Bayonetta 3 - Announced for Switch

[Hexx]

Am I imagining it or are there loads more enemies/attacks without audio cues in this?

[dataDave]

22 minutes ago, Hexx said:

Am I imagining it or are there loads more enemies/attacks without audio cues in this?

 

That's right. They're mostly gone. As well as hitting you from off-screen enemies will also stack their attacks, so even if you dodge the first one the second one is a guaranteed hit.

 

I'm also dragging myself through the game. I just want to unlock Witch Trials ASAP and be done with all of this platforming and all of these "CRAZY!" bits. Some of these stages are so blandly designed that they could be mistaken as being procedurally generated. I wouldn't mind so much if they were packed with encounters, but they're not, they're just empty.

 

The auto-aim has been acting up quite a lot, too. Sometimes it'll target something randomly which is very far away, rather than the things nearby. I'm finding that I have to manually lock-on each and every single time to avoid that.

[skondo]

I appear to have a Bayonetta Switch code if anyone would like it? Not sure how long I’ve had the card, but I can’t see an expiry date on it.

 

Code has gone.

[Hexx]

And done. About 15 hours, mostly silver on standard

Utterly baffled by strong reviews. It's a 6/10 or 7/10 game. But it's so disappointing because of what came before - so it hits even harder.

There's lightest of spoilers in here - such as mentioning locations or some gameplay bits, but nothing that should be too spoilerific if you've been reading previews/reviews, but wanted to be safe.

Spoiler

They clearly didn't want to make a Bayonetta game. 

 

Do you like Bayonetta? Well you can play as her for just over half the game! Do you like her fluid responsive combat! Bad luck as 75% of the time you'll be control demon summons or kaijuesque fights.

That's before you get on the changes to combat mechanics like removing audio queues.

 

The story is a disaster from start to finish. Nothing makes any sense. It's offensively disjointed and dumb. Motivations, powers and plans aren't explained. Characters teleport. Plot points appear out of no where.

 

The biggest disappointment after combat is the game is SO BORING to be in. There's basically no imagination and flair to it. This looks worse than a 360 game in 95% of it's environments. It's grey, drab and dull. They idea of exploring it to look for extra verses (or more like one of a billion collectables) doesn't appeal.

 

But previously they made up for poor graphics with spectacular presentation/ideas (e.g. anything in Paridiso or similar in B1, playing with gravity etc in space).

Or you fight the last boss on the ruins of an exploding skyscraper as you plummet to earth, spinning. As he throws satellites and buildings as you. (Or in outer space against the god of creation throwing ice, fire, magic at you)

 

In B3 you fight in a grey blocky city ruin, surrounded by grey blocky skyscrappers against a grey/green humanoid who could be ANY enemy in the game they're so boring and similar

 

World 1 : Block Grey Tokoyo City
Hub world - The lab island of the luman sages and umbra witches as the experiment with the multiverses - could be any grassy/mountain world from any old game
World 2: Block Ancient Japan World with PS2 quality lava
Traversal World - "The Chaos dimension". Grey rocks with red lights one floating in a grey void
World 3: Generic Desert level with Generic "tomb" buildings
World 4: Generic Grey Tokoyo City...sorry "Paris" City,
World 5: Generic Grey Tokoyo City...sorry "New York" City

 

I've forgotten one sorry but that's how dull they are.

 

Plus every world is boxed in by grey fog walls, where you can see the pattern the tessellated squares are the size of you character.

 

I don't get why they went with a multiverse for such boring locations - the other Bayonettas have no purpose except to be skins or give antagonist Bayonetta new weapons. They have no real characterisations or impact on narrative.

 

It's not a bad game. But it's exceedingly mediocre - seemingly throwing away anything that made the series "different". I wouldn't be so disappointed but as I said, I'm utterly confounded by the reviews and the stuff they don't mentioned. The ending is [i]exceedingl[/i]y problematic - I'm surprised Nintendo didn't step in an say "No. You can't put that message on our console".  

