During a fight against some angels, Jeanne’s soul is taken to hell. Bayonetta travels to the mountain Fimbulventr to find the Gates of Hell so that she can recover Jeanne’s soul. On her journey she meets a boy called Loki, who is also trying to reach Fimbulventr for reasons he cannot remember. The two team up and there’s some twists to the story. Some of these twists were lost on me, but it made sense when I read the synopsis on Wikipedia. The scenes are often over-dramatic and full of over the top violence, sexual references, and slightly cheesy lines. The story is delivered via a mix of cut-scenes and still images.
I think the sexual aspects were mainly in the opening, and seemed very comedic. The swearing also seemed a bit forced. It’s a bit weird for Nintendo to allow this when they were a stakeholder in the game.
Bayonetta is arrogant and patronising to others; snarky but sassy. Her new pixie hair cut is very stylish. Loki was a bit irritating.
Bayonetta is a nimble character and can chain combos together with a mix of punch, kick, and gun attacks. It's combo system works really well due to the impressive animation of the characters and enemies. Being a witch, Bayonetta can add a bit of magic to the mix with her “wicked weave” attack, turning her hair and clothes into a demon figure, and also dodging at the last moment activates slow-motion 'witch time'. A lot of the battles rely heavily on this mechanic, so it isn't the case of just button mashing to victory since you need to wait for the attack, dodge, then unleash the fury.
Filling up the magic meter can also allow you to do “torture attacks” which do large amounts of damage and involve a bit of button mashing to rack up more pain. Weapons can be unlocked and assigned to Bayonetta's hands and/or feet including a whip, guns, sword, and bow and can be mapped to 2 weapons sets and switched at the press of a trigger.
The loading screen doubles up as a practice mode, complete with an on-screen move list, which is a nice reminder of the controls when you die and are waiting for the game to reload. Each chapter is split up into 'verses' which are scored separately based on time, combo damage, and damage taken, and the more hardcore gamers will go for the platinum awards.
On normal difficulty, Bayonetta proves a decent challenge but it seemed easier than the first game. If you want a harder challenge, there are higher difficulties available too. By collecting halos that enemies drop, you can spend them at the shop, but the extra techniques and special items are particularly pricey. The normal items like healing items are a fair price but are limited in the amount you can purchase.
Some chapters end in a boss battle, but the larger bosses are so dramatic that they have their own dedicated chapter. These take some time to take down but have checkpoints at certain stages.
The game doesn’t have the most exciting level design, since it is often an alternating pattern of simple corridors and circle arenas. It is very predictable when enemies are going to spawn. It’s really a sequence of arena battles and boss fights. There are moments where there will be aerial fights, or you will fight in a mech, plane, or on horseback but they feel too similar or more mindless.
In each level, there is at least one portal to take you to a challenge area where you have a task such as defeating enemies without taking a hit, without touching the ground, or have a damage restriction such as only dealing damage in witch-time.
The overall style of Bayonetta is certainly strange but has a lot of charm. The overall look and difficulty of the game will draw comparisons to Devil May Cry and if you enjoy that kind of game, then Bayonetta is an obvious game to play. The soundtrack to the game is very repetitive since there is often one J-pop sounding song which seems repeated an insane amount of times, especially in the challenge area.
Overall, Bayonetta is a decent game, but it felt a bit dated in its design. I don’t understand the 10/10 ratings from some critics. I felt it wasn’t as outrageous as the first game. The story seemed a bit basic at first, then was hard to follow, and some of the extra variety they tried to put in the game aren't particularly fun. Normally I wouldn't encourage quick-time events, but since the cut-scenes were so dramatic and sometimes quite lengthy; it probably would have suited the game to have more quick-time events as well as being more complex, rather than used sparingly and involving one button press.