bayonetta's combat is
pretty good, and did a lot of things right, but it also has some flaws. For one thing, a lot of the weapons have too-similar combos, and don't really become different unless you're shooting out of your combos. Most combo setup is also entirely reliant on witch time at higher levels since enemies are so aggressive and break out of combos so quickly it's the only way to really get a good chain going.
Character is also cheesy as ****. Bayonetta is obviously supposed to be a parody, but they lay it on so thick and the joke carries on for way too long in every scene. That said, I don't think there's anything ninja theory's writers could offer as an improvement to story or characters; their own story for DmC was copy pasted out of an
80s movie, and their character development essentially involved hand picking from a list of
tropes in order to maximize appeal to 2012's angsty teens. For example, DmC makes liberal use of tropes such as
anti-hero,
the alcoholic,
taunting c'thulu,
constant swearing,
hedonism,
racism, and
going commando, but chooses to ditch series-standard tropes such as
cry for the devil (one which you'd think would be important,
since the title is based around it). This does not inspire a whole lot of faith in their ability to rewrite bayonetta. Luckily they never will, since platinum refuses to deal with publishers that try to claim rights to their IP, meaning it will only ever be a platinum game unless they collaborate willingly with someone else
Aside from bayonetta's reliance on witch time to get combos going, and (frankly obnoxious) inclusion of quick time events, there's a ton of combat mechanics that I really enjoy in this game. Dialing-a-combo annoyed me at first, until I discovered
dodge offsetting, and the fact that you don't have to be on the ground to advance your combo. Binding weapons to the hands and feet in whichever combination you like, in addition to a long list of
trinkets with very significant combat effects, makes for a crazy amount of combat variety. DmC could learn a thing or two from
bayonetta's whip alone, since it has twice the utility, uses half of the buttons that ophion takes up, and serves as a completely functional stand-alone weapon on top of everything else.
The resource bar (Devil gauge equivalent) is incredibly handy and has a ton of different uses, but the game discourages you from hoarding your energy by taking away chunks of it if you get hit, air combat is satisfying because they don't make it easy to stay in the air indefinitely, and bosses feel truly epic in scale (though sometimes it can be a little
too epic...) They also managed to find a way to make a game where the primary defensive mechanic is dodging, but still include DMC's royalguard in a meaningful (yet non-mandatory) way.
TL;DR
Ninja theory is bad at original stories, their first (and only) in-house attempt being a copy/paste of existing work, and their characters are developed with the goal of marketing to the widest audience, instead of making good characters. Bayonetta's character and story does need some work, but how about we give that task to someone who's actually written good characters and story before?
