Bayonetta 3: Into the Bayo-verse

[Zevox]

Bayonetta 3 is finally out, and I have spent a fair bit of time playing it today. I am greatly enjoying it, as expected.

As the trailers wound up implying, yep, we have a multiverse-hopping plot going on, with multiple Bayonettas involved. And I am very pleased to say that after meeting the first one, you do indeed get to play as them, and then use their looks as costumes on your main Bayonetta. I am already digging that, as the first alternate Bayonetta is pretty cool looking, and I love her weapon: a set of large, bladed, magical yo-yos, which you also skate around on like roller skates/the chainsaw weapon from Bayo 2. (Kind of a funny coincidence to have that show up in this game when I've been playing a lot of Bridget in Guilty Gear Strive lately...) That's definitely going to be one of my weapons of choice, unless later weapons really blow me out of the water. Using it with the club as my secondary weapon right now, just because I figure the heavy-hitting alternate might have some use in giving me more variety than going with the guns are my second weapon. Unfortunately you can no longer mix and match by setting different weapons to your hands and feet, but eh, as long as the movesets still feel good, I can fine with that.

The new mechanics involving direct control of your demons in battle are pretty cool as well, though I much prefer Madama Butterfly and Phantom to Gamorrah, who feels like everything he does is on a massive delay due to how slow he is. He's good for the bonus attack they can sneak in at the end of Bayonetta's combo sequences with the right timing though. I'm also not a fan of the couple of riding sequences on Gamorrah, which have felt like they suffered greatly from how ponderous he is; riding Phantom was a much better sequence, even if still with a couple of bits where controls frustrated me.

Got the first of Jeanne's side-scrolling missions, which was kind of fun, and very different from the usual gameplay - it's basically light stealth platforming. Haven't yet gotten to play as Viola, though hopefully that should happen soon. I'm looking forward to what she'll be like.

Very mild spoilers story discussion (it's all things you learn within the first couple of stages):

Spoiler

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The game opens with the Bayonetta from Viola's universe getting killed by the universe-hopping villain, and she looks exactly like Bayonetta did in the first game. She even uses Panther Within when you double-tap dodge like Bayo did in the previous games, which this game's Bayonneta doesn't use, instead fusing with her demons into different forms for that mobility option. Which kind of begs the question: did the game open with the original Bayonetta getting killed, and this game's Bayonetta is herself an AU version? Granted, Viola didn't exist in prior games (and she clearly has a connection to Bayonetta they're hinting at... I'm calling it right now, she's her daughter), and we would have to presume that Bayonetta 2 wasn't an alternate universe since it gave no indication of such, but Bayo could have gone back to her original look after that, and we have no idea how much time passed between Bayo 2 and the start of this game, especially if that universe was the original one, so even if Viola is Bayo's daughter that could have happened in between games for all we know.

I suppose more likely is that it was an alternate universe where Bayo never moved beyond her look and abilities from the first game, but still, it makes you wonder.

Anyway, general plot seems to be multiverse-hopping villain is specifically targeting each universe's Bayonetta because that will cause their universes to collapse when she dies for some reason, and Rodan speculates that doing this will eventually allow the villain to harness enough power from the universes' collapsing to annihilate the whole Trinity - heaven, hell, and the mortal world, basically. Goofy over-the-top concept, yep, that works perfectly for Bayonetta. The multiple universes also seem to only apply to the mortal world, from Rodan's remarks, I think heaven and hell are exempt and just exist as one version of themselves for all of the mortal universes, which is an interesting way to handle it.

So, anyone else playing this?

[Rakaydos]

Concerning bayo 1/2 and multiple universes...

Bayo 1 and Bayo 2 are Mobius timelines. Baulder absorbing Loptr and going back in time to be Father Baulder from the first game. Father Baulder pulls Little Ceresa from even earlier in the timeline to change Bayonetta in the present, but the peptalk Bayonetta gives Little Ceresa at the end of bayo1 resets that change, and the timeline continues into Bayo2 and Loptr trying to change the past again.

The question is if this counts as one universe or not. Bayo1 implied that it was operating under BTTF rules, where the present can be changed by altering the past. But Bayo2 closed the loop, causing the events of Bayo1. It's unclear if the "timeline alteration" from the pep talk at the end of bayo1 spawned a new universe that we-as-player jumped into, with the new, stronger bayonetta. If so, yea, Bayo1 Bayonetta is a good cannidate for whom is in the opening cinimatic.

