Another story in the world we live in

I'll just say the title is misleading in the way you probably think what this game is.

Resonated with some lines but feels like this wasn't meant for me at all.

There really isn't much here and it's like 5 minutes but I hope the person is alright. This is just one of the many stories in this world.

(read with umineko project. you're making a grave mistake if you don't do that. god i feel bad for the og/steam fans)

after reading higurashi i was expecting this to pretty much faceplant, crash, burn, and shit itself in every way possible at some point. but somehow ryukishi got his act together and actually executed his ideas... pretty much perfectly?

sure, i'd be lying if i said i loved every second (a CERTAIN detective drives me up a wall, among a few others) and the pacing can definitely be WAY too sluggish at times, but i also would be lying if i said i cared much at all by this point

yeah, you were all right

Bayonetta 2 leaps off the screen in an explosive display of pride for the action genre. The colors pop and the visual design is off the charts. No longer does the game force cheap instant death QTEs on the player, but instead the occasional laid back mashing sequence that provides no immediate danger to the player, providing a power fantasy that isn’t anything new to the genre. On the whole the game is snapper, more vibrant, and is in contention for the best audio visual experience Platinum games has ever made. On the surface this game is a straight upgrade from Bayonetta 1, but that’s just the problem, it’s all just surface level. The more I played the game the more little things jumped out to me. The heavier enemies mean juggle combos aren’t as easy to attain, and occasionally your combo will be broken out of due to no fault of your own. To get around this the player has a new mechanic known as Umbran Climax, but to say it turns the game into a button masher would be an understatement. A thing I loved about the first game was how it was all balanced. One might assume that witch time was the defining central mechanic to skillful play, but in a shocking twist, the game removes this mechanic entirely on the highest difficulty, revealing that it was never essential to begin with. This was teased at certain points by enemies that couldn’t trigger witch time like gracious and glorious, but this revelatory moment is something that surely made people stick with the game even past the highest threshold of difficulty. In general, Platinum Games are really good about introducing a unique mechanic to the player, and then removing the training wheels by the end of the experience. They respect the player’s skill and let them go wild with newfound mastery of the game. But in Bayonetta 2, the use of Umbran Climax is essential for the sake of getting the best rank. More pressingly, this addition seeps into other facets of the game in a negative way. Most obvious is the major nerf to Bayonetta’s damage output. Possibly in an attempt to make Umbran Climax more enticing, Platinum opted to reduce the damage output of standard attacks dramatically from their power in the first game. This isn’t a terrible change on paper, but Bayo is so crippled here that fights end up dragging on for what feels like an eternity. In general there’s just not enough wiggle room for player expression in the game to warrant a 2nd playthrough. I’ve seen many players call Bayonetta 2 a better casual experience than the first game and I definitely agree. It's easier, less punishing, more flashy, and makes the player feel like a god from the start compared to the brutal challenge of Bayonetta 1. As a result, however, it loses all the thrill, tension, and escalation of the first game. I’m not sure what's in store for our favorite angel slayer, but with the impending release of Bayonetta 3 looming over our heads, one can only hope they don’t make the same mistakes they did with this game.

Bayonetta 2 was made for people who only did one playthrough of Bayonetta. At launch critics and fans praised the game for fixing a lot of the glaring faults of the original. It's more vibrant in colors, removed all resemblance of insta-kill QTEs and terrible After Burner levels, and made cool new additions such as the introduction of Demons and Umbran Climax. However, over time the game's reputation devolved, and if you ask any Platnium Games fan about the game, they'll tell you it's a weaker entry than the original. I share that same sentiment.

You see, the main problem with Bayonetta 2 is that it revolves too much around Witch Time. Now I know what you might be saying, wasn't Witch Time the central mechanic of Bayonetta and so naturally they would want to keep focusing that clear central mechanic? That was never the case.

Witch Time was made as a crutch for newer players to get used to the game on its lower difficulties, but even then there were enemies that spawned that outright ignore Witch Time. On my first playthrough, I thought that was a bug or something, but no, it was intentional. The highest difficulty of Bayonetta 1 you unlock after beating hard mode, Infinite Climax, outright removes Witch Time altogether. That seems insane for anyone who played the original once, some encounters seemed like they're impossible without the mechanic. But no, Witch Time wasn't made for these encounters, it was Dodge Offset.

Dodge Offset was the secret mechanic to the first game that allows for these Witch Time-less encounters to work. It allows Bayonetta to continue combos while dodging. The problem however lies in that while there's a visual queue for a successful dodge offset, that game never explicitly told the player how to do it, and it's the most crucial mechanic to learn how to master the game's combat. I admittedly pissed farted and shitted my way through the first game without ever knowing it was even in the game until years later.

I feel the team behind Bayonetta 2 without Hideki Kamiya's influence thought because the first game never told the player how important Dodge Offset was only a supplemental gameplay mechanic and felt the need to include it in the game without asking the player to master it. It's most likely why Infinite Climax in this game actually has Witch Time activated, as it's this game's main mechanic now.

Well okay, fine, you want to make the game easier for new players and make learning technical stuff an optional thing. That wouldn't be an issue, but for some reason, Witch Time is notably nerfed in this game too. I guess they didn't want players to gain too much reward from it during encounters, but that requires Bayonetta to do any real damage in this game.

The second issue with this game is that Bayonetta doesn't do any damn damage in this game. I already thought the health pools of bosses in the original were obnoxious, but it's taken to ludicrous degrees here now that Bayonetta feels she hits people with a wet towel, and the new weapons don't give any improvements to her damage output. Why? Oh yeah, so Platnium can shoehorn Umbran Climax to your face. It's fine if you wanted to give the player a Devil Trigger-like mechanic, but it shouldn't be the end all be all for dealing substantial damage. It also doesn't help that enemies can break out of combos easier now, which makes getting that damage naturally even harder. It devolves all of the encounters to just waiting for a Witch Time opportunity to do pixel-health damage and to build Umbran Climax meter then releasing it so you can actually nuke their health bars until either the encounter stops or the boss goes away.

I also gotta say, what was the point of adding in slow-moving walking sessions or the Snake Within or Crow Within abilities that amounts to "helping you move by flying or swimming". These don't add anything to an action game, these are blatant padding techniques to bloat out an already shorter game than the original.

So, while Bayonetta 2 does indeed remove a lot of things that plagued the original release, it adds in a bunch of useless features that not only make no sense but completely unbalances what made the original the more compelling and interesting to master game.

The thing is I never actually noticed these things on my initial playthrough. Like most people, I thought it was an upgrade to the original because it was prettier and didn't have those terrible QTEs, but what I didn't realize that the monkey paw twisted one of its fingers when I asked for these changes when playing the original. I only did one playthrough of each game and when you only have little understanding of those mechanics you will naturally feel Bayonetta 2 is the better game. But it was until revisiting those games with a better grasp of both these games mechanics and action games as a whole is how I figured out that this game was a lot of smoke and mirrors. It's pretty and flashy, but that can only give you so much to work with.