3.5/5 ★ – nldemo's review of Bayonetta 3.

Bayonetta remains the undisputed queen of character action games. Bayonetta 3 makes a titular return to the switch, now with an emphasis on Kaiju combat. Everything in that sentence would lead me to believe that this would be my favorite in the series, and while I did enjoy it, I would still highly recommend starting with Bayonetta 1. My reasoning is two-fold: the story payoffs in 3 are better if you've played both 1 & 2; and the start of the trilogy has the best build up to story climax in a self-contained game. Simply put, Bayonetta 1 is the best of the trilogy. It may just be recency bias, but I would rank Bayo 3 above 2 because the story felt a lot more memorable. That is saying a lot since this game's story tackles the multiverse, an overplayed theme in today's media. The climactic ending had some especially cool payoffs which I will not spoil here (reach out to me if you want to know!). On the flip side, I couldn’t seem to make myself care about the combat. I think I'm just at a point where I strictly play character action games for the story and the crazy cut scenes. Unless your name is SunhiLegend, I would be hard pressed to tell if you were button mashing to pull off crazy combos - so long as you're landing your dodges on time. I'd much rather sink my teeth into a strategy, tactics, or turn-based game,.. but to each his own. The Kaiju fights were super cool and it was neat having the perspective of already [recently] having played FF16. Platinum games was definitely took all their experience and lessons learned from this game and injected that straight into FF16 (SquareEnix contracted out to Platinum games for specific components of 16). The Kaiju controls took on a few forms - literal heart wrenching giga-Kaiju cinematic battles, more puzzle-like smaller scale battles (one example was a rock-paper-scissors combat game), and the even smaller scale standard combat where you utilize a meter in order to summon up a Kaiju to help take down Bayo's foes. Unfortunately, the Kaijus felt a little too mandatory for that last option - especially when fighting demons/angels/homunculi more than double the size of Bayonetta; and I often found myself just building up meter to get to the next Kaiju, rather than styling on my opponents while in Bayonetta's human witch form. The aforementioned Homunculi are a new class of monsters introduced to the trilogy, which are mostly a palette of light blue and green goo. Each new monster just seemed like a slightly larger or variant version of green goo, with only a few really standing out as unique in the bunch (I'm looking at you two headed dragon). While you cross multiple dimensions trying to stop the big bad from wiping them all out and taking over the Space-time continuum, Bayonetta 3 rapidly throws new Kaijus at you to collect as if you were a Pokémon trainer. Each new Kaiju is fun to try out and you get to actively equip your favorite trio of three. Each Kaiju also comes with a weapon, and each weapon comes with a unique travel mechanic (replacing panther & butterfly) and a "Devil Trigger/Limit Break"-esque mechanic. It was definitely more fun for me to collect and try them all out rather than to use them and build the individual skill trees. I especially enjoyed the Demon Train Kaiju, as it had Bayo turning into a choo-choo train, and cutting people down with a giant trainsaw. In new game plus, you receive an especially cool Voltron themed weapon. Bayonetta 3 also features gameplay sections where you play as Viola, Bayonetta's daughter from the future. She sports a single unique weapon combo of katana and darts, and her Kaiju mechanic allows you to summon Cheshire to fight alongside you. Personally, I preferred Cheshire over Bayo's summons as while you could not directly control him, you did not lose control of your human avatar either. There are also infiltration segments where you play as Jeanne trying to rescue a Doctor to help save the multiverse, but I found those to be pretty meh sections that I just wanted to speedrun through. I can't wait for Switch 2. This game wouldn't exist without Nintendo's support, but at the same time it was heavily switch compromised. Stinky switch. Scenes with a lot of motion could be hard to track, and was evident in screenshots - they really did cut down hard on poly count. Probably to get it to run at a decent framerate in 720p on the switch. It really is too bad there is no PC/PS4+ version. My Personal HLTB just under 6 hours and my personal favorite Bayonetta design was Tokyo Jpop Bayo (surprise surprise lol)