Just seeing the Sloth enemy on screen makes me feel sick. I swear that enemy is part of a government experiment designed to test my patience. Not only can you not launch it and it dodges everything like other enemies in this game but it's attacks seem like they were PERFECTLY timed to hit you even if you got witch time by having a follow up attack that you can't interrupt that hits you the FRAME witch time runs out.
no you just suck at the game dude, lol, i love the sloths, one of the few enemies in the game that was always a proper challenge, sloths, grace, glory, if they gave me a mode where i just fight those over n over again i would spend tons of time doing just that
ooo, so you are crazy at the game then fair enough, still if your that good i figured you would enjoy the sloths, since they are one of the few enemies that are actually HARD to deal with plus they have aa very diverse moveset, so u never know whats comming, trust me these things made nightmares for me at first, which made slicing them up into bits even more satifsfying
@@MegaBigmac87 I like difficulty but I wouldn't say they are hard. I find Sloths incredibly annoying and unfair. I would take an enraged Gracious and Glorious on Non-Stop Infinite Climax any day over a Sloth on Hard. They are artificially difficult because they are programmed to be the antithesis of your abilities. They dodge everything with no hesitation, have very little wind up on most of their attacks, have attacks that will hit you even if you get witch time because they NEVER flinch unless you are using Umbran Climax, and a whole host of other problems that will make this comment even longer than it already is. After getting my Pure Platinums I just use a torture attack to kill them instantly because fuck fighting those things. They singlehandedly made me hate going for Pure Platinums more than anything in Bayonetta 1. Kinships would have been preferable and that's saying a lot.
@Yeti and the speed of combat as well; Whenever i play both of these games, i always say that the best bayo game would be one that has the combat system of bayo 1 and the fluidity of movement of bayo 2. One of the things that i absolutely appreciate bayo 2 over bayo 1 is that i's combat is definitely faster, emphasizing the sense of fulfillment one feels to dish out numerous combos and a blistering pace
@@MrMoises621 Bayo 1 looks slower than 2 only on Switch where you can experience frame rate drops in certain section, otherwhise both games are capped to 60fps. If you want to experience Bayo 1 in all its beauty and speed I suggest you to play that game on every other platforms expect PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii u (the last two have frame rate drops such as on Switch while the PS3 as many other issues). I played Bayonetta 1 on PS4 drops and then Bayonetta 2 on Switch and I can't see any difference in terms of speed and fluidity.
I've always preferred Bayo 1 to Bayo 2 but could never quite put my finger on why but thinking about it now while watching this video, yeah, the witch time and enemy design sections perfectly explain my issues.
Dodges everything outside of Witch time, has super armour even during witch time, can cancel recovery into attacks for seemingly no reason. They force a very defensive playstyle from the player, even more so than any other enemy in the game. They're just super boring to fight, in a normal run all I do is charge Shuraba, dodge an attack and then release PKP. Kafka does seem to hit them quite often though but good luck getting Platinum with it. I once did a Infinite Climax run without Witch Time by equipping Bracelet of Time but not using it...it was not fun, this enemy is borderline unbeatable at that point. My only option was to slowly chip away or get lucky with hitting very high damage moves, until I had enough magic to torture attack. So yeah, just take the humanoid bosses and make them even worse and you get Sloth.
the sloths are one of the "proper Challenges" in this game, most enemies are easy, even on harder difficulties, but those sloths on infinite climax difficulty............ooooo man, i know what you mean,m but trust me if there is a will there is a way, i loved fighting those things, but they didnt make it easy...which was kinda the point
@@MegaBigmac87 they are difficult, but its because they're basically grace and glory on ketamine. Sloth has a varied moveset, but its insanely fast and can catch you immediately after witch time ends, which is very annoying in a game that values using witch time so much. It dodges everything and has super armor, so your only options are torture attack, umbran climax, or witch time (which we've already established is unreliable). But because you can't hit them, how are you gonna get magic? The lollipops, but where is the skill/fun in shoving a million lollipops up your butt and using it to set off a nuke? To me, they're just very annoying and borderline not fun to fight against
the only people mad about veterans’ complaints w/ bayo 2 are the people who didn’t take time to understand and master the combat system in Bayo 1 and think it’s too hard to enjoy. bayonetta as a game is meant to be ruthless and brutal to its higher level players who’ve devoted to time to learning the combat, so that we can see how stylishly and efficiently we can finish verses.
toning down some of the more unnecessarily punishing elements would’ve been fine imo for example climax finishers and torture attacks being ungodly to get max bonus (seriously I’m only like 300 hours into bayonetta 1 and I’m starting to get carpal tunnel) or how the mana gauge would still drain even if you were getting true combo’d (I think the uppercut combo that GnG could do had like 4 hits that you couldn’t escape out of and the each of those hits would drain 5 mana points which is 2 full bars) but making the climax finishers/TAs easy as all hell to get max bonus was not the way to go and completely removing mana penalties for getting hit was again not the way to go (I think mana penalties shoulda worked similarly to how alfheim health worked where if you got hit there would be a short invincibility period where you didn’t take any damage but could still be staggered to prevent getting one combo’d on alfheims that weren’t one hit only which would’ve made it punishing but not so punishing it was like getting nuked) also items don’t bring down your score which means you could just chug mega invincibility lolipops and get through entire chapters without having to dodge once which again was not the way to go
WORD combat in bayo 1 was better, more technical, enemies get new moves and combos as you raise the difficulty, combat in bayo 2 was "FASTER", the higher the difficulty, the faster the action was, it just sped up the attack animations for all the enemies and projectile attacks, basically making you even more reliant on witchtime,
@@MegaBigmac87 Maybe Platinum thought that players would love the faster gameplay in which fighting is all about having to keep moving while in battle? Bayo 1 Certainly held more strength and skill especially without Witch Time. Bayo 2, however, seems to hold more speed and maneuverability while in combat, sacrificing the technical and skill based aspects that were prominent in Bayo 1...
