look forward to more of Bayonetta having to share the spotlight. I thought the game was fine for the most part, and the combat very enjoyable, but it places its emphasis on all the wrong things and takes the series in a direction that makes me not want to play it any further.
I also 100% thought she was constructing the demons out of her hair back when I played Bayonetta 1. The focus on the hair is one of those things that feels so fundamental to that first game's identity that seems totally lost in this new one, and here they could have even taken the opportunity to have her puppeteer the demons with strings of hair like a marionette. Even the standard wicked weaves are lacking them now, it looks so wrong.
I never saw it as her outright turning her hair into demons or anything like that, but that the hair is more just a container for the demons to exert more control, like wrapping a ghost in a sheet or covering it in flour I guess, which comes across from how parts of the demons poke out from the hair. The fact they're not wrapped up in this one is a little weird yeah, but I see it as her sacrificing direct control for better maneuverability, which is mitigated by Demon Slave anyway
There's a giant plot hole that doesn't get talked about enough which is that this is an alternate universe than the first two games, so we know literally NOTHING about these versions of Bayonetta and Luka. They entirely didn't earn this ending.
What about the giant plot hole that is Rodin: there is only one Rodin(given that he is from Paradiso), so he has at least 3 different bars named Gates of Hell in 3 diferent universes, deals with 3 diferent Bayos and Enzos, and is, in general, just universe hopping and seeing the same shit happen over and over again. It makes less sense the more you think about it. They completely botched the story of these games for some cool "3 Peter Parkers on the screen" moment
They say that bayonetta 2 had a nearly identical story to bayonetta in the character files, so the implication is some of these universes had the same events play out
@@Arcananine77 You can just ignore the Devil Breaker system if you want to? Nero you can stick to the Buster arm for his old moveset, and he gets two news attacks as well. The only part of DMC4 Nero I prefer are the fire trails his EX-moves left behind. They look much weaker in the RE7 engine’s more realistic style, but that’s a fair trade off for its quality.
@@idkusername5789 Oh yeah you can do that.....after you beat the game. On your first playthough all you got are the devil breakers. Before you say that there's the devil arm which is basically the grab like DMC 4, that one in the shop is one of the most expensive one. Meanwhile you're still buying moves for Nero. Even if you do get it, if you get hit while using it, the arm breaks which is inevitable since Nero's grab animation goes on for a while. The breakers are only great once you understand how the enemies work which is impossible on the first playthough. At least in 4, you don't lose a gameplay element when you get hit.
One thing that I felt let down on was that the final boss's defeat was very... dull. Past big bads in Bayonetta had gotten either extravagant or humiliating defeats, something that Bayonetta would be most fitting to do, (taking these gods off their high pedestal). This one I can hardly remember how the final boss goes down and I just recently played it.
Yeah I finished it just like two weeks ago and I can't remember how the final boss dies. On the other hand, I can easily recall Jubileus getting Sheba punched into the sun and Aesir getting Omne kicked into the jaws of Gomorrah.
All I can remember is that they just had, like, three different moments where another character shows up to save the day and Bayonetta, only for the final boss to shrug it off each time. Kinda felt tiring after a point.
It says a lot that I remember Bayonetta's undeserved character-death more than I do the main villain's death. Even in stories where the badguy ultimately wins after death, like Texhnolyze, I vividly remember Ichise punching Kano's head clean-off with the might of a bullet-train. His death wouldn't change anything at that point, but it was the least he deserved, and seeing him face the full force of Ichise's wrath was an appropriate end I won't soon forget. Singularity's death? I'm in the same boat, I haven't got a clue. And that's not even comparing Jubileus and Aesir's memorable executions that would empower the player like nothing else..
@@gameman250I definitely felt that dullness in other parts of the game too, like bayonetta ripping out her heart for an "ultimate" summon, then doing it over and over. And here i thought it was suppose to be special lol
I believe Bayo 3 was playing catching up way too much with DMC5 that it became a convoluted mess. Also, that "Not Nero" girl wasn't helping either. Her gameplay was completely inferior to Bayo and Jean just like how Nero in DMC4 comparing to DMC4 Dante. DMC has proper building up with a personal and simple story. Bayo 3 was just trying to be too different but lost their OG charm. Also, are you telling ME that Viola is gonna replace the OG Bayo as the new Bayo? Gimme a break. DMC5 Dante, Nero and Vergil is still themselves. Nero just simply took over his business while Dante and Vergil cleaning up the mess under the Qliphoth tree. Nero didn't replace Dante as a new Dante AT ALL. Shock value just for the sake of it was not the way to catching up, Platinum. Where is the charm from Senator Armstrong, Jetstream Sam, and the old Bayo?
Agreed well said viola being the next bayo wasnt earned with a shitty final boss that wasn't interesting and boring to fight against not to mention bayo and luka being in love comes out of nowhere it feels manufactured.
@@ragingguts 1. Not the same bayo. It's pretty clear this bayo isn't the 1 from 1 or 2. Everything about her from her posture to gestures is noticeably different. 2. Comes out of nowhere? Bayo has always taken kindly to Luka she's always flirted with him as well. 3. Lukas magical side. People.claim ots out of nowhere but Luka hasaways been as crazy tall as all other magical or divine characters in the series. That was always a question I personally had.
I'd make the whole "DMC references are back baby" joke, but honestly I was kind of thinking about DMC after I completed Bayonetta 3. That series manages to introduce new mechanics pretty naturally and have them feel like fun new additions to the core combat (Styles, Devil Breakers) while Bayonetta seems to miss the mark for me. Umbran Climax felt like a pretty bad version of the generic "gather resource and then go superpowered" mode, and while Demon Summoning is better, it can't help but feel pretty disconnected to Bayonetta's core combo-completing gameplay. Honestly, I think the problem is the series feeling the pressure to live up to its reputation for over-the-top insanity. Your big new addition can't just be something understated but influential on combat like "having moves be tied to consumable resources" or "putting a different move on the circle button", it has to be something that leaves jaws on the floor and minds reeling at the level of Spectacle we've just ascended to. And I like that! I liked that when the first game did it! .…But I think that game made the right decision by having the over-the-top spectacle mostly be carried by the enemies and scenarios and not integrated directly into the player's kit. The downside of having insane crazy concepts like being able to summon demons at the drop of a hat be a regular fixture of gameplay is that it kind of wreaks havoc on your game's balancing. I found the story… fun, but that's probably more due to liking the concepts it gestures towards rather than any big successes on the part of the game itself. In a vacuum, the format of Bayonetta meeting alternate versions of herself that she fails to save over and over is one that *should* provide a lot of opportunities for character building… but I'm not so sure heady sci-fi concepts like ALTERNATE UNIVERSES and TIME TRAVEL and THE DEATH OF ALL LIFE are suited for the slim script of a fourteen-hour gameplay-focused action game. You can really see it struggling to get to the places it wants to go in the almost no time it has to get there. Like, who are these Bayonettas? (Bayonettae?) What brought them to the point their worlds are in? How does our Bayonetta feel about seeing herself fail to save the world over and over again? These are good questions, and I don't know why the game thought it had the narrative bandwidth to answer any of them. Luka is probably the best example of this. In Bayonetta 1, he was the "wacky comedy sidekick with the beginnings of a romance", in Bayonetta 2, he was "wacky comedy side character with some great gags", and in Bayonetta 3 we have to have him make the jump to "I AM A MONSTER, I CAN NEVER BE LOVED" and it leaves me feeling like I just had a stroke. The problem isn't that giving Luka a Dark Backstory couldn't work, or even that it's a bad idea - if they're going to get serious about writing a romance between Bayonetta and Luka, I honestly think giving Luka character conflict like this isn't a bad idea. The bad idea was doing this in the span of thirteen seconds and then acting like this was a totally natural way to introduce this plot point. While I actually liked Bayonetta 3 well enough, ironically, the biggest thing I took away from it was appreciation for how restrained the first game was, mechanically, thematically, and narratively. It built up its combat to a point where it felt complete, where (Torture Attacks being a bit of an exception) it didn't feel like there were many gimmicks or half-baked exceptions in the core gameplay. It wants to be audacious and even a little bit gaudy, but it understands that you can't be a spectacle all the time. The story is simple, but it makes the game feel like an adventure, and that simplicity suits the limited bandwith that a script a game like this is inevitably is going to have. If there's one thing I want them to do with Bayonetta 4 - and there's going to be a Bayonetta 4 someday, at least if you believe Kamiya (I wouldn't) - it's that if the series is going to have a new protagonist anyway, I think they should take that opportunity to go back to the drawing board and really think the new game from the fundamentals up, the way they had to when Bayonetta was a new IP. Because I really love the first game, and I really want to love the new ones too, and while I respect their ambition, all of them have felt a little bit off to me.
Lmao your comment about Luka's progression is true af. Luka has always works as a one-time-gag-kinda character, he swoops in, be goofy, be a bit romantic towardd Bayo, and then leave. It's okay if he didn't have this "Multiverse Purpose since Ancient Time" or whatever. He's just one goofy ass guy like Enzo, and it's fine by me. If anything i wanna Rodin to join in the fight more often like in Bayo 2 tbh
I got annoyed at how casual Bayonetta was with watching thousands of people die. Like she felt guilty for Luka's dad's death in the first game. I never really pictured her that soulless.
Despite enjoying (most of) my time with Bayonetta 3, I always had one particular quote in the back of my head; it was originally applied for government policies, but I think it works for design considerations as well. "There are no solutions, only compromises." On-the-fly demon summoning is one such thing, a natural evolution of end-of-battle quick-time events where you can now use the battle-ending demon in the battle itself. However, the world must grow wider to accommodate their presence, and enemies must grow to similar scales to warrant it. Torture attacks are tied to summons breaking enemies and are made faster and can be chained with multiple enemies easily and even work to do massive damage to bosses, but that also means the camera won't typically be focusing on it and the torture attacks are way less personalized as all enemies share one of two or three torture attacks. I love Strider's design, it was the first boss that led to a death for me, and watching him develop his own Witch Time parry as you fight him was great. But the fact that it's Luka means that most of the appeal of Luka being this regular guy in way over his head but still somehow keeping up with Bayonetta and playing his own role in dealing with god-like beings now goes away since he's now a faerie werewolf. Bayonetta and Luka's death scene actually got to me a bit and I think it was the perfect death for them to share as they pass on their responsibilities to their daughter from an alternate universe, but, well, Bayonetta is dead now and that did sour the ending for me (it probably didn't help that Singularity wasn't drop-kicked into Gomorrah's mouth and there's no real resolution to the destruction of all these alternate realities). We get to visit varied locations on Earth with different themes, but there's a distinct lack of Paradiso and Inferno. Ginnungagap serves its purpose as a supernatural realm between all the different universes, but it lacks the splendor of Paradiso and the varied landscapes of Inferno. We have a new class of enemies in the homunculus, representing the mortal world and wreaking havoc across the multiverse, but they are entirely dominant as angels and demons are entirely sidelined to optional battles. You'd think the angels would be concerned with the potential destruction of the Trinity or that demons would be taking advantage of the turmoil, but no. The weapons are more heavily tied to Bayonetta's abilities, transforming her to match the demon the weapon represents, but it also means that you can no longer mix arm and leg weapons and Demon Masquerade is too similar to Devil Trigger for an ability Bayonetta should have. Weapons are acquired through the story with two exceptions, meaning that they can play a level of narrative significance, but that also means most weapons aren't optional rewards for exploring the world. And since these weapons are claimed from other versions of Bayonetta, Jeanne, or Rosa, that means that they are not procured by Rodin, the weaponsmith that fights powerful demons and instills their essence into the weapons he makes for you, leaving him with very little purpose as the game's shopkeeper compared to other games. Jeanne gets her own side game handling the game's C plot to find Sigurd, but that means she basically has no interaction with Bayonetta, and her plot is utterly obsolete when it's revealed that Sigurd is Singularity. Viola, the young firebrand who makes up for a lack of style and options with hard-hitting power with a single weapon, is revealed to have a familiar relationship with Bayonetta, gets a proper Devil Trigger from dealing with family, and fights a legacy character as the last boss so that the torch can be passed to her, but there will be immediate comparisons to Nero who was frankly handled way better. These changes and additions aren't necessarily bad, but something must be sacrificed for them. And for many, what ends up sacrificed are parts of the game's original identity.
I don’t understand how Viola was handled this badly when everything is there for it to work. One thing that confused me about Viola’s character is that even though she’s Ceraza’s and Luka’s daughter she’s nothing like her mother and feels exclusively like her father. An easy journey for her character would be to have Viola learn not just from Bayo3 but all the bayos she meets across the multiverse getting to see first hand the different aspects of her mother. Not only would it be a huge celebration of bayonetta and what makes her great but Viola would actually grow and learn how to be more capable and self confident and overall a badass like her mother. No longer being a clumsy buffoon always at the butt of a joke to someone who’s fully earned to be the next Bayonetta while still being a little bit of a clutz to show she still has some growing to do on her own. It’s really simple but a lot more than all the nothing the game gave us.
Agreed. She is ONLY clumsy and doesn’t have any of the charm, wit, sexiness, or swag of her mom. It’s all clumsiness and overconfidence(in a bad way, unlike bayo) like her father
Whenever bayo 4 happens I do hope they age her up and make her more mature. Maybe she takes after her father in b3 but the next game she's grown and resembles her mother more.
I feel like Astral Chain was a bit of a prototype for the idea of the main gameplay being controlling a summon, but it ended up being generally more fun and engaging even if far more simple, and also better looking even tho it was launched far earlier in the Switche's life.
in a way I feel like that bait and switch astral chain doggie ended up acting as foreshadowing for how the game would be we just didn't know it at the time
Just a shame that Astral Chain lacked focus and consistency with its gameplay to make the ranking system worth mastering, or 60fps minimum to make the game anywhere near as responsive as it should be.
@@NintendanGXit curious how you felt that was the case, astral chain’s combat fits the vibe of its protags. They’ve got a job to do so they’re not trying to be stylish they’re being efficient. Not getting hit is ideal but a few scuffs doesn’t remove s+. They aren’t super heros, why not pop that energy drink. About the only thing I felt lacking was the transformation because of the slow buildup but (at least my interpretation of) astral chain had a very clear direction for its combat But yeah fuck the switch I want that shit on something else. Shame THAT was the game that was commissioned by Nintendo
Astral Chain handled the whole demon slave and “press both sticks for super mode” things much better imo. Both the chain mechanic and the way you controlled the legion with a dedicated thumbstick lead to much more fluid gameplay. Biggest downside was that some legions (like the Axe) were just incredibly better than other choices
I finished playing Bayo3 recently and it felt off to me, so I went back and played 1 and then 2 again and it was very easy to see what was different. I think in many ways Bayo3 is the Scalebound game that Kamiya was denied due to Microsoft incessant meddling. In fact just look at Viola and compare her to the original female main character Kamiya wanted for Scalebound they look quite similar. Kamiya doesn't usually make sequels and that is because he prefers to create a game, let other people make sequels to it then move on to an entirely new one. He is not attached to his franchises the way many people think he is. Bringing him in full on (which they did despite what is says in the credits this is obvious) just resulted in him making an entirely new game out of Bayonetta. Just my two cents.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 It really does appear so, Bayonetta did have massive bosses but they where not Kaijus and you where not fighting them with other Kaijus. You do that only in Bayo3. The troubling thing I find is it's Kamiya he can sell games on his name alone. You'd think a new IP from Kamiya a true spiritual successor to the game we where denied would sell quite well without the need of hijacking Bayonetta for it.
MS didn't do any meddling though. Matt McMuscles even did a What Happened video on it. Scalebound was just too big for the Xbox to handle, with Platinum insisting on using an engine they had no experience in using. Which the Switch can't even handle with a less visually appealing game with an engine they do know how to use.
@@Ineedgames Hmm interesting I might look it up however I strongly disagree because there's proof they did. Kamiya wanted a female character and there are images of that character available which look similar to Viola they said no had to be male. Kamiya wanted to make a 1p game they said it had to be multiplayer. Then Kamiya said that was impossible at 60 fps and they said to drop it to 30fps then he walked. I was around watching the entire thing unfold I may look at the video but those all happened.
Kamiya is making project gg, he did the story for bayo 3 but I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that kamiya directed this game in secret without getting credit for it. Not sure what Yusuke Miyata’s role would be then
22:49 Bayo didn't make them dance, singularity made them do that to mock her. You can see the anger in her face as she has to dance to kill them immediately after
The multiverse element was not only badly executed but also unnecesary given what they gave us. A "Different" Bayo from, Japan, China, Egypt, France... those are all real places. The thing that makes multiverse stories fun is to get to see slightly or entirely different versions of characters and envirorments we are all familiar with and to see how all those ideas clash. Why not a universe were Bayo is the villain and Jeanne is the hero? or another universe were the Witch clan survived? or another one were Bayo was born a man? The story that was given to us would've worked better as a time travel plot were we get to see Bayo travel to different eras throughout history and we got to see her ancestors. We could've delved more into Rosa's backstory the same way we did with Balder on the second game since we know next to nothing about that character and how her romance with Balder came to be. And that would've worked better with the established Time theme of the series.
