Bayonetta finishes combos by weaving her hair into huge attacks
Bayonetta Bayonetta. Where do I begin. Funny – this is a game that when I started playing I was prepared to blog an impressions entry on it. My initial impressions were somewhat negative, but part of me felt like I was missing something so I decided to hold off and play through it more and just go for the review. As I continued to play the game past completion, I started to reach a zen-like trance with the game. Now, 20 hours later, I can say I love it. Read on to see how my first few hours with this game started off on the wrong foot but eventually found its way into…my heart?
I consider myself to be a relatively harsh critic of games. Growing up in the era of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Battletoads on the NES, I guess I can say I’m well versed and trained in “classic action/adventure” gameplay. I am a definite fan of the Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry games, but since then, there hasn’t really been another strong Japanese action/adventure game to release since Ninja Gaiden II and Devil May Cry 4 a couple years ago. Bayonetta had a lot of makings to be a bona fida hit in my eyes: the potential combination of over-the-top theatrics, solid and classic Japanese action/adventure gameplay, and a new sultry protagonist is a combo that us action/adventure game fans don’t come across every day. With reviewers raving, I eagerly started playing the game and was actually let down.
Initial Impressions
All sorts of niggling negatives started showing up as I played my first couple of hours through the game. Why is the music so bland and silly? It brought back my repressed memories of Marvel vs. Capcom 2′s theme song. And why the heck are most of these cutscenes not even animated? Did the developer have to save costs so instead went the route of still shots with recorded voices? It just looked cheap to see characters 3D rendered and voice-overs yet their mouths weren’t even moving. And worst of all was the entire storyline. It was confusing and terrible.
The Devil May Cry games had an easier to follow and entertaining storyline – heck even Devil May Cry 4′s storyline was excellent when compared to Bayonetta’s. As I sat through minutes of lengthy, nonsensical cutscenes between and throughout levels, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed with the storyline and the lack of any sort of direction with it. Part of me wanted to skip them because they were so bad, but part of me felt that I should watch it all to try to see if I could absorb some sort of semblance of a plot. Of course, one argument to be made in an action/adventure game is that storyline doesn’t matter, but I personally believe it can really elevate the gameplay experience if you feel more connected to the protagonist and the other characters in the game. There was no such connection here.
Gameplay – hitting me like Bayonetta’s hairweave boot
As I continued to play it, I came to realize that outside of the terrible storytelling, the combat system in the game is action/adventure perfection. The concept of guns on Bayonetta’s boots seemed so silly when I first learned about it, but they actually work quite well in the game. Most weapons in the game you pick up can be equipped on Bayonetta’s arms or legs, and combos vary depending on the weapon types. I loved holding a sword in my hands and equipping rocket launchers on my legs, so my combos would consist of alternating sword swipes and rockets hurled towards the enemy. It all seems so over the top but it works so well that I can’t figure out how to describe it.
It’s not only the equipping of weapons on Bayonetta’s arms and legs that make the gameplay so good. The first thing many players will notice are the Wicked Weave attacks, which are combo finishers that often make use of Bayonetta’s hair to form huge legs or fists that lay into an enemy at the end of a combo. They are ridiculously powerful and practically clear the room of enemies, making them tons of fun. The hardest part about pulling these Wicked Weave attacks off is actually being able to get through a combo before being interrupted. If you’re comboing one enemy and he’s stunned, that’s all well and good, but an enemy may be behind you that can attack, knocking you out of your combo and ruining your chance for unleashing a Wicked Weave. Fortunately, there is something else in the combat mechanics that allows you to pull them off a bit easier: Witch Time.
Bayonetta is perhaps the first action/adventure game I’ve played that incorporates a “bullet time” mode in a game like this. Remember games like Stranglehold, Max Payne, and F.E.A.R., where you could slow down time? Bayonetta has this and it’s called Witch Time. Witch Time functions in the same way as those other games: slowing down enemies while keeping you going at normal speed so you can pull off lengthy combos without worrying about getting hit. But what makes the Witch Time remarkable is how you activate it. It’s not simply hitting a button to go into this mode, but rather – you have to dodge at the exact moment you’re about to get attacked in order to have Witch Time activated. Thus, Witch Time is a reward for good gameplay rather than a crutch that you are forced to lean on. If you can’t dodge well, then you won’t get to use it!
There’s also a magic meter in the game that fills up as you do combos, dodge attacks, and counter enemies. As this magic meter fills, you get to perform special attacks called Torture Attacks, where Bayonetta grabs an enemy and throws them into a torture device for massive damage. They’re a lot of fun to perform, and the most interesting thing about the magic meter is that whenever you get hit, your magic meter decreases considerably. Like Witch Time, the Torture Attacks are also a reward for playing well as opposed to being a crutch to lean on. These Torture Attacks are almost like Killstreak Rewards in Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer, for those of you that play that.
Outside of the dodging and Witch Time gameplay mechanic, you are also able to perform counters/guard breaks or whatever you call them in Street Fighter III/Soul Calibur. If enemies are attacking you and you hit forward at the moment they attack, you can repel their attack and create an opening. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily provide an ample opportunity to perform a lengthy combo if there are two other enemies behind you.
