Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

I started and finished Bayonetta 2 while visiting my family for Christmas. A surprisingly short game, though I'm not one to get into all the post-game challenge stuff. I have to admit I feel a little disappointed. I played the first one at around the same time last year and had a blast with it. I absolutely fell in love with the campy nature of it to the point where it made me overlook and eventually enjoy the hack-n-slash gameplay. The character of Bayonetta and the ensemble around her were just such a delight. I'd only heard praise for the sequel about how it's a refined version of the first and how many people prefer it, so I did admittedly go into it with high expectations.

To some degree, I can understand what people meant with the refined nature of it. The combat feels more vast than ever in the different playstyles and opportunities it gives you, even if the main combat feels incredibly similar. I will say I'm not one to prioritise experimentation with different weapons and systems, so I stuck to what worked for me for most of the game. Therefore, deeper weapons or combat mechanics don't really do anything for me. That said, I was really not a fan of the Umbran Climax. It felt like an incredibly cheap move every time I pulled it off. I've seen people describe it as a activate-to-win button, and that feels pretty on the money for me. It definitely felt like it removed a lot of the tension of a fight, because instead of you having a dance of wits against the enemy, it was more about filling your magic meter to get the super attack.

It's actually gotten me to think about my gaming behaviour beyond this game, because I've always been someone who said to prioritise comfort over difficulty. I don't appreciate when a game is back-breaking difficult, because I'm ultimately here to have a fun time with my hobby. Failing is not fun for me. Perservering and ultimately winning is not an achievement to me. It's a nuisance where if it happens too often, I will feel nothing but resentful relief or frustation by the end of it. This is why I also always said I didn't mind it when a game would be classified as too easy. Easy just means none of the frustration with all of the reward to me... but this game had me thinking differently. I think, for the first time in all of my gaming life... this was too easy? The first game kicked my butt sometimes, but never quite to the point I got frustrated. It was perfectly balanced for me specifically there (aside from that one horrendous flying chapter). This one never kicked my butt except for one Muspelheim to the point I'd even say I started to miss the challenge. Maybe that's growth. I guess I'd have to experiment with that feeling further to see if I've really changed in viewing game difficulties.

My biggest disappointment, however, was the narrative and characters. Where the whole ensemble and storyline of the first felt chockful of ridiculous camp balanced with proper touching emotional beats, this one felt like it lost all of that. The presentation felt a lot less campy, which removed a lot of the charm that I came to love from the first. The emotional beats didn't really hit either, because all of them were centered around a new character I didn't really grow any fondness for over the course of the game. There's maybe one moment between Bayonetta and Jeanne that got to me a little, but that whole arc disappointed me. The fact that it set off the whole journey, but wasn't even really a major part of the actual conclusion felt so odd. Why did we go through that entire sequence of events only for it not to really matter? All it did in the end was made us lose valuable screentime with one of the major characters from the first. And that plays into probably the biggest issue for me. Bayonetta in the first was surrounded by a lively cast of characters who all had fun moments of their own... yet they're not present in this one for the majority of the game. Almost all of Bayonetta's interactions are limited to this one new character, who again, I really couldn't care less about.

The highlights of the game were the very prologue and epilogue, which were the only moments that felt like they retained the silly, campy nature of the first as well as its fun cast of characters in prominent roles. I really don't understand what went wrong with the narrative in this sequel and why they chose to approach it like that. Did they tone down the campy nature of it due to it being a Nintendo exclusive now? Were they trying to reach a broader or more child-friendly audience? Why did they just remove all of the characters we came to love from the first from any prominent roles? Why did they make such a well-balanced difficulty curve in the first so incredibly easy in the sequel? It just seems to me like a bunch of problems that were predictable from the very planning stages. Is it still a fun time? Sure, it's not like I was bored. But did it come anywhere close to the heights of the first game for me? No, not at all.