 

Actual spoilers now

Spoiler

WTF is up with Luka? He's suddenly a fairy werewolf with a drive for truth? Who's been hearing voices his entire life?? That's evil until he's not...because Elf prince Luka also joined. And then he can control multiverse portals...once?

They're Adam and Eve? What? And Arch-Adam/Eve? And the origin?

Ignoring the out of no where love declaration that makes no sense in the series history (even without shipping Jeanne :P) - there's something very very unhealthy about him choosing to effectively commit suicide and go to hell with her for eternity (doubly so when their troubled daughter-ish is right next to them). That should not be a grand romantic gesture it's presented as here. Again I'm actually amazed Nintendo let that message on their console.

So Siguard-in-rags sent Viola to another world to find Siguardagain as Singularity killed Bayonetta1, but Siguardagain was also Singularity and Siguard-in-rags was sending Viola to find himself masquerading as Sigurdagain, so...Yeah. It makes no sense except they wanted to have a "We've been played" surprise twist!

Beyond "being evil" and "destroying the world" I've no idea what the villains motivation was. Or how they were so strong. Or what they were actually doing. At the start it's implied this hithertoo unseen levels of powers was letting htem destroy worlds, gets them more power so they can take on the Trinity of Reality? But then nothing comes of that. And at the end it's all about Truth? what?

 

Something quite sad that B1 and B2 Bayonetta - which are now separate universes -  both died "off screen"

 

[ZOK]

I’m finding it a lot of fun! But I’ve never played any of the others so I’ve nothing to compare it to. It’s just a silly, fun game.

[dataDave]

Some parts are funny, but I don’t know about fun. It’s all over the place. There’s no chance I’m ever going to be replaying any of these novelty sections for the grades, as the majority of them control like utter shit.

 

The Jeanne ‘stealth’ levels are also laughably poor.

 

I feel like I’m skipping 80% of the game in an effort to get back to the combat, but then when I’m back in control I find myself platforming through levels which have been lifted from a PSP-era Square Enix action RPG. Some of those fragmented stone sections where you have to collect the five parts do a really good job of highlighting how atrocious the platforming is (Chapter 7, Viola). When you fail one of those you have to go back to the stone to reactivate the challenge, which is fine, but once triggered it goes into really. slow. motion. to show you where it’s placing each of the pieces. Like you wouldn’t fucking know after failing twice. You can’t even skip that sequence. I spent a lot of time having to watch that one repeatedly last night because trying to precisely jump up a thin tree with branches that can fuck the physics and catapult you into space if you jump into them at a slightly wrong angle is fucking hard work, so is dealing with a grappling hook which activates if you hold the jump button just a tad longer than required, flinging you off in a random direction once it clips with the scenery. I felt like I was on an AVGN episode.

 

I might just trade my copy in while I get a good return on it. I honestly had more fun playing Korra.

[ZOK]

10 minutes ago, dataDave said:

There’s no chance I’m ever going to be replaying any of these novelty sections for the grades

Not my idea of fun at all! I’m just playing it for the ride. I thought about dropping it down to casual as I only want to see the story, but it seems so easy to get golds anyway I’ll probably stick with standard.

[Gambit]

9 hours ago, Hexx said:

And done. About 15 hours, mostly silver on standard

Utterly baffled by strong reviews. It's a 6/10 or 7/10 game. But it's so disappointing because of what came before - so it hits even harder.

There's lightest of spoilers in here - such as mentioning locations or some gameplay bits, but nothing that should be too spoilerific if you've been reading previews/reviews, but wanted to be safe.

  Reveal hidden contents

They clearly didn't want to make a Bayonetta game. 

 

Do you like Bayonetta? Well you can play as her for just over half the game! Do you like her fluid responsive combat! Bad luck as 75% of the time you'll be control demon summons or kaijuesque fights.

That's before you get on the changes to combat mechanics like removing audio queues.