One thing that kinda annoyed me is that there are too many air battles than necessary, especially during boss fights and it got a little old when you fight Valor.
Holy hell, I was wondering why Hatred and Hideous were so damn hard to dodge when I put Gaze of Despair on. The lack of audio cues and the way their rage-colored models blend into the background cheapened the fight. I'm turning that accessory off now, thanks. lol
Dude don't bother using Gaze of Despair ever. There is no reason to. You don't need the additional combo points of enraged enemies in this game because combo's don't become stale anymore, enraged enemies no longer give extra magic, and enraged enemies give you almost 0 witch time now. All you are doing is letting enemies hit you harder, faster, and give you less with time for no benefit.
Unreactable attacks in Bayonetta 1 were an exception, not commonplace like they are in Bayonetta 2. Off the top of my head, Joy's whip attack, Fearless/Fairness grounded bite (15 frames iirc, and it has the grab property so no Bat Within) and Inspired's bite attack. The thing is that in Bayo 1 there IS counterplay for unreactable attacks: Positioning. For example, Joy's unreactable whip attack can't really hit you if you are diagonally up from Joy, so from there you can safely attack. Fearless/Fairness only do the bite attack when you are fairly close to them so you either keep distance or you can preemptively dodge offset after hitting them once or twice. Bayo 2 minimises the effectiveness of positioning vs unreactable attacks by having enemies (particularly demons) that constantly try to close the distance on you. The reason Bayonetta 1's enemies typically move slowly when not attacking is so that you have time to position yourself in spots that are advantageous to you.
When I first played Bayonetta 2 on Switch a year ago, I felt something wasn't quite right but I couldn't figure out what. Your video helped me a lot, let's hope Bayonetta 3 will be more similar to the first in terms of enemy design and score meter.
god one of my biggest gripes with Bayonetta 2 was how it allowed enemies to all attack you at once. In Bayo 1, if an affinity lunged at you, the surrounding affinities usually wait until the former one finishes it's attack before attacking themselves. The best example of this is the clip at 10:00 with all the angles. All of them are just lunging and slashing at the player without any sort of room to breathe or attack. Even if you dodge one of those attacks, it's more than likely that once the HALF SECOND of witch time is done, you'll get hit by the last few frames of a different enemy's attack :////// The flow of combat in the second game is so god damn clunky.
this comment makes no god damn sense. They made the angels ruthless meaning you couldn't focus one at a time and THAT MAKES IT CLUNKY? any other time this would be considered a con of any fighter "why do they only attack one at a time" and here you are crying when they actually add more than one fighter.
@@frogradar it’s bad game design no matter how much you try to convince hope . The fact that the enemies are constantly attacking you and not giving you any chance to breathe would be nice if it were any other game but it’s bayonetta and the combo system relies on using different combos and different setups. you can’t do that when you have to dodge OUT of your witch time to stop yourself from being bounced around by enemies like a deranged pinball . It’s clunky because it makes you unsure of your next inputs therefore forcing a player into a box of dodging relentlessly. In B1 affinities would attack you with a slower windup and only two would attack at once so you had time to get WT and then finish and begin your next combo . You’re stripped of any combo freedom in this game completely because of the crackhead enemy balancing.
The things I don’t like about bayonetta 2’s enemies are the human bosses, what I mean by that is, bosses like Aesir, Masked lumen, and Alrune, forgive me if I butchered that name but, the point is, in the original bayonetta game, I loved fighting against Jeanne on hard mode not because I got my ass handed to me, but because it was a match of equals, Jeanne can do everything you can do and also has recovery so that she can’t just dodge her way out of wicked weaves like the lumen sage in bayo 2, everything in Jeanne’s fight was fair so if you get hit it’s on you it was your fault for getting hit by jeanne’s attacks, but in bayo 2 the lumen sage just keeps ghosting his way out of wicked weaves, not to mention that some of his attacks were not telegraphed and the fight is frustrating because he keeps dodging, It wasn’t a match of equals.
Except Jeanne’s uppercut wicked weave attack, that shit sometimes comes out of nowhere, like blink and you’ll miss it kinda thing. Obviously this isn’t as bad as the bayo 2 bosses (nothing can be that bad, I’d hope) since it’s at least manageable compared to the lumen sage who I really think is the biggest offender of bullshit attacks, I don’t think anything can be worse or as bad as him.
I feel this so much. The Witch Time and combo system balancing were by far the worst parts of 2 for me and really made the game feel less like a game of skill and more like a game of "Hit R when I tell you to". It never felt as grounded or challenging as 1, especially with Umbran Climax being introduced. In many ways it felt... loose(?) if you catch my meaning. Like all care for how I played went out the window so long as I mashed that dodge to build up into my Umbran Climax and I didn't realize my issues with the game till I hit the Lumen Sage and saw how he reacted to attacks, witch time, and wicked weaves and that was really disheartening to me after 1 put such a high emphasis on fast and thought based skill. The game's still fun on its own and definitely pales in comparison to the first, but I can kind of get the appeal of having an easier entry after watching my sister get into Bayonetta 2 after being reaaaaaally put off by the first, but it sucks when one fan has to suffer for another's gain. I can only do what everyone else here is doing and just hope 3 meshes the best of both worlds. Also, c'mon. Gimme a Turbo Mode. :P
Interesting how this affects mainly high level players, I'm a casual Bayonetta fan and I find the second game ai mprove in basically anything, maybe if I dedicate time to learn the game deeply, I would start notice the flaws mentioned. I personally think part of those decisions was deliberate or maybe a request from Nintendo so the game is more accessible for the casual playerbase their consoles have
I know this vid is old af and I am late but I finally played and beat the game for the first time today and ended up here after looking up stuff about mechanics. And man it kinda confirms a lot of my worst fears. I really liked the game, don't get me wrong but certain things felt off when I was playing. I think the biggest one was just not being able to infinite combo enemies, but I never stopped to actually test and figure out why cause I didn't want to break the flow of the game. But honestly, that wouldn't bother me so much if not for how scoring worked. Seeing that getting platinum rankings favors playing efficiently vs playing fun and pulling off long cool combos really dampens my mood to even bother trying to plat every level. That's like missing the whole point of these kind of games. Also magic generation being so slow just bugs me. Even ignoring how OP umbran climax is it just feels wrong. I think I ended up using like 3 torture attacks the whole game. Was one of my favorite mechanics in Bayo 1 and here you're lucky to use it like once per encounter (not that using it is worth it obviously.) Meh, anyway, like I said I had fun and I am gonna go through all the difficulties but kinda bummed about the score chasing aspect of the game as that is what I love about action games most tbh. Nothing hits as hard as finally earning those S ranks (or insert grading system here.) But the way you achieve that in this game is lame.
