Whew, it's Monday morning and I'm not sure how to smoothly introduce the main thing I want to discuss in this blog, so we'll just rip the band-aid off now- Bayonetta 3 was a huge disappointment for me on almost every level. The Bayonetta series hit a sweet spot for me, a sublime mashup of over-the-top spectacle, empowerment and cheesy dialogue with...not quite a disregard for plot, but telling a plot that mainly exists to get us familiar with Bayonetta, and then allow her personality and powers to take center stage all of the ridiculous situations that arise. However, it is apparent to me that PlatinumGames decided between Bayonetta 2 and 3 that the way things worked was not enough.
Aside from the combat while playing as Bayonetta, almost everything is different in Bayonetta 3. There are two other playable protagonists, Viola (new to the series) and Jeanne (not new, but newly playable) and their gameplay sections are mixed-to-awful. Each level is much more open, with lots of platforming and puzzle solving challenges, but the majority of these are not good fits for the combat-focused game engine. And this game had a voice acting controversy before release, but that was quickly resolved and replaced by a new one...this game has a truly horrible story. At the beginning of the game, Bayonetta is fighting a multiverse-traveling entity and loses. After a cutscene, we open on a sunny day to...Bayonetta, dragging her man-servant Enzo along for another day of shopping. She quickly realizes she must traverse the multiverse to save different dimensions, meeting other Bayonettas along the way. Sounds cool, right? Well, the writers at PlatinumGames decided that this was going to be their swing at telling an affecting story full of character drama, high stakes, and tragedy. And in my opinion, this not only missed the mark in those departments, but also diverted too far away from the thing that made Bayonetta stories fun in the first place- wild situations that allow Bayonetta's personality to take center stage. And I won't spoil the ending here, but just allow me to say that it feels like Platinum has totally lost the plot on why people like Bayonetta, the character, in the first place.
So that's a lot, right? I went into this recording with a lot of thoughts, and I was lucky enough to be joined by** Matt aka Stormageddon*, host of many podcasts, including *"Fun" and Games*, **Reignite, **Screen Snark, **CPOV: Autographs*, among many more on the Certain POV podcast network. If you're listening to Tales from the Backlog because you like video games (likely), then I cannot recommend "Fun" and Games enough. And if you want a play-along style show for Mass Effect and Dragon Age, check out Reignite! You can find all of Matt's podcasts by following this link!
You can listen to episode 60 of Tales from the Backlog (Bayonetta 3) of Tales from the Backlog in the player below, or you can follow the links to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or search "Tales from the Backlog" in your favorite podcast app!