July Assassination #1 (SG Win/ PoP Pick)

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I was on the edge over whether to give a thumbs up or down, but since the general score is Very Positive, a thumbs down doesn't feel wrong.

In short, Bayonetta is one of those games that encapsulates the mid-to-late-2000s. We're thinking flashy, explosive, edgy, bombastic action with an overreliance on cutscenes, QTEs, button mashes, and where you fight the camera more often than you fight the enemies. Some parts of it are great, but the overall experience of playing it all in 2026 is a bit rough.

Some things are undeniable. Bayonetta IS edgy, stylish, and over the top. If that's what you're looking for, a litte bit of provocateur energy, it fits the bill and is great at it. But part of the problem comes from it -- to show you how edgy it is, the game needs to take control away from you, and probably half the time the game is on I'm not controlling the character, but instead, watching it being edgy on a cutscene. That hurts the pacing, to the point you're frequently watching the game, not playing the game. But it get ridiculous when the game throws a quick time event (QTE) at you in the middle of a cutscene, only to kill you if you fail to react. Or when it requires a button mash in the middle of a cutscene, making you scramble and breaking your controller in the process. I know we're talking about a 2009 game, but I would expect at least the decency of an option to turn those things off in 2026. Not only that, sometimes the cutscene ends with less than one second to react before an enemy hits you. In one instance in Chapter 8 or 9, the enemy hit me for HALF my life bar before I even realized the cutscene had ended, and in a game where you don't get health items recharged, this is simply ridiculous.

When you're not watching Bayonetta being badass, you can sometimes be it yourself. The combat system is mostly fine, with many combos you can either memorize or buy with in-game currency, but I didn't feel any reason to use most combos besides the basic PPP or PPPKK or PPPPK, all of which generally did good damage but still allowed me to frame-cancel in case I needed to dodge. There's no parrying which is fine, and the dodge unlocks Witch Time which is a slo-mo retribution window, which is sweet, but coming from Elden Ring, I found enemy animations and attacks very jerky and hard to read, but that would be fine if the camera was a bit more helpful. I can't really pinpoint what's wrong with it, but the amount of times I got hit by enemies off-screen and the amount of finaggling it took me to try to fix my positioning in battle arenas was just very frustrating. I do like a fast-paced combat system, but the arenas, monsters design and camera have to help me have fun, whereas in Bayonetta they just felt half-assed and prevented me really enjoying the combat. Good combat encounters are really good (I loved 1x1 against humanoid humans, like Joys or Selene), but very frequently you'll be fighting the environment, not the monsters.

The game economy is also a wreck -- your currency is used both to buy healing items, important upgrades like health, combo moves, cosmetics, and amulets. Amulets are so absurdly overpriced that I imagine they are a feature for NG+, which robs players of the enjoyment and strategy they could offer. The problem with the same currency being used for everything is that it forces you to choose very few areas to focus on. For instance, I barely bought moves or amulets in my run, because I spent most of my money on healing and extra energy (given how I was suffering through combat encounters). But you earn currency by getting good rankings, and using items reduce your rankings, and dying has little effect besides rankings, so put it all together and your best bet is ignoring healing (and rankings, maybe) to ensure you have enough money for lasting upgrades and maybe, learn your way through the encounters so you can survive them on subsequent playthroughs (if you still want to play it after beating it). Poor players get punished by receiving no money to use on upgrades, whereas good players are showered with more currency than they know what to do with and for items they don't need, all so they can spend it on overpriced amulets or useless cosmetics. It's a whole system that feels built upside-down, and which clearly shows its age.

So yeah, while Bayonetta is "cool" and "edgy" and "sexy" and ♥♥♥♥, it's also not super fun to play if you're a casual gamer that is not gonna try to S-Rank everything on multiple runs. You'll be fighting camera, hard-to-read enemy animations, the lack of a functioning economy, and the cutscenes, before you even reach your first enemy. I like the character, I tolerate the plot, but I can't say I really enjoy the game per se