I remember getting super excited seeing Lukaon thinking he was gonna be a Lumen Sage, only for him to be some fairy king and feeling pointless to the story 😅
you know the funny thing about this is that Devil may cry would probably able to pull the multiverse story ark more better than bayonetta. they already have the reboot dante as an established alternative reality dante as well as vergil questioning "if our position been switched, would our fates be different?" as a nice foreshadowing if they ever decide to go with that plot.
They kinda already went that route with the second novel, Dante is forced into another universe in which everything went wrong and Mundus won. The roles were reversed too with Nelo/Vergil being the hero that tragically died and Dante killing an army of Eva clones/Trish.
No SPOILERS until 22:19. Update - Since this video came out the game has received some updates. From reading the changes apparently you can now skip the block puzzle cutscenes as well dodge offset Viola's parry (still seems wild to me that wasn't a feature to begin with).
Hello, discovered your channel recently and loved how concise and complete your analysis are! Can I recommend a game to you? I guess a complete analysis of Nier Automata would be amazing since the game is a true masterpiece both as an action hack 'n slash game and as a deep, filosofical lore driven game. Thnx s2
Do you think you'll do a ragnarok critique? I enjoyed your GoW 2018 video and agree with a lot of it. There has been definitie improvement in the combat and excessive loot but the bad stuff from 2018 is way worse.
@@drakula839 he eventually said no, even the wiki page about Umbra witches have both tweets in their references, and you can see that he changed his mind about it a few years after.
I heard that Bayonetta 3 was originally going to be an open world game. Which would make sense due to how large the areas in the game are. That might also explain why the look of the game took a hit in regards to 2. I personally never wanted a series out of Bayonetta. Always seemed like a 1 and done type of game. And kamiya saying he wants 9 Bayonetta games just sounds extreme for any franchise. Something else with Bayonetta 3 I realized is that it tried to do DMC4 and DMC5 in one game. Viola is introduced and made the new main character in one swoop. At least in DMC4 and DMC5 the old cast is still alive. By the end of Bayonetta 3 Jeanne, Luka, and Bayonetta are all dead and I think that was too much to throw into one game for people to accept. Especially since Viola's gameplay just isn't as good as Bayonetta's imo. And tbh if she's going to be the main character going forward I'm kinda... eh towards that. Either way great review!
ya I think the reason they tryed to do it in one game is that despide what Kamiya might say I think platinum is acutely aware of how bad bayo games tend to sell which means that they go into each game with the idea that this could be the last bayo game ever made so the end up trying to do everything and this was the game where that mentality caught up with them
*Tbh, I don't mind Viola´s Cringe, in fact, I love her smile and energy, but if she's gonna be thrown to my face as The Bayonetta for the next game or, God forbid, games, then that's the end of it for me. She's a lot of great things, but she's not our Bayonetta.*
@@Juanandsomegymcontent I think people are geting to cought up on the name thing she is inheriting a title not replacing the character need I remind you that Bayonetta is not evern bayo's real name its no diffrent from nero inheriting the devil may cry buisness
@@elapidpython4378 But if Cereza is dead, then she _is_ in fact replacing the character. And Nero may be running the Devil May Cry business, but Dante's still alive and kicking, just down in the underworld with Vergil.
I believe Bayo 1 and 2 benefitted heavily from the DMC game they where up against. Bayo 1 was after DMC4 and while history looks up on it way more favorably, back then people where way more negative about it and then Bayonetta came out feeling a lot more complete. Bayo 2 came after DmC and whilst it was on the Wii U it still a very favorable look for Bayo 2. Bayo 3 comes after DMC5 which just makes it have a very uphill battle that they can't even really fight because of the Switch hardware
Bayo 3 is basically suffering the fate of Ninja Gaiden 3: Game makes controversial changes to the story and combat that even with patches, the game is doomed to nearly be the death of a franchise due to some unfortunate decisions by the director of the game.
I think also the big problem is not just the switch hardware being old but also that Platinum games seem to not find ways to get around it since it feels they made the game without the limitations in mind
I love how in this very channel's old bayo 2 review he's just ecstatic that action games are still being made after DmC the dmc and the climate at the time was killing his hope
Oh boy, I get to copy paste my complaints on Viola again: Viola's gameplay never really came together like I wanted it to and I sincerely hope they make some big adjustments to her kit in future titles: ~Her parry feels like garbage with too few frames with which to activate Witch Time, as well as causing enemies to recoil out of range for most of her attacks; by the time you approach the recoiling enemy or use one of your far reaching options, Witch Time is half over. Giving her an automatic followup like Raiden in MGR might partially remedy this. ~Double tapping R gives you a far reaching dash to home in on distant enemies (Bayo has this for every weapon herself), unfortunately the default controls also map THE ONE DEFENSIVE OPTION YOU MADE THE CHARACTER REVOLVE AROUND to the same button, leading to lots of mis-inputs and taking hits to the face. Changing the default parry input could maybe fix that. ~Her dodge is dogwater and feels bad to use; it's a waste of a button. You would probably get away with giving her something like Raiden's Offensive Defensive from Revengence instead. ~Her Devil Trigger equivalent is lame and has no depth, amounting to a button mashing mini-game for when you don't want to actually fight for 20 seconds ~Summoning Cheshire leads to a lack of options both offensively and defensively; he's also always on auto pilot which is limiting. ~Cheshire is also tethered to a certain distance of where the sword is thrown leading to situations where if you aren't paying attention you have him just sitting there out of range doing nothing while the enemies crowd you and your Witch Time-less self. ~Her darts just kind of exist. It's clear Platinum wanted to make a character that felt different to Bayonetta with different goals in her gameplan, but they already had a katana wielding, giant enemy parrying protag and his name was Raiden. Making Viola's gameplay more closely resemble his while iterating on it could be the key to making her kit feel more cohesive and functional, while calling back to Platinum's action game history (as the devs like to do).
No worries about DMC5 propaganda. I replayed it recently after a long break and it's just so damn good. It deserves to stay relevant through videos like this. As for Bayo, I've only played the first 1 due to Nintendo exclusivity. Liked it, but not as much as DMC. And yeah, Bayo was summoning wicked weaves and monsters with her hair. I think it's tied to the european mythology about witches' hair having magical powers. Plus it was a visual feast since her clothes were also made of hair, and she had to strip herself to summon large creatures. And since a lot of Bayo's charm was her sex appeal, it added to her character so much.
This is pretty much my same concern with Metroid Prime 4. I think the game will look nice but it may not be nearly as impressive today as compared to Metroid Prime 1 or 2 were back in the 2000's. Back then not only was Retro Studios talented enough to put together a game with impressive tech but the GameCube had a lot of power under the hood for a console of it's era. The Nintendo Switch doesn't.
It's partly why I'm skeptical that the game will release on the Switch at all. We're reaching the end of the Switch's lifespan, next year feels like the last time Intendo can really turn heads with a new Switch release and not feel like he competition is leaving them in the dust with their 2008-era hardware. If you ask me, Metroid Prime 4 would be a great pick to supplement a new hardware launch, a real showcase for how bulking up the hardware to at least PS4 levels of performance capabilities can greatly enhance immersion. A new 3D Mario release would also make sense for the launch window, since the team seems to have been mostly silent since the release of Odyssey all the way back in 2017.
Tbf, Platinum doesn't have a rock solid history like Retro does. Metroid Prime 3 and Donkey Kong TF both pushed their systems to the limit (you can really feel it in MP3 with the load times ugh), but their worst game overall is simply "quite good". For Platinum, they've had a lot of struggles developing consistently both in gameplay and for the consoles they released on. While Bayo 2 was a pretty good surprise for the Wii U, Bayo 1 was still not nearly as well performing as contemporary titles. Not to mention the general wishy-washy gameplay with all their games. At the very least for MP4, I feel like Retro could pull off another MP3 level game Also I doubt that Nintendo won't have a new console in 2023. The Switch would be 6 years old for Tears of the Kingdom, where the baseline power is a console from 2012
If I’m not mistaken the Gamecube was the most potent console at the time Edit: Yeah I was mistaken, it was the Xbox, but still, some Gamecube games really make you wonder how they managed to be released in such an old console and hold up so well.
The point about not having interplay between summons is a weird one because there is interplay, the game just never ever tries to tell you about it. I had to watch a developer playthrough video on the platinum games yt to find that out...
It’s more notable with slower summons like Gomorrah and Baal. When they (still) do their thing you can release the summon button and do your thing. Taunting, the usual attacks, etc. Faster summons like Madame and Rodin, yeah, their command buffers go out first usually before you’re at melee range of your target, which breaks the flow…
Funny enough, you're the first to really mention the idea of Luka and Bayo to begin with, a lot of people take the progression focus from 2 and their lack of chemistry in it as a major swerve in the opposite direction. Plus there's the fact that they don't even really seem to follow up each game reliably anymore, given that vague implication in the ending boss fight. With that and how non-Bayonetta the Bayo in 3 acts, it really does feel distant from 1 and even 2. The gameplay and the story both seem to be trying to do way too much, and falling very short of their ambitions as a result.
Bayonetta 2 is my favourite game ever, so you can imagine my disappointment with Bayo 3. This video perfectly captures the issues I have with it, so thanks for that. The one thing I would add is how silly it is that they removed the ability to equip weapons to your hands and feet separately. Not only does this tremendously reduce the depth of the combat, but now it doesn't even make sense to have punch/kick buttons, because many of her new weapons don't even utilize her feet!
Idk I feel like having weapons being equipped To hands and feet would’ve overcomplicated the already complicated combat since there’s now demon slave and masquerade.
@@shammyprops3869 Why? All her weapons still have a full moveset for each button, you just can't mix and match them anymore. How would it make it too complicated?
@@shammyprops3869 I mean that doesn't stop DMC5 to have more than 5 weapons for each switch button for Dante? Improve what you are good at. NOT ADDING MORE UNPOLISHED GEMS.
@@bradalfk I guess complicated wasn’t the right word. But I guess what I mean is that there’s now demon masquerade which wouldn’t work with mixed up weapons and also demon slave is now a thing too so they didn’t want to overwhelm the “new player” which I do disagree with but yeah I’m not sure how to explain it
Bayo1 = a true classic disney Renaissance movie Bayo2 = the weird but charming direct to dvd movie Bayo3 = the "reboot" TV series that kinda misses the point of the original
Nail on the head. Currently playing and having a good time with 3 mostly it's combat, but it's issues and shortcoming are plentiful and super apparent. Who would've thought that after almost 14 years they still wouldn't able to top that original 09 release in terms of overall quality. Kamiya's apparently already talking about a Bayo 4, fingers cross they learn some lesson in the 9 or so years that'll take.
If there's one thing Bayo has clarified for me, it's that if a director isn't in the director's chair, directing in the studio themselves, they're not acting as a director. I like Bayonetta 2 and 3 well enough, but I just do *not* believe that Kamiya had anything to do with Bayonetta 2 given the pretty radical shift in design style (and the fact he was directing The Wonderful 101) and from the message he gave on Platinum's website it doesn't seem like he had much to do with Bayonetta 3 either, besides hand-picking the core team that actually lead development and reading over the story. Obviously Kamiya not being director doesn't mean ipso facto QED mean the game is shit, because that's stupid. (Itsuno's DMC games... exist, after all.) But I think it's time to stop considering him the spokesman of the series the way he's been treated.
they literally have DMC to learn from as a franchise that has had its own share of troubles (troubles that are arguably just as big with the entire character assassination stunt DmC pulled and keiji inafune breathing down their necks), yet here we are
After playing through the Bayonetta games I feel like it was a blessing that Hideaki Itsuno became the director for Devil May Cry going forward. I can only imagine the downgrades that would've happened under Kamiya, let alone the questionable story decisions that would've been made under him.
@@limabarreto911 Kamiya once mentioned that he wanted to focus more on Dante and Trish as a duo. He returned to this concept with Viewtiful Joe were he made sure the second game was about both Joe and Silvia being playable at both being the leads. Though given Kamiya's approach to story telling I feel like we may have dodged a bullet.
@@Tokumastu1 To be fair, I always wanted to see Trish having a bigger role. Going from the end of 1 to her doing nothing at all is weird. The first DMC is still my favorite for the adventerous feel and well designed enemies, even if every game after 2 is better.
Bayo 3's announcement trailer was all about her getting bodied by something. Right off the bat they wanted to tell us she's going to be weaker than usual, setting the expectation of something different. Guess that cinematic did translate directly to gameplay after all, I just don't get why they thought making the protagonist weak was a good core idea to go off of for a sequel.
@@doddynuryanto3800 She is if she has to rely so much on summons now. Or at least the game wants you to rely on them, but if you don't you won't reach the same peaks she could in the first two games.
Though they are correct this Bayonetta is supposedly the strongest ever because of the Demon Slave and the Deadly Sin magic etc, but the way this was executed or the way they attempted to show this comes off as if she was weak. But this kind of magic is not something B1 and B2 or any other Bayonetta would be able to do. But I 100% understand what you mean, Bayonetta in B1 fighting giant ass bosses with her bare hands and her wicked weaves does seem she’s stronger. But in reality it’s not. Also, the teasers, each one present challenges from easy to hard, B1 teaser of her against the Angel was easy peasy, B2 of her agains more leveled enemy, her father, Balder was more challenging, and B3 being something extremely difficult and deadly.
This surely feels more of an opinion than a review (which yeah, it's a YT channel at the end of the day and i respect that) but there are so many key things in the gameplay deparment that you mentioned which are not true. With Demon Slave you definitely can use the demons and Bayo at the same time to combo, it's all about the synergy and know when to press your inputs for Bayo or press ZL when you want to queue something for the demons. That's what i would say is the reason of why some of Bayo's attacks animate slower, so you have enough time to press ZL and input something for your demon. It doesn't drag gameplay, at all... Once you master that out, you can clear up verses full of enemies in less than 30 seconds. Hell, some people's complaints are the fact that enemies don't have enough health, which is something that i agree with. I love Bayo 1 to death and i enjoyed Bayo 2... But if i want Bayo 1 again, i'll just play Bayo 1. Bayo 3 i found it much more interesting that 2 because for once, it was doing different things in the gameplay department, not unlike 2 which only added a panic button as Umbran Climax which took out of the gameplay the choice of doing Torture Attacks (they are there, but no one would spend a Magic Bar on a Torture Attack when you can "press L to win" with Umbran Climax). Bayo 3 is extremely unique in the gameplay aspects and i couldn't disagree more with your opinion. Bayo 1 surely is magical and great... But going into a game expecting Bayo 1 again, when clearly is not trying to be that, of course you'll be dissapointed in the end. And honestly, i don't think the fault is on the game. I respect your opinion, but i can't agree on that aspect.
I liked the combat and demon slave more than i thought i would, but man the story is baaaaaaaaaaad. And the stuff that Kamiya is tweeting these last few weeks doesn’t give me much hope that it’s gonna go in a good direction. It almost feels like he wants to pull a Yoko Taro in world building, but fails miserably
Bayonetta is a catch 22 her intense character is clearly difficult to design and write for. How do you write for a character that defeated god, and is also justifiably over confident? You either go bigger and make a inter galactic kaiju fighter, which I mean the switch would just implode, you pass the torch, you do a weird side story, you kill off the character, or you go back and show the progression of how she got so strong. I think the best move for Bayonetta is to go the prequel route. A game where you play as a younger Bayonetta trying to live up to her future self from the first game is an interesting story to tell, simply because Bayonetta as a child would already know who she becomes as an Adult, it would be hard to design for since well, designing a teenager with Bayo's sex appeal is kind of an offputting thought, but it could be something she grows into she starts off the game in a baggy edgy design to hide her body for a disheartened character struggling to reach her potential, but ends the game in a confident cheerleader or school girl design, Bayonetta being confident in the skill she has, and accepting that, while she might not be as powerful as she could be, she is still growing. Bayonetta to me is a powerfully feminine character so it would have been interesting to see a game where she grapples with a problem a lot of girls do, the body image and self-confidence issues from comparing themselves to older women. Bayonetta really is an end point kind of character, going back and building her story up to that point would be a chance to develop depth for her, and would also give them breathing room since, a younger weaker Bayonetta would justifiably struggle against the large groups of enemies so they could put those resources into experimenting with enemy variety, story telling, or areas.
Or you could just leave the story be? I never felt that Bayonetta 1 needed a sequel to begin with as the first game does a pretty good job at answering all the questions you would have. I love the Bayo lore especially in one and Bayo1 being one of my all time fav games.. I was still disappointed by Bayo2 and I'm starting to think that bayo1 is still to this day more than 10 years later the best game Platinum Games made. Which is a bit sad imo. Bayo3 is just dmc4+5 done a 1000 times worse imo
@@omdhdk what makes dmc 3, 4 and 5 diffrent from bayo 2 and 3 [ i'm excluing dmc 2 as it does not matter.} is itsuno had an idea for where he wanted those 3 games to go.