[Zevox]

Concerning bayo 1/2 and multiple universes...

Bayo 1 and Bayo 2 are Mobius timelines. Baulder absorbing Loptr and going back in time to be Father Baulder from the first game. Father Baulder pulls Little Ceresa from even earlier in the timeline to change Bayonetta in the present, but the peptalk Bayonetta gives Little Ceresa at the end of bayo1 resets that change, and the timeline continues into Bayo2 and Loptr trying to change the past again.

The question is if this counts as one universe or not. Bayo1 implied that it was operating under BTTF rules, where the present can be changed by altering the past. But Bayo2 closed the loop, causing the events of Bayo1. It's unclear if the "timeline alteration" from the pep talk at the end of bayo1 spawned a new universe that we-as-player jumped into, with the new, stronger bayonetta. If so, yea, Bayo1 Bayonetta is a good cannidate for whom is in the opening cinimatic.

Yeah, I suppose I didn't consider how the time-travel elements of the previous games might interact with this. Though personally I'd prefer to keep it simple and say that they don't.

But anyway, I beat the game, and it actually kind of answers that question, maybe.

Spoiler

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Yes, that was Bayonetta 1 Bayo - because she actually shows up to help Bayonetta in the final boss fight. And so does Bayonetta 2 Bayo. So, either all three games are alternate universes from each, or at least alternate universes where Bayonetta is as she was in the previous games exist, and somehow those Bayonettas had evaded destruction despite the villain thinking he had already destroyed them. But then all three of them merge into one, and never un-merge, so... yeah, probably no longer worth trying to figure out, it's just going whole-hog crazy, enjoy the ride.

And I definitely did. Goddamn but there's a lot to love about this game. The gameplay is of course wonderful - combat is excellent, and the weapon variety is amazing and I love so many of them, the demons being a standard controllable part of combat was a nice addition even if a lot of them end up feeling very samey (summon big demon, mash their basic attacks, get big damage, just watch out for enemies getting at you while you're at it - though there are some you cannot treat that way, which is quite nice), the additional quick attacks from the demons you can add to the end your combos are just awesome, and Viola is a welcome addition and a lot of fun herself. I do have trouble transition between Bayonetta and Viola though, because of how their defensive mechanics work fundamentally differently. While Viola can dodge like Bayo, she doesn't get With Time from it. For that, she needs to parry enemy attacks with her sword, and that uses a different button, R instead of ZR. Bayonetta herself only uses R for her quick dash strikes and holds it down to enable her stinger/high time moves... and Viola still uses it for that as well, it's just that for her simply pushing the button normally is her block, so she has to do that with parry timing in order to get Witch Time. It almost makes me wish Viola just didn't doge, so she could have her block/parry on the same button as Bayonetta's dodge, but at the same time I do get them not wanting to entirely deny you that option.

I absolutely loved the alternate Bayonettas and their weapons. They obviously just had some fun with this, especially with the last one, where we're treated to a random little Thriller-style sequence of dancing zombie soldiers in the middle of the stage, and a climactic boss battle where Bayonetta summons her frog-demon to turn into a fancy opera singer, who blocks incoming kamikaze-insect monsters with magical shields to create the music she's singing to which will ultimate crescendo and destroy your enemies. And gods, I have a hard time picking my favorite among these weapons. My most used wound up being the Yo-yos and the Fans, but I so want to use the magic wand & hat set and the staff/microphone stand more, and try out the new weapon you don't even unlock until you beat the game. And even the weapons I'm less fond of actually using I really appreciate the creativity with: the "Dead End Express," which I can only call a trainsaw, and Tartarus, the shields/doors from a demonic clocktower/gattling guns. The most boring weapons in the game are your starting guns and the club you get as your first alternate weapon, and that's still a demon club that's bigger than you. And on that same note, we get a demon train and demon clock tower, which work completely differently from every other demon in the game when you summon them. And the clock tower can deploy a mech suit for Bayonetta to use for some reason. It's awesome.

And the game might be short in terms of the story and number of ordinary stages, but it sure feels like there's a lot to do. I obviously want to play it again on higher difficulties after playing through on standard, as always with these games, but I also still need to unlock a lot of bonus stages, since there's one for every stage in the game locked behind you finding three animals hidden in each stage (a cat, raven, and toad), and I only managed that for two stages. They're just extra challenge missions for the stage they're linked to, not whole additional stages, but it's still a fair amount more stuff to do; and that's before I try the Witch Trials stages that beating the game unlocks. Plus I want to unlock the Bayonetta 1 and 2 costumes, and all the alternate colors for the other costumes (which are all really good), which will require more halos being collected.