Currently pure platinuming B2 on Infinite Climax. Holy shit, everything you said is how I feel about the game. Initially, I love my first playthru of B2 on the Wii U. But after putting in over 100 hours in on B2, yeah, you can see the adherent flaws with the game.
This is also issue. Many people just complete game once and done with it. I also liked the game when I first done it on Wiiu, but now trying to unclock more stuff//PP in bayonetta 2 on switch you can clearly see all the problems.
feralbeast67 Yea I played Bayo 1 first and got destroyed on normal. I didn’t even try hard. I went to to and felt how nice and smooth the game felt and did way better on hard mode than normal in bayo 1. After getting some platinum trophies in 2 I went back to one on hard mode and immediately got trashed on chapter 1, however I eventually got really good at bayo 1 and thought and enjoyed it a lot more on hard mode. I played hard mode twice in bayo 1. I found out things like dodge offset and perfect countering naturally by playing on hard mode. I then went to bayo 2 and the game felt so weird to me. I realized every single problem explained in this video. I hope astral chain and Bayo 3 will be much better.
I actually don't mind enemies breaking out as an idea. Offense and defense are so interwoven in Bayonetta's controls that you can do something like have enemies break out with an attack that you can dodge and then punish their counter attack. Think Revenge Value from KH but instead of forcing you to stop your offense. You can continue your offense. Sucks for combo videos but makes enemies more responsive and aggressive.
what no one seems to say is that the weapon load out, once you unlock all of them, is WAY better in Bayo 1, Bayo 2 has the double swords and the dual whips which are both Awesome, but in bayo 1 you get dual rocket launchers x2, the durga claws x2, laser guns, the nuncuck thing, basically the combo possibilities in Bayo 1 are way mores diverse because of all the cool weapon set ups, bayo 2 has good weapons, but i was very sad when i finished bayo 2 and realized there were NO rocket launchers or laser guns like in the 1st game, SAD, they kinda dropped the ball here, i hope they bring some of em back for bayo 3, especially the Durga's
Honestly I love 2’s variety in weapons the problem that they seem to have run into with this is that some weapons feel extremely situational to downright useless. While I wish 1 had variety, at least I found each weapon useful and knew that if I tried to use it, it’d be viable regardless. I do hope we still have variety in 3 but the weapons don’t feel niche or useless.
Everything you've said is perfectly on point. I can't land a goddamn combo unless I'm using Umbran climax. And even then I'm open to surprise damage from enemies I'm not wailing on.
Seeing this video and the comments, it justifies why I only played bayo 2 for 2 months on wii u release while 13 years later, I'm still playing bayo 1 lol
as someone who plays Bayo 2 way more than 1 (because Tag Climax), i can finally understand why pros love the first over the second. Tag Climax basically gave me the habit of using the same 10 combos using only Love is Blue or Scarborough Fair and to do Wicked Weaves like every 3 seconds to maximize score and damage, but it does get bland after a bit tho.
I think one of my main complaints is that the weapons had more of a "form over function" deal. I found myself hardly using any of the other weapons except for love is blue, rakshasa, alruna, and chernobog. In the first game, I used nearly every weapon for differing playstyles, from shuraba, to odette, to onyx roses, to Lt Kilgore, etc. they were all fun to use, but the weapons in bayo2 seemed like they wanted them to look cool over them feeling good to use. I don't know, that could just be me sucking at games like DMC (tho I love dmc)
Yeah that is exactly the problem. Like the whip in 2 looks cool but in the first game it had way more functions. I think they tried to improve on this a bit by giving some weapons different special moves on the same input, but since the game stops you from doing anything stylish it really just makes those moves useless. I think they can definitely improve even more on weapon functions and uniqueness in Bayo 3, but that's a topic I will be discussing in the next video.
Honestly a very made video and critic of Bayonetta 2's gameplay problems. I will definitely use this video as reference when talking or debating Bayo 1 & 2 in the future. Cheers!
I played bayo 1 last month and I fell in love with the series so when I got to play Bayo 2 yesterday I was over the moon but when I finished it I kept telling myself it wasn’t that bad but now I just accepted the fact I’m disappointed with the sequel, don’t get me wrong the game is great but everything I loved about bayo 1 was just stripped away especially the quick weaves. Umbran climax definitely made my experience less enjoyable since I took the time to learn the best finishers and how to use my magic gage properly. I’m so excited for bayonetta 3 but I am praying most if not all these issues were resolved.
thats explains why i play more bayo 1 than 2. in my experience i played bayo 2 first then the bayo 1. bayo 1 totally felt different its hard kind of way but challenging, the alfheim missions is better and fun. but i hated the verses with the motorbike and the jet/rocket shooting it takes too long
I REALLY hope Platinum Games take a look at this while following up with Bayonetta 3. As much as i still enjoy Bayonetta 2 overall (well not as much as i did at launch), its painful going back and forth between Bayo 1's NSIC & 2's IC which really opened my eyes on the latter's various severe balance issues that were introduced. Its just mindboggling considering that Hashimoto knocked it out the park as the enemy designer for Bayo 1.
