Since its inception as part of Osaka studio Platinum’s first wave of games, Bayonetta has been many things – sexy, stylish and most of all brilliantly stupid – but reserved is not one of them. This is an action game in which you press a button and then watch the screen explode in flashes of orgiastic action, where climax is piled atop of climax. It’d be exhausting if it wasn’t quite so exhilarating.
Bayonetta 3 doesn’t change any of that; indeed it’s as bombastic, overstated and over-the-top as this series has ever been, and by extension perhaps the most outrageous thing PlatinumGames has produced yet. It’s also, though, perhaps its most unrefined, because for all its considerable charms Bayonetta 3 is a mess. A charming, frequently dazzling mess, but a mess all the same.
Bayonetta 3 reviewPublisher: NintendoDeveloper: PlatinumGamesPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out October 28 on Switch
Maybe that’s inevitable in a sequel that throws everything it can at the player, piling on one idea after the other until the whole thing buckles. There’s a story here, but I’m not going to try and make too much sense of it (if you have been keeping up with the Bayonettas, though, you’ll be rewarded with face-offs with old favourites and a whole host of cameos I won’t spoil here, not least because some incredibly restrictive review guidelines prevent me from doing so). What’s important is that there’s a multiverse under threat, meaning there are multiple worlds to save and meaning that there’s no shortage of new surroundings to tear apart in a series of spectacular setpieces.
Once more there are restrictive guidelines stopping me from telling you the real highlights, though that’s probably for the best to ensure the sense of surprise is kept intact, so I’ll keep it to broad strokes; there are rooftop chases across the rapidly deforming skyscrapers of Tokyo, shootouts that take place atop skittering demon spiders and kaiju fights that introduce a new level of scale and spectacle to Bayonetta. Given the amount Bayonetta 3 fits into its dozen hours of action I could go on indefinitely, but the best way to describe it is indescribable; these are setpieces to be savoured first-hand and that have to be seen to be believed.
Beyond those frequent setpieces the fundamentals have been tweaked far more drastically for Bayonetta 3 than they did between the first two games. The most profound change is the ability to directly control the demons Bayonetta has traditionally been able to call upon in battle, the introduction of Demon Slaves playing to that increased sense of scale and spectacle that’s the thrust of Bayonetta 3. In terms of ramping up the ridiculousness of the action, the Demon Slaves are an absolute triumph; there’s the towering Madama Butterfly whose fists are the size of Bayonetta herself, or the fearsome Gomorrah, a 30-foot-tall dragon who fills the screen and makes it shake with fury upon being summoned.