As most if not all 5 of my readers know, I've got that big disconnect with Nintendo. One of the biggest reasons that I don't review games from the Nintendo consoles is because I just don't have the format to play them on. I had to download an emulator to try Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and it wasn't until recently I had got a 3DS to finally get at some things I was looking to play.
This recently changed at my home. For the most part I still have had no interest in purchasing a Wii or Wii U for any reason, and it really hasn't changed. But one of my tenants is a ravenous Nintendo fan, and there was no way in hell he was gonna let a Mario Kart get past him. But now that a Wii U in my household (and found a random 40$ dropped on the floor that went unclaimed for a week) I took it as an opportunity to play the one game I was frothing to get my hands on.
BAYONETTA 2
Much like the original Bayonetta the game starts In Medias Res with Bayonetta and another similar looking Umbra witch basically being displayed in erotic bullet time fashion as they are mid combat with angels on a falling piece of building. The opening then begins to tell how the Aesir basically created the eyes of the world, which essentially governs power of the human realm and divided them to the Umbra witches and Lumen Sages to protect them and maintain the balance between the world.
Not that you would get a moment to actually read that, because the moment he starts speaking the stillness moves and you are battling off waves and enemies from the get go, (pretty much exactly like how the first game started). The actual story takes place with Bayonetta out doing her holiday shopping in what appears to be New York with idiotic dumbass waste of dialog Joe Pesci rip-off Enzo. In the midst of her shopping however she is attacked by angels again and is quickly accompanied by fellow Umbran witch, Jeanne.
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| While Jeanne let her hair down, Bayonetta took her hair off. Both look better for it. |
They make fairly effortless work of the angels, but something goes wrong with one of Bayonetta's summoned monsters, which turns into an inferno demon. Jeanne is killed trying to save Bayonetta, and her soul is ripped to Inferno. Bayonetta takes care of the demon, and learns from her contacts Rodin and Enzo that if she travels to Fimbulventr to find the gates of hell, she can bring Jeanne back. With both demons and angels after her, Bayonetta confidently sashays off to rescue her Umbran sister.
So, for once, Bayonetta actually has a somewhat coherent plot line. I've played through the first Bayonetta game a couple of times and even after extensively reading the wiki for detailed plot analysis, I still have no idea what the fuck is going on. This time around it's cut and dry: something went wrong, friend got killed, off to save friend, beat shit up on the way. Alright, got it. Thank you for keeping shit simple this time around.
Let's just get this out of the way to start, I used the Wii U tablet thingy like once the entirety of time i spent with this game, and not one time did I use the touch controls. You know why? Because if I am playing a game where shit is constantly flying around an attacking me, sticking my gigantic hulk fingers in the way of a 6 inch surface area is not going to help me play the game more effectively. The whole time I used the Wii U's pro controller, and aside from the A and B being different functions to the X and O on PlayStation, most of the transition to the new controller was seamless.
Full disclosure: I know practically nothing about the Wii U hardware. I simply assumed that it was grossly underpowered compared to the PS3 and XB360, let alone the PS4 and XB1. So I was actually quite surprise with just how well the game was able to keep up with all of the action that was flying around the screen at any given time. Only in a few rare moments did the frame rate start to chug on me. Most of cut scenes seem to be at 30fps for a more cinematic look, but all of the combat looked much smoother, and seemed to hold a pretty consistently high level if not a flat 60 nearly the whole time.
Which is incredibly handy considering how smooth the Bayonetta combat is. If there is anything Hideki Kamiya knows about video games, it's how to make a ridiculous over the top action sequence. Sometimes he falls in the trap of it happening in cut scene, but after the game's introduction, you basically control the pace. Much like the Devil May Cry series he is known for, the combat is incredibly fast paced and fluid, all of the weapons you attain in the game have a large myriad of combos that interlink with the weapons Bayonetta uses on her hands and feet that appeal to both the skillful and the button masher.
There seems to be more variety to the weapons that you can unlock this time around. It didn't take me long to unlock a pair of twin swords which very quickly became my favorite weapons in the game and were my primary hand weapons until I discovered the scythe and whip. Once I had them, the blades shifted to the feet and suddenly I became a twirling, prancing, area of effect monster of destruction. It was fucking awesome. But they also give you some heavier gas cannons that shoot fire and ice which were fun to use, and a Bow that shoots insects at people that was great for fights I was losing hand to hand in. The weapons are infinitely better than the first game.
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| The torture attacks are back, but the fetishy ones (like the bondage horse) are absent. |
There is still no block button in this game, but it is made up for with a dodge move that you can pretty much spam relentlessly. If you dodge at the right moment, you get a few moments of "witch time" where everything but you slows down for you to unload a combo. This was something I somewhat struggled with in the first Bayonetta. Now I can probably make a joke here about how it was dumbed down to be easier for the Wii U audience who wouldn't know a great game if it bit them on the ass, but the reality of it is that enemies have a bit more of a clear indicator of the moment they are going to attack, so it's easier to follow the pace of the fight.
