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Bayonetta 3 ​🦋​


one-armed dwarf
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Just a quick thread post to say I played an hour after 12am unlock last night. Played quite badly, I must have dodge-offseted all my Bayonetta muscle memory from the last time I played these games. So don't have a ton much to say, the opening has a bit of a DMC5 thing going on I guess with a fairly similar setup.

 

I will say however that technically speaking I find the game very hard to parse visually. It's not really the framerate as such, which is quite bad but tolerable for the kind of mashing that Bayo can offer. It's moreso the image quality (lack of), visual effects and resolution as well as the alpha transparency dot matrix thing that they do with enemies which are overlapping with the camera. It's unfortunately rough stuff and it all sort of turned into a soup of purple nonsense for me in the first 'proper' stage in the game.

 

A quick thing I can say that's interesting to me is with the summons you can queue up to two actions by them (perhaps this can be upgraded), release control and go back to Bayonetta while the demon slave asynchronously resolves all the big moves you told it to do. I think there will be some interesting synergies there. Maybe, I was really only mashing the buttons tbh, it's been so long since I played a game like this (including dmc) that my fingers feel like they're made of shite and nothing feels very deliberate

 

That said, I'm excited to really dig into it over the spooky weekend, the horrors of poorly scaled graphics notwithstanding 😱. Will need to setup the elgato to actually capture some decent clobbering from it tho, I really need that with these games not the 30 second clip that switch does

 

edit, some gameplay of me passing a secret mission, pogface. The monster mechanic is cool, I think the way you leverage launchers from witch time wicked weaves and can chomp motherfuckers while they're up there is some really inspired stuff so far, especially compared to Bayonetta 2

 

 

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I think if they could clean it up it could end up being my favourite of the three, but it's hard to say. Bayo 1 had such a well thought out battle system, but a bit of a one trick pony with the dodge offsets and grace and glory fights. Bayo 2 was spammy, but this is an interesting middle ground in that it gives you quick access to the ridiculous AOE fuck everything moves like umbran climax did in B2, but they've now also connected it more thoughtfully to the main combat mechanics from Bayonetta 1

 

You can swap in and out of your demon slave 'dance', you are vulnerable while doing it but there's probably some interesting setups you can go for. For instance, Madame Butterfly has a big charge up hadouken move which requires Bayo to commit a bit to her dance. But if you get a witch time triggered, and dodge offset into a wicked weave which launches a now vulnerable opponent into the air, now you have your chance to do your big fireball. You also have an 'exceed'-esque* mechanic in that you can press the trigger at the end of your wicked weaves (to be clear, these are the big hairy fist things Bayo does at the end of combos) and do a quick demon attack like that. So it's an interesting design in that you have big flashy attacks that are easy to do but they also interact in interesting ways, and my best guess is that the higher difficulties will require and reward careful layering of Bayonetta's melee and demon summoning powers against enemies that will require it

 

it is a shame that it is so technically shonky, it's the only real problem I'm having with it. I think though that fans of the previous two games, or at least one of them, they should pick this one up. Just have to grit yourself for the visual diarrhea and not so great performance, but the game underneath it all is very good. Bring on Switch 2

 

*nero's rev timing mechanic in DMC4/5

 

edit here's a guy I sub to wrecking shit, look at how cool this is (this is not actually a spoiler, I just dont want to have a bunch of video embeds)

Spoiler

 

 

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This game is mad fun, Madame Butterfly has been playing Street Fighter

 

 

Can't believe I thought the summon mechanics looked boring in the trailers

 

I'm on chapter 7 so far, but going back to do some of the older levels on expert as some of the mechanics settle in, and the ways Bayonetta has of moving around and swapping offensive styles. It's very cool, I like it a lot. It might pip MGR for me, but that depends on how it feels on the highest difficulty. It easily beats the other two Bayonettas, the only thing I would say 1 is better at is it has those Jeanne fights, nothing here quite on that level but this game feels much more unique and not just Devil May Cry with a dedicated dodge and light/heavy strings, which makes it much more interesting now imo

 

Still has those annoying gimmick stages though, the ones with vehicles and annoying fights. But you expect that with these games.

 

All that said I suspect the game might be divisive, it's quite a big departure and is a lot to figure out. This is a 'hard' game, not in its difficulty as such but in that the skill floor is high enough that it takes quite a bit of time to get comfy with it

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Played the first mission last night. 

