Bayonetta

[miffy495]

So over the past week I have replayed Bayo 1 and am 3 chapters into 2 for the second time as well. As great as 1 is, playing them back to back has really underlined for me just how much of a leap forward 2 really is. Everything just feels so much tighter and better. Don't get me wrong, I still love 1, and I had a great time replaying it (and after finishing 2 will probably go back in and do some more things for higher rankings), but man: fucking Bayonetta fucking 2. So good. I am so happy that they ported these to the switch. Even if 3 is a disappointment, having these two amazing games that I can just play while lying in bed is worth it. I really hope 3 does right by the series.

 

Side note: This is making me want to go back and play DmC again. There really isn't anything quite like the feeling that an amazing character action game gets you into.

[Nappi]

I've been slowly playing through Bayonetta 2, basically one chapter a day after work. I just fought my second white-robe dude (end of chapter 7, I think), and I had a lot of fun dodging and attacking. I'm still not, dodge offsetting much, but even so, I have done quite well, i.e. have not died since the very beginning and do not have to rely on lollipops too much (still use the healing ones occasionally though).

 

I did not expect my biggest gripe with the game to be the quality of the comic style cutscenes. I don't mind the use of (basically) still images, but I don't understand why they have to look so bad when during gameplay things are so much sharper. Also, even simple conversations drag a lot, which feels a bit jarring considering how fast-paced the action is.

[Nappi]

I beat this horny game!

 

I think the difficulty was very nicely balanced throughout. I played on normal and only died a couple of time – once during the prologue (due to not knowing how I should fight big bosses) and once when fighting a regular enemy that somehow single-hit me into a baby (?). I got silver/gold from most of the chapters, but feel that I would have to put more effort in learning the fighting system if I was to go for platinum medals or beat the game on hard mode, which is something I'm not interested in but it is cool that it's there for those who are.

 

Surprisingly, I ended up liking the boss fights with fast enemies the most. My least favorite were the ones where the monster was outside the play area or where you were floating in air, as I never quite figured out how I was supposed to approach these fights. I liked the sections where they varied the gameplay a bit and wished there had been more of those because running from combat arena to combat arena started to feel boring quite fast.

 

In addition to some of the horrible looking and poorly paced cutscenes, my biggest disappointment with the game was that the setting, for the most part, was super dull. The prologue was quite exciting and I was hoping that the game would be taking place in "the real world" with angels and demons or whatever disrupting the normal course of things. Instead, I spent most of the time in really bland heaven-and-hell-themed locations. Similarly, the beginning of the game got me excited about all the wacky characters I would meet, but in the end the plot was nonsense (to me) and the characters I ended up spending the most time with were the least interesting.

 

In any case, I feel quite positive about the game. Not enough to buy Bayonetta, because it sounds like it is rougher than the sequel both in terms of polish and difficulty, but enough to be looking forward to Bayonetta 3. I hope the setting will be more interesting, and they will not go budget on the cutscenes.

 

By the way, Selene's Light is a complete waste of money. It gives a very short period of Witch Time and makes it much harder to gather magic points for special attacks. I could have spent that 100,000 to buy more of those crazy Nintendo costumes.

[miffy495]

Most of the plot is actually super referential to the first game, which was also largely nonsense. The whole thing makes very little sense, but having a grasp on the first does help. Long story short, God created two gems that controlled reality, gave one to the lumen and one to the umbra with the intention of balance between light and dark. Then the lumen and umbra fucked that up by letting two of their members have a baby with each other (Bayonetta). In the first game, light (run by Bayonetta's father, Balder, who also controlled the lumen gem) made a play for the other gem which had manifested itself inside Bayonetta and was attempting to use the two to give god a physical form. Bayonetta kills Balder (who is brought back  in Bayonetta 2 thanks to time travel as a past version of himself from before he'd lost his damn mind called "The Masked Lumen", which is why that dude matters), then actually punches god into the sun at the climax of that game. The finale of two explains why Balder went crazy in the first game, actually, making the story of the two games weirdly cyclical. The end of two leads into the start of one, then the end of one leads back into two, thanks to Loki's weird time shit pulling Balder from time period to time period.

 

One is definitely a harder game and less polished, but I'm really glad that I played them back to back over two weeks. It was a really good two weeks. Going into 1 after finishing 2 would be kinda jarring. They're very similar to one another, but if you feel the urge to replay B2 in a few years, consider picking up the first at that time and trying them back to back. Very fun.