Bayo 3 seems like an attempt by Kamiya and Platinum to compete with DMC V, however this ended up hurting the franchise more than helping it. They ended up rewriting the story, changing and removing the content that made the franchise so unique from other action games. We'll see when Bayo 4 comes out and how they continue with the franchise, but seeing the end of Bayo 3 I think I'm not as excited as before.
This all seems similar to the issue that I had with Arkham Knight. Batman's core gameplay was changed to accommodate a car that no one asked for. Inclusions like this only hurt the game in the long run.
@@shouldfire9799 Easiest way to name that button in my opinion. As all these controllers have the same layout I don't think it's confusing what I'm talking about.
My biggest complaints were with the story. I have no idea why they thought they should rip off a villain plot from an episode of Sliders but if they had to do it couldn't they have at least picked a good episode? Also they really needed to explain the motivations of the main antagonist IMO. Finally I hate the ending, I played this at a point of my life where being blindsided by a surprise sad ending to a game I had been looking forward to for years was the last thing I needed.
And the worst part is, I didn’t even cry. I tested up when Bayonetta reconciled with her father, but not in this supposed definitive end to the character. Perhaps because we spent more time on an apocalypse story we’ve seen a dozen times, or a multiverse plot that always cheapens death. The thing about multiverses is that they’re literally limitless. There’s more than 6 or 9. Rick and Morty would roast the shit out of this game. I play Bayonetta 1 and 2 every Christmas, I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this.
When the game came out I did my review of the game and pointed out many of these same issues and ohh boy the backlash was mighty lol. It's always dangerous to step in front of the hypetrain
I remember when everyone called me crazy for saying demon slave would just be another Umbran Climax, but worse. Turns out a bargain bin astral chain mechanic takes away from the core gameplay! Woah!
on the point regarding the weapons and their specific purposes: About two months ago, a hack-and-slash action type of game that takes a lot of cues from DMC by name of Soulstice came out. Does a lot of good stuff, including options for custom controls and color blind people. Every -of the quite a few- weapon(s) only has a few combo strings that can be interwoven with one another, and if the "Style meter" so to speak is high enough, the end of the combo string will be a very special finisher. The combo string itself doesn't matter much, just the weapon that you finish the string with. But that's only one thing of it. Every of the seven weapons has their own strengths and weaknesses to specific weapon types and have different properties. For example, there's two heavy melee weapons: A hammer and a gauntlet, known as the Ashen Enforcer and Hand of Retribution respectively. They function quite similarly, with having launcher moves, slam-down moves, a charge move and being especially strong against breaking armor and barriers. The hammer is a bit slower but has wider reach, while the gauntlet (to my knowledge) has more concentrated damage, a parry mechanic based on correct timing, and a bit more to the charge mechanics. Then there's a whip weapon and cannon tonfas, known as the Tearing Penance and Furious Zealots. Both have pretty far reach, but the Tearing Penance is more useful against swarmers or keeping an enemy stunned or in the air thanks to its fast, wide circular moves (even has a prop-like move for both air and ground, to either gain some air time or keep an enemy in the sky)-- and there's an unlockable grapple move (albeit of not unlimited range) to quickly bring *yourself* to a specific enemy, after keeping others away. It's a good alternative to the dash/stinger-ish moves of other weapons, and thus you can use the more effective 1-on-1 weapons on that enemy (like the Sword, Gauntlet or Punch Daggers) for a bit. Now, the Furious Zealots can *also* cover quite a bit of ground, by virtue of the blasts released from the cannon barrels. There's in fact two different moves that allow for it, but one has a longer finishing animation that does extra damage if it connects with an enemy. So the other dash move is worth keeping in mind there. But on top of that, the dash forward blasts behind the player character and is quite nasty against armor/barriers too. Heck, you can even shoot yourself upwards with it if you're getting crowded, and then use the button inputs that are normally a slam-down attack for the Hammer and Gauntlet weapon, to lay some extra damage on the fools below you and keep some more airtime. The blasts are important to keep in mind, especially in the air, because of the knockback that normal air attacks with the Furious Zealots offer. So you may find yourself wanting to quickly switch to the whip again and connect the grapple move, so that you can start blastin' again. In essence, I think this weapon selection and their options hit the nail on the head in the aspect of usefullness. That, and I... just kinda want to spread the word of Soulstice amongst the crowd that is interested in hack-and-slash type of games. It's getting mixed-to-positive reviews with a few negative ones here and there, and not without understandable reasons. But that's exactly why the smaller companies, that do stumble on some titles, are worthy of more attention-- to help them gain traction to build upon the shortcomings of the last game. And thus improve, grow from it and offer experiences that are aren't easily found elsewhere in the modern climate of games. This comment wasn't related to Bayonetta directly, but if you did read through it and you're interested in Soulstice-- thank you for doing so, and I wish you a good rest of your day/week. And I hope Soulstice may be a good, or at least positively interesting experience.
While I agree on many things, especially with how they handled its story and characters, I found myself having an amazing time with the new unique weapons and demon slave system. I definitely respect Bayo 3's ambition, and am grateful for the wish fulfillment of finally being able to puppeteer my demons. And being able to select individual checkpoints to jump into within chapters has made pure platinum chasing no longer this exhausting task for me. Bayo 2 was allowed to play it safe by essentially being Bayo 1+, as we were uncertain of the franchise's future at that time, and it got to serve as this triumphant return. I'm sure that if Bayo 3 would have done the same thing and become Bayo 1++, I would have had a fun time, but I wouldn't have been fulfilled. Great videos as always, man! I love seeing your input on action games. (Edit/Add-on): Given that you can equip up to 3 out of the 11 available demons that all have extensive movesets and can be cancelled into, you're going into combat scenarios where you're essentially rocking 5 weapon sets. The customization and player expression is still there. It's just conceptualized differently.
@@jurtheorc8117 I feel that designing a single weapon that fits with any other weapon leads to more flexibility and player expression (i.e. having the whips on my feet while wielding that big ass hammer), but I feel is more homogenous in what you can do with them. I feel designing a weapon as a set allows for the opportunity for that weapon set to be very unique and to have its ideas fully fleshed out and be highly cohesive. The set I like referring to when talking about this is Ribbit Libito, where you're holding down either punches or kicks to provide you with the buff you want. Ultimately, I cannot decide which approach I prefer, but I'm still getting a lot of mileage out of the new system, and that you can pop out a demon and quickly que up an attack to extend your combos. In a perfect world, I'd have a game that has all of these things with a weapon select wheel like in DMC3 Switch version (or god forbid more than 2 weapon sets at a time). For the time being, I feel this approach is very refreshing, and if I'm ever craving the previous thing I can always boot those games up.
My issue with Bayo 1 & 2 is what I could compare to the issue with God of War 3 & Ascension's weapons: Same moves, different special effects. They just didn't feel that diverse, besides their HOLD attacks with Alruna, Kefka Rodin & kinda Lt Col Kilgore being the ones with no "counterpart". Bayo 3 gave every weapon unique movesets, both new and as a remix to past games weapons. So I agree that it's "refreshing" in multiple senses.
I just wished that it took cues from Dante's Weapon Select kit in DMC5. I grew very sick very fast at having to go into the menu just to switch weapons.
I absolutely abhore the skill tree thing they did with three. I see so many people compliment it and I'm just thinking: "Remember in 1 and two, that when you bought those secret moves, they would all automatically apply to all weapons. Yeah. I remember too." Like seriously. Why do I have to buy after burner kick like 7 different times for 7 different weapons?
'Behind the scenes machinations ' - as in No one else was interested in funding it. But you can at least take comfort in the fact that if there is a Bayo 4, at the bare minimum it will be on whatever succeeds the switch so the tech will be able to advance.
Perfect video. Can't remember the last time I listened to someone's 30 minutes analysis of something and agree on every single point. Thank you for putting in the effort. Amazing.
Viola definitely feels weird. The last thing I want to do in a Bayonetta game is sit back and wait for the enemy to do something so I can parry. It's why I didn't care much for Sekiro.
I actually really like the second playthrough to platinum this game. The first playthrough is ugly but the 2nd when using the Bayo 1 and 2 costumes along with learning how to master the masquerade is very fun.
My only gripe about Viola is the parry timing for the Witch Time is too strict in comparison to Bayonetta. Bayo’s Witch Time is far more lenient since if you get hit there is still some frames for the witch time to activate thanks to Bat Within thing. Viola doesn’t have that. So the most dreadful moments with Viola are on verses that you must do Witch Time. Otherwise Chesire and her amazing sword swinging - sword throwing switcheroo feels badass. There are many cool combos to pull off as she does charged sword throws then you continue on punching and kicking.
~SPOILERS IN THIS COMMENT~ I feel like not only in terms of gameplay, but they also make Bayo feel weaker in the story. Sure, we knew there were risks to being an Umbra Witch, since what happened with Jeane in 2. But Bayo always felt like she was above that, a force that defied expectations and all that. Here, everything's more tragic. We see versions of her die left and right, she effectively dies in the arms of her lover, she feels way more like a traditional "female" character than... well, Bayonetta.
My issue is her powers are inconsitent. She seems weaker but also op as fuck in certain moments without earning it. In Bayo 1 and 2 big thing about witch time was that she is very powerfull but still a human, she can get hurt so she avoids damage if she can. Her demons can steal her souls if she doesn't provide them with angels. But in 3 she forces them to do whatever the fuck she wants without any issue, she rips out her heart to summon Sin version of demons and not really paying any price for it other than looking weak for entire 2 seconds and healing without a trace, then she gets stabbed by Luka and just brushes it off, but somehow all the other Bayos and then her at the end die from a sneeze of a boss.
I'm surprised the visuals are such a mixed bag, because I thought astral chain looked really fantastic on switch. For all its flaws I remember thinking that platinum had reached a new level in terms of environments, which had often been a bit drab before. But I guess bayo 3 aims for 60fps and they couldn't carry that stuff over at a higher frame rate.
I think part of it was that AC only had two or three environment aesthetics and the art team went particularly hard on the futuristic city part. The sewers and “legion world” were very drab in comparison to the Ark levels.
New to your channel and I just finished the game yesterday so this was timely. I said the exact same thing about needing a whole game of Bayo and Luka's romance for it to feel deserved by the end aloud to my best friend when it was happening. The only point I disagree on was the villain being a bit weak. That is to say he was AWFUL haha. What were his motivations, even? I left the game so annoyed that I didn't know why he did any of this. The whole time he was on screen, I was like "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?" Unrelated, but super stoked to hear your DMC 5 review after seeing this one.
The first trailer of the game featured the military fighting monsters and then bayo showing up, the first trailer for dmc5 is basically the same but with Nero. Both games also end the same way….. kind of
Honestly, I agree with your video, but my biggest gripes with the game are that it feels like the equivalent of "Teen Titans Go" to "Teen Titans". To expound: they took a cursory glance at the original material in primarily 1 and some of 2, before then just deciding that was enough to get a full breadth of the series. It felt like the character of Bayo, and all her growth through 1 and 2, were lost and not regained until the end of Cairo--not even fully. It also felt like they completely shat on the lore the series had built up by sloppily introducing the multiverse without considering the implications, with my favorite being that there must be at least 3 Madame Butterfly's to match the Bayo 1, 2, and 3 we see in the ending. It just wanted to be so much, without doing any work to make sure it actually fit the series or style that had been established--let alone the fact that her portrayal as a character in the story felt so much less like a full, complex "woman in charge" and more "ogle the woman in power" this time around.
One of my biggest gripes with this game were the homunculi and their designs. They're so boring compared to the angels and demons. Part of the charm in Bayonetta were the angels and how they represented different virtues. They usually had clever or at least memorable designs that took inspiration from lesser known depictions of angels and other creatures. And bayonetta 2 showed several demonic versions of these designs. And it was cool how angels looked like fleshy aliens covered in porcelain, and demons, in contrast, looked like robots. But the homunculi don't follow any distinct design patterns. They're somewhat Hindu-inspired plant creatures that are named after clouds. But none of them have memorable designs and they all look the same due to having the same color palette. They're supposed to be bioweapons, but they don't even look organic. They should have given them more distinct plant designs or at least made them look more like actual living creatures. They should have also given them more recognizable names that correlated with them being man-made creatures.
The Hommunculi should've just been human souls that turned into monsters after not being claimed by angels and demons. If they had to be plant-like, maybe thir names could've been references to the Qlipoth so it fits with the judeo-christian references embodied by the angels and demons of these games?
So glad im not the only one that absolutely hated the Design Change and absolutely loved the Angel Demon comparison of the first game They were ligitemately creepy and cool asf with theire completely displaced Faces and weird voices coming off as beautiful and virtues while hiding ugly Monsters underneath How can you fuck up a Design Theme so fricken hard.....
great point on the tone of the story. bayo 1 and 2 are different tonally but at least consistent within themselves. in 1 shes a little edgy and hard to get a read on, in 2 shes a more of a superhero. here its a bit hard to get a read on, as the stuff happening around her and her actions isnt rly consistent with the tone of the character as this reverent multiverse hero
I definitely get the criticisms but I've had more fun with 3 than the other 2 games. 2 is the least exciting for me, and while 1 is amazing its very frustrating with its insta kill QTEs, button mashing, backtracking, and the demon QTEs get old fast. There are things I wish the 3rd game did like have more creative levels and more hype bosses like the first (its very hard to top Kamiya to be fair), have less mini games, etc but it's highs are pretty high and it's lows aren't low enough imo.
@Dbzfan109 Shoulda been more specific. I actually meant the mashing you do for the QTEs and torture attacks. Some of those things are near impossible to get the max bonus. As far as actual combat bayo is probs my favorite. It's flow feels great
i remember hearing you play as Jeanne for some stealth levels as well and its hilariously damning that I don't think you even mentioned it, that... kinda tells me how good it was
I honestly loved the gimmick Demon boss fights in 3, especially the singing Baal one, just because of how fun the concepts are. But I do wish we got these but ALSO had legitimately big bosses that I was fighting as Bayonetta herself.
One of the few Quality-of-life improvements I appreciated in Bayonetta 3 was the ranking-update system. In past games, it frustrated me that I couldn't restart a Verse if I didn't get Pure Platinum or even just Platinum, and I'd have to keep quitting the game and loading back in. With Bayonetta 3, while it's not ideal, I can at least try specific segments of a stage from the stage-select screen, and update my ranking on whichever verses are contained within them, which in turn would update my overall stage ranking. This way, I don't have to replay an entire level just because I fucked up on one battle. I don't have to do a perfect marathon, and this little bit of leeway was something Devil May Cry nailed as early as the third game. I just wish the game was more lenient when it comes to scoring players based on health, because losing health should suffice as punishment for taking damage (which, again, Devil May Cry developers understand) It's just a shame that this wonderful feature came as late as it did, for a game that's overall less-polished and poorly-considered compared to past games. Getting a bog-standard Platinum on each stage was fine enough in most of Bayonetta's own stages (and surprisingly satisfying in the Jeanne spy segments, which I actually loved for what they were), but the prospect of doing this becomes a nightmare when it's time to play as Viola, who's mechanically anaemic, stylistically ugly and contemptable, and has the worst implementation of both a Witch Time trigger and a counter I've ever experienced in a character-action game. Every time I was forced to play as her, she turned what could've been a satisfying (albeit incredibly flawed) journey of mastery and betterment into one of the most frustrating gameplay experiences in the entire franchise, down there with Bayo 1's awful quick-time events and 2's shitty walking sections. I enjoyed Bayonetta 3 for the most part, and I honestly wouldn't mind getting a full eShop game based on Jeanne's spy segments with a new story and more content. But it's easily the sloppiest game in the series, with a poorly-executed passing-of-the-torch story that felt undeserved and removed the entire reason I'd want to play these games in the first place. Viola fucking sucks, and I'm much less inclined to continue investing in the franchise with her at the helm, even with any improvements to her gameplay, because she's a fundamentally-flawed character and cringe as fuck. The sort of girl who represents the most obnoxious modern-day women of first-world countries. The Nero comparisons are inaccurate, and not only ignore the fundamental problems with a character nobody asked for nor needed and was introduced by the time players were already getting accustomed to Bayonetta's moveset (only for Viola to then strip them of the many combat options they'd accumulated), but does a disservice to Nero, a character who HAD potential, was introduced from the start so as to ease players in with his more limited moveset, and mechanics like the Blue Rose charge shot and Devil Bringer to help him stand out from the rest of the cast. Nero was fun from the start, and his limited moveset wasn't as much of an issue as Viola's due to the DMC combat system rewarding players for cycling between different attacks rather than spamming the same ones ad nauseum. They also didn't completely kill Dante off, even in DMC5 where Nero got a much-needed facelift visually and mechanically, so there's still something for veterans and combo maniacs to keep coming back to, which I now can't say about Viola and Bayonetta.
Not only that. It feels like a test for platinums new ip project GG. Its supposed to be a heavily based kaiju style combat game and the entire time I was playing bayo 3 I kept thinking. "This is gonna be in their new ip"
@@gameinspection4999 bruh the Kaiju sections where the absolute worst thing I have ever played in any game ever, it was wild. Who thought it was a good idea to introduce rock-paper-scissors that has a 5 second button delay lol. The 1st time through me off, and the 2nd time made me actually upset I had to do it again.
