Disclaimer: This is Part II to an unintentionally long Game EXP article from Monday that kind of turned into Bayonetta 2 bashing, but all the while knowing that that was not going to be the end of it all. I did in fact enjoy a lot of what was in Bayonetta 2, even though there were things that I disliked. For those points of view, go back and read Part I (If you'd like), then come back here to find out the rest.
And once again, if you have not played the game and are looking for a 100% spoiler free article, I would not recommend your eyes go any further, if they haven't already.
Welcome back one and, um, two. Maybe five, but let us not get carried away. So now that I have aired out all/most of my displeasures with Bayonetta 2, let us get down to all the awesomeness that was, in fact, Bayonetta 2.
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| Pretty damn epic for an opening act mind you. |
The boss battles. Holy bloody hell the scale of a lot of the boss battles was ramped up here to a level that I was not expecting. As you can sort of see here, Bayonetta is smaller than even the nasal horns on this creature here (I know the creatures name, I am just trying to keep even just a little bit unspoiled). Granted some of the boss battles were not all this grand in scale, otherwise by the end of the game you would have ended up fighting the moon. . . but this was one hell of a way to start off the game. Another aspect of the boss battles that I was very much impressed by was the music, which I feel like I am going to have to feature in an upcoming MIDI Week Singles article. But while I honestly did not notice the music during the regular fights as much as I kind of did in the first game, the music during a lot of the later boss fights came across as very grandiose, complete with full symphonic orchestrations and what sounded like a full choir. I am definitely going to have to look up the music the more I try to recall how it was used in those battles.
And just like the first game, it does not take itself too seriously, such as in the first game you fight while riding on a missile, while in Bayonetta 2 you find yourself (more than once) fighting on the back of a fighter jet.
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| How is she flying the plane if she's standing on the back of it? Probably magic. She's a witch after all. |
But unlike the missile stage in Bayonetta, the plane stage in particular was a lot more forgiving and therefore, I was able to enjoy the absurdity a bit more, rather than be annoyed with the length and repetitiveness of the stage.
Another aspect of the game that I felt was an improvement over the first game, was the combat which felt a lot more fluid. And by fluid, I mean that I felt that I was the bad ass hand-to-hand fighting witch that I had wanted to be in the first game. There was also inclusion of the Umbran Climax, which allowed you to use some of your built up magic to, in essence, release a flurry of critical hit attacks for a limited amount of time. Torture attacks were still present here as in the first game, but I definitely found myself wanting to save up enough magic to use the Umbran Climax. Unless of course that the Torture Attack was the attack that would kill off an enemy. And even the Max Bonus button mashing was a lot more forgiving than in the first game, where it seemed like unless you knew ahead of time and were already vigorously mashing that Y button, you would be lucky to even fill half of the meter. Instead, in Bayonetta 2, it was almost hard not to get the Max Bonus.
As depicted in the above video, by the time in the game that you earn the swords, I nearly stuck with them for the rest of the game. I did feel a little like I was cheating against the design of the character since one of her key elements was that she used four guns. But something about the way the swords often felt and the combos that came out of them stuck with me. A few times I did switch back to the four guns, but that was pretty rare. And once I acquired the Alruna whips and put those on my feet, wooboy did I have my favorite weapon set for the rest of the game; although leading up to the whips, I did favor the flame/ice throwers as feet weapons. I guess I liked a lot more of the optional weapons here than in the first game, of which I found that I rarely used.
The story too I felt was very well conceived, although like the first one, a bit confusing until near the very end. And considering that there were direct connections to the first game, I was eager to see how those connections manifested themselves here without feeling like the first game was entirely retconned in order for the writers to come up with the story here. Or maybe there was a lot that was retconned but went over my head. The only thing that immediately comes to mind is Jeanne's hair in the beginning of the game is over three feet long when there was only supposed to have been a few months between the end of the first game and the beginning of the second. However, I feel like you can get away with it since the Umbran Witches use their hair as an outlet for their magical powers, so who am I to dictate what can and cannot happen with their hair?
Connected to the story, at least in most parts, were the locations used throughout the game. For the most part I liked the general variety even if the location itself did not change much. In the city of Noatun, it offered more than a stereotypical European cobbled city as depicted in Vigrid. And I seem to recall that the transitions between areas seemed to make a bit more sense than how I sometimes felt about the area transitions in the first game.
And while we are on about story, I did briefly restart the game after finishing the main story in order to find out what the hard difficulty level would be like, and upon watching the opening cinematic with the knowledge of both games, I definitely had an "Ahhhhhhh" moment in regards to events coming together and fully understanding parts of the first game and now made a lot more sense.
Well, I am sure that I am missing elements of the game these are the first that came to mind while planning out this article so I take that to mean that those that had the most impact. And as I mentioned in the previous article, I was still entertained enough by Bayonetta 2 that I already pre-ordered Bayonetta 3. And at least I am hoping that the blood over the moon and the purple-ness hint at something dark and foreboding in the third installment. But that is just me.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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