 

The story is a disaster from start to finish. Nothing makes any sense. It's offensively disjointed and dumb. Motivations, powers and plans aren't explained. Characters teleport. Plot points appear out of no where.

 

The biggest disappointment after combat is the game is SO BORING to be in. There's basically no imagination and flair to it. This looks worse than a 360 game in 95% of it's environments. It's grey, drab and dull. They idea of exploring it to look for extra verses (or more like one of a billion collectables) doesn't appeal.

 

But previously they made up for poor graphics with spectacular presentation/ideas (e.g. anything in Paridiso or similar in B1, playing with gravity etc in space).

Or you fight the last boss on the ruins of an exploding skyscraper as you plummet to earth, spinning. As he throws satellites and buildings as you. (Or in outer space against the god of creation throwing ice, fire, magic at you)

 

In B3 you fight in a grey blocky city ruin, surrounded by grey blocky skyscrappers against a grey/green humanoid who could be ANY enemy in the game they're so boring and similar

 

World 1 : Block Grey Tokoyo City
Hub world - The lab island of the luman sages and umbra witches as the experiment with the multiverses - could be any grassy/mountain world from any old game
World 2: Block Ancient Japan World with PS2 quality lava
Traversal World - "The Chaos dimension". Grey rocks with red lights one floating in a grey void
World 3: Generic Desert level with Generic "tomb" buildings
World 4: Generic Grey Tokoyo City...sorry "Paris" City,
World 5: Generic Grey Tokoyo City...sorry "New York" City

 

I've forgotten one sorry but that's how dull they are.

 

Plus every world is boxed in by grey fog walls, where you can see the pattern the tessellated squares are the size of you character.

 

I don't get why they went with a multiverse for such boring locations - the other Bayonettas have no purpose except to be skins or give antagonist Bayonetta new weapons. They have no real characterisations or impact on narrative.

 

It's not a bad game. But it's exceedingly mediocre - seemingly throwing away anything that made the series "different". I wouldn't be so disappointed but as I said, I'm utterly confounded by the reviews and the stuff they don't mentioned. The ending is [i]exceedingl[/i]y problematic - I'm surprised Nintendo didn't step in an say "No. You can't put that message on our console".  

 

Actual spoilers now

  Reveal hidden contents

WTF is up with Luka? He's suddenly a fairy werewolf with a drive for truth? Who's been hearing voices his entire life?? That's evil until he's not...because Elf prince Luka also joined. And then he can control multiverse portals...once?

They're Adam and Eve? What? And Arch-Adam/Eve? And the origin?

Ignoring the out of no where love declaration that makes no sense in the series history (even without shipping Jeanne :P) - there's something very very unhealthy about him choosing to effectively commit suicide and go to hell with her for eternity (doubly so when their troubled daughter-ish is right next to them). That should not be a grand romantic gesture it's presented as here. Again I'm actually amazed Nintendo let that message on their console.

So Siguard-in-rags sent Viola to another world to find Siguardagain as Singularity killed Bayonetta1, but Siguardagain was also Singularity and Siguard-in-rags was sending Viola to find himself masquerading as Sigurdagain, so...Yeah. It makes no sense except they wanted to have a "We've been played" surprise twist!

Beyond "being evil" and "destroying the world" I've no idea what the villains motivation was. Or how they were so strong. Or what they were actually doing. At the start it's implied this hithertoo unseen levels of powers was letting htem destroy worlds, gets them more power so they can take on the Trinity of Reality? But then nothing comes of that. And at the end it's all about Truth? what?

 

Something quite sad that B1 and B2 Bayonetta - which are now separate universes -  both died "off screen"

 

 

I'm around chapter 6 and I agree with this so far. When you're playing as Bayonetta just doing cool shit it's a lot of fun but..

 

Spoiler

The Jeanne stealth bit was like a terrible version of those side scrolling Assassin Creed games and good god the train. Having to destroy everything at the same time almost drive me insane.

