Lots of Style, and a moderate amount of substance…
It’s safe to say that Bayonetta 3 was one of my most anticipated games of this entire year. This is a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time and the true test for what Bayonetta could actually have been on the Nintendo Switch. As Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 were games that existed on previous hardware, I was hopeful that Bayonetta 3 would excel in ways where the previous games could not. However, that simply just isn’t the case.
Make no mistake, Bayonetta 3 excels at delivering more chaotic fun with a wealth of variety in not only its weaponry, but in the very methods of how you will do battle. From a side-scrolling spy outing to a shooting gallery that feels inspired by Nier: Automata, to a boss battle that felt like weaponizing the Fifth Element’s opera scene, Bayonetta 3 delivers in spades when it comes to engaging encounters that satisfy in ways that few games can.
While all that is true, Bayonetta 3 is simply a game that crumbles under its own ambitions, a visual disappointment when its comes to a cohesive experience. Character models look stellar and shine when up close, as do the incredible menus and overall presentation, but everything built around them feels drastically more dated than the 2009 original. Where Bayonetta 2 was a visual showpiece for the franchise, Bayonetta 3, despite some strong art direction, is nowhere near the series’ best.
While the narrative of Bayonetta has varied in its quality and complexity, Bayonetta 3’s story is far easier to digest, but that isn’t a compliment. Bayonetta 3 is a game built around the concept of the multiverse, where Bayonetta’s are being slaughtered one by one by a dark force that seems unstoppable. It is here where we meet Viola, the human embodiment of a Spencer’s Gifts store. To be fair, the few moments where you take control of her are largely fun, but her design and overall presence here feels forced in ways it didn’t need to be.
Our introduction to Viola is during a scene where this mysterious evil is doing combat with an alternative world’s Bayonetta, in which she is murdered right in front of Viola. Upon using some sort of dimensional gate object that is never once mentioned again, Viola barely escapes with her life, thrust into the world that is occupied by our Bayonetta. After a martini shake of some exposition, Jeanne is tasked with tracking down a Dr. Sigurd and Bayonetta is sent to find a handful of Chaos Gears, mechanized macguffins that are crucial in saving the multiverse and stopping said evil.
For what it’s worth, the concept of Bayonetta traveling throughout a series of alternative earth’s seems pretty damn awesome. While a lot of these Bayonetta doppelgangers are certainly interesting, each with unique weapons and summonable beasts, the story around them is sadly only built to have Bayonetta take their powers and collect a new weapon and demon in the process. The game also has a bad habit of either not explaining story beats to the player, or in most cases, to the characters themselves. This causes confusion in how certain characters know things or if the narrative is simply built on convenience to keep the pacing of the game motoring on.
This method of having the story rely on convenience is constant as characters are hopping from world to world and yet have no issues finding one another when they truly need to. Hell, for Dr. Sigurd being told to us that he is just “somewhere in the world”, Jeanne finds him with absolutely no problem, let alone knowing when and where to meet Bayonetta afterwards, despite her affairs in other worlds keeping her all over the place. I don’t mind stories where things easily fall into place for the main characters, but much of this is done without conveying how characters know things to have those moments happen. This is essentially the “Step Three: profit!” of storytelling.
While I’ll avoid talking too much about where this adventure wraps up, it is still something to address as a great deal of the community isn’t taking too kindly to how the game ends and the handling of Bayonetta herself. I’ll state that while I really like the Bayonetta character, especially through Bayonetta 2, there are those who look up to her for entirely different and more substantial reasons. A lot of that community is not fond of certain choices that have been made here, as if their LGBTQ+ icon has had a lot of her power and mystique diminished. While that is something I personally do not identifying with, but certainly can understand, I am also not fond of the choices made here and found the ending to be the least impressive moment of this entire franchise, regardless of what it is clearly setting up for for the future of Bayonetta.
Throughout the multiverse adventure, Bayonetta will have chats with the central villain, a face that speaks to Bayonetta from beyond a dimensional wisp of smoke and magic, their eyes and mouth front and center, casting out threats and warnings to the Umbra Witch. However, this villain is incredibly one-note, a being that spouts off the same generic gibberish we hear from every over-confident villain who has underestimated the main hero. There is nothing here of any substance and causes the final confrontation to feel incredibly weightless to any decent resolution or memorable moment. While there is a post credits battle, it feels like an extra jab to the events that just preceded it.