I can only think of a few points of cricitism. Gameplay-wise, the segments where you need to control specifically Gamorrah, the dragon demon, don't feel great, because he is slow as all hell and everything he does feels like it's delayed by a couple of seconds. There were a couple of specific challenge missions I thought were more frustrating than fun, but I guess that's getting nitpicky. Story-wise, the villain isn't the best - they obviously wanted to surprise you with his identity, but unfortunately you spend so little time with him that it doesn't really mean much, so he can't be as much fun as, say, Baldur was, since he just feels like a random guy, even though you thought he'd be on your side earlier in the game.

And finally, and kind of the biggest one, also story-related, is the ending. Because, uh, what the hell? It's actually unclear how serious Bayonetta and Luka getting dragged into Inferno like that is thanks to Rodan's remark to Viola about how he "has to hear it from her old man" when she skips school. I mean, I guess Rodan could get to see Luka even if he's in hell, but considering what Jeanne being dragged there meant in Bayonetta 2, I have some doubts about that. So maybe that was undone when the multiverse stuff shook out, who knows; but if not, they've ended the game with Bayonetta, Luka, and Jeanne all dead, and Viola now taking on the title of Bayonetta as her own. And they're definitely at least sticking to that last part, since they do end on the message "to be continued in a new generation." Which, hate to say it guys, but bad move. I like Viola, but you can't just discard your main character and tell us this new supporting character is now the main character, it doesn't work - just look at Devil May Cry, nobody seriously thinks of Nero as the main character in that series, even if Capcom wants to act like he is. And they didn't try to get rid of Dante entirely when they did that. Having Viola around, great, I like her; giving her a larger role in the next game, awesome; ditching Bayonetta and her friends entirely in favor of Viola? No, don't do it, bad idea.

Oh, yeah, and I do hope they weren't expecting the reveal that Viola was Bayonetta and Luka's daughter to be a surprise to anyone, because oh boy was that obvious from pretty early on. Her behavior around them gave it away pretty fast.

Anyway, I'm glad I at least got through this once so quickly, since I've now got a full additional week to do extra stuff in it before God of War Ragnarok hits. Even so though, it still sucks that those two have to launch so close to each other, because damn would I like to just stick with this game for a while longer.

[Delicious Taffy]

Even so though, it still sucks that those two have to launch so close to each other, because damn would I like to just stick with this game for a while longer.

This is a weird thing I see a lot. What's stopping you from sticking to the game you're already playing? Once the next one comes out, it's out, there's no time limit on when you can start playing it.

[Zevox]

This is a weird thing I see a lot. What's stopping you from sticking to the game you're already playing? Once the next one comes out, it's out, there's no time limit on when you can start playing it.

Because God of War: Ragnarok is a game I'm so looking forward to that I've taken some of my vacation time the week it's coming out just to be able to play it a lot. There's very little that I would play over it once it's out until I've played through it once - off the top of my head, only maybe a new Persona game could manage to make me do that. It just so happens that these are both games that I've been hugely looking forward to for a long time now, to the point where they're each among my top reasons for owning the systems that they're on. On the up side, Bayonetta 3 is a short enough game that a week and half lets me play through it a couple of times - on the down side, it's the sort of game I'd probably play even more than that before moving on to a different game normally.

If it were almost any other game coming out besides God of War, or if Bayonetta 3 were a longer game I couldn't complete before God of War came out, yeah, I'd just play another week or two of Bayonetta 3 before moving on. That's ordinarily what I do when multiple games I want come out close to each other. But this isn't an ordinary case for me at all. I'll just have to come back to Bayonetta after Ragnarok in this case.

Anyway, I cannot speak highly enough of Bayonetta 3. At this point, I've gone through it a second time, bumping the difficulty up to Expert (the game's hard mode), and enjoyed that even more than the first. Turns out there were actually even more weapons for me to unlock as well, which was mind-blowing considering how many I already had after beating it the first time. Between that and the fact that every weapon has a different demon associated with it that you can summon pretty darn freely in battle, there are just so many ways to play Bayonetta this time, and it's amazing to experiment with them. Very few of the weapons and demons do I just not like, too, which is a step up from past games, where I usually settled on just a few options and ignored the rest. My reservations about the ending aside, the story's plenty of cheesy fun, too.

