I've been wanting to get around to this game for a while. A couple years back my roommate at the time had a copy of Bayonetta for the WiiU and I was always want to play through it, but I never had the time because I had higher priority games on my radar, like the twentieth rerelease of Kingdom Hearts II. So when Bayonetta was announced for Switch, I was super stoked, made it a high priority buy and determined once I finished whatever 52 game I was working on, I would put this up next as my pick for the 52. And it came at a pretty good time all things considered. Having very recently beaten the Wonderful 101, I sort of got a perspective of a good Platinum Studios game vs. a bad one, as well as knowing ahead of time what complaints I was probably going to have about Bayonetta. As well, I had just finished a game, Strong Bad, that I was very much not having a good time with and I needed this to lighten my mood. With that said, let's dive right into Bayonetta.
Bayonetta puts you into the gun-heeled shoes of the titular character, an amnesiac witch with love for firearms and a hatred of the divine. Amnesia is one of the oldest tropes in video games, every franchise amounts to the amnesiac protagonist deal at some point or another. But what I like about Bayonetta is how the amnesia isn't the focus. Bayonetta, of course, wants her memories back, but she doesn't obsess over it, like, at all. Rather she's been functioning just fine in the world for the past 20 years and doesn't seem to especially miss her memories. However, her definition of 'functioning just fine' involves endlessly paying off a deal she made with the residents of Inferno(or Hell, if you prefer) to slaughter their enemies on a daily basis or else her soul is forfeit. Not to mention the fact that the residents of Paradisio have a special interest in her, believing her to be the key to resurrecting their missing leader, Jubileus. And then, of course, there's the matter of the mysterious witch that frequently appears, antagonizing Bayonetta with knowledge of her past, as well as the mysterious little girl that the divine seem to be taking a vested interest in. It's up to Bayonetta to rescue the girl, beat the bad guys and save the world from Armageddon. Makes you ache for the days where you basically just crashed funerals.
The story of Bayonetta is basically a late 90s Apocalypse action movie if the main character was Xenia Onatopp. On the surface, it seems kind of cheesy and, yeah, it pretty much is. I think with as much cool mythology is going on in this game, the writers kind of knew they were writing a B-Movie. There's a lot of long exposition sequences, a lot of over the top acting and a lot of humor sprinkled throughout, particularly from Bayonetta herself who is incredibly sarcastic and patronizing and frequently doesn't get to learn about her past because she gets bored with the long speeches and kills the speaker. It's like the game wants to be taken seriously, but it doesn't take itself seriously. And while that kind of storytelling can create a messy storyline, it really works here. Though, it's not perfect storytelling. The game attempts to throw twists at you and they have basically a 0% success rate. I'm not sure, given the game's tone, if they actually intended on these twists being super obvious or not, but since they keep on not revealing them until the very end, I'm going to have to go with them intending on these twists and turns fooling you, and they just don't.
 |
| Okay, her looks REALLY don't hurt. |
I'm going to say this up front, Bayonetta is one of my favorite protagonists in anything ever. I absolutely adore how she carries herself. She lost her memory? So what, she's got stuff to do. Someone shows up from her past antagonizing her? Kick her in the face. The divine's speech going on too long? Stab him in the forehead to shut him up. Bayonetta is by far one of the most unabashedly awesome characters that have ever been put in a video game. Not to mention that she's insanely funny, having some of the best taunts and one-liners I've ever heard. And, of course, Bayonetta's looks don't hurt either. She's all the best parts about the femme fatale and, while she's not the most complex character, the writing for her just makes it work so well. She's the real highlight of this journey overall and I look forward to experiencing her future endeavors.
Bayonetta's combat system is incredible. You have a lot of freedom in terms of mobility, weapon types, attack combos and the game's finishers, the Wicked Weaves. Bayonetta almost plays like a Street Fighter game with how fast and fluid the combat is. There is a learning curve, but the game doesn't leave you stranded if you don't want to learn the super fancy stuff. There's a lot of very simple combos you can use to deal a lot of damage, which I admittedly relied on throughout most of my experience. It's both a fault with me, wanting to get through the game without needing a ton of practice, but also a fault with the game, its attempts to be user-friendly don't incentivize the learning curve. By the end of the game, I had at least a dozen combos I'd never even used on just about every weapon. But, other than that, Bayonetta's combat seems actually built for the time-based and rank-based gameplay that Platinum tends to favor in their games. Not to mention the wonders of Witch Time, where dodging at the proper times allows you to enter a hyperspeed state where time appears to slow down, giving you free easy hits without the stress. It's just so much fun overall and I love it so much.
