3/5 ★ – gundamjehutykai's review of Bayonetta 3.

TL:DR - No sir, I did not like it. Change is a curious thing. You can't keep doing the same thing over again throughout a series without mixing things up but change too much and you lose sight of what made them so good in the first place. And so we have Bayonetta 3, a game that was pulled out of Development hell and what came out feels like an unholy mashup of different ideas (chiefly Astral Chain and I'm sure copious amounts of the cancelled Scalebound) wrapped up in a bayonetta skin to look presentable. Combat is what suffers the most. While in previous games, fights were an exciting, smooth and personal experience where you guide your character through a dance & dodge attacks with a hairs breadth to slow down time for an advantage, in Bayonetta 3, they introduced demons you summon and control remotely and that takes precedence over the old style combat from previous games. Battles are more about watching the spectacle of seeing your large demon do slow and wide swinging moves against equally large enemies while bayonetta stands in place. And controlling a lumbering demon through bayonetta causes a disconnect for the player from the game since you aren't directly involved in the combat. They also make it very clear that this is the way they intend for you to play the game now. There are some parts where the demons are sealed or you play the new character, Viola, but they don't play as well as previous games either. Viola especially changed things up too but at least there's more similarity with the old school combat, even if I found the character to be quite insufferable. She's basically a female controllable luka but without the goofy charm & sympathy. game performance is also quite poor and it's clear that the switch cannot handle running the game at the level that the devs wanted. All in all, Bayo 3 isn't a bad game per se, but it's quite a clear low point for a series which started off so strongly and became so beloved. The ending of the game made it clear that Platinum Games (or at least the current team that worked on the series) are now done with the property though they left it open enough for others to continue if they so want. But we can only hope that they make any future game a return to classic form rather than an experiment that didn't stick the landing...