The issues brought up in this video are why I only play B1 seriously (playing on the highest difficulty or going for pure platinums). In my opinion there wasn't anywhere to go but down after the original in terms of gameplay and B3 hasn't changed my mind. Another thing I disliked about B2 was the simplified movesets. I liked that in B1 you had a huge list of combos and that a lot of them had tricky timings. I think some combos should be difficult to pull off. Makes it more satisfying when you do.
I’d be fine with them making enemies harder to launch/more defensive if they made it so that you had to use a specific move to make enemies launchable like in the wonderful 101, but saying that is kind of stupid because THEY ALREADY DID THAT WITH WICKED WEAVES
Totally agree. I was introduced to Bayonetta by Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and finially played Bayo1 followed by Bayo2 in the past month. I was so impressed by Bayo1 that I spent a whole week getting pure platinums (normal difficulty tho), even though I never played any action games before. But for Bayo2 I just don't feel the passion. In addition to what you already mentioned, it is also frustrating every time after defeating a boss, I see in the next CG scene bayonetta gets grabbed/hit by the BOSS, waiting to be rescued, falling into water or so. In Bayo1 this only happens to little Cereza, like bayo is confident enough to dodge any incoming attack in CG. Bayo3 is coming in a year. I really wish to see something more like Bayo1 than Bayo2. Bayo1 without the shooting and driving parts would be a perfect game.
Also near the end of Bayo2, couldn't figure out why Balder is supposed to dance. Then after hitting an inifiniton punch, I still need gigaton bites to finish it? Comeon you must have other ways for Jeanne to make an appearance...
They are. But how does that make Bayonetta 2 better? Imagine if it was the first entry in the series or even Bayonetta 1 did not simply existed? That doesn't excuse other things at all.
"I'm glad those are gone, they have no place in an action game like this." Guess you didn't see what I wrote. No one likes the QTE's, but just because they're gone doesn't make Bayo 2 the better game.
Now I have not played Bayonetta 2 yet since I am relatively broke right now but will get to it someday. One thing that really annoyed me in Bayonetta 1 where the burning enemies. On Hard and lower they where no big deal thanks to witch time but on Infinite Climax they where so dam annoying.
Great video, pretty accurate. I hadn't notice those things on Bayonetta 2 because I could play it until the end just one time, and I was too excited with the experience to care. This video does a great job at explaining the flaws, I really hope they go back to Bayonetta 1's quality, and raise it even more.
Wow you could make a great analysis channel. Very informative. That's the type of information I look for when I want to buy a new game of this genre, not these shallow reviewers that youtube are full of. Thank you a lot!
I've been replaying the game on Infinite Climax and I'm currently stuck against Alraune. She just dodges every wicked weave, summons plants to obstruct view, parries constantly which ends my combo and witch time is incredibly short. Even during Umbran Climax she dodges about 70% of it.
But Daedron, don't you see? It's totally ok to use lollipops as much as you want because it's canon to the storyline. Seriously speaking, I'm really glad you made this video. I had always wanted to make a video like this but never had the time and patience. You've pointed out many things I've had issues with, stuff I'm sure you've seen me say :D It's hard to critique Bayonetta 2 without coming across as looking like a bunch of hipster elitists, but hopefully this is something more players can understand and it's something I really hope is addressed in the 3rd game.
I had to change the script around a lot to not sound like just another ranter, definitely was the hardest part when making this video. Eagerly awaiting Bayonetta 3. As long as it takes the good parts from both games and leaves out all the bad, I'm sure it will turn out great.
I hope Bayonetta 3 adresses all these issues and gives us an AWESOME Bayonetta sequel with improved combat options! Bayonetta 2 is a difficult one to judge, i believe these changes come from a 'well intentioned' effort by Platinum Games and Director Hashimoto to make the game more accesible, enjoyable, casual friendly and easier, so it can reach a wider audience and sell more copies because the second game ALMOST didn't get done😢, effort was made to remove the 'tedious' parts, pretty up the graphics/art, simplify the story a little etc. Instead of the usual expected in sequels of these types of games: more complex combat systems and higher difficulty. That and a rushed development cycle (and without Kamiya) for Bayonetta 2 made it what it is,and it WAS still a fantastic game, problem is dumbing down the combat allienates the core fanbase that purchased Bayonetta in the first place, and Bayonetta 2 didn't ended with higher commercial success either, with Bayonetta 3 they appear to have noticed this problem and are making a 'proper' sequel with longer development cycle to focus on expanding the combat options 🤞
I think this is all thanks to Kamiya's tradition of making someone else director for the sequels of games he started, but I have possible good news as the guy that directed Bayonetta 2 left Platinum games which means he won't be involved with Bayonetta 3, so there is a possibility that the new director could bring back what actually made Bayonetta a good game and balance everything again. I don't know how involved Hideo is with Bayonetta 3. Edit: Apparently Hideo Kamiya is directing Bayo 3 so... GREAT!!! Now I feel more hopeful.
I disagree on the combo point system. Yes it required some skill, but there's a limit to what skill SHOULD be required. Bayonetta 1 penalised you for using powerful weapons, meaning some weapons just became annoying to use during combo PP runs. Onyx rose and Kilgore being suffers of this because they produced too much damage to efficiently garner a substantial PP combo score. B2 wasn't better in this regard in that it did the opposite, in that using the most powerful weapon was the way forward, meaning if you loved using Alruane and LoveIsBlue you'd be up shit creek because the combo score would be like "nah, use the hammer". Like you said near the start, there needs to be a finer line between the two.
