A legendary (no pun intended) game, but aged very poorly compared to the other two in the trilogy. It's still a good game, but the level design is horrendous and tedious and the gameplay is generally very clunky compared to the sequels. Certain staples of this series, such as dual wielding, vehicle hijacking, and the more snappy melee combat system, are not present in this game. As someone who is nostalgic for this game and has played through it countless times since the early 2000s, I have to say that anyone who thinks this one is the best in the series is on crack.

Infuriating, cryptic level design is the name of the game here, with some downright maddening levels towards the end where your guns are rendered useless and you have to fight some insanely difficult enemies with just your lightsaber. The story is also of questionable quality, since the actual "meat" of the plot only happens in the last hour or so of the game, and the rest of it is Kyle fighting stormtroopers and Mara going off to do a mission for Jabba's successor to secure supplies for the new republic. It gets three stars because it's more Dark Forces 2, however, because Dark Forces 2 is a great game.

Bayonetta, like most Platinum games, is a very fun, but deeply flawed experience. Unlike its cohorts (i.e. Devil May Cry 3 or Ninja Gaiden Black), Bayonetta constantly interrupts the flow of the game with cutscenes during missions, as opposed to the beginning and end of a mission. The cutscene's role in this game goes from being a welcome reprieve from the action to experience a simple yet well-fleshed out story, and instead becomes an annoyance that will constantly return to pester the player right when they reach proper momentum in the gameplay to continue delivering a nonsensical, hard-to-follow story. Of course, some of these cutscenes have instant death quick-time events which come out of nowhere to punish the player for having the audacity to mentally check out. Aside from the cutscenes, the action is solid (if inconsistent due to certain enemies not following the rules of witch time), and the stacy-tier protagonist keeps things entertaining with her flambouyant antics and varied moveset. The graphics and art style are fine, but there is so much filtering over the game that it lends itself to a fever-dream atmosphere. To be fair, this is a common hallmark amongst seventh gen games that had to hide the fact that they came out on inherently limited hardware, but Platinum games is a pretty big offender with this, especially with Metal Gear Rising and Vanquish. The soundtrack is perfect for this type of game, filled with frenetic bubblegum pop that will get stuck in your head despite not understanding any of the lyrics. The gameplay also has a tendency to be punishing and full of trial and error moments that will lead to many a quick and cheap death on the first playthrough of a mission, not just from combat but also traps and quick-time events that are not telegraphed prior to occuring. This, combined with the overly strict ranking system (this game is quick to give anyone a stone award, they aren't lenient in the awards system so you'll either get a stone or gold/platinum award and rarely get the ones in between), can lead to feeling enraged at the end of the level when you see Enzo's stony form gracing your screen. That being said, Bayonetta is not a bad game by any means. It just suffers from the unchecked, scattershot ambition of a man like Hideki Kamiya and a developer like Platinum Games.

Platinuming this game made me remember how frustrating the base game was. Pros: the graphics and gameplay are a step up from AC2, there were mechanics in the gameplay that were new to the series that made the side content more engaging and plentiful, there were more gadgets to play with, the missions themselves were more varied, and full sync missions were a good idea on paper and ended up being implemented better later on in the series. Cons: the objectives were extremely restrictive, the full sync was far too demanding and restrictive for something that still had the awkward movement of the first two games, and the story ended up feeling like a filler arc between 2 and Revelations. Overall, I would've rated it 3.5 but the DaVinci Disappearance ended up being so much better than the main story that this game gets a 4 out of 5.