@@Pheonixess Oh my stars this so much. I don't mind playing a big monster but don't make me do a fucking rock paper scissors. At least Queen Butterfly, Phantom and Baal Zebul were handled better.
Thank you! After seeing all the praises flooded the internet I thought I was the only person who finds B3 way worse... When you stressed that using summons makes Bayonetta herself weaker, I was screaming internally. So very true. If you don't use summon and Bayo only, you'll be dragged into prolonged fights because her punches don't hit that hard, at least not anymore. Basically players are forced to use summons. The demons are very cool looking and everything, but I bought this game in order to enjoy the combos, not monsters spewing fire at each other. Although Bayonetta is not a "story heavy" series, I do hope they could write more about Bayo and Luka. I completely agree with you that I'm happy to see them get together, but it just feels rushed and the dev team did not put enough substance to back it up, making the ending less impactful. I am a casual player who entered this series because I liked B1's combat system. B2 is my favorite that I even finish the Hard difficulty with Platinum. B3 is just... picking up some of the worst aspects of the previous titles. Awful camera again, endless mini games, stupidly difficult enemies... Those time gated blocks are incredibly infuriating to collect that I almost gave up on this game.
Yeah, this video cements my thoughts on the game almost perfectly. I beat it yesterday and there's a lot of stuff I like, but also a lot I'm not so hot on. I've described this game as "Diet Bayo" to folks I've talked to about the game, and this really just expands my thoughts.
It is a shame Charlie skipped out on Astral Chain. The stuff Bayonetta 3 struggles to do (and sacrifices a lot of why Bayonetta is fun to do so) is done so much better there.
Yes, the fact that the “summons”, the legion, in astral chain are about the same size as the character doesn’t sacrifice bad camera. Also, you can still get an S rank, even if you took damage, makes it more possible to S rank on ultimate difficulty. Also that graphics an art style in AC is a lot better than Bayo3
The more I think about Astral Chain the better I think that game is. It's not perfect but I think I like it more than Bayo 1 (Bayo 2 is my fav of platinum's output)
For a Multiverse plot, the only alternate universe I was left wanting to go was the one in which the series isn't chained to underpowered hardware where we could had the equivalent of Bayonetta in the RE engine, well who knows maybe next gen Nintendo pick ups the slack eventually, Kamiya says he isn't done with the series. Also glad to see a fan who actually doesn't turn his dissapointment with the plot against Luka's character, seems like everybodyelse and their mom redirected all their anger to the poor guy acting like suddenly is a crime Cereza ends up with a man or greatly exagerating their own dislike of Luka.
On the subject of Pure Platinums, the game saving your best medal rankings for each individual verse and permanently using those in the overall chapter tally is something I'm of two minds of. On the one hand, players can just focus on the individual battles they need to without having to perfect everything else in a chapter, but on the other hand is that really rewarding skill when you can just mesh the best bits of your runs together? Runs that on their own are gonna be sloppy to give attention to the fights you need Pure Platinum on. I guess if you've got something to prove you can always upload an All Verse Pure Platinum run video but the game doesn't seem interested in recognizing if you can do such a thing. It's only focusing on one battle at a time and then adding it all together after the fact.
I think the reason they chose to go with this stiching your best performances together method is because they included so many non combat verses in the chapters. They knew it would be a total pain to PP chapters because of them and this is their way to avoid that frustration.
It's also frustrating because checkpoints are not as common anymore. Doing this game the old fashioned way literally has me pulling my hair out in frustration because you'll end up doing three or four verses in a row before a checkpoint. It sort of gnaws at the perfectionist in me after awhile and holds the game back for me by a mile. I mean if they casualized Verses, why implement so many changes like harder checkpoints and having the pause screen break your combo? Who is this game for exactly? It tries to cater to casuals and hardcore gamers alike but doesn't really deliver in either aspect. It's more often detrimental to the overall experience rather than making me want to play.
I’m surprised there wasn’t a riff on just how comically bad this game handles it’s “Viola getting Fairy Trigger” moment. Like DMC4 at least puts some weight and character on Nero syncing with the Yamato and awakening his Devil Trigger and we don’t even need to talk about how epic it was handled in 5.
i think the major issue platinum has with this series is it's always trying to top the sceptical of the gameplay and story of the first game. the second game had hell and time shenanigans to compete with heaven and space from the first with a busted devil trigger to beat normal wicked weaves, then the next game tries to up the scale by having the demon fully control able compared devil trigger in 2, demon masquerade to out do wicked weaves, while the story has multiverse. hell i bet that's why they changed protags so they can reset the scale when they never had to any off all that. all they had to do was surpass bayo 1 with mechanical gameplay not sceptical gameplay and story.
The one thing that kept breaking my immersion is how some of the goons looks like someone on a greenscreen tight suit that just scanned and didn't bother with addition whatsoever, they just slaps some grey colors on that scan lmao
Hmmm... I pretty much disagree with everything you said, gameplay-wise. I don't think Bayo 3's changes are either "better" or "worse" than its predecessors, just different. All 3 have some distinctions. And I also felt that there was just the right amount of demon slave necessity in battles. There is a pseudo "demon offset" that I tended to use. But my biggest disagreement is that 3 nerfed her standard moveset. I didn't feel this at all and thought her standard X combo was broken seeing how much movement she gets out of it. I do agree with the absence of giant boss battles. But I wouldn't want them in exchange for the demon-minigames, as I also liked those just fine. Would be nice to have both. Also, you can get Scarborough and Love is Blue after beating the game if you don't have save files. 10:16 No, I never got the impression she was "making" the demons with her hair. Balder literally kills two of them in front of her. It's always been her summoning demons with her hair.
Are you sure about Scarborough and Love is blue? I've only read you can get them only through the save data thing. I know you get the bayo 1 amd 2 costumes after beating the game but not the guns
@@ShinPepsiman Apparently, you're right; there is no other way? I couldn't check since I have 1 and 2 for Switch. Read this was the case on two other sites and had no reason to doubt it.
I've been having so much fun with the game but I agree with almost all of your criticism. Like you said. The first Bayonetta is complete. Regardless, I've played the hell out of this game. Compared to Bayo 2, which feels like DLC,
when i was playing bayonetta 3 I did find stuff i enjoyed about it. that being said as time keeps going forward i doubt ill really come back to this game. I never really got into the whole idea of luka and bayo getting together and when it happend it just sort of felt very last minute and out of left field. like the only reason they die is because luka makes a bad call not to one shot the demon and then go after viola and that is just hyper unsatisfying to kill off and replace bayo with viola.
I enjoyed Bayo 3 alot gameplay wise. However, The story and scenarios really did sour me on the whole experience. Especially the finale. How many times do I beat the bad guy only for him to confirm I wasn't doing anything, to then power up and beat him again ect...? Either way great video
Wow, i did not expect to see a bayonetta 3 review so soon after the previous video, but I'm very glad to hear all my problems with Bayo 3 be articulated so well, because it spares me from spewing vitriol into the uncaring void. All "professional" coverage of bayonetta 3 ignored the game's mechanical problems and focused on the story, which wasn't even bad for the reasons they describe. Anyway, for me the biggest problem with the Demon Slave system is how it undermines the feeling of control you have in bayonetta. I understand Bayonetta isn't actually controlling gomorrah when she summons the big bad dragon, but the delay between the input and the attack connecting feels bad, no matter how much you spin it as bayonetta commanding a demon, rather than the player controlling it. If the demon slave was more like a devil trigger form with various powerful attacks, I could see it enhancing the core gameplay, but as it stands, I vowed to never use it, until I felt forced to in the last third of the game by enemies who will literally bubble and shield themselves from bayonetta's own attacks. Getting some unpleasant DmC flashbacks there. The point about bayonetta getting nerfed to make place for the new features is I think best explained with witch time. In bayonetta 1, witch time was amazing because of how unnecessary it was. You felt like you were making the game a fool of itself, because the enemies were perfectly fair to fight even without it, so any time you activate witch time feels like a reward for skillful play, a point made clear when the highest difficulty removes witch time entirely. In Bayonetta 3, the enemies are so aggressive that witch time becomes an absolute necessity, and witch time isn't disabled for infinite climax, so the game feels like it's only allowing you to do anything after you've perfectly dodged the badly telegraphed attack.
The story really dragged this down for me. The first two were such fun romps and this one felt really hollow outside of some fun set pieces. Never been a fan of the bayo/luka ship either so that really fell flat for me at the end
Glad to see someone acknowledge the Luka Bayo dynamic in this light. I feel like the vast majority of the negative reactions to their relationship was the fact that she didn't end up with Jeanne which eclipsed the bigger issue, Bayo and Luka's relationship was already well established, it just got sidelined in the second game, and then brought back in 3 with barely any interaction between the two until the finale. I thought the Arch Adam and Arch Eve stuff was really weird and jarring but that's mainly because they hardly spent the time fleshing it out in this game. For something so important to the story it hardly gets the service it warrants. Then there's the Homunculi and Singularity, again some really good potential for this ridiculous threat that instead of originating from Heaven or Hell, came from the in-between, Chaos, some more time with the villain to understand it's motivation and why it is collapsing everything and maybe witnessing the discourse of the angels and demons and how THEY'RE dealing with the threat not only would have fleshed it out more, but would have upped the stakes. Can you imagine how cool it would have been if at the end when Bayo's seal breaks and she's about to get snacked on by Gomorrah, Madama Butterfly comes out and tames that motherfucker signifying the importance and bond Bayo developed with her demons throughout this game? Man...
That last paragraph with your idea managed to hype me up way more than most of Bayo 3's supposedly "hype" moments. 😆 It's kinda sad to think how much potential Bayo 3's writing ended up wasting, although PG had no shortage of interesting concepts to explore.
@@BeatGoat Agreed, they have some really cool ideas and lots of room for them, they're just really inconsistent when it comes to execution. It sucks because I think the way Bayo 2' story ties in with Bayo 1 is actually brilliant, but 3 came along and kinda just disrupted the perfect circle dynamic the series had... Heh, kind of fitting actually if you look at the logo of the game.
![[#2024MAMA] BIGBANG (빅뱅) - 뱅뱅뱅 (BANG BANG BANG) + FANTASTIC BABY | Mnet 241123 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQsYfiPR9uM/mqdefault.jpg)
It's difficult not to compare this game to DMC5. They wanted the weapon variety of Dante, the demon summoning of V, and the self contained alternate protagonist of Nero. You illustrated many of the shortcomings of these desires: there's no incentive to weapon switch since they all have the same tools available, the focus on demon summoning compromised Bayo's own fighting prowess, and the way they try to make Viola feel different from Bayo just makes her a less enjoyable character in every way.
this game literally feels like it wanted so badly to ape the success of dmc5 without realizing why that game was a success in the first place
Honestly I’d be more enthusiastic for a DMC 6 with Nero being the MC. Than a Bayonetta 4 with Viola being the lead.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 Yeah, and Nero freaking earned his MC title through many hardships. They tried to make Viola surpassed Bayo but I felt like it was just handed to her like a silver platter. That last battle just came out left field. So many rush development in one game.
IT also shares the same pitfall as DMC5. Dissjointed gameplay switching between 3 characters during the adventure ruining the flowstate.
@@dante19890 Shut up
The multiverse idea would be cool if the multiple bayonettas actually ya know…… talked and interacted with each other
I liked the different versions of the crew but yeah, we kinda just peeked through the window at most.
Yeah it’ll be more interesting if we play as these multiverse Bayonettas instead of Viola.
Its kinda like that moment in 2 where we meet Rosa and they just...fight together but don't really say very much. I was hoping for more than that but instead we just watch everyone die. What a bummer dude
Multiverse stuff always shits the bed.
@@alastor8091 well, unless we're talking isekai
Jeanne’s levels were so forgettable he didn’t even mention them
I mean I just don't like the idea on 1 hit and your done in infinite climax.
Like the first 2 I can work around BUT THE BIKE AND ELEVATOR?
It truly is the actual worst part of the whole experience too
Yeah Jeanne levels were really weird and forgettable. It’s like playing a weird version of Elevator Action. Not to mention playing as Viola is a forgetful character too.
Playing as Viola really did feel like they were trying to integrate Sekiro's Deflect mechanic, but she ultimately just felt like another Bayo weapon, except as a character with her own separate chapters.
Should've just brought back Angel Attack.
When Bayonetta 3 showed off the giant monsters for the first time as a gameplay mechanic I theorized that Platinum was repurposing ideas they had for that cancelled game Scalebound. Playing the game now I realize maybe there was a reason Scalebound was cancelled in the first place.
Bayo 3 is basically scale bound meets astral chain more so then bayonetta
@D C This game was pretty much Platinum desperately throwing all of their ideas from a bunch of failed projects into a blender and hoping that something good would come out the other end.
You talk like this game is bad lol
@@lupinthenerd439 No I don't think it's bad, but I would play the first two games again before I replay this.
@@lupinthenerd439 It's not, Bayo 1 and 2 just offer an overall better and more authentic experience that Bayonetta is about, gameplay-wise. The stories have always been kinda meh with some big wows mixed in.
10:15 Back when I played Bayo 1 for the first time in 2009, I did think that she made the demons out of her hair, but it was actually explained in the game's lore that her hair served as a conduit to summon actual demonic entities (each demon has their own description in the bestiary as well), so it has been like that from the very beginning and not a change introduced in the sequel.
My biggest gripe with Bayo3 is that it doesn't make me excited for its inevitable sequel, just dread. I don't want to play as Viola again, I don't look forward to more of Bayonetta having to share the spotlight. I thought the game was fine for the most part, and the combat very enjoyable, but it places its emphasis on all the wrong things and takes the series in a direction that makes me not want to play it any further.
The one upside is the multiverse angle means this entire game can be rendered non-canon.
@@NDenizen What do you even mean by that? They're not going to do that.
@@amosdeguzman9980 They need to do that. Otherwise this franchise is dead.
@@hieithegreat Matter of opinion.
@@hieithegreat Fact.
I also 100% thought she was constructing the demons out of her hair back when I played Bayonetta 1.
The focus on the hair is one of those things that feels so fundamental to that first game's identity that seems totally lost in this new one, and here they could have even taken the opportunity to have her puppeteer the demons with strings of hair like a marionette. Even the standard wicked weaves are lacking them now, it looks so wrong.
Same.
Same.
It was an element tying the series to actual European witch lore with the use of organic matter in rituals. Now it's just glowy magic superpowers.
I thought this was canon, hence "wicket (hair) weave".
I never saw it as her outright turning her hair into demons or anything like that, but that the hair is more just a container for the demons to exert more control, like wrapping a ghost in a sheet or covering it in flour I guess, which comes across from how parts of the demons poke out from the hair. The fact they're not wrapped up in this one is a little weird yeah, but I see it as her sacrificing direct control for better maneuverability, which is mitigated by Demon Slave anyway
There's a giant plot hole that doesn't get talked about enough which is that this is an alternate universe than the first two games, so we know literally NOTHING about these versions of Bayonetta and Luka. They entirely didn't earn this ending.
What about the giant plot hole that is Rodin: there is only one Rodin(given that he is from Paradiso), so he has at least 3 different bars named Gates of Hell in 3 diferent universes, deals with 3 diferent Bayos and Enzos, and is, in general, just universe hopping and seeing the same shit happen over and over again.
It makes less sense the more you think about it. They completely botched the story of these games for some cool "3 Peter Parkers on the screen" moment
@@Mene0 yep
They say that bayonetta 2 had a nearly identical story to bayonetta in the character files, so the implication is some of these universes had the same events play out
@@Mene0 Also the fact that if theres only 1 Rodin then he absolutely should've known about Singularity WAY before Viola appears to tell everyone else
"You're not helping the witch economy by hoarding all those magic points. Go and summon a demon!"
Not funny, didn't laugh
XD
every new character added in an action series really makes dmc4 nero constantly look better
I actually prefer DMC4 Nero over DMC5 Nero. Constantly switching Devil Breakers was just annoying to me. I also liked his design in 4 a lot more.
@@Arcananine77 You can just ignore the Devil Breaker system if you want to? Nero you can stick to the Buster arm for his old moveset, and he gets two news attacks as well.
The only part of DMC4 Nero I prefer are the fire trails his EX-moves left behind. They look much weaker in the RE7 engine’s more realistic style, but that’s a fair trade off for its quality.
@@idkusername5789 DMC4 EX-Streak is incredibly satisfying. The DMC5 version really doesn't compare.
@@idkusername5789 Oh yeah you can do that.....after you beat the game. On your first playthough all you got are the devil breakers. Before you say that there's the devil arm which is basically the grab like DMC 4, that one in the shop is one of the most expensive one. Meanwhile you're still buying moves for Nero. Even if you do get it, if you get hit while using it, the arm breaks which is inevitable since Nero's grab animation goes on for a while. The breakers are only great once you understand how the enemies work which is impossible on the first playthough. At least in 4, you don't lose a gameplay element when you get hit.
