A Witch’s Brewīayonetta 3 is more than just its combat, and in fact, one of the things it does even better than its predecessors is mixing up its gameplay styles at the drop of a hat. There’s definitely an adjustment period to remembering you must block, not dodge as Viola, but once I got used to it I ended up really enjoying Viola’s chapters as nice little breaks from the traditional demon-summon-heavy Bayonetta chapters. Witch Time, of course, is the temporary slow motion that gets activated when dodging an attack at the last second as Bayonetta but as Viola, you must instead time a block with her sword just before an attack hits her. By the end I was convinced: This sequel builds on everything that made the original great, and delivers one of the most satisfying action games I've played. The superb pacing and combat are just that good. At times, the writing feels ridiculous, but I still love how it plays. Bayonetta has historically had some of the wildest weapons in all of video games, but I think it’s easy to say that these top even her own previous games.Įvery aspect of Bayonetta 2 feels polished and focused. By the time I was finished, I had an arsenal of 10 weapons and nine demons to play with, all of which had their own skill trees with upgradeable abilities. There’s the versatile Ignis Yo-Yos which hit distant enemies with punch attacks, and close enemies with kick attacks the Dead End Express, which is, I kid you not, a literal demon train that Bayonetta can wield like a chainsaw or ride like a locomotive to careen into enemies and the Ribbit Libido, a mic stand that she can kick out like a rockstar and sing a little quip into in order to buff either her offense or defense. I didn’t have any issue with the lack of mixing and matching different weapon types, though, mainly because Bayonetta’s arsenal of weapons is insane and extensive. Instead, when you get a new weapon, it works as a set that has its own unique attacks for both punches and kicks. The other big new change to Bayonetta 3’s combat is the fact that you can no longer equip specific weapon sets to either Bayonetta’s arms or legs. It’s a real high risk vs high reward situation. What you really have to be careful about, though, is the rage meter of your summon – if that maxes out, they’ll turn against you and you’ll have no way of unsummoning them. One specific enemy type will multiply if they get killed by one of your demons, another type will nimbly dodge every attack they throw. Your summon can also be killed if they take too much damage, and there are even enemies that can outright destroy them with a single move, putting it on a cooldown timer before you can bring it back. For one, all it takes is one hit on Bayonetta to cancel the summon, and it takes much more magic to resummon than it does to keep a summon going. But Platinum does a really great job of keeping the power of summons in check as the campaign rolls on. It’s a hell of a power trip, and my first reaction to using the beastly Gomorrah to effortlessly take out enemies that would’ve taken me about 30 seconds of wailing on to defeat them was that this seemed quite overpowered.

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