As you can see, the gameplay can be very frenetic when you’re in a screen full of enemies as you try to dodge, combo, and pull off Witch Times, Wicked Weave Attacks, and Torture Attacks. When you get good at it, you feel like you’re sitting on top of the world and get rated accordingly. Of course, it’s possible to get through the game without making use of all of these tools at your disposal, but when you do, it’s exhilirating.
Checkpoints
One of the biggest breakthroughs that Bayonetta makes over all of the Devil May Cry games are checkpoints. None of the Devil May Cry games had checkpoints. If you died at any point during the 30 minute or so level or on any of the bonus stages within those levels, you would have to start over. Make your way to the boss in a Devil May Cry game and die, and you will have to start the level over. Thankfully, Bayonetta has adopted the Western philosophy of checkpoints. Each level is broken up into generally about a dozen sections called Verses.
Each Verse is often a fight with a large enemy type or several smaller enemy types. Depending on how well you do in that Verse, you get graded and all of the Verse grades give you an overall level grade at the end of the level. If you die at any point in the level, you can continue from the last Verse you were on. If you die on a bonus stage within a level, you can directly continue from that bonus stage as much as you’d like.
Bosses even have several checkpoints throughout the fight, depending on how many forms they turn into. These checkpoints make the game so much more accessible to gamers of all skills that the game is just more fun (and less frustrating) to play after all. Of course, every time you continue, your overall level score gets penalized, so hardcore gamers can still have bragging rights on the Leaderboards displaying their super high level scores earned only through playing the game perfectly. It’s a remarkable balance of challenge and accessibility and I thought it was a very well planned approach. There will be no controller throwing in Bayonetta, yet the game still has lots of attainable bragging rights.
Game Length
Compared to games like Ninja Gaiden II and Devil May Cry 4 where action/adventure game fans can spend practically a hundred hours going through all difficulty levels to beat, Bayonetta stands a bit short. It’s possible to skip everything optional and make a bee-line right to the end of a level to beat the game in under 3 hours (there are special items unlocked if you do), but the game realistically hovers more along the 12 hour or so mark. Throw in the amount of time you may spend on the dozens of bonuses stages within each level, and you may find yourself getting closer to the 20 hour mark. Add in a few more difficulties for the harder playthroughs, which consist of more difficult enemies inserted into the game and it should take maybe 40 or so hours to get through everything this game has to offer. It’s not 100 hours, but it sure beats games these days that are only like six hours long.
Final Thoughts
If Bayonetta looks at all interesting to you, I would highly recommend downloading the demo and checking it out. The first level is far too crazy and confusing, as there’s too much going on at once, but the second level of the demo makes things a bit easier to grasp and understand. I love this game, and it may be the action/adventure game with the best fighting game mechanics I’ve ever played. From a pure gameplay standpoint, it’s perfection. The storyline and cutscenes are terrible, but now that I’m playing through on a harder difficulty, I’m skipping every cutscene (Protip: to skip cutscenes quickly, hold the R trigger and hit the back button) so the game is just an exhilirating action/adventure game from when the game starts to when I call it a night. Sadly, the lack of a good storyline and storytelling hold this game back from reaching a perfect score. But if I would have graded this game purely from a gameplay standpoint, it would unequivably be perfect.
It’s weird – Japanese games seem to have core gameplay (and even boss design) down to an art – it revolves around traditional gameplay mechanics that are tried and true. The combat is designed with such precision and care that when you play it you’re just like wow. But at the same time, storyline and character development in Japanese games are completely ridiculous and poorly done. When I try to engage myself into Bayonetta’s storyline, part of me can’t help but think of clothing that Japanese people like to wear with English on them but make absolutely no sense. That’s how their video game storylines seem to go. And on the other side of the pond, for Western developers, we seem to tell a great story with our games, but gameplay mechanics are generally not as well composed as the Japanese when it comes to action/adventure games. If only we could get an action/adventure game with Western storytelling and Eastern game design. Wouldn’t it be heavenly?
Final Grade: A-
the cut scenes are pretty crappy. and i have no idea what the storyline is. but it’s super fun. i’m enjoying this more than when i played ninja gaiden, maybe cuz i’m being much more casual about it instead of stressing over collecting every single little item and doing everything perfectly. who knows, maybe i’ll even replay it on a harder difficulty.
glad you’re enjoying it and i’m also relieved that perhaps i’m not the only one that thinks the plot was completely nonsensical. i think the game may contain the best action/adventure mechanics of this generation though, and it’s certainly easier to play than ninja gaiden 2. Platinum Games went out of their way to make this game accessible, even going so far as to allow you to play the game with one hand on easier difficulty settings.
but even on normal difficulty it’s not too bad with all the checkpoints and stuff. once you beat it, you’ll probably want to try to get through it again on a harder difficulty to see how much better you can do. after i beat it on normal, i cruised through it like a badass on hard difficulty. insane was a bit…too much for me since there’s no witch time on insane. maybe i’ll try to get through it eventually one of these days.