The only fighting game I ever loved. I'd spend unhealthy amounts of time in this game, unlocked every character, did everyone's campaign, loved everything about it. My favorite characters were probably Cervantes, Ivy and her sword, Yoshimitsu, Raphael (mostly for his name, but I loved playing as him as well), but above all were Setsuka and Taki, I think. Playing as Taki was satisfying as hell, and Setsuka's stage and theme, and the umbrella sword, have stuck with me forever. I was also pretty good at Siegfried and Sophitia.
The backstories, stage design, movesets, I loved it all back then, and if I were to revisit the game today, I think I'd feel about the same. I also loved the alternate paths you could take in the storyline, leading you to fights against bonus opponents, visiting other stages, fighting a huge stone statue called Colossus, or the secret final boss, Night Terror. I remember 8 year-old me trying again and again to reach him after doing it once, before erasing my memory card on accident. The quicktime events in the endings were cool as well, the soundtrack was the shit, I love everything about this game.

Game of the year, two years running!!!!!!!!!

Dotemu, Guardcrush and Lizardcube (which, despite the number of studio logos, is still only like five guys) continue to refine an already near-perfect game - you know a beat 'em up has proper chops when the developers are putting out patch notes that look like a fighting game balance update and people are crying/cheering for nerfs/buffs to their favourite characters.

Survival mode is the main draw here, of course. The execution is deceptively simple - at first it just feels like the devs have thrown together a procgen that throws together random enemies together with a series of roguelike buffs between brawls, but it quickly becomes apparent that the new mode has a ton of fun little surprises - fighting Max and Shiva at the same time in a mad factory of conveyor belts with lasers flying everywhere is so much more madcap than anything the main campaign tried, but the insanity is somehow tempered by the game allowing you to carefully Sophie's Choice your way to crazy builds that let you unleash twenty electric jabs that do 90% extra damage or build an army of kangaroo friends or whatever other mad shit you can conceive of - i.e. the good part of roguelikes - is something that feels really, really good in a game where most things already feel so good.

New weapons are stupid in all the right ways too - a swordfish that does crazy pushback and wallbounces, a multi-hitting duck umbrella/shield, those foam sticks from Gladiators, Cloud's buster sword.... and a hammer, that has been knowingly patched into that corridor scene in Stage 3 that every always said was like Oldboy. I like these devs!

Of the new characters, I've only tried Estelle so far. She rules. More devs should have the guts to create a fast-moving grappler! That's right - Lizardcube are so good at their job that they managed to make a cop fun to play as! Wow!! The talent!!!

What an game! It's not perfect, nor is Platinum's best game, but what a awesome experience!

The game is "Pure Platinum" (see what I did there?), it has amazing action sequences, incredible characters that hold the ball up the whole game, it doesn't overstays, and it's exactly what I want from Platinum, and what I think they do the best, medium length hyped up action game, they're the masters at this "genre" and Bayonetta is a example of that.

All of that being said, the story was kinda confusing and when it reaches the end I was a little lost, but overall this is an AWESOME game, that you should definitely play. And now I need to buy Bayo 2 and wait for the third entry!