 

Positive early impressions, I'd forgotten how utterly batshit bonkers this series was, that whole entire opening cutscene was just absolutely crazy in all the best ways. Went from 0-100 in about 5 minutes lol. Huge crazy monsters coming out the wazoo so early on with a crazy amount of shit going on all over the shop reminiscent of the The Day After tomorrow.

 

Safe to say I've not got to grips with the combat system at all yet, I'm mostly button mashing still hoping for the best. Having to juggle Bayonetta and the demon is a bit of a struggle at the moment but hopefully I'll get to grips with it shortly. I am already enjoying it though, just wish I had more of a handle on things really but that will come in time I hope.

 

Looks pretty good on the OLED Switch, visuals look a step up from B2 from what I can tell so far.

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I beat it today. I think it's the best one, probably, but the switch hardware is really depressing. It really needs a 'new generation' I think to really get across Platinum's ambition here, I don't fault at all the direction they took with this but I sort of wish we got another year or two of development hell so it could come out on a next gen system

 

(that's oversimplifying the work involved in getting a next gen version working I realise)

 

That said, I will look forward to playing that version whenever it releases. But some fights are like a clusterfuck of purple stuff, like this one (chapter 13 spoilers, big ones I guess) 😵

 

Spoiler

 

 

Unlike Bayonetta 2 this is a game I will be sticking with for a while to really figure it out. I might try and do everything in it (except pure platinum runs, did the S rank runs in DMC5 and it's just not fun at all doing perfectionist score optimised playthroughs, not at all). 

 

I did not figure out Viola at all. You don't get to play as her enough in the first playthrough to develop competency I think. So while you're playing through this I guess you'll just have to accept that or grind her mechanics out, I did the former. My initial takeaway from her is that she is Trish from DMC2/4, and has a simplified DMC moveset with a de-emphasis on witch time cause her parry requires dropping a combo in order to get it (and it's not that easy to get either). You're supposed to play her like Bayo in Bayonetta 1 on the hardest mode where WT is disabled, I think. Just pure aggression and dodge offset, but this is a guess. I'll spend time figuring it out later but as I said you don't get enough time in a first playthrough unless you grind the hell out of her missions and training.

 

They do a lot of good things with this though, I think they have a better balance of the crazy set piece stuff such that it doesn't completely suffocate the action like it did in Bayo 2. Some of the non-combat 'gimmick' content is actually quite cool and creative, and is full of DMC1 callbacks both in cutscenes and gameplay mechanics (as well as arcade game callbacks ala other Platinum games). But they also put in things like 'Witch Trials', as well as these alternative versions of levels which are purely just about clobbering. So it's a meaty in-depth action game with tons of places to explore that, but also a 'just one playthrough' game for more casual players. Nobody is really shortchanged here, which you could argue they were with the previous two games. And of course as series tradition there's the 1 million credits ticket to buy a rodin boss fight, each game does this and I've never tried it, so I'll try it with this one.

 

I made an attempt at the witch trials, which is like a 10 stages bloody palace but not too difficult (at least the first one anyway..). Got to stage 9 on my first try, but I couldn't see shit once I got to it lmao. But then I went back in again and beat it. So this here is my Gold clear of witch trials 1. It's not too hard, you just need to be able to spam at a high APM lol. This has spoilers for the final boss (upload for this video says 2 hours from this post so it's all the one).

 

image.png

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

I think I understand generally now what you're supposed to be doing with Bayo 3 combat, it's a lot of breaking posture with summon clobbering and closing in. Or managing adds while the summons do the real right, which is way harder I find cause it's hard to think of the main character as just playing 'support'. Some stuff is so visually incoherent though, it's so hard to keep track of some big enemies. Think the desiccated tree spirits from Elden Ring, but in a stylish action game. Urk

 

Some story stuff is a bit weird. I don't have a strong opinion on it really, but feels a bit unjustified by lack of development. It's not something I care about much but if the game seems polarising online this is one part of the reason why. fwiw, DMC5 still gets my vote as best game of this type of the past decade. But it's honestly very close here for me, in terms of catering to my personal tastes. In particular for delivering a stylish combat game with good summoner combat. Make more in this particular niche Platinum, you're better at it than Capcom lol.