 

Also I'm finding Viola a bit like having Scrappy Doo in your team. Playing as her now and everytime you clear an area and she throws up the devil horns I almost cringe inside out.

 

Really confused by the 9/10's I've seen. So far it's easily the weakest in the series. Can't wait to see this ending everyone is talking about though.

[Nick R]

1 hour ago, dataDave said:

I honestly had more fun playing Korra.

 

Ouch, that's harsh! 😬

 

Spoiler

I was actually quite fond of the Korra game, but that's mostly because I like the TV series, and on one of the later levels I liked switching to airbending and watching the combo meter go up and up.

[Goemon]

9 hours ago, dataDave said:

Some parts are funny, but I don’t know about fun. It’s all over the place. There’s no chance I’m ever going to be replaying any of these novelty sections for the grades, as the majority of them control like utter shit.

 

The Jeanne ‘stealth’ levels are also laughably poor.

 

I feel like I’m skipping 80% of the game in an effort to get back to the combat, but then when I’m back in control I find myself platforming through levels which have been lifted from a PSP-era Square Enix action RPG. Some of those fragmented stone sections where you have to collect the five parts do a really good job of highlighting how atrocious the platforming is (Chapter 7, Viola). When you fail one of those you have to go back to the stone to reactivate the challenge, which is fine, but once triggered it goes into really. slow. motion. to show you where it’s placing each of the pieces. Like you wouldn’t fucking know after failing twice. You can’t even skip that sequence. I spent a lot of time having to watch that one repeatedly last night because trying to precisely jump up a thin tree with branches that can fuck the physics and catapult you into space if you jump into them at a slightly wrong angle is fucking hard work, so is dealing with a grappling hook which activates if you hold the jump button just a tad longer than required, flinging you off in a random direction once it clips with the scenery. I felt like I was on an AVGN episode.

 

I might just trade my copy in while I get a good return on it. I honestly had more fun playing Korra.

The more I see from Platinum, the more I think they fluked the original Bayonetta. They seem to have no idea what made the first one great and seem more focused on making goofy over the top novelty sections over flushing out fighting mechanics.

[NickyDrinks]

I couldn't take what felt like combat I just could barely follow so switched over to the emulator after the intro. At 60fps this is so much better but I'm wondering if it shows up the weaknesses even more compared to the first 2 games (1 in particular). Summoning the demons and mashing buttons in the hope that they'll do something in the distance just isn't very fun, the very first trial instructing you to "chomp" or whatever it was took me a good 3 or 4 goes before I even worked out what move it wanted me to use, mash R apparently. I'm still having fun with it (a hell of a lot more than I was wrestling with it on Switch) but so far it feels like the first game with the auto-combat on and a couple of buttons to fire off super special moves. I don't think the first game was a fluke since we also got Astral Chain but Bayonetta 3 always had a weird feeling about it from the gameplay we were shown, as if they were worried that there wasn't an awful lot else to show other than cut-scenes that show what in the previous games you'd have actually been in control of.

 

I don't remember getting so frustrated with the cut-scenes in the first two either to the point where I was saying, "Oh ffs just get on with it". It made me want to put on DMC5 with 144hz again and play through the Special Edition that I've still not really got stuck into properly.

 

Edit : Also at 60fps I was getting a lot more Platinum trophies than I'd have expected, if you disable v-sync the whole game speeds up so it appears to have been balanced with the slow-down taken into consideration which can't be a great sign.

[Hexx]

38 minutes ago, NickyDrinks said:

L Summoning the demons and mashing buttons in the hope that they'll do something in the distance just isn't very fun

Make sure to be locked on 

[Sarlaccfood]

Yeah you know what….I don’t think I like this either. Both the environment and enemies are quite uninspiring, the story is all over the shop and lacks any peril and tonally it’s so embarrassing, but there’s so fucking much of it.
 