This is the part where I ramble about difficulty and, yeah, Bayonetta is pretty punishing. Admittedly, a large part of this is just me being bad at video games in general, but Bayonetta is still very punishing and very cheap. All my favorites of the Platinum formula return, like enemies that take too long to defeat, need specific weapons and timing to even damage and deal massive amounts of damage to you, or instant death traps you can't possibly know are coming in a game that has no live system and punishes you for using continues. But how about we add quick time events that require split-second timing that you're bound to fail your first time because you have no idea they're coming up to the mix? Also, Bayonetta does the same thing Wonderful 101 does where the hardest boss in the game is technically just a recurring miniboss that is way harder than any of the actual bosses in the game. In fact, while Bayonetta has a more forgiving difficulty curve than other Platinum games I've played, all of the actual bosses are pretty much jokes, whereas the other witch character can cause me to lose so many continues that the game just actually stops counting. I eventually just stopped caring about the rankings because I'm bad at video games and using just one continue makes your run near unsalvageable, and I had more fun with the game as of that point. Really, I just don't think I'm ever going to agree with how Platinum makes games, but they're at least still usually fun.
When I talked about the Wonderful 101, I mentioned that I had a major issue with how it couldn't keep itself focused on just the core gameplay. Well, Bayonetta does that too and, yeah, it's pretty much just as bad. Like, none of the segments where it does this are especially long or slow-paced like the Wonderful 101's were. But the tradeoff is that they're super infrequent and, as a result, way more jarring. Like, in the Wonderful 101, I kind of expected at least once a chapter that I was going to have to quickly adapt to some half-baked idea for a stage and that was just how it was. Here in Bayonetta, they keep the gameplay focused throughout most of the game and then near the end just randomly throw all of this at you. It kind of crushed my enjoyment of the game, but the overall product was so strong that I just kept going with it, which was a really solid decision overall.
My experience with Bayonetta was pretty mixed but overall positive. For all the punishing segments, overpowered enemies and out of nowhere motorcycle segments, there was a lot of thought, a lot of heart, and one thoroughly awesome character to tie it all together. I highly recommend it if you haven't played it. As frustrating as it tends to be, it's just so fun and so rewarding to play through. I can't wait to play through the sequel and I'm so stoked for the third game. I hope you enjoyed this look at Bayonetta and next time we'll be talking about Life is Strange: Before the Storm, a prequel to one of my favorite games. See ya then.
Ethan's backlog:
https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist
This is the part where I ramble about difficulty and, yeah, Bayonetta is pretty punishing. Admittedly, a large part of this is just me being bad at video games in general, but Bayonetta is still very punishing and very cheap. All my favorites of the Platinum formula return, like enemies that take too long to defeat, need specific weapons and timing to even damage and deal massive amounts of damage to you, or instant death traps you can't possibly know are coming in a game that has no live system and punishes you for using continues. But how about we add quick time events that require split-second timing that you're bound to fail your first time because you have no idea they're coming up to the mix? Also, Bayonetta does the same thing Wonderful 101 does where the hardest boss in the game is technically just a recurring miniboss that is way harder than any of the actual bosses in the game. In fact, while Bayonetta has a more forgiving difficulty curve than other Platinum games I've played, all of the actual bosses are pretty much jokes, whereas the other witch character can cause me to lose so many continues that the game just actually stops counting. I eventually just stopped caring about the rankings because I'm bad at video games and using just one continue makes your run near unsalvageable, and I had more fun with the game as of that point. Really, I just don't think I'm ever going to agree with how Platinum makes games, but they're at least still usually fun.
When I talked about the Wonderful 101, I mentioned that I had a major issue with how it couldn't keep itself focused on just the core gameplay. Well, Bayonetta does that too and, yeah, it's pretty much just as bad. Like, none of the segments where it does this are especially long or slow-paced like the Wonderful 101's were. But the tradeoff is that they're super infrequent and, as a result, way more jarring. Like, in the Wonderful 101, I kind of expected at least once a chapter that I was going to have to quickly adapt to some half-baked idea for a stage and that was just how it was. Here in Bayonetta, they keep the gameplay focused throughout most of the game and then near the end just randomly throw all of this at you. It kind of crushed my enjoyment of the game, but the overall product was so strong that I just kept going with it, which was a really solid decision overall.
No comments:
Post a Comment