Agree with all this 100%. My other main gripe while playing through Bayo 2 so far is the story experience. It all feels tacked on and incredibly corny, *especially* anything to do with Luka. It's not like I think Luka was a great character in Bayo 1, but it at least felt like he was a real person with some connection to the story and characters around him. In 2 he's been completely reduced to comedic relief and extremely boring narrative dump. Bayo herself feels like less of her sassy and sexy self in favor of a more dry and serious persona. Her taking care of little Cereza in 1 felt organic and natural while her babysitting Loki feels contrived and weird. I didn't even like the concept of her taking care of the little girl in the first much because in my opinion it takes away from the overtly sexy appeal she has, but this is just on another level of bad in my opinion. Overall I'm really disappointed with Bayonetta 2 and I'm *really* not digging the aesthetic of 3 much, so it sadly seems like this series will end up a bit of a one hit wonder in my eyes. Sad because the 1st is so ridiculously good outside of the gimmick levels.
umbran climax should’ve been unlocked later in the game and shoulda cost 2 bars and instead of giving every attack a WW all attacks would stagger and deal higher damage yet still way lower than a normal weave, the infernal summons could stay but again lower damage but hey that’s just my two bits
I have a pretty good idea for how to improve UC. Maybe have it be a temporary upgrade gained by keeping your combo high for extended periods of time and have breaking your combo or getting hit knock you out of UC. It has its own problems and would probably require for the game to be heavily rebalanced, but it feels like a more dynamic and interesting system for both casual and hardcore players than hitting a button and turning your brain off.
Just realized something. People compare UC to Devil Trigger from DMC, but if you fuck around in DT, mashing buttons, not thinking about what attacks change up your combo or are good for the current situation, not only will your style ranking be garbage, you’ll have wasted your DT. UC is closer to Sin Devil Trigger in DMC5, but EVEN SDT, A FORM LITERALLY MEANT TO GIVE YOU ABSURD LEVELS OF POWER is balanced out by taking longer to attain then DT, not lasting as long as DT, not healing you like DT, and draining your entire DT meter just to be able to access SDT. Even in SDT, your style meter won’t raise if you just mash one button over and over, and you’re encouraged to use the few unique moves SDT has to benefit you in the current fight. The basic SDT combo can be weaved in between other moves, sin stinger and the Luce are good at taking out far away targets, obliteration can take out 1 powerful enemy, but takes so long to use that you won’t have SDT for long after using it, and judgement is likely to kill most if not all of the enemies in screen, and probably the only attack in the game that is good in EVERY situation, but even that sacrifices your entire SDT meter. And even after THAT, you have the ability that lets you revert back from SDT on command, but only if your style meter is currently at SSS (imagine that, being REWARDED for skillful play instead of punished). Now take all of that considered, we’ll balanced design, and compare it to UC, where you hit L, and spam a button. The more I think about UC, the more I realize how much of a fucking disgrace it is.
@@BIGJUNK1MILLION I also compare them, but i called it a shallow version of DT, like they look at it superficial parts like oh just it's a build up and punish super mode and that's it. And since they removed magic removal on hit it makes this mechanic not risk/reward but reward/reward.
Also, Bayonetta 1 punishing you for using Items on even V-easy -> Normal was just bullshit. The fact that on your first playthrough of the game ever and the game gives you the WORST rating because you dared to heal is a shiiiiit time for any newcomers.
Well I mean if you even had to heal that would basically mean you were damaged I think the item penalty is good to prevent shit like in bayonetta 2 where you can literally spam the yellow moon lollipop (which turns you *invincible* btw) and not get punished for it AT ALL I tried it and I GOT A PURE PLATINUM, does that sound like good balancing to you?
No it isn't. Sorry that a game designed to be replayed didn't give you a Pure Platinum on your first playthrough that you weren't going to get anyway because you needed to heal damage from getting hit.
In easy and normal mode the game already gives you healing for breaking items in the scenery or defeating enemies, so having to use a lollipop means you took MUCH more damage than you should have and really deserved to be punished.
Good vid. I've been playing bayo 2 and trying to beat witch trial 5. Needless to say that all the faults of this game (most of which I never noticed before) start to become glaring when I need to switch our accessories in order to manipulate witch time effects and triggering methods so that I can use alarune so that I don't have to dodge 20 different chaotic hitboxes at once. Still fucking love this game. If I could mod the game: Halve the frequency (or take it down to a 1/5 of what we deal with) of blocks and dodges by humanoids and defensive characters Wicked weaves do good damage again Umbran Climax damage is lowered a bit (10 to 20%) Magic Gauge is sped up a bit (50% increase) torture attacks do only half a big orb Testukos/heel stomps do 2 small orbs (will become a powerful option with eternal testimony) Witch time is either bayo 1 length or an average of bayo 1 and 2 Fix the time requirements Something really radical: make bayo's combo meter more like dmc's combo meter. Make it more visually useful in a chaotic fight. Numbers kinda mean jack squat when you have to painstakingly read them first. I think these things would make the game the true successor of bayo 1 that we wanted.
I come back to this video every once in a while. It would be really interesting if you made a follow-up with your thoughts in Bayo 3. Would love to hear your take on how that game addressed many of your comments regarding Bayo 2. What do you think about the "improvisation" and witch time bonus multipliers in the combo system? What are your thoughts on demon slave vs umbran climax? Do you think the weapons are funner despite the removal of per limb customization?
Wow... This is just... Great. I always say to everyone that the only thing that i think that Bayo 2 has better than Bayo 1 is the story, but in every aspect of gameplay, Bayo 1 has always been so much superior... And you nailed almost every point in the video. The other things that i would say is OST, i think it wasn't as iconic or original like the Bayo 1 OST. When i hear a track from Bayo 1 i recognize that is Bayonetta, but when i hear a boss fight theme for Bayo 2, i don't even know if is God Of War or something else. But seriously, this video is amazing. Great job, you nailed it.