 

damn, I wonder what Scalebound would have been like now if it actually came together. between that and Astral Chain Platinum are all about summons these days

 

b3>b1>>>b2

 

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Platinum made a video explaining how some of the summon synergies work. Some of this is stuff I'd sorta worked out, like launching an enemy with a witch time wicked weave is a good setup for having the bird claw grab. But you can also do it purely through summons

 

 

Arguably this video could spoil some of the fun discovery of these mechanics, but at the same time I think very little of Bayonetta 3's flow is intuitive. The game has cool discoveries in it but has maybe the worst path to those discoveries I've seen in a while, need to really just search for this stuff on the internet.

 

I've gotten into the knack of pulling them out during Bayonetta's animation recovery from larger committal attacks, which works really well I think and is also fun.

 

The game's combat hits a sort of exhausting wall at higher levels though I think, the combat encounters favour these really big enemies which charge into each other and the camera and cause the pixel-ey stuff to happen. Again the issue really isn't framerate as such, but the bad framerate doesn't help. It just looks like an absolute mess sometimes and the enemies blend together into pixel soup with too fast attack telegraphs. You're supposed to manage your pokemon to split them apart and pressure them and support with Bayonetta. Basically the idea in the video I just linked, which is to disable the big enemies so they stop causing you camera problems, but the action is very unclean and you won't always be able to do it. This game has a wild bell curve in the technicalities of its combat, in some parts its really rich and interesting but a lot of the shortcomings of these games are maybe most apparent in its third entry. Perhaps some of the highest highs and lowest lows. While I prefer Bayo 3 overall I think Bayo 1 is still the best executed game, even if it is kind of uninteresting compared to the wild shit this game is trying to do

 

I have cooled off on my hype for the game a bit but I still do like it a lot, it's just still a super flawed series in every single entry. Anyway I hope to clear witch trial 2 soon (got as far as verse 9 now) and I have just started labbing the optional rodin fight, at which I'm completely clueless. Starting off by learning assault slave parry timing

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Beat Witch trial 2 💪

 

(think results screen is a spoiler maybe? I don't know if this character was in trailers, probably was)
 

Spoiler

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One to go. Witch Trial 3 tho... 😱

 

 

I saw some of the later fights on some youtube video tho and they're fucked up. Won't get it clocked by ragnarok 🙉

 

Messed around with the Rodin fight, I actually really dislike it. Very framey for such an intense fight, it also feels like they designed an Elden Ring Malenia fight with how you have to rote learn all of Rodin's habits based on his proximity to you rather than react to clearly defined tells. I think once I clear WT3 I might just consider it done. I don't have the appetite to do boss enemy pattern homework all over again like ER.

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Played a bit more of this over the past week or so and am currently about halfway through Chapter 6. 

 

Still enjoying it but that enjoyment has waned a bit the past couple of Chapters or so, not really sure why but I'm struggling to find the motivation to pick it up and play a bit now compared with the first 3-4 chapters of the game. That batshit crazy intensity has gone and instead I'm left running around kind of similar levels with similar interactions, collectables etc. and I'm just kind of waiting for the next set-piece spectacle to bring the excitement back a bit really.

 

First Chapter with a different character was cool, I enjoyed trying out a combat style that was a bit different to Bayonetta's. I didn't enjoy it as much and it felt a little stiffer and flowed less for me but that Chapter was pretty short, assuming I spend more time with this character in future chapters I'm sure I'll get more used to it. Combat with Bayonetta is flowing now at least, ever since I picked up the Spider demon and Spider accessories (?) to wear I seem to do really well in combat and all sorts of cool shit happens on screen. I am still button mashing and it doesn't feel anywhere near as intricate as something like DMC5 but it's fun and cool, I will say though that the demons have become a bit of a crutch so far and I feel myself wanting to bash humanoid sized enemies more than I have been so far. I also miss having a combo meter like DMC5.

 

So yeah, a little more of a mixed bag the further I've got into this but I'm still enjoying it. Just hope the bombast returns shortly.

 

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9 hours ago, DisturbedSwan said:

assuming I spend more time with this character in future chapters I'm sure I'll get more used to it.

For me, at least, she never clicked. She's very unintuitive in this game, you really have to grind her in post game and training I think. Limited kit but how to apply it, no idea. Her perfect parry knocks enemies so far back you can hardly capitalise on it, really strange. 