And it certainly does feel like it's scaled back the difficulty somewhat. I went back and played the first Bayonetta after completing Bayonetta 2 and I still tend to struggle with certain enemies as I had before. Yet in Bayonetta 2 there was only one boss fight where I actually had to spend a continue to try again. It actually might be a combination of more telegraphed moves, weapons with wider attack areas, slightly easier difficulty, and so on. Either way, I managed to tear through the game getting gold of silver rankings nearly the whole time.
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| The bosses in this game follow a kinda Dark Soulsian trope: If boss is closer to your size, the more dangerous they are. The Lumen sage is an perfect example of this |
On top of all the good things I have just prattled on about, probably the smartest visual change this game made was to change Bayonetta's hair. Instead of the ridiculous beehive cone thing she had in the previous game, she has a much simpler short kinda wave instead. She looks normal, it accentuates her face more, and frankly looks a billion times more attractive. It is somewhat marred by the fact that she still has the ridiculous out of proportion giraffe legs that spoil the entirety of her look for me. Some of her other features seem out of proportion too, but the legs are really what stand out to me.
Since I've brought up the topic of her appearance I might as well address the Nintendo themed costumes. Alright, some of them are kinda cool and it's a nice little nod to its new platform. But ultimately they are 100% cosmetic additions that are functionally useless. To be totally honest, a large majority of the costumes you can unlock in the game already I think are infinitely better than the Nintendo skinned ones. It's a moot point I suppose, but that shouldn't be the reason people buy the game because I think its begging the fanboys to try something new, they should buy the game for its own merits.
I really tried to push the original Bayonetta when it first came out. The way I would describe it to customers is that every level of this game, is the final level of another game. It holds true here and possibly even more so. There are very few down moments of the game to give you exposition, and nearly every boss fight does the God of War thing where they are roughly the size of a 20 story building, and uses a lot of grandiose visualizations of scope such as fighting up a building, standing on a chunk of ground that is being swung around by a demon, or quickly moving from platform to platform to continue the fight.
To some people, it could even be exhausting. Almost every single aspect of this game is so straight jacket wearingly over the top I couldn't blame people for constantly pausing the game to reorient themselves. I could probably even draw the comparison to some of the Call of Duty games in how it likes to drop you into a chaotic war zone. While exhausting, it allows the game to keep a somewhat frenetic pace that makes the game very difficult to put down.
But you know what this game is lacking? Angst. Despite the some what erotic presentation of her character, Bayonetta is clearly a confident protagonist who enjoys the fact that she is an attractive woman who can kick serious ass, and can do so effortlessly. At no point does she ever come off as weak or submissive, but she manages to balance it but showing some cracks in the armor and displaying that she's not emotionally stoic. A number of times in the game there are moments of panic that show that her flirtatiously confident appearance might just be a shield. These moments made me find her to be a more entertaining character in Bayonetta 2 than she was in the first.
Sadly, my roomies suck and I didn't get to play any of the co-op trials modes or a number of the extras, but depending on what difficulties you beat the game on or what challenges you complete, there are a handful of unlockable characters that can be used in the co-op mode, and Jeanne can be used in story mode. In addition to that, the game just straight up gives you a copy of the first one as well, which is an incredible deal.
If I had to really reach for complaint on this, it sits SOLELY on the Enzo character. Fuck Enzo. He is put in clearly to be a Joe Pesci styled comic relief character to play off Bayonetta's almost regal level of confidence. the problem is, he's not funny. At all, NOT IN THE FUCKING SLIGHTEST. He basically gets an incredibly meaty set of dialog in the first few scenes of the game to rehash some crappy joke from the first scene of the previous game (which wasn't funny then either), it runs entirely too long, and he drops the word fuck more times then I do in years worth of reviews. Enzo sucks and I cannot stand him. You would be completely justified in skipping Bayonetta 2's opening sequence to just get past him.
The only other complaint I can come up with is if you just finished the original Bayonetta, then Bayonetta 2 is going to pretty much feel like the exact same game to you. The controls are mostly unchanged from game to game, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only major change is the additional use of the magic bar for Umbran Climax, which allows your whole combo to be done with a series of finishing strikes instead of just at the end of the combo (a feature once unlocked by beating the game in the previous title).
There are a ton of reviews giving this game perfect to near perfect scores. Nearly any complaint I could have came up with on the previous Bayonetta game were effectively fixed in nearly every way on this one. The load times are minimal, the game shows excellence in combat design, the story doesn't take itself too seriously and neither do the characters, and it comes bundled with the first game free of charge. It's almost like a game was designed to be fun first, and artistic second. Who'd of thought?