In the past I’ve overlooked pretty much all of these aspects because the gameplay is so tight, but in this I just feel overwhelmed with choice paralysis when fighting. I’ve no desire to unlock any extra moves or anything because I’m still getting to grips with the ones I have and I can’t fucking see what’s going on anyway so there’s no joy in styling things out. 

[dataDave]

Yeah, the manual lock-on is essential for every encounter.

 

2 hours ago, NickyDrinks said:

I don't think the first game was a fluke since we also got Astral Chain

 

And Transformers Devastation, and also TW101 to a slightly lesser extent.

  

2 minutes ago, Sarlaccfood said:

In the past I’ve overlooked pretty much all of these aspects because the gameplay is so tight, but in this I just feel overwhelmed with choice paralysis when fighting. I’ve no desire to unlock any extra moves or anything because I’m still getting to grips with the ones I have and I can’t fucking see what’s going on anyway so there’s no joy in styling things out. 

 

I've unlocked almost everything other than the endgame stuff. I've actively avoided upgrading my regular moveset outside of Demon Slave because despite upgrades being fun and experimental it's only going to sabotage my scoring potential. This is backwards - flexing the game's toolkit should reward you with scoring buffs.

[Sarlaccfood]

Me trying to make out enemy attack cues in this game:

 

[CarloOos]

4 hours ago, Goemon said:

The more I see from Platinum, the more I think they fluked the original Bayonetta. They seem to have no idea what made the first one great and seem more focused on making goofy over the top novelty sections over flushing out fighting mechanics.

Haven’t played the second or third games, but the original definitely had its fair share of shitty novelty sections and never-ending cutscenes. I’ve always thought Platinum are mad overrated tbh, everything I’ve played has always had some insanely annoying mechanic or indulgent nonsense. 

[Keyboard Koala]

MadWorld? Vanquish? Transformers? NiER? Astral Chain?

[dataDave]

11 minutes ago, CarloOos said:

Haven’t played the second or third games, but the original definitely had its fair share of shitty novelty sections and never-ending cutscenes. I’ve always thought Platinum are mad overrated tbh, everything I’ve played has always had some insanely annoying mechanic or indulgent nonsense. 

 

There are what, two full levels on the first game? The motorway and the Space Harrier levels. The Space Harrier one isn't even that bad if you like that kind of thing, although naturally it's not one of my most-played levels. On this it's every other verse! 

 

I always quick-skip the cutscenes with R+Back, although there are sections on this which can't be skipped no matter what, including cutscenes which are semi-interactable.

 

^^ MadWorld, too. That was my gateway into this genre. I've not played Astral Chain yet, so I might trade this in for that.

[Sarlaccfood]

Astral Chain is great yeah.

 

Looks stunning compared to this too. 

[CarloOos]

17 minutes ago, dataDave said:

 

There are what, two full levels on the first game? The motorway and the Space Harrier levels. The Space Harrier one isn't even that bad if you like that kind of thing, although naturally it's not one of my most-played levels. On this it's every other verse! 

 

I always quick-skip the cutscenes with R+Back, although there are sections on this which can't be skipped no matter what, including cutscenes which are semi-interactable.

 

^^ MadWorld, too. That was my gateway into this genre. I've not played Astral Chain yet, so I might trade this in for that.

Think I just prefer my action games more like Ninja Gaiden or to an extent DmC, just 100% focused on the combat with minimal faff. I particularly like NG’s emphasis on just surviving encounters, as opposed to showboating. I think the closest Platinum have ever come to making something like this is Revengeance, but unfortunately I just found that quite mechanically annoying with one of the worst cameras of the 360 era.

 

Vanquish is a can of worms for me, there’s so much to love but again I found it mechanically annoying. The weapon upgrade system is nonsense and the necessity to repeatedly spam the slide button for i-frames just seems stupid. At the time I preferred Binary Domain.

 

(Never played Astral Chain, W101, Bayo 2 or the licensed games).