@@ThaPlaya1994 such a weird non complaint for a game that 99% of people are gonna do repeated playthroughs on
One thing that I felt let down on was that the final boss's defeat was very... dull.
Past big bads in Bayonetta had gotten either extravagant or humiliating defeats, something that Bayonetta would be most fitting to do, (taking these gods off their high pedestal). This one I can hardly remember how the final boss goes down and I just recently played it.
Yeah I finished it just like two weeks ago and I can't remember how the final boss dies. On the other hand, I can easily recall Jubileus getting Sheba punched into the sun and Aesir getting Omne kicked into the jaws of Gomorrah.
All I can remember is that they just had, like, three different moments where another character shows up to save the day and Bayonetta, only for the final boss to shrug it off each time. Kinda felt tiring after a point.
It says a lot that I remember Bayonetta's undeserved character-death more than I do the main villain's death. Even in stories where the badguy ultimately wins after death, like Texhnolyze, I vividly remember Ichise punching Kano's head clean-off with the might of a bullet-train. His death wouldn't change anything at that point, but it was the least he deserved, and seeing him face the full force of Ichise's wrath was an appropriate end I won't soon forget.
Singularity's death? I'm in the same boat, I haven't got a clue. And that's not even comparing Jubileus and Aesir's memorable executions that would empower the player like nothing else..
@@gameman250I definitely felt that dullness in other parts of the game too, like bayonetta ripping out her heart for an "ultimate" summon, then doing it over and over. And here i thought it was suppose to be special lol
I believe Bayo 3 was playing catching up way too much with DMC5 that it became a convoluted mess. Also, that "Not Nero" girl wasn't helping either. Her gameplay was completely inferior to Bayo and Jean just like how Nero in DMC4 comparing to DMC4 Dante. DMC has proper building up with a personal and simple story. Bayo 3 was just trying to be too different but lost their OG charm. Also, are you telling ME that Viola is gonna replace the OG Bayo as the new Bayo? Gimme a break. DMC5 Dante, Nero and Vergil is still themselves. Nero just simply took over his business while Dante and Vergil cleaning up the mess under the Qliphoth tree. Nero didn't replace Dante as a new Dante AT ALL. Shock value just for the sake of it was not the way to catching up, Platinum. Where is the charm from Senator Armstrong, Jetstream Sam, and the old Bayo?
Also, te design
@dudeguy3802 "The source is that I made it the FUCK UP!!!!!"
Always wanted to say it once in my life. Armstrong was way too iconic.
Agreed well said viola being the next bayo wasnt earned with a shitty final boss that wasn't interesting and boring to fight against not to mention bayo and luka being in love comes out of nowhere it feels manufactured.
Excellent. Couldnt of said better
@@ragingguts 1. Not the same bayo. It's pretty clear this bayo isn't the 1 from 1 or 2. Everything about her from her posture to gestures is noticeably different.
2. Comes out of nowhere? Bayo has always taken kindly to Luka she's always flirted with him as well.
3. Lukas magical side. People.claim ots out of nowhere but Luka hasaways been as crazy tall as all other magical or divine characters in the series. That was always a question I personally had.
I'd make the whole "DMC references are back baby" joke, but honestly I was kind of thinking about DMC after I completed Bayonetta 3. That series manages to introduce new mechanics pretty naturally and have them feel like fun new additions to the core combat (Styles, Devil Breakers) while Bayonetta seems to miss the mark for me. Umbran Climax felt like a pretty bad version of the generic "gather resource and then go superpowered" mode, and while Demon Summoning is better, it can't help but feel pretty disconnected to Bayonetta's core combo-completing gameplay.
Honestly, I think the problem is the series feeling the pressure to live up to its reputation for over-the-top insanity. Your big new addition can't just be something understated but influential on combat like "having moves be tied to consumable resources" or "putting a different move on the circle button", it has to be something that leaves jaws on the floor and minds reeling at the level of Spectacle we've just ascended to. And I like that! I liked that when the first game did it! .…But I think that game made the right decision by having the over-the-top spectacle mostly be carried by the enemies and scenarios and not integrated directly into the player's kit. The downside of having insane crazy concepts like being able to summon demons at the drop of a hat be a regular fixture of gameplay is that it kind of wreaks havoc on your game's balancing.
I found the story… fun, but that's probably more due to liking the concepts it gestures towards rather than any big successes on the part of the game itself. In a vacuum, the format of Bayonetta meeting alternate versions of herself that she fails to save over and over is one that *should* provide a lot of opportunities for character building… but I'm not so sure heady sci-fi concepts like ALTERNATE UNIVERSES and TIME TRAVEL and THE DEATH OF ALL LIFE are suited for the slim script of a fourteen-hour gameplay-focused action game. You can really see it struggling to get to the places it wants to go in the almost no time it has to get there. Like, who are these Bayonettas? (Bayonettae?) What brought them to the point their worlds are in? How does our Bayonetta feel about seeing herself fail to save the world over and over again? These are good questions, and I don't know why the game thought it had the narrative bandwidth to answer any of them.
Luka is probably the best example of this. In Bayonetta 1, he was the "wacky comedy sidekick with the beginnings of a romance", in Bayonetta 2, he was "wacky comedy side character with some great gags", and in Bayonetta 3 we have to have him make the jump to "I AM A MONSTER, I CAN NEVER BE LOVED" and it leaves me feeling like I just had a stroke. The problem isn't that giving Luka a Dark Backstory couldn't work, or even that it's a bad idea - if they're going to get serious about writing a romance between Bayonetta and Luka, I honestly think giving Luka character conflict like this isn't a bad idea. The bad idea was doing this in the span of thirteen seconds and then acting like this was a totally natural way to introduce this plot point.
While I actually liked Bayonetta 3 well enough, ironically, the biggest thing I took away from it was appreciation for how restrained the first game was, mechanically, thematically, and narratively. It built up its combat to a point where it felt complete, where (Torture Attacks being a bit of an exception) it didn't feel like there were many gimmicks or half-baked exceptions in the core gameplay. It wants to be audacious and even a little bit gaudy, but it understands that you can't be a spectacle all the time. The story is simple, but it makes the game feel like an adventure, and that simplicity suits the limited bandwith that a script a game like this is inevitably is going to have.
If there's one thing I want them to do with Bayonetta 4 - and there's going to be a Bayonetta 4 someday, at least if you believe Kamiya (I wouldn't) - it's that if the series is going to have a new protagonist anyway, I think they should take that opportunity to go back to the drawing board and really think the new game from the fundamentals up, the way they had to when Bayonetta was a new IP. Because I really love the first game, and I really want to love the new ones too, and while I respect their ambition, all of them have felt a little bit off to me.
Lmao your comment about Luka's progression is true af. Luka has always works as a one-time-gag-kinda character, he swoops in, be goofy, be a bit romantic towardd Bayo, and then leave. It's okay if he didn't have this "Multiverse Purpose since Ancient Time" or whatever. He's just one goofy ass guy like Enzo, and it's fine by me.
If anything i wanna Rodin to join in the fight more often like in Bayo 2 tbh
I got annoyed at how casual Bayonetta was with watching thousands of people die.
Like she felt guilty for Luka's dad's death in the first game.
I never really pictured her that soulless.
Bayonetta never seems to care about casualties in her battles unless they're related to her friends.
@@danielalexispaulinh.8729 Even still she's standing around while watching people die.
She is a witch
True, but she is Brave Cereza.
@@Ineedgames She isn't exatly just standing around, she is trying to reach the spurce of the killing to killing it herself.
Despite enjoying (most of) my time with Bayonetta 3, I always had one particular quote in the back of my head; it was originally applied for government policies, but I think it works for design considerations as well. "There are no solutions, only compromises."
On-the-fly demon summoning is one such thing, a natural evolution of end-of-battle quick-time events where you can now use the battle-ending demon in the battle itself. However, the world must grow wider to accommodate their presence, and enemies must grow to similar scales to warrant it.
Torture attacks are tied to summons breaking enemies and are made faster and can be chained with multiple enemies easily and even work to do massive damage to bosses, but that also means the camera won't typically be focusing on it and the torture attacks are way less personalized as all enemies share one of two or three torture attacks.
I love Strider's design, it was the first boss that led to a death for me, and watching him develop his own Witch Time parry as you fight him was great. But the fact that it's Luka means that most of the appeal of Luka being this regular guy in way over his head but still somehow keeping up with Bayonetta and playing his own role in dealing with god-like beings now goes away since he's now a faerie werewolf.
Bayonetta and Luka's death scene actually got to me a bit and I think it was the perfect death for them to share as they pass on their responsibilities to their daughter from an alternate universe, but, well, Bayonetta is dead now and that did sour the ending for me (it probably didn't help that Singularity wasn't drop-kicked into Gomorrah's mouth and there's no real resolution to the destruction of all these alternate realities).
We get to visit varied locations on Earth with different themes, but there's a distinct lack of Paradiso and Inferno. Ginnungagap serves its purpose as a supernatural realm between all the different universes, but it lacks the splendor of Paradiso and the varied landscapes of Inferno.
We have a new class of enemies in the homunculus, representing the mortal world and wreaking havoc across the multiverse, but they are entirely dominant as angels and demons are entirely sidelined to optional battles. You'd think the angels would be concerned with the potential destruction of the Trinity or that demons would be taking advantage of the turmoil, but no.
The weapons are more heavily tied to Bayonetta's abilities, transforming her to match the demon the weapon represents, but it also means that you can no longer mix arm and leg weapons and Demon Masquerade is too similar to Devil Trigger for an ability Bayonetta should have.
Weapons are acquired through the story with two exceptions, meaning that they can play a level of narrative significance, but that also means most weapons aren't optional rewards for exploring the world. And since these weapons are claimed from other versions of Bayonetta, Jeanne, or Rosa, that means that they are not procured by Rodin, the weaponsmith that fights powerful demons and instills their essence into the weapons he makes for you, leaving him with very little purpose as the game's shopkeeper compared to other games.
Jeanne gets her own side game handling the game's C plot to find Sigurd, but that means she basically has no interaction with Bayonetta, and her plot is utterly obsolete when it's revealed that Sigurd is Singularity.
Viola, the young firebrand who makes up for a lack of style and options with hard-hitting power with a single weapon, is revealed to have a familiar relationship with Bayonetta, gets a proper Devil Trigger from dealing with family, and fights a legacy character as the last boss so that the torch can be passed to her, but there will be immediate comparisons to Nero who was frankly handled way better.
These changes and additions aren't necessarily bad, but something must be sacrificed for them. And for many, what ends up sacrificed are parts of the game's original identity.
I don’t understand how Viola was handled this badly when everything is there for it to work. One thing that confused me about Viola’s character is that even though she’s Ceraza’s and Luka’s daughter she’s nothing like her mother and feels exclusively like her father. An easy journey for her character would be to have Viola learn not just from Bayo3 but all the bayos she meets across the multiverse getting to see first hand the different aspects of her mother. Not only would it be a huge celebration of bayonetta and what makes her great but Viola would actually grow and learn how to be more capable and self confident and overall a badass like her mother. No longer being a clumsy buffoon always at the butt of a joke to someone who’s fully earned to be the next Bayonetta while still being a little bit of a clutz to show she still has some growing to do on her own. It’s really simple but a lot more than all the nothing the game gave us.
Don't worry about it she'll get a robot arm or something next time
Agreed. She is ONLY clumsy and doesn’t have any of the charm, wit, sexiness, or swag of her mom. It’s all clumsiness and overconfidence(in a bad way, unlike bayo) like her father
Whenever bayo 4 happens I do hope they age her up and make her more mature. Maybe she takes after her father in b3 but the next game she's grown and resembles her mother more.
@@Kriss_ch. Viola (Violetta): My arm!
Cereza: I need more power
I mean I've met a ton of *real* people that only take after one of their parents. I don't think this is a problem at all.
I feel like Astral Chain was a bit of a prototype for the idea of the main gameplay being controlling a summon, but it ended up being generally more fun and engaging even if far more simple, and also better looking even tho it was launched far earlier in the Switche's life.
Astral chain is another game totally kneecapped from being on the switch. The camera for that game (and this one) is just atrocious
in a way I feel like that bait and switch astral chain doggie ended up acting as foreshadowing for how the game would be we just didn't know it at the time
Just a shame that Astral Chain lacked focus and consistency with its gameplay to make the ranking system worth mastering, or 60fps minimum to make the game anywhere near as responsive as it should be.
@@NintendanGXit curious how you felt that was the case, astral chain’s combat fits the vibe of its protags. They’ve got a job to do so they’re not trying to be stylish they’re being efficient. Not getting hit is ideal but a few scuffs doesn’t remove s+. They aren’t super heros, why not pop that energy drink. About the only thing I felt lacking was the transformation because of the slow buildup but (at least my interpretation of) astral chain had a very clear direction for its combat
But yeah fuck the switch I want that shit on something else. Shame THAT was the game that was commissioned by Nintendo
Astral Chain handled the whole demon slave and “press both sticks for super mode” things much better imo. Both the chain mechanic and the way you controlled the legion with a dedicated thumbstick lead to much more fluid gameplay. Biggest downside was that some legions (like the Axe) were just incredibly better than other choices
I finished playing Bayo3 recently and it felt off to me, so I went back and played 1 and then 2 again and it was very easy to see what was different. I think in many ways Bayo3 is the Scalebound game that Kamiya was denied due to Microsoft incessant meddling. In fact just look at Viola and compare her to the original female main character Kamiya wanted for Scalebound they look quite similar. Kamiya doesn't usually make sequels and that is because he prefers to create a game, let other people make sequels to it then move on to an entirely new one. He is not attached to his franchises the way many people think he is. Bringing him in full on (which they did despite what is says in the credits this is obvious) just resulted in him making an entirely new game out of Bayonetta. Just my two cents.
So Kamiya was so preoccupied with wether he could make a Scalebound successor, but he didn’t stop to think if he should.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 It really does appear so, Bayonetta did have massive bosses but they where not Kaijus and you where not fighting them with other Kaijus. You do that only in Bayo3. The troubling thing I find is it's Kamiya he can sell games on his name alone. You'd think a new IP from Kamiya a true spiritual successor to the game we where denied would sell quite well without the need of hijacking Bayonetta for it.
MS didn't do any meddling though. Matt McMuscles even did a What Happened video on it.
Scalebound was just too big for the Xbox to handle, with Platinum insisting on using an engine they had no experience in using. Which the Switch can't even handle with a less visually appealing game with an engine they do know how to use.
@@Ineedgames Hmm interesting I might look it up however I strongly disagree because there's proof they did. Kamiya wanted a female character and there are images of that character available which look similar to Viola they said no had to be male. Kamiya wanted to make a 1p game they said it had to be multiplayer. Then Kamiya said that was impossible at 60 fps and they said to drop it to 30fps then he walked. I was around watching the entire thing unfold I may look at the video but those all happened.
Kamiya is making project gg, he did the story for bayo 3 but I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that kamiya directed this game in secret without getting credit for it. Not sure what Yusuke Miyata’s role would be then
22:49 Bayo didn't make them dance, singularity made them do that to mock her. You can see the anger in her face as she has to dance to kill them immediately after
The multiverse element was not only badly executed but also unnecesary given what they gave us.
A "Different" Bayo from, Japan, China, Egypt, France... those are all real places.
The thing that makes multiverse stories fun is to get to see slightly or entirely different versions of characters and envirorments we are all familiar with and to see how all those ideas clash. Why not a universe were Bayo is the villain and Jeanne is the hero? or another universe were the Witch clan survived? or another one were Bayo was born a man?
The story that was given to us would've worked better as a time travel plot were we get to see Bayo travel to different eras throughout history and we got to see her ancestors. We could've delved more into Rosa's backstory the same way we did with Balder on the second game since we know next to nothing about that character and how her romance with Balder came to be.
And that would've worked better with the established Time theme of the series.
The fact we never got to see an alternate bayonetta as a lumen sage or balder as a hero in another universe is baffling
I remember getting super excited seeing Lukaon thinking he was gonna be a Lumen Sage, only for him to be some fairy king and feeling pointless to the story 😅
@@lowhp_comic dude yeah I thought he was a lumen sage too… fuckin fairy king lol
Bayonetta as a man would actually be a genius idea. The closest we would get to a DMC x Bayonetta crossover.
I was really expecting to see a Lumen Sage Bayonetta at one point, but I was disappointed.
I was about to say "why skip bayo 2?" and went to check that you made it 7 years ago, damn.
thanking you for this comment, just deleted mine aha
Honestly, I think he should re review it. His analysis skills and way better now than they were then, and a Bayonetta 2 re review would be nice.
@@shadestrider1033 it would be nice if only for consistency's sake
you know the funny thing about this is that Devil may cry would probably able to pull the multiverse story ark more better than bayonetta. they already have the reboot dante as an established alternative reality dante as well as vergil questioning "if our position been switched, would our fates be different?" as a nice foreshadowing if they ever decide to go with that plot.
They kinda already went that route with the second novel, Dante is forced into another universe in which everything went wrong and Mundus won. The roles were reversed too with Nelo/Vergil being the hero that tragically died and Dante killing an army of Eva clones/Trish.