I actually totally disagree with you on the story front. To me it seemed that the only real thrust of the story was that Baldur was too flamboyantly portrayed in Bayo 1 to have been believably boning Bayonetta's mom, so this game had to do the time warp and say that back in the day he was this handsome, bishy guy, who only later went coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. That's... pretty much it. That's why I think other publishers were turning the game down. There's very little substance to make a full game out of. The big bad, aside from being completely forgettable, has a story with some really crappy retcons to Bayo 1's story. Jeanne's whole kidnapping story was underwhelming and Bayonetta losing control of her powers felt neither properly explained not resolved. Loki was such a terrible character, I found myself exclaiming "thank god he showed up" when Luka appeared, because as much of an annoyance as he was in Bayo 1, he's still so superior to anything in Bayo 2 that his entrance felt refreshing. I could say the same about how Bayo 2's enemy design is so bland that they needed to recycle Bayo 1's enemies in order for the game to deliver a shred of players feeling anything close to a "rewarding" sensation. I was also severely disappointed with the part of the game where you go to Hell. With the way Bayonetta, Jeanne, Rodin and his bar are portrayed versus the more monstrous angels, I was expecting Hell to be far more stylish. If you told me back in the days of Bayo 1 that Bayo 2 would have the player go to Hell, I'd tell you I wouldn't be surprised if Satan was a genuinely fun character designed after Graham Norton or something. What they did in Bayo 2 was the living definition of bland. It was empty, covered in thorns, and the worst that section has to throw at you is the flower lady which was stupid down to a conceptual level. Alraune's whole beef with Madama Butterfly and that being the reason Bayonetta was losing control of her powers is never properly explained in-game, and is also fairly tangential to the game's actual plot. So to me, Bayo 1's story is vastly superior to Bayo 2's train wreck of a narrative. That's without even getting into how much shorter Bayo 2 is. It's story is so short that it could've just been a DLC expansion for Bayo 1. I remain resolute that had it not been packaged with Bayonetta 1, and were released as a $10 standalone game a la that one Infamous standalone thing with the vampires, people would get it because it's more Bayonetta but then immediately start questioning whether it was worth the price of admission. That's how substanceless it is, and due to the story not really pushing things forward, it's an entirely skippable part of the franchise. Not really what I would call "sequel" material in a trilogy. I'm also going to dock points from Bayo 2 for how it removes a lot of the videogame-y fanfare from Bayo 1. Bayo 1 was gender-bent Devil May Cry, down to Bayonetta's one-liners being FROM Devil May Cry, and her Ebony and Ivory pistols. What set it apart from being PURELY that was how much love and appreciation it had for the history of videogames, from Eggman's funeral (as it was a Sega-published title) to the Road Rash-inspired motorcycle segment to the missile-riding Space Invaders-esque segment, even down to the arcade-style mini games between the levels. Bayo 2 not only removes ALL of that, but it commits an even bigger sin... what it replaces it with. You get these parts in the game where you ride the jet or ride the horse in those on-rails segments. Being a hardcore Bayo 1 player, it just felt like they were going, "oh hey, remember that cool motorbike sequence from Bayo 1?" and then not only gave you something that wasn't as good... but made you do it TWICE... EACH! There are two pairs of segments like this which only exist to be references to how Bayonetta 1 did it better. Most of the game feels that way to me, especially when they bring back Bayo 1 enemies later. Aside from the few newer enemy additions, most of the game's enemies just feel same-y in the design, compared to Bayo 1's variety. Part of me feels like this entire game was made using unused or left-over assets from Bayo 1 that didn't make the cut into the final game. Bayo 2's snake form even has the Bayo 1 hair style. Personally-speaking, I LOVE Bayonetta 1... but feel it's kind of like the Matrix in that we didn't need a sequel. Bayonetta 2 had the opportunity to push the franchise forward... but then didn't. It retconned and tried to re-explain things from Bayonetta 1 and used time travel to give us a prequel, or a pre-sequel, if you will. It's not substantive enough for me to even recognize it as a proper sequel to Bayonetta 1, which IMHO didn't need one. I do not want Bayo 3. I'd rather get Vanquish 2, considering how a propos it would be what with current events and all. I personally feel Bayo 3 should be cancelled. Just having more for the sake of more doesn't make it necessary, and 2 didn't really open the flood gates for another entry, so there's very little point in beating a dead horse, if you ask me.
heyyy, found this video 3 years after you posted it! I just finished my first playthroughs of both games and I felt a lot of these things even as a first time player, but I couldn't put them into words, so I'm very thankful for the video. Hopefully platinum looks into them for bayonetta 3!
Late as hell to the party... I've played over 3000 hours of Bayonetta 1 and owned it for 4 different platforms. I truly think it's the greatest game in the genre. I agree with all of this wholeheartedly. You outlined all of my biggest issues with 2. It's nice to see someone else (especially with a platform) understand why 1 is a much better game than 2.
After playing it 150 hours and I'm still playing ... I agree with you, but that does not make it inferior to Bayonetta 1 (which is much better for me), Bayonetta 2 fixes several Bayonetta 1 failures in terms of playability QTEs, levels long This Bayonetta 2 is friendlier to the public, only we see those "defects" so to speak. One thing that I did not like Bayonetta 2 is the change of weapons, for example Weapons A: PPKK and can not change to Weapons B and press "K" ... it is canceled, in Bayonetta 1 you ended up with a Wicked Wave. Also missing weapons with more firepower .. I miss the B2, no shotgun, no rocket launchers ... I hope that Bayonetta 3 directed by Kamiya is going to be the real sequel to Bayonetta 1 in terms of gameplay. AH I forgot, I hate Sloth with all my soul.
@@tobiasarevalo9929 if there comes a time that you learn all of them, what happens that sometimes in Bayonetta 1 the buttons are sometimes random ... in case Bayonetta 2 is always the same.
I feel like the direction of the combat system changed because of hideki kamiya's disappearance. He didn't direct the second game, however was the director of the first. I pray that the combat system is fixed in 3 because Kamiya returns in 3 to monitor/direct the game.
Bayonetta 2 isn’t a bad game but I knew from my second playthrough that something didn’t feel right about it. For me it was the combo breaking that wa stage 1st ref flag. Both mor unsatisfying then getting a streak going but the then the game decided to break it, not because the enemy tricked you and hit you good but because the game decided “no your using witch time”
Thanks for this explanation. I've heard alot of people complain about this game at high level , some going so far as not even touching it anymore, but I never heard the reason why.