[CrichStand]

Yeah, Bayo was definitely a one off fluke! I mean it’s not as if Hideki Kamiya is a video game legend that worked on Resi 1 and then directed/created Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami etc. 😂

[Benny]

Astral Chain is my favourite Platinum game by far.

[BadgerFarmer]

Yeah, I've been playing, and writing about, Astral Chain again recently. It's got some amazing combat systems once you get the hang of it, and all the other stuff fits around them really well.

 

Bayo 1 is still Platinum's best work though. And I've still got enough good will left over from it that I may still buy B3 even though I'm not convinced by what I've seen and read. It would be good if someone here could say 'actually, the new systems are really interesting after all.'

[Jolly]

I can't seem to find details on this anywhere, but is there a way to switch between enemies when you're locked on? 

 

I'm not quite as down on this as the thread. I've always found these games immeasurably better the second time round when I can guilt-free skip the cutscenes, mind. 

[Goemon]

I was being slightly facetious, I know they have done other good things.

 

At the same time their catalogue IS a mixed bag with Bayo 1 probably being their best work and when we get to the 3rd version of this flagship title, I don’t expect to be reading the comments I’m reading (or, unfortunately, I guess maybe I do… )

 

Where was ‘video game legend’ Kamiya while this was being made? Did he play through the game and go “yea, I’m happy with that” or did he just not give a shit?

 

The whole thing is pretty frustrating.

 

[Stanley]

Should I cross this one off my Christmas list then? I very almost ordered the LE but I held back. 

[ZOK]

I’ve played a bit of Bayonetta 1 now so I can see why people might not be too keen on this if they hold that up as an example of ‘this is how this game must be’, it’s a lot more up close and fluid in terms of the fighting. Also, as someone who hadn’t played it before, Bayo 1 actually explains the move sets in a cogent way that Bayo 3 doesn’t seem to, I think when I go back to 3 I’ll be much better as I kind of know what I’m doing.

 

Where I find Bayo 3 to be better is it’s much sillier and wackier than Bayo 1 (which is quite silly and wacky itself), and it looks a lot nicer generally. In many ways it puts me in mind of EDF the way they’ve completely disregarded any sense to make it fun.

 

I guess I’m not precious about the combat so I’m not bothered that 3 plays quite differently - to me the up close combat seems to be about surviving until you can break out the monsters again - and to me they are both great games.

[dataDave]

Like Kevvy rightly says, Bayonetta 2 and 3 don't have to be anything like 1. They have good ideas for evolving the groundwork made on the first game, it's just that they're executed poorly with gross imbalance and a total disregard for the scoring and grading systems. The scoring philosophy revolves around wacking 'win button' features. You're actively punished for attempting creative/high-risk play, which is a direct contrast to the first game (or practically any game I can think of with score attacks).

 

That's before we move onto the enemy behaviour and reaction design, and their various states, which is another pillar when it comes to these games. You can write paragraphs about each individual enemy from B1, whereas it's like they completely forgot about this important aspect afterwards, or simply chose not to dedicate resources towards it. It's frustrating because both sequels could be GOAT material with some very basic tweaks and enemy design polish.

[dataDave]

1 hour ago, ZOK said:

I’ve played a bit of Bayonetta 1 now

 

Please! Play more than just a bit! Once you're flawlessly reacting to audio, offsetting combos to the point where you only see the Wicked Weaves coming out, and no longer playing with Witch Time; you'll actually fully 'get' what makes it a 10/10. It doesn't take hundreds of hours to get to that stage, either.

[Kevvy Metal]

28 minutes ago, dataDave said:

Like Kevvy rightly says, Bayonetta 2 and 3 don't have to be anything like 1.

 

But you're focussing on one specific area, and how it's different to the first game without considering how completely over the top and bombastic the sequels are. 
I'm 100% convinced this is all completely deliberately implemented by the developers. They've juiced the game right up while deliberately breaking the scoring system to make it feel like everything is ott and exploding every where. It's totally a vibe and intentional.