There's plenty to do, too. In each stage you can collect three "Umbran Tears of Blood" - red gemstones held by a cat, crow, and frog that can be found in each stage, though you'll have to catch the cat and crow even after finding them - to unlock a bonus stage, completion of which rewards you with either a power-up item for your health/magic, an accessory, or in two cases, a new weapon. Then there's a bunch of other collectibles scatter across each stage, including some whose use still eludes me, four fragments of some amulet, which I've only found two of so far. Then there's the Witch Trials, which you unlock after beating the game once, a set of challenge stages of increasing difficulty; and of course you can unlock a bonus fight Rodin, which I'm going to try and do before God of War releases.

I'm also going to try and do a decent chunk of the game on Infinite Climax, the highest difficulty. Already did the first stage, and oof, the damage really gets cranked up, much bigger jump than going from standard to expert. Gotta get good to get through the game on this difficulty, which probably means I'll have to stick to my best weapons.

Spoiler: Weapon list, in case anyone wants to know.

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Colour My World: Bayo's signature guns for the game. Similar to her guns from previously games, but with some changes, mostly relating to new game mechanics. Associated demon: Madama Butterfly, of course.
G-Pillar: A massive demonic club, bigger than Bayo herself is. Doubles as a sort of sniper rifle. Not my preferred kind of weapon, but good to have for variety. Associated demon: Gamorrah (the Dragon demon she's used in past games).
Ignis Araneae Yo-Yo: A set of four magical bladed yo-yos. Good range and speed, can be held for extended damage like her chainsaw weapons in Bayo 2. Definitely one of my personal favorites. Associated demon: Phantasmaranae, aka Phantom, the flame Spider/Scorpion.
Dead End Express: The "Trainsaw," a huge chainsaw in the shape a train engine. Big and slow like the club, and similarly not one of my preferences, but very cool. Associated demon: Wartrain Gouon. Yes, it's a demon train.
Ribbit Libido BZ55: A microphone stand that you wield like a staff. Fires musical notes as its projectile, and you can sing while holding it for buffs. Associated demon: Baal, a singing frog demon.
Simoon: A pair of fans with wind magic effects, which also transform your feet into bird-like talons. Probably one of the game's fastest weapons. One of my favorites, personally. Associated demon: Malphas, a huge crow demon.
Tartarus: A pair of shields that are actually the doors of a clocktower, and somehow have gattling guns built into them. Associated demon: Umbran Clock Tower. Yes, a clock tower demon, based on the clock tower that was destroyed in the first game.
Abracadabra: A magician's wand and hat. It shoots swarms of bats with punch, large electrified bats with kick, and tosses various random items out of the hat as its "gun" attack. Pretty sure it's partially a send-up to Nevan, the electrical guitar weapon from DMC3, which also used electrified bats as its main attack method. Associated demon: Mictlantecuhtli, a pair of bat demons that function like one huge bat with four wings. Also electrical.
Alruna: A returning Bayonetta 2 weapon, a pair of gloves and boots that project magical vine whips. Just so happens to have been one of my favorite Bayonetta 2 weapons, so I was over the moon when I unlocked this. Associated demon: Alraune, the poison flower demon boss you got Alruna from in Bayonetta 2.
Cruel Altea: A set of lion-shaped gauntlet and greaves that shoot out like rocket-propelled projectiles when you attack with them, and can also fire lasers. Based on their colors they're also a Voltron reference, which I appreciate. Associated demon: Labolas, a Lion demon capable of splitting into five smaller lions.
Cassiopeia: An anchor with a heavy chain attached that gives it quite a lot of reach. My favorite of the slower, heavy-hitting weapons, personally. Associated demon: the Kraken.
Handguns: Basically a version of her gun weapon for when you want to handicap yourself, these can only do her most basic moves, and don't have an associated demon. Only including them for completeness.

On top of all that, apparently if you have save data from Bayonetta 1 and 2 on your Switch, you can unlock Scarborough Fair and Love Is Blue, the Bayo 1 and 2 versions of her guns, which actually use the mechanics from those games instead of the Bayo 3 mechanics. Which is an awesome bonus. Unfortunately I have the previous games on Wii U (plus X-Box 360 for the first), not Switch, so I don't get those.