Bayonetta

??? (2022)
It's Devil May Cry but with more sex appeal and everything goes way over the top. It's got style, it's got comedy, it's fast fun and flashy.

Overall the combat is just like DMC. Very fluid and fast. Lots of combos and juggling and it's a lot of fun. I really love how they just keep upping the ante in terms of ridiculousness and the size of enemies. Where by the end of the game you're basically fighting god in space and your finishing move is to morph into a giant lady made of hair and punt the god into the Sun. No joke. That's fantastic.

It is of course quite hard to the point that without knowing how to fight enemies initially I'd die numerous times and get really low ratings for almost every level lol.

I'll ding it for overly long cutscenes. I mean these games aren't known for their story and here's no different: it's not good. So to spend so much time with these boring ass cutscenes explaining lame motivations for annoying characters...just move on.

The biggest thing I'll ding it for are the quicktime events. I would finish a boss fight reasonably well and then they'd randomly make you press X and A at just the right time. I legit failed one of these like 6 times in a row and it tanked my rating for the level. Get rid of it.

One thing that's notably different from DMC, and which now sounds to be a standard part of PlatinumGames schtick, is mixing in lots of almost minigames into the gameplay. There's a driving section which is reasonably fun, a shmup section where you're controlling a rocket and shooting things, and a little shooting gallery thing in between levels. They're nice little fun things that break up the gameplay and I enjoyed em.

Overall it's a great game. I think the story was garbage and the difficulty and quicktime events soured me a bit on the combat enough at times for me to not give this a 9 or a 10 but it's still great.