Bayonetta 3 review: An instant classic that feels like a proper old-school, content-packed Nintendo adventure

Mario, Kirby, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Samus Aran, Bayonetta. The witch has reached the upper echelons of Nintendo’s elite with bayonet 3, and any doubt about his status as a House of Mario pet has dissolved into a cauldron, bubbling with demon blood, keratin, and rocket fuel. With the chant of an incantation and the flick of a delicately gloved finger, Bayonetta 3 secures the Umbran Witch as a Nintendo icon, perhaps even usurping some of the more…familiar…faces on the roster in the process. Bayonetta 3, Switch owners, is a must.

And it doesn’t start with a bang, but with a groan. The introduction to the game is slow and irritating; making you trudge, as Bayonetta, through a world that is being ripped apart by an unknown entity of chaos. You can’t run, you can’t jump, you can’t fight, you just stumble as life is sucked out of this world you once called home. A ragtag band of heroes lie dead around you, and you’re forced to watch as a brave young witch breaks through the barriers of reality, desperate to save…something.

Welcome to Bayonetta 3, one of the most fun and mindless games you’ll have the pleasure of playing this year. Hell, maybe even this generation. That languid intro seems intentionally placed to show you just how fast and furious the actual game is. Once you’ve cleared out the prologue and cleared up the stakes (read: the multiverse), you’ll cut yourself off with your sassy witch hair and walk the streets of Los Angeles like a domineering woman en route to a gala. The proverbial shit hits the metaphorical fan, and it’s time to fight, and right away, PlatinumGames shows him that he’s back on track and ready for business.

Melee is fast, reactive, and empowering. Enemies are designed to take hard hits and respond well if you give them a naughty backhand or hit them in the neck with a stiletto. Throughout the game, combat is rhythmically set and adjusted to last no more than a few minutes per attempt. The result is that even the boss fights feel fast and punchy: nothing stays more than welcome, and the breakneck pace of it all makes you feel like the empowered witch from hell you’re supposed to be.

Right from the start, before you have any of the goofy, over-the-top weapons and demons you later own, you still feel incredibly powerful. It’s like continuing from Bayonetta 2, right at the beginning: how many games manage to give you that godlike power fantasy right from the start? More impressive still, Platinum has managed to pack even more mechanics into the sequel’s already overflowing cup, with the highlight being his Demon Slaves: hulking monsters he can summon on a whim to deal ridiculous amounts of damage to his enemies, the world, and anything that gets in your way.

Somehow, Platinum has made Bayonetta stand out in both the micro and macro. Kaiju-like butterfly women, living trains, frogs, spiders… commanding them to do your bidding while you squirm and twerk feels amazing, and when you need to go back to your more traditional guns and hammers and weapons for essential melee, you never miss a beat. Even after 30 hours, this whiplash from moshpit monster to Bayonetta ballet never gets old.

And that’s probably because there’s so much going on between these spontaneous, violent, lightning dances. Each weapon you acquire gives you the ability to ‘disguise’ yourself as a corresponding demon, giving you unique ways to move around the massive zones that make up the world of Bayonetta 3. Secrets, challenges, and mega-difficult fights have been hidden throughout the world. , and even the sealed realms of Inferno and Paraside find a way to break through here and there.

The result is downtime that feels like uptime; exciting exploration and learning little secrets that make you smile and say “bastard” when you finally find them, even if it took you about 20 minutes of sloppy platforming. There are issues with the camera (especially in some of the more difficult “the floor is lava” challenges) and the lock sometimes leaves a lot to be desired…sand until you win, you soon forget about these little quirks.

When you’re not making your way through alternate realms, scratching your head as you try to make sense of a story that would make even JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure seem understandable, you can play spy action platformer sections (yes, really) or engage in mega bosses. You fight in alternate reality versions of the levels you’ve beaten. The spy parts aren’t amazing, I mean they’re fun and funny sure, but they’re not on the level of everything else in the game. But when you’re flying down a road with the afterburner on for hours, sometimes it’s nice to slide a bit, right?

Bayonetta 3 feels like an old-fashioned Nintendo game; the kind you’d eagerly open at Christmas, pop into your console, and never take out. In an age of service games and microtransactions, it’s rewarding and exciting to have a game with so much ‘on disk’. Every level is packed with secrets, the replay value is through the roof (can’t talk much about that yet), and even just replaying levels to try and get Platinum rank for every bit seems like it would get you through until your next hit of dopamine and adrenaline.

As a game and as a tonic for people sick of buying season passes and DLC, Bayonetta 3 is an essential romp; a love letter to classic Nintendo games that delight in making you laugh, smile and feel like an absolute badass. PlatinumGames has faltered a bit lately, but with this fitting conclusion to the original Bayonetta trilogy, the studio proves that it can still fire flat out and then some. This could be one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch.

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