Imagine them going to the universe the DMC Devil May Cry that would be funny.
Virgilio Bluegrave…
@@Tony-lw5yp what novel is this?
@@Hyde1415 The DMC2 Novel, the one with Beryl.
No SPOILERS until 22:19.
Update - Since this video came out the game has received some updates. From reading the changes apparently you can now skip the block puzzle cutscenes as well dodge offset Viola's parry (still seems wild to me that wasn't a feature to begin with).
Hello, discovered your channel recently and loved how concise and complete your analysis are! Can I recommend a game to you? I guess a complete analysis of Nier Automata would be amazing since the game is a true masterpiece both as an action hack 'n slash game and as a deep, filosofical lore driven game. Thnx s2
@@guilhermebrito2056 does he know?
Do you think you'll do a ragnarok critique? I enjoyed your GoW 2018 video and agree with a lot of it. There has been definitie improvement in the combat and excessive loot but the bad stuff from 2018 is way worse.
I wish you talked about the stupid ending, I'm still crying about it
So it is written.
In the infinite expanse of the multiverse, every Bayonetta is a woman, every Bayonetta is an Umbran Witch, none of them are Lumen Sages
Laaaame
Lumen where a exclusively male clan, as Umbra where exclusively female.
@@danielalexispaulinh.8729 umm, no Kamiya mentioned in one of the twits that there were some exceptions.
@@drakula839 he eventually said no, even the wiki page about Umbra witches have both tweets in their references, and you can see that he changed his mind about it a few years after.
@@danielalexispaulinh.8729 sadge
Can't believe Charlie's talking about a new game
I can't wait for him to review Metroid Prime 4 in the year 2024
Love to see it
I hope Metroid Dread gets a shot soon
bold of you to assume metroid prime 4 will release this decade
I heard that Bayonetta 3 was originally going to be an open world game. Which would make sense due to how large the areas in the game are. That might also explain why the look of the game took a hit in regards to 2.
I personally never wanted a series out of Bayonetta. Always seemed like a 1 and done type of game. And kamiya saying he wants 9 Bayonetta games just sounds extreme for any franchise.
Something else with Bayonetta 3 I realized is that it tried to do DMC4 and DMC5 in one game. Viola is introduced and made the new main character in one swoop. At least in DMC4 and DMC5 the old cast is still alive. By the end of Bayonetta 3 Jeanne, Luka, and Bayonetta are all dead and I think that was too much to throw into one game for people to accept. Especially since Viola's gameplay just isn't as good as Bayonetta's imo. And tbh if she's going to be the main character going forward I'm kinda... eh towards that.
Either way great review!
ya I think the reason they tryed to do it in one game is that despide what Kamiya might say I think platinum is acutely aware of how bad bayo games tend to sell which means that they go into each game with the idea that this could be the last bayo game ever made so the end up trying to do everything and this was the game where that mentality caught up with them
They sacrificed so much for these big environments and it never really mattered much.
*Tbh, I don't mind Viola´s Cringe, in fact, I love her smile and energy, but if she's gonna be thrown to my face as The Bayonetta for the next game or, God forbid, games, then that's the end of it for me. She's a lot of great things, but she's not our Bayonetta.*
@@Juanandsomegymcontent I think people are geting to cought up on the name thing she is inheriting a title not replacing the character need I remind you that Bayonetta is not evern bayo's real name its no diffrent from nero inheriting the devil may cry buisness
@@elapidpython4378 But if Cereza is dead, then she _is_ in fact replacing the character. And Nero may be running the Devil May Cry business, but Dante's still alive and kicking, just down in the underworld with Vergil.
I believe Bayo 1 and 2 benefitted heavily from the DMC game they where up against. Bayo 1 was after DMC4 and while history looks up on it way more favorably, back then people where way more negative about it and then Bayonetta came out feeling a lot more complete. Bayo 2 came after DmC and whilst it was on the Wii U it still a very favorable look for Bayo 2. Bayo 3 comes after DMC5 which just makes it have a very uphill battle that they can't even really fight because of the Switch hardware
This
Lol i was just thinking the same
If Bayo 1 came after DMC3 it wouldn't stand a chance. In fact, we are already seeing that result with DMC5...
Bayo 3 is basically suffering the fate of Ninja Gaiden 3: Game makes controversial changes to the story and combat that even with patches, the game is doomed to nearly be the death of a franchise due to some unfortunate decisions by the director of the game.
I think also the big problem is not just the switch hardware being old but also that Platinum games seem to not find ways to get around it since it feels they made the game without the limitations in mind
I love how in this very channel's old bayo 2 review he's just ecstatic that action games are still being made after DmC the dmc and the climate at the time was killing his hope
Oh boy, I get to copy paste my complaints on Viola again:
Viola's gameplay never really came together like I wanted it to and I sincerely hope they make some big adjustments to her kit in future titles:
~Her parry feels like garbage with too few frames with which to activate Witch Time, as well as causing enemies to recoil out of range for most of her attacks; by the time you approach the recoiling enemy or use one of your far reaching options, Witch Time is half over. Giving her an automatic followup like Raiden in MGR might partially remedy this.
~Double tapping R gives you a far reaching dash to home in on distant enemies (Bayo has this for every weapon herself), unfortunately the default controls also map THE ONE DEFENSIVE OPTION YOU MADE THE CHARACTER REVOLVE AROUND to the same button, leading to lots of mis-inputs and taking hits to the face. Changing the default parry input could maybe fix that.
~Her dodge is dogwater and feels bad to use; it's a waste of a button. You would probably get away with giving her something like Raiden's Offensive Defensive from Revengence instead.
~Her Devil Trigger equivalent is lame and has no depth, amounting to a button mashing mini-game for when you don't want to actually fight for 20 seconds
~Summoning Cheshire leads to a lack of options both offensively and defensively; he's also always on auto pilot which is limiting.
~Cheshire is also tethered to a certain distance of where the sword is thrown leading to situations where if you aren't paying attention you have him just sitting there out of range doing nothing while the enemies crowd you and your Witch Time-less self.
~Her darts just kind of exist.
It's clear Platinum wanted to make a character that felt different to Bayonetta with different goals in her gameplan, but they already had a katana wielding, giant enemy parrying protag and his name was Raiden. Making Viola's gameplay more closely resemble his while iterating on it could be the key to making her kit feel more cohesive and functional, while calling back to Platinum's action game history (as the devs like to do).
No worries about DMC5 propaganda. I replayed it recently after a long break and it's just so damn good. It deserves to stay relevant through videos like this. As for Bayo, I've only played the first 1 due to Nintendo exclusivity. Liked it, but not as much as DMC. And yeah, Bayo was summoning wicked weaves and monsters with her hair. I think it's tied to the european mythology about witches' hair having magical powers. Plus it was a visual feast since her clothes were also made of hair, and she had to strip herself to summon large creatures. And since a lot of Bayo's charm was her sex appeal, it added to her character so much.
21:50 Brit iterates his desire to protect his Joycon analog stick twice in succession. Boy I really hope someone got fired for that blunder
I swear i broke mine while playing metal gear rising
Mumkey jones reference?
This is pretty much my same concern with Metroid Prime 4.
I think the game will look nice but it may not be nearly as impressive today as compared to Metroid Prime 1 or 2 were back in the 2000's.
Back then not only was Retro Studios talented enough to put together a game with impressive tech but the GameCube had a lot of power under the hood for a console of it's era.
The Nintendo Switch doesn't.
It's partly why I'm skeptical that the game will release on the Switch at all. We're reaching the end of the Switch's lifespan, next year feels like the last time Intendo can really turn heads with a new Switch release and not feel like he competition is leaving them in the dust with their 2008-era hardware. If you ask me, Metroid Prime 4 would be a great pick to supplement a new hardware launch, a real showcase for how bulking up the hardware to at least PS4 levels of performance capabilities can greatly enhance immersion. A new 3D Mario release would also make sense for the launch window, since the team seems to have been mostly silent since the release of Odyssey all the way back in 2017.
Tbf, Platinum doesn't have a rock solid history like Retro does. Metroid Prime 3 and Donkey Kong TF both pushed their systems to the limit (you can really feel it in MP3 with the load times ugh), but their worst game overall is simply "quite good". For Platinum, they've had a lot of struggles developing consistently both in gameplay and for the consoles they released on. While Bayo 2 was a pretty good surprise for the Wii U, Bayo 1 was still not nearly as well performing as contemporary titles. Not to mention the general wishy-washy gameplay with all their games. At the very least for MP4, I feel like Retro could pull off another MP3 level game
Also I doubt that Nintendo won't have a new console in 2023. The Switch would be 6 years old for Tears of the Kingdom, where the baseline power is a console from 2012
If I’m not mistaken the Gamecube was the most potent console at the time
Edit: Yeah I was mistaken, it was the Xbox, but still, some Gamecube games really make you wonder how they managed to be released in such an old console and hold up so well.
@@c0mplex_Ale actually, It was the Xbox, but the GameCube wasn't far behind.
A lot of GameCube games hold up really well today.
Prime was a Gamecube series. This will look far better. It is not the same uphill battle Bayo fights.
The point about not having interplay between summons is a weird one because there is interplay, the game just never ever tries to tell you about it. I had to watch a developer playthrough video on the platinum games yt to find that out...
It’s more notable with slower summons like Gomorrah and Baal. When they (still) do their thing you can release the summon button and do your thing. Taunting, the usual attacks, etc. Faster summons like Madame and Rodin, yeah, their command buffers go out first usually before you’re at melee range of your target, which breaks the flow…
Platinum Games just is so hit or miss these days, they really are a name I think twice about getting a game for now if they are attached to it
More miss than hits.
they peaked with nier automata and never been good since.
Funny enough, you're the first to really mention the idea of Luka and Bayo to begin with, a lot of people take the progression focus from 2 and their lack of chemistry in it as a major swerve in the opposite direction. Plus there's the fact that they don't even really seem to follow up each game reliably anymore, given that vague implication in the ending boss fight. With that and how non-Bayonetta the Bayo in 3 acts, it really does feel distant from 1 and even 2. The gameplay and the story both seem to be trying to do way too much, and falling very short of their ambitions as a result.
Bayonetta 2 is my favourite game ever, so you can imagine my disappointment with Bayo 3. This video perfectly captures the issues I have with it, so thanks for that.
The one thing I would add is how silly it is that they removed the ability to equip weapons to your hands and feet separately. Not only does this tremendously reduce the depth of the combat, but now it doesn't even make sense to have punch/kick buttons, because many of her new weapons don't even utilize her feet!
Idk I feel like having weapons being equipped To hands and feet would’ve overcomplicated the already complicated combat since there’s now demon slave and masquerade.
@@shammyprops3869 Why? All her weapons still have a full moveset for each button, you just can't mix and match them anymore. How would it make it too complicated?
@@shammyprops3869 I mean that doesn't stop DMC5 to have more than 5 weapons for each switch button for Dante? Improve what you are good at. NOT ADDING MORE UNPOLISHED GEMS.
@@bradalfk I guess complicated wasn’t the right word. But I guess what I mean is that there’s now demon masquerade which wouldn’t work with mixed up weapons and also demon slave is now a thing too so they didn’t want to overwhelm the “new player” which I do disagree with but yeah I’m not sure how to explain it
You can still switch between the 2 weapons instantly, allowing you to do some interesting combos
Bayo1 = a true classic disney Renaissance movie
Bayo2 = the weird but charming direct to dvd movie
Bayo3 = the "reboot" TV series that kinda misses the point of the original
What is better in Bayo 1 than Bayo 3 ?
@@crackmaniak1 bayo 1 had better enemies, set pieces and less gimmick stages
@@Mr.Faust3 bayo 1 had the most gimmick stages.
@@ubadman1 nope
@@ubadman1 thats bayo 3 also i think bayo 1 only had 4 gimmick mechanics
Nail on the head. Currently playing and having a good time with 3 mostly it's combat, but it's issues and shortcoming are plentiful and super apparent. Who would've thought that after almost 14 years they still wouldn't able to top that original 09 release in terms of overall quality. Kamiya's apparently already talking about a Bayo 4, fingers cross they learn some lesson in the 9 or so years that'll take.
It's time for Kamiya to put up or shut up, take the helm again or let the series die. Bayo 1 is still the only good one
@@makeitthrough_ the only good one? The best one ok, but the only good one? Jesus Christ some gamers are ridiculously jaded and spoiled…
If there's one thing Bayo has clarified for me, it's that if a director isn't in the director's chair, directing in the studio themselves, they're not acting as a director.
I like Bayonetta 2 and 3 well enough, but I just do *not* believe that Kamiya had anything to do with Bayonetta 2 given the pretty radical shift in design style (and the fact he was directing The Wonderful 101) and from the message he gave on Platinum's website it doesn't seem like he had much to do with Bayonetta 3 either, besides hand-picking the core team that actually lead development and reading over the story.
Obviously Kamiya not being director doesn't mean ipso facto QED mean the game is shit, because that's stupid. (Itsuno's DMC games... exist, after all.) But I think it's time to stop considering him the spokesman of the series the way he's been treated.
they literally have DMC to learn from as a franchise that has had its own share of troubles (troubles that are arguably just as big with the entire character assassination stunt DmC pulled and keiji inafune breathing down their necks), yet here we are
@@seija8588 Just because Bayonetta is a spiritual successor to DMC, doesn't mean they have to listen and watch DMC's gameplay.
After playing through the Bayonetta games I feel like it was a blessing that Hideaki Itsuno became the director for Devil May Cry going forward. I can only imagine the downgrades that would've happened under Kamiya, let alone the questionable story decisions that would've been made under him.
Did he ever talk about the plans he had for the DMC series moving forward, were he still in the director's chair?
@@limabarreto911 Kamiya once mentioned that he wanted to focus more on Dante and Trish as a duo. He returned to this concept with Viewtiful Joe were he made sure the second game was about both Joe and Silvia being playable at both being the leads. Though given Kamiya's approach to story telling I feel like we may have dodged a bullet.
@@Tokumastu1 To be fair, I always wanted to see Trish having a bigger role. Going from the end of 1 to her doing nothing at all is weird.
The first DMC is still my favorite for the adventerous feel and well designed enemies, even if every game after 2 is better.
Kamiya didn't direct Bayonetta 2 and 3
@@hubblebublumbubwub5215 He wrote the story and supervised over the director. His mark is all over the projects.
See you all in Bayonetta 3 Special Edition and Redeeming Viola
Platinum never does Special Editions.
@@saaaaaaaaadasda If I remember correctly Capcom started it's "Special Edition" treatment with the third Devil May Cry game
More like Bayonetta 3: Rodin's Edge.
Bayo 3's announcement trailer was all about her getting bodied by something. Right off the bat they wanted to tell us she's going to be weaker than usual, setting the expectation of something different. Guess that cinematic did translate directly to gameplay after all, I just don't get why they thought making the protagonist weak was a good core idea to go off of for a sequel.
Mmm..she's not. She is the most powerful bayo
@@doddynuryanto3800 She is if she has to rely so much on summons now. Or at least the game wants you to rely on them, but if you don't you won't reach the same peaks she could in the first two games.
Though they are correct this Bayonetta is supposedly the strongest ever because of the Demon Slave and the Deadly Sin magic etc, but the way this was executed or the way they attempted to show this comes off as if she was weak. But this kind of magic is not something B1 and B2 or any other Bayonetta would be able to do. But I 100% understand what you mean, Bayonetta in B1 fighting giant ass bosses with her bare hands and her wicked weaves does seem she’s stronger. But in reality it’s not. Also, the teasers, each one present challenges from easy to hard, B1 teaser of her against the Angel was easy peasy, B2 of her agains more leveled enemy, her father, Balder was more challenging, and B3 being something extremely difficult and deadly.
There’s a limit to escalation…
SHE KILLED TWO GODS!!!
This surely feels more of an opinion than a review (which yeah, it's a YT channel at the end of the day and i respect that) but there are so many key things in the gameplay deparment that you mentioned which are not true.
With Demon Slave you definitely can use the demons and Bayo at the same time to combo, it's all about the synergy and know when to press your inputs for Bayo or press ZL when you want to queue something for the demons. That's what i would say is the reason of why some of Bayo's attacks animate slower, so you have enough time to press ZL and input something for your demon. It doesn't drag gameplay, at all... Once you master that out, you can clear up verses full of enemies in less than 30 seconds. Hell, some people's complaints are the fact that enemies don't have enough health, which is something that i agree with.
I love Bayo 1 to death and i enjoyed Bayo 2... But if i want Bayo 1 again, i'll just play Bayo 1. Bayo 3 i found it much more interesting that 2 because for once, it was doing different things in the gameplay department, not unlike 2 which only added a panic button as Umbran Climax which took out of the gameplay the choice of doing Torture Attacks (they are there, but no one would spend a Magic Bar on a Torture Attack when you can "press L to win" with Umbran Climax). Bayo 3 is extremely unique in the gameplay aspects and i couldn't disagree more with your opinion.
