2.5/5 ★ – ThePikesvillain's review of Bayonetta 3.

Bayonetta 3 gets a rather mixed review from me. Going into it I had high expectations from what I had heard about the franchise, and early in the game my expectations were being met. I was blown away by the set pieces and the fun action gameplay. Every moment was so wildly epic and unique. For the most part that never changed, and that was kind of to the game’s detriment. Every boss feels like a final boss. Every moment is a climax. But after awhile, nothing is, and at that point it became tedious and monotonous. The game tries to fix that by throwing in different characters that play in different ways, but I found this just hurts the muscle memory of gameplay. Viola controls so similarly to Bayonetta, but blocking instead of dodging to go into witch-time forces the player to play in a similar but slightly different way which throws off your rhythm for both characters. And the random 2D side scrolling levels have a completely different gameplay that I simply just wanted to end every time it came up. Narratively the story is pure nonsense and there are seemingly no consequences to anything. Everybody can be fighting and dying, sacrificing themselves to save everyone else only to come back later because… just because. So nothing feels like it matters and the game really is just a sequence of action moments. The final boss fight was like a gauntlet of 5 final boss fights and ultimately it just took way too long and I kept wondering when it would end. By the end I was so weary of the game that I stopped exploring levels and collecting things, but I would simply run to the next checkpoint as fast as possible to fight the next boss. I found the best technique was to stock up on health lollipops and those are what carried me through to the end. The best moments were great, I loved the kaiju fights the most of anything! I enjoyed Bayonetta’s fighting gameplay as well. Unfortunately overall I feel like this game is trying to do too much rather than focusing on what it does well, and when every moment is turned up to 11 on a scale of 1-10, you become numb to that and 11 feels like a 2 with nowhere higher to go. This was my first Bayonetta game and I’m not sure I will try the other the other two now, but maybe one day. I am glad I played it, I did have fun at times- a hell of a lot of fun at times, but the game doesn’t really understand itself and undermines what works. Perhaps 1 and 2 are better in that regard? It is a middle of the road game. The highest highs are very good, the lowest lows are frustrating, lots of eye-candy but sometimes too much, the developers had a high attention to detail, voice acting is excellent, and it leaves the player feeling glad when it is finally all over.