 

She's basically DMC4 Trish, but that kinda moveset in this kinda game is strange. I dunno if I'm inclined to put the time in, there's a lot of content I've still to do and labbing Viola is just not on the agenda. I think generally the idea tho is to try and play DMC in Bayonetta. I dunno.

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I'm not sure I've any experience with Trish (I basically played an hour of DMC1 then an hour of DMC4) but to me she feels like Virgil in DMC5 in the way she leans heavily on counters and you the lack of witch time from dodges. 

 

I'm now part way through Chapter 8 in this and unfortunately the longer it goes on the more I'm not enjoying it. I still like it to a base degree, the combat is still fun as hell (for the most part - thanks other character) but the weird mini-hub worlds where I'm going about doing some needlessly fiddly platforming in order to get a Collectible just gets real old real fast, yes I know I don't have to do these (and I may not bother in the future) but I still feel weirdly compelled to find all these in these mini-hubs before moving forward. It just drags the whole pace of the game down and makes Chapters feel like they take forever. 

 

B1 and B2 were (from my poor recollection) rollercoaster rides that didn't really let up from start to finish. Here, I just find it odd for it to be like 'right, explore this mini open world a bit then we'll start the action up again' it just bogs everything down and affects the pacing massively. I really dislike the challenge rooms in this too, far more so than the other games (from what I can remember), they're just incredibly annoying and frustrating. There's one in Chapter 8 where the Switch nearly got launched across the room, you're on a slippy floor and have to defeat all the enemies in a certain time limit, whilst only having 4 hit points, if you slide into the fog you're dead, if an enemy hits you a few times you're dead, it's just infuriating. I don't think I'm gonna bother with any more of these, they're not worth the hassle, stress and frustration.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finished this in bed last night and was pleased to see the back of it.

 

Was just a bit of a mess throughout I thought, the story (I didn't expect much don't get me wrong) was nonsensical and felt incredibly disjointed, the locations were equally bizarre (sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way) but the worst part about it is the demon summoning ruins that visceral Bayonetta combat that made me enjoy 1 & 2 so much, there's seldom any moments in the game where you're matched up against humanoid size enemies and as a result have to summon your array of demons repeatedly to do any meaningful damage. The whole thing just feels clunky as well which is the antithesis to the tight precise Bayonetta combat, I just never fully got to grips with controlling this big thing knocking about the arena and Bayonetta at the same time, there needed to be a lock on of some sort otherwise you can just walk your demon around an arena completely missing any enemies until your demon expires. I absolutely hated Viola's levels too, thankfully there isn't many of them but they still all sucked massively.

 

Pacing was just really strange as well, the first two games I'd describe as rollercoasters. Lots of bombast, lots of spectacle all the way through to a satisfying conclusion 8-10 hours later. Here the game is much longer at about 20 hours and features these mini-open worlds with a number of collectibles you can collect and upgrades you can attain if you finish a little mini challenge which usually involves some bad platforming section which frustrates rather than entertains. This bogs down the pacing massively, making the game feel like it has too much busywork, I know you can ignore all these and I wish I did in hindsight but for someone who likes to do everything in a game it was frustrating as hell doing some of these and some of the combat arenas this time around just were no fun at all. 

 

The game does get a little better once it reaches Chapter 10 as the focus is more on the spectacle rather than mini open-worlds of the earlier chapters but these last few chapters don't do enough to turn the tide for me, I was just glad it was over by the time the credits were rolling.

 

Probably one of my biggest gaming disappointments in recent years, very much enjoyed the first two games but this can get in the bin. If they do make a B4 I'll be reticent to go back to the franchise to be honest, this has left such a bad taste in the mouth.

 

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7/10 is a very lenient rating for that writeup lol

 

imo, but I think there are a decent number of humanoid enemies. However I rarely enjoyed fighting them because the muddiness of the visuals and battle information was rubbish at communicating what exactly they were doing. But I still really like the game cause of how active it is and the unique movement options of each weapon, and the ways you can bring the summons out for support (even if, technically speaking, Bayonetta is the support role here). The trick I found with the summoner combat was to do certain moves with lots of active frames a lot (eg, slow attacks that last for a while), like the ones with backwards forwards inputs, cause you can buffer the summon commands during their attack animations and recovery. Which lets you layer bayo and the summon's offense in interesting ways. You can do it during dodges, jumps, flying around as well. Some bayonutters have figured out how to implement it in dodge offset, but that's too much for me I find.