Bayo 1 surely is magical and great... But going into a game expecting Bayo 1 again, when clearly is not trying to be that, of course you'll be dissapointed in the end. And honestly, i don't think the fault is on the game. I respect your opinion, but i can't agree on that aspect.
Spot on comment 👍
I liked the combat and demon slave more than i thought i would, but man the story is baaaaaaaaaaad.
And the stuff that Kamiya is tweeting these last few weeks doesn’t give me much hope that it’s gonna go in a good direction.
It almost feels like he wants to pull a Yoko Taro in world building, but fails miserably
Honestly I am hoping the 4th installment fairs better though. Who knows.
I cant believe we got a Bayonetta 3 review before No More Heroes 3
I still gotta play no more heroes 3 lol
Bayonetta is a catch 22 her intense character is clearly difficult to design and write for. How do you write for a character that defeated god, and is also justifiably over confident? You either go bigger and make a inter galactic kaiju fighter, which I mean the switch would just implode, you pass the torch, you do a weird side story, you kill off the character, or you go back and show the progression of how she got so strong. I think the best move for Bayonetta is to go the prequel route. A game where you play as a younger Bayonetta trying to live up to her future self from the first game is an interesting story to tell, simply because Bayonetta as a child would already know who she becomes as an Adult, it would be hard to design for since well, designing a teenager with Bayo's sex appeal is kind of an offputting thought, but it could be something she grows into she starts off the game in a baggy edgy design to hide her body for a disheartened character struggling to reach her potential, but ends the game in a confident cheerleader or school girl design, Bayonetta being confident in the skill she has, and accepting that, while she might not be as powerful as she could be, she is still growing. Bayonetta to me is a powerfully feminine character so it would have been interesting to see a game where she grapples with a problem a lot of girls do, the body image and self-confidence issues from comparing themselves to older women. Bayonetta really is an end point kind of character, going back and building her story up to that point would be a chance to develop depth for her, and would also give them breathing room since, a younger weaker Bayonetta would justifiably struggle against the large groups of enemies so they could put those resources into experimenting with enemy variety, story telling, or areas.
Or you could just leave the story be? I never felt that Bayonetta 1 needed a sequel to begin with as the first game does a pretty good job at answering all the questions you would have. I love the Bayo lore especially in one and Bayo1 being one of my all time fav games.. I was still disappointed by Bayo2 and I'm starting to think that bayo1 is still to this day more than 10 years later the best game Platinum Games made. Which is a bit sad imo. Bayo3 is just dmc4+5 done a 1000 times worse imo
Well, they announced that Bayonetta Origins game this month. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but it does go for the prequel route.
Honestly, a prequel set in the time before the Witch Hunts would be awesome since you could do way more with that then try to justify a multiverse.
when i finished bayo 1 it never felt like it needed a sequel.
@@omdhdk what makes dmc 3, 4 and 5 diffrent from bayo 2 and 3 [ i'm excluing dmc 2 as it does not matter.} is itsuno had an idea for where he wanted those 3 games to go.
The enemies in this game feel like they could be in a t rated licensed game, the angels were more memorable
Bayo 3 seems like an attempt by Kamiya and Platinum to compete with DMC V, however this ended up hurting the franchise more than helping it. They ended up rewriting the story, changing and removing the content that made the franchise so unique from other action games.
We'll see when Bayo 4 comes out and how they continue with the franchise, but seeing the end of Bayo 3 I think I'm not as excited as before.
This all seems similar to the issue that I had with Arkham Knight. Batman's core gameplay was changed to accommodate a car that no one asked for. Inclusions like this only hurt the game in the long run.
The thing is people actually asked for the Batmobile the problem is how the implemented the damn thing
I'm with you.
I hate the R3 lock button.
I want a shoulder button that I can keep pressing and move the camera individually.
@TheGamingBritShow97 Oh you're totally the real deal.
@@shouldfire9799 Easiest way to name that button in my opinion. As all these controllers have the same layout I don't think it's confusing what I'm talking about.
I wasn't ready for that Serious Sam reference. In a Bayonetta video on TGBS channel of all places.
I had been waiting for a video in which you let your fun personality fully loose again since Overblood 2. Thanks for the treat!
My biggest complaints were with the story.
I have no idea why they thought they should rip off a villain plot from an episode of Sliders but if they had to do it couldn't they have at least picked a good episode?
Also they really needed to explain the motivations of the main antagonist IMO.
Finally I hate the ending, I played this at a point of my life where being blindsided by a surprise sad ending to a game I had been looking forward to for years was the last thing I needed.
Shut up
And what makes you think I feel any need or desire to follow your orders?
As someone who had waited for Bayonetta 3 after playing Bayonetta 2 six tos even years ago, I can agree that the ending was a slap-in-the-face.
And the worst part is, I didn’t even cry. I tested up when Bayonetta reconciled with her father, but not in this supposed definitive end to the character. Perhaps because we spent more time on an apocalypse story we’ve seen a dozen times, or a multiverse plot that always cheapens death. The thing about multiverses is that they’re literally limitless. There’s more than 6 or 9. Rick and Morty would roast the shit out of this game. I play Bayonetta 1 and 2 every Christmas, I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this.
When the game came out I did my review of the game and pointed out many of these same issues and ohh boy the backlash was mighty lol. It's always dangerous to step in front of the hypetrain
Oh nice. I didn't think we'd get a Bayo 3 review from you for another 6 years.
I remember when everyone called me crazy for saying demon slave would just be another Umbran Climax, but worse. Turns out a bargain bin astral chain mechanic takes away from the core gameplay! Woah!
You're still wrong about it being worse than Umbran climax.
Yeah Climax was dumb. Demon slaves are just Astral Chain legions dumbed way down and extra clunky
Demoon Slave is basically why most games don't let the player use every ability the protagonist can do in cutscenes.
I hate the Demon Slave combat. Pretty much ruined the game for me. I'd rather just play Bayo 1 and 2 again than this garbo
on the point regarding the weapons and their specific purposes: About two months ago, a hack-and-slash action type of game that takes a lot of cues from DMC by name of Soulstice came out.
Does a lot of good stuff, including options for custom controls and color blind people.
Every -of the quite a few- weapon(s) only has a few combo strings that can be interwoven with one another, and if the "Style meter" so to speak is high enough, the end of the combo string will be a very special finisher.
The combo string itself doesn't matter much, just the weapon that you finish the string with.
But that's only one thing of it. Every of the seven weapons has their own strengths and weaknesses to specific weapon types and have different properties.
For example, there's two heavy melee weapons: A hammer and a gauntlet, known as the Ashen Enforcer and Hand of Retribution respectively. They function quite similarly, with having launcher moves, slam-down moves, a charge move and being especially strong against breaking armor and barriers.
The hammer is a bit slower but has wider reach, while the gauntlet (to my knowledge) has more concentrated damage, a parry mechanic based on correct timing, and a bit more to the charge mechanics.
Then there's a whip weapon and cannon tonfas, known as the Tearing Penance and Furious Zealots.
Both have pretty far reach, but the Tearing Penance is more useful against swarmers or keeping an enemy stunned or in the air thanks to its fast, wide circular moves (even has a prop-like move for both air and ground, to either gain some air time or keep an enemy in the sky)-- and there's an unlockable grapple move (albeit of not unlimited range) to quickly bring *yourself* to a specific enemy, after keeping others away.
It's a good alternative to the dash/stinger-ish moves of other weapons, and thus you can use the more effective 1-on-1 weapons on that enemy (like the Sword, Gauntlet or Punch Daggers) for a bit.
Now, the Furious Zealots can *also* cover quite a bit of ground, by virtue of the blasts released from the cannon barrels. There's in fact two different moves that allow for it, but one has a longer finishing animation that does extra damage if it connects with an enemy. So the other dash move is worth keeping in mind there.
But on top of that, the dash forward blasts behind the player character and is quite nasty against armor/barriers too.
Heck, you can even shoot yourself upwards with it if you're getting crowded, and then use the button inputs that are normally a slam-down attack for the Hammer and Gauntlet weapon, to lay some extra damage on the fools below you and keep some more airtime.
The blasts are important to keep in mind, especially in the air, because of the knockback that normal air attacks with the Furious Zealots offer. So you may find yourself wanting to quickly switch to the whip again and connect the grapple move, so that you can start blastin' again.
In essence, I think this weapon selection and their options hit the nail on the head in the aspect of usefullness. That, and I... just kinda want to spread the word of Soulstice amongst the crowd that is interested in hack-and-slash type of games.
It's getting mixed-to-positive reviews with a few negative ones here and there, and not without understandable reasons.
But that's exactly why the smaller companies, that do stumble on some titles, are worthy of more attention-- to help them gain traction to build upon the shortcomings of the last game. And thus improve, grow from it and offer experiences that are aren't easily found elsewhere in the modern climate of games.
This comment wasn't related to Bayonetta directly, but if you did read through it and you're interested in Soulstice-- thank you for doing so, and I wish you a good rest of your day/week. And I hope Soulstice may be a good, or at least positively interesting experience.
While I agree on many things, especially with how they handled its story and characters, I found myself having an amazing time with the new unique weapons and demon slave system. I definitely respect Bayo 3's ambition, and am grateful for the wish fulfillment of finally being able to puppeteer my demons. And being able to select individual checkpoints to jump into within chapters has made pure platinum chasing no longer this exhausting task for me.
Bayo 2 was allowed to play it safe by essentially being Bayo 1+, as we were uncertain of the franchise's future at that time, and it got to serve as this triumphant return. I'm sure that if Bayo 3 would have done the same thing and become Bayo 1++, I would have had a fun time, but I wouldn't have been fulfilled.
Great videos as always, man! I love seeing your input on action games.
(Edit/Add-on): Given that you can equip up to 3 out of the 11 available demons that all have extensive movesets and can be cancelled into, you're going into combat scenarios where you're essentially rocking 5 weapon sets. The customization and player expression is still there. It's just conceptualized differently.
If it's alright to ask, what about the weapons make them so good to use for you?
Basically the same thoughts here.
@@jurtheorc8117 I feel that designing a single weapon that fits with any other weapon leads to more flexibility and player expression (i.e. having the whips on my feet while wielding that big ass hammer), but I feel is more homogenous in what you can do with them. I feel designing a weapon as a set allows for the opportunity for that weapon set to be very unique and to have its ideas fully fleshed out and be highly cohesive. The set I like referring to when talking about this is Ribbit Libito, where you're holding down either punches or kicks to provide you with the buff you want. Ultimately, I cannot decide which approach I prefer, but I'm still getting a lot of mileage out of the new system, and that you can pop out a demon and quickly que up an attack to extend your combos. In a perfect world, I'd have a game that has all of these things with a weapon select wheel like in DMC3 Switch version (or god forbid more than 2 weapon sets at a time). For the time being, I feel this approach is very refreshing, and if I'm ever craving the previous thing I can always boot those games up.
My issue with Bayo 1 & 2 is what I could compare to the issue with God of War 3 & Ascension's weapons: Same moves, different special effects. They just didn't feel that diverse, besides their HOLD attacks with Alruna, Kefka Rodin & kinda Lt Col Kilgore being the ones with no "counterpart". Bayo 3 gave every weapon unique movesets, both new and as a remix to past games weapons. So I agree that it's "refreshing" in multiple senses.
I just wished that it took cues from Dante's Weapon Select kit in DMC5.
I grew very sick very fast at having to go into the menu just to switch weapons.
Good thing we can all agree that DMC5 is the greatest videogame ever released.
Its def not. It has a lot of issues. DMC3 on switch did the most things right.
Ew casual alert
@@dante19890 except when you go above mission 12
The game becomes horrible I think
@@thebuddah1253 bro every DMC had major flaw in level design except V but I don't know I haven't played DMCV yet.
@@dante19890 DMC 3 is amazing but V is better
Reason: Gameplay, Vergil, Soundtrack, Vergil
Guess Luka did had his chance with the Final Boss of Women.
I absolutely abhore the skill tree thing they did with three. I see so many people compliment it and I'm just thinking:
"Remember in 1 and two, that when you bought those secret moves, they would all automatically apply to all weapons. Yeah. I remember too."
Like seriously. Why do I have to buy after burner kick like 7 different times for 7 different weapons?
'Behind the scenes machinations ' - as in No one else was interested in funding it.
But you can at least take comfort in the fact that if there is a Bayo 4, at the bare minimum it will be on whatever succeeds the switch so the tech will be able to advance.
Perfect video. Can't remember the last time I listened to someone's 30 minutes analysis of something and agree on every single point. Thank you for putting in the effort. Amazing.
Viola definitely feels weird. The last thing I want to do in a Bayonetta game is sit back and wait for the enemy to do something so I can parry. It's why I didn't care much for Sekiro.
I actually really like the second playthrough to platinum this game. The first playthrough is ugly but the 2nd when using the Bayo 1 and 2 costumes along with learning how to master the masquerade is very fun.
My only gripe about Viola is the parry timing for the Witch Time is too strict in comparison to Bayonetta. Bayo’s Witch Time is far more lenient since if you get hit there is still some frames for the witch time to activate thanks to Bat Within thing. Viola doesn’t have that. So the most dreadful moments with Viola are on verses that you must do Witch Time. Otherwise Chesire and her amazing sword swinging - sword throwing switcheroo feels badass. There are many cool combos to pull off as she does charged sword throws then you continue on punching and kicking.
What a wonderful review. I love the descriptions of everything you said
Jesus christ how did this man describe my every thought with Bayo 3's Gameplay & Story so precisely in just 30 minutes
~SPOILERS IN THIS COMMENT~
I feel like not only in terms of gameplay, but they also make Bayo feel weaker in the story. Sure, we knew there were risks to being an Umbra Witch, since what happened with Jeane in 2. But Bayo always felt like she was above that, a force that defied expectations and all that. Here, everything's more tragic. We see versions of her die left and right, she effectively dies in the arms of her lover, she feels way more like a traditional "female" character than... well, Bayonetta.
My issue is her powers are inconsitent. She seems weaker but also op as fuck in certain moments without earning it. In Bayo 1 and 2 big thing about witch time was that she is very powerfull but still a human, she can get hurt so she avoids damage if she can. Her demons can steal her souls if she doesn't provide them with angels. But in 3 she forces them to do whatever the fuck she wants without any issue, she rips out her heart to summon Sin version of demons and not really paying any price for it other than looking weak for entire 2 seconds and healing without a trace, then she gets stabbed by Luka and just brushes it off, but somehow all the other Bayos and then her at the end die from a sneeze of a boss.
I'm surprised the visuals are such a mixed bag, because I thought astral chain looked really fantastic on switch. For all its flaws I remember thinking that platinum had reached a new level in terms of environments, which had often been a bit drab before. But I guess bayo 3 aims for 60fps and they couldn't carry that stuff over at a higher frame rate.
I think part of it was that AC only had two or three environment aesthetics and the art team went particularly hard on the futuristic city part. The sewers and “legion world” were very drab in comparison to the Ark levels.
New to your channel and I just finished the game yesterday so this was timely. I said the exact same thing about needing a whole game of Bayo and Luka's romance for it to feel deserved by the end aloud to my best friend when it was happening. The only point I disagree on was the villain being a bit weak. That is to say he was AWFUL haha. What were his motivations, even? I left the game so annoyed that I didn't know why he did any of this. The whole time he was on screen, I was like "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?"
Unrelated, but super stoked to hear your DMC 5 review after seeing this one.
The villain is a borderline non character
Game would have been better if the Homonculli were mindless force of destruction a la gray goo.
@@NIHIL_EGO Or souls of the damned that were bitter they never claimed by Heaven or Hell.
The first trailer of the game featured the military fighting monsters and then bayo showing up, the first trailer for dmc5 is basically the same but with Nero. Both games also end the same way….. kind of
And still no Metroid Dread review lol.
parallel universe multiverse is the shittiest writing trope to crop up of late.
Honestly, I agree with your video, but my biggest gripes with the game are that it feels like the equivalent of "Teen Titans Go" to "Teen Titans". To expound: they took a cursory glance at the original material in primarily 1 and some of 2, before then just deciding that was enough to get a full breadth of the series.
It felt like the character of Bayo, and all her growth through 1 and 2, were lost and not regained until the end of Cairo--not even fully. It also felt like they completely shat on the lore the series had built up by sloppily introducing the multiverse without considering the implications, with my favorite being that there must be at least 3 Madame Butterfly's to match the Bayo 1, 2, and 3 we see in the ending.
It just wanted to be so much, without doing any work to make sure it actually fit the series or style that had been established--let alone the fact that her portrayal as a character in the story felt so much less like a full, complex "woman in charge" and more "ogle the woman in power" this time around.
One of my biggest gripes with this game were the homunculi and their designs. They're so boring compared to the angels and demons.
Part of the charm in Bayonetta were the angels and how they represented different virtues. They usually had clever or at least memorable designs that took inspiration from lesser known depictions of angels and other creatures. And bayonetta 2 showed several demonic versions of these designs. And it was cool how angels looked like fleshy aliens covered in porcelain, and demons, in contrast, looked like robots.