Coming out of the Devil May Cry series, I've wanted to branch out to other hack and slash games so I picked up Bayo 2. But man playing it for hours straight I can see that the game feels like it wanted to deviate away from the DMC series as well as keeping up with it if that makes sense. This video explains well the flaws that I can't really put my finger on, like the humanoid battles and the enemy behaviors. My first battle with the demons I can already tell that there is something wrong with the AI. Most of the time I also feel like the launchers are almost useless, the witch time part really explains my qualms about it.
I have to admit your points are valid and the points of the new players are valid too. Bayo 2 is better for a beginner player, you're not punished for using items (a thing you wouldn't even use in Bayo 1 even if you're not trying pure platinum, because the penalty is huuge). What I think they should have done with the Combo and Points system was to add the more complex system on the Hard+ difficulties. This would be good. Because I have to say, sometimes it IS difficult to get pure platinum on bayo 2 just like you would on Bayo 1 because, the reasons you've pointed out. The enemies defend too much, the bosses are way too weird to fight, and the demons late game is just impossible to dodge sometimes. It makes me mad as hell. xD
Umbran climax could’ve been fixed easily if it were an accessory, so then newer players would need to grind in order to get it, or having umbran climax locked for easy mode like the immortal marionette, and if you used umbran climax in normal+, your combo points would be reduced by half.
I'd just prefer if they balanced the Magic in he game better. With the reduced magic orb gain you are incentivised to only use it on the most powerful ability, which is Umbran Climax. There's no reason to use any other accessory or Torture Attacks, there's no reason to use Tetsuzenko or Heel Stop. It locks you into one-way play style if you want to actually get Pure Platinums without puling your hair out. Make the magic gain more akin to Bayonetta 1, make Umbran Climax more expensive (maybe needing 3 full bars and it's a reward you unlock late game or something), make enemies more vulnerable to your standard attacks and the largest problem in this game is fixed.
++++ why can you not change the enemy in practice mode....!!!! I recently played B1 recently and I had forgotten how much more fun the combos were and felt.
The new practice mode was a step in the right direction but they can do so much more, hopefully in Bayonetta 3 we will see a fully fleshed out training room with lots of options (enemy spawning/infinite HP/etc.)
@@Daedron12 Hey! and we're here... 4 years on... let's hope the training room (if there is one) is better this time! Once again this was a wonderful video to come back to. One thing I had recently been thinking about was how the sound design really took a step back with B2, especially in regard to wicked weaves. They sound so much less powerful. All I can say is props to the B1 sound designer. They really smashed it!
@@nomight273 Why are you replying to 2 year comments? How about you grow up and stop being triggered by people's opinions on games. Bayonetta 2 is a terrible game. Get over it.
I wanted heard your voice. I'm so glad to see i can interact much in this channel and hope you continue uploading such content for us. I will support it fully
Perfect. At last a guy who knows what to talk about. You have earned a new subscriber. Oh and you forgot to mention that they even didn't put the funniest weapon in B1 : Saï Fung ! It was so fun hearing Bayo shouting ATATATATA !!
You know, I think no one here will agree with me but the only thing I dislike about Bayonetta 1 is that you can't switch chars. You have to play the whole game over again to play as Jeanne/Zero. But besides that I agree. I also miss taunt offsets :(
I'm not even trying to pure platinum, but playing hard mode in Bayo 2 as Jeanne is an utter hell. Everything hits because witch time is very strict, but bat/moth within is annoying to time because of the lack of specific cues and because I've found that enemy attacks in 2 just have a weird timing period.
there's a lot of stuff u said that i agree with you mainly the lack of knockback and how strong and reliant bayo 2 was with umbran climax, also it was way to easy to trigger witch time but i still think bayo 2 had a lot of stuff that beats bayo 1 for example the diversity of enemies made the game much more enjoyable and even though sloth is a literal monster that haunts me while i sleep, the variety of enemies made each fight feel both fun and unique, although the lack of unique enemy sound queues did upset you tbh i think the idea of a loud ding and a bright light to notify the player was more than and because of that i never had any trouble, i actually had more trouble in bayo 1 because of the design of the maps, most of the time i would get hit by an attack in bayo 1 was because the enemies would often blend into the background making it difficult to notice. i think the main reason why i preferred bayo 2's combat is because not only did it feel smoother in a good way (for example using scarborough fair in both games, bayo 2's version felt a lot more impactful) but the weapons in bayo 2 were more diverse, unique and fun like i know bayo 1 had weapons like bazooka's, ice skates and claws but in bayo 2 you had bows that shot poisonous insects, scythes that had 3 blades that could be shot like a shotgun, chainsaw's that could tear through enemies and flamethrowers that could change element also bayo 2 had unforgiven (rosa's pistols) which i still think is one of if not the best designed bayonetta weapon because it felt extremely satisfying to use and it's design was incredible. I don't want this to seem like a you're wrong and here's why kinda thing but rather bayo 1 had it's own problems too and bayo 2 did a lot of good things as well like personally in the long run i see myself playing bayo 1 more because as you said in the video higher risk reward
Since playing the games on Switch back to back, much as you did, I began to think of the difference between Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 as a difference between how it feels to play the game, and even before watching this video, I believed it to be “I feel like my ability to fight is being tested” and “I feel like my ability to do a specific thing the game is built around is being tested.” Watching this made me glad to see I wasn’t alone in this regard, but I would have loved to see a discussion of Sloth, since all the problems I have with the humanoid bosses and then some apply to Sloth. I also think the weapon design of Bayo 2 deserved its own segment, since I found no greater incentive to use weapons beyond Love is Blue, Salamandra, Undine, and Rakshasa beyond combo point gain or damage. (My mindset was that higher damage = easier game and slower weapon = more needlessly annoying game.) I still think Bayonetta 2 is a fun game for when I just want to cut loose, and I’d certainly rather have UC than the instakill QTE’s than the overly long and finger-destroying vehicle sections, but the game just doesn’t satisfy the itch that the first game does.