 

* like as an example, the bird has a grab attack on the rb button. But you can't do much with it unless you mash the punch button after it to make the bird smash the enemy on the ground over and over. So you could stand there with Bayo and have her do the dance to mash the punch button, or you could initiate the bird grab, zone over to the enemy and do a big slow attack to it, and during its animation you can press ZL and mash the punch button and the game will accept both inputs. Slow weapons are best for this, or ones with charge inputs, making g pillar secretly the best weapon in the game.

 

Anyway I am the opposite with this game. I'm not going to pretend like the game doesn't have some fundamentally big issues but I think it's an exciting and innovative direction to take this sort of combat in. If Platinum double down on the summoner combat stuff they will stop being a second fiddle to dmc for me and more like an equal. The genre needs some new ideas and stylish pokemon clobbering is an interesting one to go for, even tho I just don't believe that Switch is the hardware to do justice to these kinds of ideas. But these are the kinds of new ideas this genre needs imo, rather than just taking the very basics DNA of DMC, and dumbing it down or just altering it over and over. Platinum's other games are fine, but this is a battle system that's really flexing. It's a game I'm excited to figure more stuff out with now that Ragnarök is done

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Haha I dropped it a point after that write up yesterday lol.

 

I'm glad they did try something new with the combat, I just think the implementation and hardware limitations didn't make it feel as intuitive or special as it could've. I will also admit that I didn't dive into the combat intricacies anywhere near as much as I could and perhaps should've done but then if I was enjoying the game more I would've done so. I don't think the game overall was very good at teaching you anything. I felt more compelled to learn in DMC5 but I think that game does almost everything better than this, with the caveat that it didn't have to run on a Switch though I suppose.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The combo tech fiends are finally making cool videos for the game

 

 

as always videos like this are less about things that are practical and more showing the level of expression possible. Tho I think the combo at 1:34 shows a really practical combo of demon switching that is both showy and useful

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  • 1 month later...

A big patch game out, the most impactful thing appears to be some timing changes for Viola. She can activate the full version of witch time out of parry more easily, and it seems you can dodge offset* in and out of parrys

 

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/01/bayonetta-3-version-1-2-0-is-now-live-here-are-the-full-patch-notes

 

Quote
  • Adjusted Viola's activation window for "Block" and activation conditions for Witch Time.
    • Block activation window added after releasing Block (during the release animation).
    • Added an additional animation when Witch Time takes effect, making its activation easier to realize.
    • The allotted duration of Witch Time, and its activation window have been lengthened.
    • Now, when block is activated when player is attacked, player will receive damage effect, but block will succeed and activate Witch Time.
    • Now, combo can continue (with Dodge Offset) when player uses Block to activate Witch Time.
    • If the Block input is used repeatedly, the granted Witch Time duration will decrease.

 

 

I didn't really get far with Viola, but the way they integrated the offset and witch time stuff felt very weird to me to the point of being broken and incomplete. So this sounds like it fixed that, at this point tho I'm just going to continue waiting until there's better hardware before I go back to play some more. Just kinda done with that image dithering on switch, and emulation has its own quirks

 

*just to clarify again, dodge offset is when you hold attack buttons down going into a dodge and can keep your combo going rather than start again. So this player is pressing punch and holding it, parrys, dodges backwards, then releases punch and presses the next button in their combo. I think

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  • 4 months later...

Started playing this. Always been a massive Bayonetta fan. Bayo 2 was pretty much the reason I bought a Wii U. Now I have a Switch, it was time to check this out. 
 

Didnt get off to the best start, as it’s absolute nonsense. Sure, Bayo’s story is never exactly logical. But this is one of the worst starts to a game I’ve played in ages. Bayo getting her arse kicked by…someone? Somewhere? Then someone else turns up. Then more stuff happens. Just left me thinking “What the fuck is going on?”. Thankfully the next level made more sense. Combat seems pretty satisfying, I’ve got a Pro Controller but haven’t used it yet, as I’ve been sticking with handheld mode. 

 

We shall see how this goes.

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