But the homunculi don't follow any distinct design patterns. They're somewhat Hindu-inspired plant creatures that are named after clouds. But none of them have memorable designs and they all look the same due to having the same color palette. They're supposed to be bioweapons, but they don't even look organic.
They should have given them more distinct plant designs or at least made them look more like actual living creatures. They should have also given them more recognizable names that correlated with them being man-made creatures.
The Hommunculi should've just been human souls that turned into monsters after not being claimed by angels and demons. If they had to be plant-like, maybe thir names could've been references to the Qlipoth so it fits with the judeo-christian references embodied by the angels and demons of these games?
So glad im not the only one that absolutely hated the Design Change and absolutely loved the Angel Demon comparison of the first game
They were ligitemately creepy and cool asf with theire completely displaced Faces and weird voices coming off as beautiful and virtues while hiding ugly Monsters underneath
How can you fuck up a Design Theme so fricken hard.....
great point on the tone of the story. bayo 1 and 2 are different tonally but at least consistent within themselves. in 1 shes a little edgy and hard to get a read on, in 2 shes a more of a superhero. here its a bit hard to get a read on, as the stuff happening around her and her actions isnt rly consistent with the tone of the character as this reverent multiverse hero
Honestly Astral Chain might be the future of Platinum. Also I think a DMC 5 vs Bayonetta 3 video could be fun.
Agreed on both points!
I definitely get the criticisms but I've had more fun with 3 than the other 2 games. 2 is the least exciting for me, and while 1 is amazing its very frustrating with its insta kill QTEs, button mashing, backtracking, and the demon QTEs get old fast. There are things I wish the 3rd game did like have more creative levels and more hype bosses like the first (its very hard to top Kamiya to be fair), have less mini games, etc but it's highs are pretty high and it's lows aren't low enough imo.
If you were button mashing in Bayonetta 1, you were playing the game wrong.
@Dbzfan109 Shoulda been more specific. I actually meant the mashing you do for the QTEs and torture attacks. Some of those things are near impossible to get the max bonus. As far as actual combat bayo is probs my favorite. It's flow feels great
i remember hearing you play as Jeanne for some stealth levels as well and its hilariously damning that I don't think you even mentioned it, that... kinda tells me how good it was
I honestly loved the gimmick Demon boss fights in 3, especially the singing Baal one, just because of how fun the concepts are.
But I do wish we got these but ALSO had legitimately big bosses that I was fighting as Bayonetta herself.
One of the few Quality-of-life improvements I appreciated in Bayonetta 3 was the ranking-update system. In past games, it frustrated me that I couldn't restart a Verse if I didn't get Pure Platinum or even just Platinum, and I'd have to keep quitting the game and loading back in. With Bayonetta 3, while it's not ideal, I can at least try specific segments of a stage from the stage-select screen, and update my ranking on whichever verses are contained within them, which in turn would update my overall stage ranking. This way, I don't have to replay an entire level just because I fucked up on one battle. I don't have to do a perfect marathon, and this little bit of leeway was something Devil May Cry nailed as early as the third game. I just wish the game was more lenient when it comes to scoring players based on health, because losing health should suffice as punishment for taking damage (which, again, Devil May Cry developers understand)
It's just a shame that this wonderful feature came as late as it did, for a game that's overall less-polished and poorly-considered compared to past games. Getting a bog-standard Platinum on each stage was fine enough in most of Bayonetta's own stages (and surprisingly satisfying in the Jeanne spy segments, which I actually loved for what they were), but the prospect of doing this becomes a nightmare when it's time to play as Viola, who's mechanically anaemic, stylistically ugly and contemptable, and has the worst implementation of both a Witch Time trigger and a counter I've ever experienced in a character-action game. Every time I was forced to play as her, she turned what could've been a satisfying (albeit incredibly flawed) journey of mastery and betterment into one of the most frustrating gameplay experiences in the entire franchise, down there with Bayo 1's awful quick-time events and 2's shitty walking sections.
I enjoyed Bayonetta 3 for the most part, and I honestly wouldn't mind getting a full eShop game based on Jeanne's spy segments with a new story and more content. But it's easily the sloppiest game in the series, with a poorly-executed passing-of-the-torch story that felt undeserved and removed the entire reason I'd want to play these games in the first place. Viola fucking sucks, and I'm much less inclined to continue investing in the franchise with her at the helm, even with any improvements to her gameplay, because she's a fundamentally-flawed character and cringe as fuck. The sort of girl who represents the most obnoxious modern-day women of first-world countries. The Nero comparisons are inaccurate, and not only ignore the fundamental problems with a character nobody asked for nor needed and was introduced by the time players were already getting accustomed to Bayonetta's moveset (only for Viola to then strip them of the many combat options they'd accumulated), but does a disservice to Nero, a character who HAD potential, was introduced from the start so as to ease players in with his more limited moveset, and mechanics like the Blue Rose charge shot and Devil Bringer to help him stand out from the rest of the cast. Nero was fun from the start, and his limited moveset wasn't as much of an issue as Viola's due to the DMC combat system rewarding players for cycling between different attacks rather than spamming the same ones ad nauseum. They also didn't completely kill Dante off, even in DMC5 where Nero got a much-needed facelift visually and mechanically, so there's still something for veterans and combo maniacs to keep coming back to, which I now can't say about Viola and Bayonetta.
For me gameplay wise Bayo 3 feels like a sequel to Astral Chain and not Bayo 2
Not only that. It feels like a test for platinums new ip project GG. Its supposed to be a heavily based kaiju style combat game and the entire time I was playing bayo 3 I kept thinking. "This is gonna be in their new ip"
Probably a ton of repurposed assets from the canceled Scalebound project as well.
@@gameinspection4999 bruh the Kaiju sections where the absolute worst thing I have ever played in any game ever, it was wild. Who thought it was a good idea to introduce rock-paper-scissors that has a 5 second button delay lol. The 1st time through me off, and the 2nd time made me actually upset I had to do it again.
@@Pheonixess Oh my stars this so much. I don't mind playing a big monster but don't make me do a fucking rock paper scissors. At least Queen Butterfly, Phantom and Baal Zebul were handled better.
Thank you! After seeing all the praises flooded the internet I thought I was the only person who finds B3 way worse...
When you stressed that using summons makes Bayonetta herself weaker, I was screaming internally. So very true. If you don't use summon and Bayo only, you'll be dragged into prolonged fights because her punches don't hit that hard, at least not anymore. Basically players are forced to use summons. The demons are very cool looking and everything, but I bought this game in order to enjoy the combos, not monsters spewing fire at each other.
Although Bayonetta is not a "story heavy" series, I do hope they could write more about Bayo and Luka. I completely agree with you that I'm happy to see them get together, but it just feels rushed and the dev team did not put enough substance to back it up, making the ending less impactful.
I am a casual player who entered this series because I liked B1's combat system. B2 is my favorite that I even finish the Hard difficulty with Platinum. B3 is just... picking up some of the worst aspects of the previous titles. Awful camera again, endless mini games, stupidly difficult enemies... Those time gated blocks are incredibly infuriating to collect that I almost gave up on this game.
Yeah, this video cements my thoughts on the game almost perfectly. I beat it yesterday and there's a lot of stuff I like, but also a lot I'm not so hot on.
I've described this game as "Diet Bayo" to folks I've talked to about the game, and this really just expands my thoughts.
It is a shame Charlie skipped out on Astral Chain. The stuff Bayonetta 3 struggles to do (and sacrifices a lot of why Bayonetta is fun to do so) is done so much better there.
Yes, the fact that the “summons”, the legion, in astral chain are about the same size as the character doesn’t sacrifice bad camera. Also, you can still get an S rank, even if you took damage, makes it more possible to S rank on ultimate difficulty. Also that graphics an art style in AC is a lot better than Bayo3
Astral Chain's got problems, but yeah I'd honestly have to say it handled the demon summoning better.
The more I think about Astral Chain the better I think that game is. It's not perfect but I think I like it more than Bayo 1 (Bayo 2 is my fav of platinum's output)
@@lunasperidot8760 I love it!
Steepest learning curve in action game history but oh man is it worth it
@@seanedwards3536 WHat are some of Astral Chain's problems, if it's alright to ask?
Simply the best more critical, fairly negative review about Bayonetta 3. That's why I really like Brit's channel
For a Multiverse plot, the only alternate universe I was left wanting to go was the one in which the series isn't chained to underpowered hardware where we could had the equivalent of Bayonetta in the RE engine, well who knows maybe next gen Nintendo pick ups the slack eventually, Kamiya says he isn't done with the series.
Also glad to see a fan who actually doesn't turn his dissapointment with the plot against Luka's character, seems like everybodyelse and their mom redirected all their anger to the poor guy acting like suddenly is a crime Cereza ends up with a man or greatly exagerating their own dislike of Luka.
The game wouldn't look much better if it was on other consoles, certainly nothing like an RE Engine game. Platinum's tech is woefully outdated.
On the subject of Pure Platinums, the game saving your best medal rankings for each individual verse and permanently using those in the overall chapter tally is something I'm of two minds of. On the one hand, players can just focus on the individual battles they need to without having to perfect everything else in a chapter, but on the other hand is that really rewarding skill when you can just mesh the best bits of your runs together? Runs that on their own are gonna be sloppy to give attention to the fights you need Pure Platinum on. I guess if you've got something to prove you can always upload an All Verse Pure Platinum run video but the game doesn't seem interested in recognizing if you can do such a thing. It's only focusing on one battle at a time and then adding it all together after the fact.
I think the reason they chose to go with this stiching your best performances together method is because they included so many non combat verses in the chapters. They knew it would be a total pain to PP chapters because of them and this is their way to avoid that frustration.
It's also frustrating because checkpoints are not as common anymore. Doing this game the old fashioned way literally has me pulling my hair out in frustration because you'll end up doing three or four verses in a row before a checkpoint. It sort of gnaws at the perfectionist in me after awhile and holds the game back for me by a mile. I mean if they casualized Verses, why implement so many changes like harder checkpoints and having the pause screen break your combo? Who is this game for exactly? It tries to cater to casuals and hardcore gamers alike but doesn't really deliver in either aspect. It's more often detrimental to the overall experience rather than making me want to play.
I guess they thought only pros would PP the whole Chapter…
Which I have seen in TH-cam
You really want to restart an entire chapter when you mess up on the gimmick bosses?? You REALLY want that?????
I’m surprised there wasn’t a riff on just how comically bad this game handles it’s “Viola getting Fairy Trigger” moment. Like DMC4 at least puts some weight and character on Nero syncing with the Yamato and awakening his Devil Trigger and we don’t even need to talk about how epic it was handled in 5.
i think the major issue platinum has with this series is it's always trying to top the sceptical of the gameplay and story of the first game. the second game had hell and time shenanigans to compete with heaven and space from the first with a busted devil trigger to beat normal wicked weaves, then the next game tries to up the scale by having the demon fully control able compared devil trigger in 2, demon masquerade to out do wicked weaves, while the story has multiverse. hell i bet that's why they changed protags so they can reset the scale when they never had to any off all that. all they had to do was surpass bayo 1 with mechanical gameplay not sceptical gameplay and story.
The one thing that kept breaking my immersion is how some of the goons looks like someone on a greenscreen tight suit that just scanned and didn't bother with addition whatsoever, they just slaps some grey colors on that scan lmao
Hmmm... I pretty much disagree with everything you said, gameplay-wise. I don't think Bayo 3's changes are either "better" or "worse" than its predecessors, just different. All 3 have some distinctions. And I also felt that there was just the right amount of demon slave necessity in battles. There is a pseudo "demon offset" that I tended to use. But my biggest disagreement is that 3 nerfed her standard moveset. I didn't feel this at all and thought her standard X combo was broken seeing how much movement she gets out of it. I do agree with the absence of giant boss battles. But I wouldn't want them in exchange for the demon-minigames, as I also liked those just fine. Would be nice to have both. Also, you can get Scarborough and Love is Blue after beating the game if you don't have save files.
10:16 No, I never got the impression she was "making" the demons with her hair. Balder literally kills two of them in front of her. It's always been her summoning demons with her hair.
Are you sure about Scarborough and Love is blue? I've only read you can get them only through the save data thing. I know you get the bayo 1 amd 2 costumes after beating the game but not the guns
@@ShinPepsiman Apparently, you're right; there is no other way? I couldn't check since I have 1 and 2 for Switch. Read this was the case on two other sites and had no reason to doubt it.
I've been having so much fun with the game but I agree with almost all of your criticism. Like you said. The first Bayonetta is complete. Regardless, I've played the hell out of this game.
Compared to Bayo 2, which feels like DLC,
Wtf, Bayonetta 2 is the one that feels like a dlc from the first game, 3 is too different from the previous ones
@@Lu.- Yes, that's what I said...
Final Fantasy 16 has done Kaiju battles better than Bayonetta 3 did.
when i was playing bayonetta 3 I did find stuff i enjoyed about it. that being said as time keeps going forward i doubt ill really come back to this game. I never really got into the whole idea of luka and bayo getting together and when it happend it just sort of felt very last minute and out of left field. like the only reason they die is because luka makes a bad call not to one shot the demon and then go after viola and that is just hyper unsatisfying to kill off and replace bayo with viola.
I enjoyed Bayo 3 alot gameplay wise. However, The story and scenarios really did sour me on the whole experience. Especially the finale. How many times do I beat the bad guy only for him to confirm I wasn't doing anything, to then power up and beat him again ect...? Either way great video
Oh wow, we're heading to Bayonetta 3 already? Well, time to buckle up and watch!
I hope you still plan on making a Bayonetta 2 video.
Technically he did when it launched. But you're probably hoping for a re-review lol
@@SonicKick Yeah, I kinda forgot I already watched it haha.
Wow, i did not expect to see a bayonetta 3 review so soon after the previous video, but I'm very glad to hear all my problems with Bayo 3 be articulated so well, because it spares me from spewing vitriol into the uncaring void. All "professional" coverage of bayonetta 3 ignored the game's mechanical problems and focused on the story, which wasn't even bad for the reasons they describe.
Anyway, for me the biggest problem with the Demon Slave system is how it undermines the feeling of control you have in bayonetta. I understand Bayonetta isn't actually controlling gomorrah when she summons the big bad dragon, but the delay between the input and the attack connecting feels bad, no matter how much you spin it as bayonetta commanding a demon, rather than the player controlling it. If the demon slave was more like a devil trigger form with various powerful attacks, I could see it enhancing the core gameplay, but as it stands, I vowed to never use it, until I felt forced to in the last third of the game by enemies who will literally bubble and shield themselves from bayonetta's own attacks. Getting some unpleasant DmC flashbacks there.
The point about bayonetta getting nerfed to make place for the new features is I think best explained with witch time. In bayonetta 1, witch time was amazing because of how unnecessary it was. You felt like you were making the game a fool of itself, because the enemies were perfectly fair to fight even without it, so any time you activate witch time feels like a reward for skillful play, a point made clear when the highest difficulty removes witch time entirely.
In Bayonetta 3, the enemies are so aggressive that witch time becomes an absolute necessity, and witch time isn't disabled for infinite climax, so the game feels like it's only allowing you to do anything after you've perfectly dodged the badly telegraphed attack.
Still hoping for those Dread and NMH3 videos
The story really dragged this down for me. The first two were such fun romps and this one felt really hollow outside of some fun set pieces. Never been a fan of the bayo/luka ship either so that really fell flat for me at the end
Glad to see someone acknowledge the Luka Bayo dynamic in this light. I feel like the vast majority of the negative reactions to their relationship was the fact that she didn't end up with Jeanne which eclipsed the bigger issue, Bayo and Luka's relationship was already well established, it just got sidelined in the second game, and then brought back in 3 with barely any interaction between the two until the finale. I thought the Arch Adam and Arch Eve stuff was really weird and jarring but that's mainly because they hardly spent the time fleshing it out in this game. For something so important to the story it hardly gets the service it warrants.
Then there's the Homunculi and Singularity, again some really good potential for this ridiculous threat that instead of originating from Heaven or Hell, came from the in-between, Chaos, some more time with the villain to understand it's motivation and why it is collapsing everything and maybe witnessing the discourse of the angels and demons and how THEY'RE dealing with the threat not only would have fleshed it out more, but would have upped the stakes.
Can you imagine how cool it would have been if at the end when Bayo's seal breaks and she's about to get snacked on by Gomorrah, Madama Butterfly comes out and tames that motherfucker signifying the importance and bond Bayo developed with her demons throughout this game? Man...
That last paragraph with your idea managed to hype me up way more than most of Bayo 3's supposedly "hype" moments. 😆 It's kinda sad to think how much potential Bayo 3's writing ended up wasting, although PG had no shortage of interesting concepts to explore.
@@BeatGoat Agreed, they have some really cool ideas and lots of room for them, they're just really inconsistent when it comes to execution. It sucks because I think the way Bayo 2' story ties in with Bayo 1 is actually brilliant, but 3 came along and kinda just disrupted the perfect circle dynamic the series had... Heh, kind of fitting actually if you look at the logo of the game.
I'm enjoying the salt about her being straight.
@@alastor8091 This is why we can't have nice things.
@@NIHIL_EGO ???