Bayonetta 2

（Save files says 6 hours 28 minutes and 41 seconds after the credits roll. Played on Switch in handheld mode with Japanese voice and text.）

In some ways, SEGA published 2 Alien games in the spooky season of 2014. Alien Isolation is the obvious one with official license in which players play hide and seek with the iconic dickhead monster among other threats. The co-publishing deal with Nintendo on Bayonetta 2 is a secret one in which players play as someone like the iconic dickhead monster. Plus, Bayonetta does go to hell in this much anticipated sequel and it’s Giger land there. One surely cannot tell a worm from a vine during one’s stay at Inferno.

Bayonetta 2 is probably the best game made by Platinum Games. On a day with bad mood, yours truly would even call it the only good one. Funded and published in part by Nintendo in a time when padding out was not an option under the big N, this is a tight action game that would hold players’ attention from beginning to end, expect a too long cut scene before the aforementioned “beginning”. Too bad it’s behind the Nintendo paywall now its only port is for Switch.

This time, is it personal?

After her first rodeo of self-discovering and world-saving, Umbral Witch Bayonetta (Or “Cereza” to her friend.) was enjoying some holiday shopping when suddenly she got pulled back into a war between Paradiso and Inferno. Her dog in the fight is her friend Jeanne, a recuring boss of the first game. Poor Jean’s soul was pulled into hell when she saved Bayonetta’s life. To save her only friend, Bayonetta goes to a peak where gates to both heaven and hell are. With a guide named Loki and a masked figure in pursuit.

Bayonetta 2 has a story more suitable for action game. The titular player is on the clock for a rescue mission. The recurring boss has a better reason to appear over and over again. And Bayonetta finally shows that she can care about someone other than herself. After all, the kid in the first game was her past self.

This game’s story does have its fair share of weird. The kind of weird that would make fights in heaven and hell seem like another day in the office. Yes, time travel bullshit is still present, but the more or less “To be continued in Bayonetta the first” makes the 2 games like a snake biting its tail, so much so that a Bayonetta 3 would have been pointless. But potential profits always come before points…

Feedback in

Playing Bayonetta 1 and 2 back to back is to see how PlatinumGames took in the feedback in a smart way. Almost all the kinks (No, not that kind.) I felt in the first game is filed off in the sequel. Magic gage does not go down when player character is hit for starter. And for the not Torturable bosses, the game adds Umbral Climax so Magic gage would not be wasted there. Once the gage is full, a tap of the left bumper would allow Bayonetta to punch above her weight literally, her familiar demons like Lady Butterfly would strike her foes from portals.

This game plays mostly like the first one with some different button mapping. Left trigger is for lock-on while right bumper is for switch weapon set while it’s vice versa in the first game. The game has almost no platforming and puzzle. The “look for a key” things are all about going places and clubbing fools just like the rest of the game. I did utter very foul thing in one occasion: a set piece disguised as platforming challenge, apparently there is only one entry on a ledge and jump onto it from any other “reasonable” angle would roll one back seconds.

Maybe calling this one Platinum’s “best” and “only good one” would be overstatement. “The only one where the camera is not against the player” is more accurate. Bayonetta 2’s plot crucial boss fights are all deceptively simple. They are either on-rail segments with giant monster or one-on-one affair between 2 humanoids, no matter how fancy the backgrounds are. The former is deliberately designed when the latter adjust camera well. Gone are the focus on the attack one is supposed to evade, the camera would always move towards the 2 humanoid combatants so player can always see the 2’s movement.

I do suspect the difficulty is toned down a bit, so I got past some optional Verses with flying color. Then again, Normal, the default difficulty of both games, is the highest in the first and in the middle for the second. Made me wonder if it’s actually Easy in Bayonetta 2.

Closure

Funny how few words one would spend on a game they enjoyed wholeheartedly. Well, this kind of er, work is not called “criticism” for no reason. It is indeed funny to see that Bayonetta 2 was launched on Wii U with a port of the first game free of charge in many regions. Guess they are either very proud of that first game or the improvement of the second game. Either way, if you want to know what’s the buzz surrounding Platinum is all about, you should try Bayonetta 2. If the Nintendo paywall is too much, well, play Okami, the game the people founded Platinum made in their before days, and you will be fine. The wolf game got almost many ports as Resident Evi 4 and it’s Platinum’s action and so much more.