Like most Americans, I didn't own a Wii U so I missed Platinum Games' second iteration of Bayonetta aptly named Bayonetta 2. Lucky for us, they decided to give us a port for the Switch so we could experience what we had been missing. This hack and slash fighter has been on my mind since I knew it was coming to Nintendo's newest golden child. Immediately after getting home from work and seeing my Amazon package sitting on my mailbox, I ran upstairs like a giddy child, set my watch for an hour and played Bayonetta 2.
The Experience:
The game immediately feels like you are just picking up where Bayonetta left off. As always you have entered a predicament where you are in a pulse-pounding combat situation, falling through the sky fighting off hordes of enemies. The opening scene is a little weird because there is a narrator giving some story but I was so distracted with fighting and missed most of what was said. It was hard to hear his voice over the hitting and I sure as hell wasn't going to read mid-fight. I got the sum of it so that was good enough.
The controls on the Switch are a lot better than I thought they would be. Zelda and Mario both required some quick inputs but nothing like the hack and slash action game that Bayonetta is. The quick time events where you mash a button were either made more lenient or the Switch joycons just react better than my Xbox controller did when I played the first one on the PC. I have been hitting the max combo a lot more. That being said the quick time even where you have to spin the joystick felt a bit odd. There are apparently touch controls, which I'll have to try out at some point.
Somewhere here there is a part of me that wishes this was a PC game because of what it would look like with some hardware behind it. The game looks great for the machine it's on but there is art in here that just feels like its screaming to come forward with just a couple fewer polygons. I am pretty sure its capped at 30fps too. This is the sacrifice that is constantly made for this console but it pays off in smooth gameplay that has not stuttered once. It's also possible its just because it came from the Wii U that was even more constrained by the hardware and it is 4 years old at this point. How does Nintendo get me to pay so much for games this old?
All the gang is back for this story Enzo, Rodin, and Jeanne are the obvious focal characters in the story as they are rendered far better than of the other lay people. Once again there is no holding back on content and if this was HBO we would have seen enough nipples to last us for an episode of Game of Thrones but sadly those are not rendered. Nintendo will only let it go so far. Sure we attack things from heaven but God forbid we get a nip in there.
I am not sure if it's the way I played the first game or there is that big of a change but there are far more items scattered around in the levels of Bayonetta 2 then the first one. The environments look great and there is plenty to destroy as well. Well, at least in one of the first areas where you actually get to start exploring. I am only an hour in.
The hour flew by faster than I could realize. I am already all in on this game and itching to go forward collect halos and unlock everything in The Gates of Hell (the in-game shop). There is already a Mario type outfit you can buy and I am super curious about what that looks like. The game feels good, looks good, and is exactly what you want in a stylized hack and slash. If this is only the starting pace I look forward to where this game will take me.
The controls on the Switch are a lot better than I thought they would be. Zelda and Mario both required some quick inputs but nothing like the hack and slash action game that Bayonetta is. The quick time events where you mash a button were either made more lenient or the Switch joycons just react better than my Xbox controller did when I played the first one on the PC. I have been hitting the max combo a lot more. That being said the quick time even where you have to spin the joystick felt a bit odd. There are apparently touch controls, which I'll have to try out at some point.
Somewhere here there is a part of me that wishes this was a PC game because of what it would look like with some hardware behind it. The game looks great for the machine it's on but there is art in here that just feels like its screaming to come forward with just a couple fewer polygons. I am pretty sure its capped at 30fps too. This is the sacrifice that is constantly made for this console but it pays off in smooth gameplay that has not stuttered once. It's also possible its just because it came from the Wii U that was even more constrained by the hardware and it is 4 years old at this point. How does Nintendo get me to pay so much for games this old?
All the gang is back for this story Enzo, Rodin, and Jeanne are the obvious focal characters in the story as they are rendered far better than of the other lay people. Once again there is no holding back on content and if this was HBO we would have seen enough nipples to last us for an episode of Game of Thrones but sadly those are not rendered. Nintendo will only let it go so far. Sure we attack things from heaven but God forbid we get a nip in there.
I am not sure if it's the way I played the first game or there is that big of a change but there are far more items scattered around in the levels of Bayonetta 2 then the first one. The environments look great and there is plenty to destroy as well. Well, at least in one of the first areas where you actually get to start exploring. I am only an hour in.
The hour flew by faster than I could realize. I am already all in on this game and itching to go forward collect halos and unlock everything in The Gates of Hell (the in-game shop). There is already a Mario type outfit you can buy and I am super curious about what that looks like. The game feels good, looks good, and is exactly what you want in a stylized hack and slash. If this is only the starting pace I look forward to where this game will take me.
TL;DR:
My first impression is that Bayonetta 2 looks like the rockstar of a game that it has been hailed as. No longer lost in the annals of the Wii U games it has come back so that we could all get a taste of what great game design could be. So far it is hitting all the right buttons.
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