Where the first two entries had us doing battle with the forces of heaven and hell, these Homunculi forces are man-made, a collective of grotesque, warped, and mutated creatures that all share in the same white and teal aesthetic. This color scheme reliance actually causes one moment in the game to be so wildly predictable that I was just counting down the seconds for the reveal to occur. While there are certainly some interesting designs here, from the simple grunts to the large and bulkish brutes, the identical color scheme causes a great deal of them to simply blend together, making each design feel like a slight tweak more so than a whole new creature.
In previous Bayonetta games, the Umbra Witch was no stranger to having demonic slaves spun from her hair to act as a finisher to her foes, seeing fanged beasts chomp down on her leftovers. Here, those beasts can cut loose and unleash hell all while Bayonetta dances off to the side. You’ll have to keep Bayonetta out of harm’s way as you use a variety of commands to fight as these companions, kept in check with a magical meter that details how long you have access to them. While many of these will first act as a borrowed asset from that world’s Bayonetta, you’ll eventually unlock them as a permanent addition to your arsenal.
However, where to use them is where I feel Bayonetta 3 suffers the most. Bayonetta 3’s locations are vastly bigger environments than previous entries to accommodate for the size and scale of what you are effectively summoning. While not every creature is as big as Bayonetta’s Gomorrah, each location still requires that space should you have them equipped, often having these locations feel big but lacking the detail to utilize the space. This causes several environments to feel bigger than they truly need to be, especially as several locations even lack enemies in order to have you simply explore them, looking for collectibles, challenge rooms, and other secrets. While this certainly keeps you busy, it can downright destroy the pacing of what is supposed to be a high energy action title.
Keeping on the element of pacing are the boss battles themselves. Several of these are downright masterpieces, such as one that borrows very minimal components of a rhythm game mixed with the opera scene from The Fifth Element, which had me laughing my ass off at how incredible this whole scene was. Another takes place in the sky as you blast bubbles towards your foes as Queen Butterfly, the massive alternative form of Madam Butterfly. Nearly every battle you take part in is bursting with creativity and spectacle, except for one that the game has you perform twice.
When Bayonetta rips her own heart out from her chest to perform these massive undertakings, it is when you have control of Sin Gomorrah where the action spectacle and energy of a Bayonetta game slams on the breaks. This Kaiju battle between titans is incredibly slow as performing any attack can take literal seconds before you even a single frame of animation play out, let alone the entire move or swiping of claws or shooting of lasers. The concept is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but the execution of this fight, let alone having to do it twice throughout the game, was incredibly boring and lacking all across the board.
Throughout the roughly 12-15 hour adventure, Bayonetta will earn a sizable cast of demonic slaves, allowing you to swap between three of them at almost any given time. These additions will also grant you weapons that compliment their host. The choices you have for your demonic slaves vary from the Godzilla-like Gomorrah, an Umbran Clock Tower, the savage Labolas, the Wartrain Gouon, and several more. Each of the demonic options vary in their use and can be upgraded to make them more effective with more moves as they rampage about, leaving Bayonetta vulnerable as she dances amidst the chaos.
As you collect more of these demonic options, Bayonetta will have access to almost a dozen weapons, each that change how she can traverse the environment as well. The Abracadabra wand, for example, shoots out parlor trick explosions out of her accompanied hat, but also turns Bayonetta into a demon that has been sawed in half, allowing her to dash forward in the air. One of the my favorite weapons is the Cruel Altea, a set of gauntlets and boots that are color-coded like the Power Rangers, giving Bayonetta a variety of lasers and flames, not to mention the quadrupedal beast that allows Bayonetta to gallop across the environment. Other weapons range from staves to chainsaw-like batons, a spider-like yo-yo, to a variety of different guns.
Much like her roster of demons, Bayonetta and Viola can be upgraded as well. These upgrades increase the number of moves at your disposal, fleshing out their arsenal considerably. While you may find your favorites in certain demons, some foes can almost one-shot them, removing them from play until a cooldown brings it back. This causes you to want to upgrade a variety of them to always keep something powerful as a backup.