Upon finishing the title I immediately messaged my Nintendo fanboy cousin who is currently frothing at the bit to play the new Smash Brothers and I messaged him with the same message I am about to tell you: If you own a Wii U and you do not have Bayonetta 2, you are fucking doing it wrong. This title has a serious case for Rage Quitter's game of the year. All of the first party fans can shut their yaps about Smash, Mario Kart, Captain Toad's nobody gives a fuck adventure because Bayonetta 2 is the best thing to happen to Nintendo in the past 20 years.
Now hopefully Sony and Microsoft learned their lesson and beg for this series to come back.
Since I've brought up the topic of her appearance I might as well address the Nintendo themed costumes. Alright, some of them are kinda cool and it's a nice little nod to its new platform. But ultimately they are 100% cosmetic additions that are functionally useless. To be totally honest, a large majority of the costumes you can unlock in the game already I think are infinitely better than the Nintendo skinned ones. It's a moot point I suppose, but that shouldn't be the reason people buy the game because I think its begging the fanboys to try something new, they should buy the game for its own merits.
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| I used the Daisy alternate for a little, but I couldn't take it seriously. |
I really tried to push the original Bayonetta when it first came out. The way I would describe it to customers is that every level of this game, is the final level of another game. It holds true here and possibly even more so. There are very few down moments of the game to give you exposition, and nearly every boss fight does the God of War thing where they are roughly the size of a 20 story building, and uses a lot of grandiose visualizations of scope such as fighting up a building, standing on a chunk of ground that is being swung around by a demon, or quickly moving from platform to platform to continue the fight.
To give a sense of scope, this is just ONE of the bosses you fight in the FIRST LEVEL of the game.
To some people, it could even be exhausting. Almost every single aspect of this game is so straight jacket wearingly over the top I couldn't blame people for constantly pausing the game to reorient themselves. I could probably even draw the comparison to some of the Call of Duty games in how it likes to drop you into a chaotic war zone. While exhausting, it allows the game to keep a somewhat frenetic pace that makes the game very difficult to put down.
But you know what this game is lacking? Angst. Despite the some what erotic presentation of her character, Bayonetta is clearly a confident protagonist who enjoys the fact that she is an attractive woman who can kick serious ass, and can do so effortlessly. At no point does she ever come off as weak or submissive, but she manages to balance it but showing some cracks in the armor and displaying that she's not emotionally stoic. A number of times in the game there are moments of panic that show that her flirtatiously confident appearance might just be a shield. These moments made me find her to be a more entertaining character in Bayonetta 2 than she was in the first.
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| You rarely see characters in games with the almost smug confidence Bayonetta has these days. |
Sadly, my roomies suck and I didn't get to play any of the co-op trials modes or a number of the extras, but depending on what difficulties you beat the game on or what challenges you complete, there are a handful of unlockable characters that can be used in the co-op mode, and Jeanne can be used in story mode. In addition to that, the game just straight up gives you a copy of the first one as well, which is an incredible deal.
If I had to really reach for complaint on this, it sits SOLELY on the Enzo character. Fuck Enzo. He is put in clearly to be a Joe Pesci styled comic relief character to play off Bayonetta's almost regal level of confidence. the problem is, he's not funny. At all, NOT IN THE FUCKING SLIGHTEST. He basically gets an incredibly meaty set of dialog in the first few scenes of the game to rehash some crappy joke from the first scene of the previous game (which wasn't funny then either), it runs entirely too long, and he drops the word fuck more times then I do in years worth of reviews. Enzo sucks and I cannot stand him. You would be completely justified in skipping Bayonetta 2's opening sequence to just get past him.
The only other complaint I can come up with is if you just finished the original Bayonetta, then Bayonetta 2 is going to pretty much feel like the exact same game to you. The controls are mostly unchanged from game to game, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only major change is the additional use of the magic bar for Umbran Climax, which allows your whole combo to be done with a series of finishing strikes instead of just at the end of the combo (a feature once unlocked by beating the game in the previous title).
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| Just another Level 1 baddie in the world of Bayonetta. Fought atop a speeding train. |
There are a ton of reviews giving this game perfect to near perfect scores. Nearly any complaint I could have came up with on the previous Bayonetta game were effectively fixed in nearly every way on this one. The load times are minimal, the game shows excellence in combat design, the story doesn't take itself too seriously and neither do the characters, and it comes bundled with the first game free of charge. It's almost like a game was designed to be fun first, and artistic second. Who'd of thought?
Upon finishing the title I immediately messaged my Nintendo fanboy cousin who is currently frothing at the bit to play the new Smash Brothers and I messaged him with the same message I am about to tell you: If you own a Wii U and you do not have Bayonetta 2, you are fucking doing it wrong. This title has a serious case for Rage Quitter's game of the year. All of the first party fans can shut their yaps about Smash, Mario Kart, Captain Toad's nobody gives a fuck adventure because Bayonetta 2 is the best thing to happen to Nintendo in the past 20 years.
Now hopefully Sony and Microsoft learned their lesson and beg for this series to come back.
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