So I finished Bayonetta a few days ago. For a while it didn't look like I'd beat it before RH, but hey, it is a fair bit shorter.
Fun fact: I totally didn't notice that you could buy witch hearts (max HP upgrades) until the last three chapters. Whoops. This probably made final Jeanne needlessly, punishingly hard, but it's all good fun.
Overall it's a pretty solid game, and it's easy to see the Devil May Cry 1 and God Hand in the game, which makes sense considering the director. Of course, considering those were already my two favourite action games, this is a good thing! The game has great random enemy design in general; all of them are distinct and you do fight them in rather different ways, which is nice. Definitely a pretty big deal to me. Bosses are interesting enough, they're sort of God of War-ish from what I've seen of that game, but with a better combat system. I generally enjoyed most of their fight designs. Overall they're decent on challenge but the checkpoints are kinda unnecessary in some cases, oh well. Nothing HM can't fix I'm sure. The last Jeanne fight (as mentioned) and Temperantia (second major boss) were the ones I had the most trouble with, but all of them were at least competent except perhaps Fortitudo (first boss, whatevs), and Balder (kinda disappointing but oh well). Incidentally, since I suck at this game and die a lot, the only two non-stone awards I got outside the prologue where against those two bosses (bronze and SILVER!!! respectively).
I really like witch time and I think it's immensely stupid that the highest difficulty does away with it, but it's not the first time that a highest difficulty setting would do something lame. Hopefully Hard is cool, for all that I'm more likely to replay Normal first and deal with all those damn stone awards taunting me. A few fights in Normal stripping you of Witch Time is fine since it made them extra hard (gold Grace and Glory oh shiiii-) but yeah. The mechanic really rewards watching and learning enemies which is pretty much the best part of the genre to me anyway!
The game is amazingly over the top which is always fun. LUKA is pretty great, definitely one of the game's stars in his goofiness. The plot in general is very silly; taken seriously it would probably be pretty bad, and it does devote a bit too much time to said plot (ludicrously long cutscenes around the last two chapters or so in particular) but ultimately sceneskip says this doesn't matter too much at worst, and I enjoyed the silliness enough to watch all the cutscenes anyway. Otherwise it's... yeah. Action zaniness taken to yet another level. I wasn't expecting a game to so blatantly top DMC3's "ride a motorbike straight up a tower then use it as a weapon" sequence but this game very, very much does. It also manages to integrate more of its over-the-topness directly into the game itself which is pretty fun. Also DID MY HAIR JUST EAT A BOSS?!? The game is also clearly hardcore trolling monotheistic religions with the whole "you are a WITCH and you summon DEMONS and you kill ANGELS (also the final boss is God, only female for an EXTRA level of trolling)" but unlike say Xenosaga I come away from this unoffended because it's so blatantly doing it for giggles and not to say deep things about religion and philosophy. Your milage may vary of course.
Aesthetically, while I have some predictable qualms about Bayonetta's design, I think the design of the angels is pretty excellent, and otherwise the game is certainly pretty. Musically... it's a bit of a mix. On the one hand, I think the game shows decisively that "Fly Me to the Moon" is not well-suited to be a battle theme. On the other hand, that track that plays for the last stage the archangel boss fights is just perfect as an example of what game music does well: really sets the scene beautifully for "yes I am going to beat this guy this time!" while still sticking within the musical style the game has adopted.
If the game was going to have loading times, then I think the game came up with the greatest loading screen ever. I doubt I'd have wanted to practice much otherwise but a little practice time while loading is just perfect, as is showing you the various combos. The game is fairly polished in general (e.g. the tutorials for the skills you purchase).
The game has an array of nagging weaknesses which keep it from being amazing to me, since in principle it feels like the game could have been my favourite in the genre to date pretty easily! Not to dwell on the negative to long, but they are:
-The game walks a fine line with the whole fanservice thing and sometimes it just gets embarrassing. I can deal with it when it's fitting in with the whole "This game is stupidly over the top" thing but then you get things like "hey guys let's watch Bayonetta pole dancing in the ending credits" which is just ffffffff.
-The game feels cluttered. Most of this can be ignored but it's kinda annoying: if you're going to have a crazy-high number of attacks that you can perform, do we really need like six different weapons as well? And the shop is so crowded I managed to miss something that was disproportionately important; mostly my fault but still questionable design there. The menus also felt a bit crowded and unintuitive (so I mostly ignored them!).
-Varying the gameplay is cool and all and sometimes works well when it's short (e.g. the FPS sequence in chapter 15). However, the highway and space harrier are places the game falls very, very flat. The former is the worst stage in the game and the latter would steal that mantle except Final Jeanne is awesome. The former is ultimately inoffensive, just exceedingly dull, while the latter... needed to be half the length or have twice as many checkpoints. I actually used my one and only item against the space harrier boss after a couple deaths, not because I couldn't win with perserverance but because I just wasn't enjoying it. I don't even MIND redoing large parts of stages upon death (I mean I think having three lives a la Mega Man is pretty optimum) but not while playing a goofy sub-genre sequence which is definitely not the reason I'm playing the game. Also barrel rolling making the screen spin is -idiotic-.
-And finally, it's ultimately minor but the game really didn't need to default to "no" to almost every choice. Be less like Suikoden 5 please.
Anyway, the game is probably somewhere in the general ballpark of an 8/10 to me, I kneejerk it a bit below DMC1 and GH due to the above flaws but it's still very good despite my objections. Pretty easy to see where the hype comes from.