Across the multitude of weapons and demons, Bayonetta still has to rely on her Witch-time to move around foes in a haze of magic that slows down her enemies but keeps her moving around much faster. This near-perfect dodge mechanic returns here in all its glory, but this system works differently through Viola as she can only enter Witch-time when she parries with her sword. While Viola can rely on that sword, her only summon is Cheshire, a demonic cat with massive fangs that comes out to play when Viola throws out her sword and can perform a series of melee attacks until she gives Cheshire a break from the action.
When it comes to combat, Bayonetta 3 excels with all the available options via a wealth of combo attacks and weapon variety. There is so much to unlock and upgrade that you constantly feel like you have something to work towards as each weapon and demon have their own skill trees to flesh out. While I wish there was more of an emphasis on combat than exploration, especially since some locations can often feel devoid of any encounters, the ones that are here often have all these systems working in tandem and produce some of the best feeling combat of the genre, regardless if you are behind the controls of Bayonetta or Viola.
As Jeanne, this is where the game shifts into something else. While the opening bit of Jeanne’s adventure has a very Cowboy Bebop vibe to it, her missions are tackled through a side-scrolling spy outing, built loosely around combat, but more so around stealth. You only take control of Jeanne a few short times, having her moving up and down elevators, hiding in lockers, and turning off lasers. There is a vehicle chase scene that I thought was going to be cooler than it was, but it still served its purpose in being at least somewhat entertaining. My only issue with this whole side activity is the credits of her completing her mission as I couldn’t skip them and they dragged on far longer than this gimmick really needed them to.
Bayonetta herself has a large variety of alternatives to her standard combat and demon summoning through plenty of fun gameplay segments as well. These include being behind the controls of large guns mounted to a train, leaping from crumbling buildings as a large lava spider, to a top down shooter as you ride atop a large winged beast. Most of these side activities work extremely well, offering up a well-paced alternative to combat, apart from the time-altering mini-game as the younger Cereza, which I wasn’t a fan of at all and honestly it felt completely out of place. There are also trials you can track down to earn some much needed health and magic upgrades, as well as a timed focused event where you have to snag floating crystals that are littered about the environment.
Bayonetta 3 certainly pushes past what the Switch is capable of with some stellar character models that look fantastic up close. However, there are several moments where they chose to have characters at a distance in a few shots, which are loaded with aliasing issues that look just downright awful. There is a motion-blur during most cutscenes that causes a lot of the action to blend together and while the action is always framed well to create some typical Bayonetta spectacle, the other aspects of what is here just fall flat. This is largely in the environments which often look incredibly poor, especially any location that is Earth-based. The opening few levels are in a destroyed metropolis with bland buildings and washed out textures that just don’t do this game any justice. I think that aesthetically this game does deliver, but so many of these locations just needed a boost in hardware performance to not stand out like a beaten and bruised sore thumb.
While there was a great deal of controversy regarding the voice of Bayonetta, a social media debacle that kept seeing updates to the story that contradicted what the original Bayonetta actor has said publicly, her replacement in Jennifer Hale nonetheless knocks it out of the park. Her delivery here is top notch and apart from the forced nature of Viola’s personality trying to dominate every scene she is in, everyone here pulls off what they needed to do, despite the lacking script and half-assed story not helping matters. There are a few songs that don’t quite keep the tempo of the scene going well enough, but the overall soundtrack is still fantastic, especially during some of the big boss encounters that constantly change up their mechanics.
Bayonetta 3 is great for the elements that make it a Bayonetta game. Combat and weapon variety is some of the series best with a wealth of options that constantly impress. Viola’s segments are the weakest of the main chapters, but I never one hated her combat style or combative offerings. Where Bayonetta 3 fails; however, is in its inconsistent visuals and disappointing execution on a fantastic narrative concept. It’s certainly my least favorite of the Bayonetta games when taken as a whole, but a title that I will certainly still jump into to 100% all the collectibles and costume unlocks. While Bayonetta 3 is certainly an action-packed adventure featuring our favorite Umbra Witch, it is far from the series’ highs and a game I just wish sat more comfortable amongst what came before.
Developer - PlatinumGames. Publisher - Nintendo. Released - October 28th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch OLED. Review Access - Bayonetta 3: Trinity Masquerade Edition was purchased for review.