Wow you really articulated everything I felt was wrong and helped me understand exactly why I was enjoying Bayonetta 1 so much more. Keep in mind I am a low level player. I never understood why Bayonetta 2 got so much praise. It seemed to me like it was a step back from almost all conceivable angles. It was fine but far less fun and engaging compared to the original game. Only 3 more days to find out if any of this gets remedied in the third...
Because it look's more flashy, overall it's more easy and it got rid of some annoying things. But overall combat is a step down, i've not been with the series during Bayo 2 OG release, but for a 5 years i've yet to hear any convincing arguments towards Umbran Climax, countering enemies or what was even "inaccessible" in Bayo 1.
@@saaaaaaaaadasda interesting, I always thought Bayonetta 1's animations looked more refined, had more versatility and flare, had far superior enemy design, and better sound design. All that, in addition to being longer and more substantial overall.
@@JoeyFTL I didn't see any downgrade in animation, i thought they are on par, i think they probably used the same mocap equipment and actress for animation. I think special-effects are better in B2, even though they are the reason why framerate on Wii U was unstable to say the least. Problem is, with the main goal or refining, streamlining and "not fixing what isn't broken" they actually broke things at the end of the day. Some things were removed for no reason, like secret kiss move on lock-on, or dodge-roll on said lock-on. Umbran Portal was also removed, why? I guess it's too tactical for a game like this. Same with armor concept and other things. They also muffled her punches sounds, don't know why, there's so much attention to music, i don't understand why are they botched punching sounds. Don't disagreee on enemy design either. About length, i think there is a theory that was, not rushed but not being release at it's full potential, since development is stopped halfway though due to SEGA financial problems and this is where Nintendo steps in. There's actually an old interview, where they said pretty specific thing - Nintendo didn't pressure them, but they listened closely to what they said.
As an overall package, Bayonetta 2 is still the most enjoyable of the trilogy for me. I do agree with many of the gameplay flaws you mentioned; if Witch Time lasted just a second or even half a second longer against the human-sized bosses, the battles would have improved significantly. However, I also ask myself, "How do I get around these issues and will the solution(s) impact my enjoyment of the game?" To that end, I find that playing as Jeanne combines some of the best combat elements from the first and second games: you get longer Witch Time and stronger Wicked Weaves, plus access to the Umbran Climax mechanic (and her version does 50% more damage than Bayonetta's). I could also use Rosa because she can inflict tremendous damage even within a short Witch Time window, but she can become a little repetitive after a while given her single moveset and the inability to customize her appearance. You can also perform Tetsuzanko and Heel Stomp during Umbran Climax for instant Infernal Weaves, so I would not say they are completely obsolete. Also, I disagree with your description that the unlockables are unsatisfying; to me, it has the greatest variety of bonus content out of the three games (Bayonetta 3 seriously disappointed in this area; even just the the casual outfit in the prologue's opening cutscene would have been amazing to have, not to mention poor Jeanne frustratingly gets nothing), but I can understand if you prefer weapons to costumes as rewards. Tag Climax was an excellent way to compare your own skill level with that of other players, and I wish it had returned in the third game as a fun, quick way to earn seeds, halos, and/or orbs.
So after awhile, I still believe Bayo3 is the better Bayo2. A lot of people complain and complain, but the game just is more fun and better balanced around its mechanics than 2 is. I think the main issue with Bayo2 is it wanted to be Bayo1 a lot, but had things that work better in Bayo3. Bayo is weak, enemies just dont stagger, fling or anything other than damage sponge and constantly block. Bayo3 has a lot of big enemies and fewer small enemies, but i honestly didnt even notice. And thats cuz the game is better balanced, you got tons of tools to work around things, you can fling the smaller enemies and combo in the air, enemies dont block a ton and the ones that do and dont get flung around by Bayo, can be staggered and stunned with combo finishers and demons, allowing for bayo to combo or do torture attacks. They both do different things, but i believe that Bayo3 fully embracing new things is better than a worse version of Bayo1. That being said, bayo3 still carries a lot of my own complaints about bayo2, so I still think Bayo1 is very much the best still.
I really liked your analysis, I only played Bayonetta 1 and I still intend to play 2, as I'm a bad hack n slash player I doubt I'll fix any of these flaws in 2, maybe just the absence of sound in the enemies' attack that occasionally I used the 1 to dodge. Again, as I'm forcefully a causal hack n slash player as I'm naturally bad I have no doubt I'll like 2 more. I hope at least the camera control in 2 is better, if that's better for my level of play already will make 2 much better. But it's very interesting to see the point of view of players who actually know how to play the game, I only see people saying that 2 is better, for me it was a surprise to see this video that shows that 1 is basically a better game in gameplay .
Bayo 3 is a little more balanced than 2. But the time shit still annoys me. Enemies not blocking you at every chance is a good enough improvement for me.
I'm quite positive about Bayonetta 3, despite some flaws carrying over to 2. Time ranking way too strict. Enemy tells not distinct enough (just the flash again) Enemies can now all attack off-screen as well which is ridiculous sometimes considering how much shit is going on. I'll do a small video about Bayonetta 3 later.
@@Daedron12 yah them hitting you from off screen is retarded. The on screen rule in 1 was perfect. Enemies were all fast enough that they never struggled to get on screen.
@@Daedron12 Overall I like how Demon Masquerade overrides both the old Wicked Weave combo-ender system and Umbran Climax. However, there's no meter penalty for using command specials other than that you're sabotaging your clear time. I would have settled for moves using up some meter in return for it dealing a lot more damage to the heavies, because as it stands there's no reason NOT to just clear the screen with Demon Slave.
Yeah, the audio cues are only there for the small humanoids, but not for anything else. It's massively jarring when you're fighting a group because you prioritize dodging/parrying little guys instead of the bigger ones that are doing a lot more damage. The visual cues are lost to the on-screen visual pollution.
@@DaveFallows I don't understand, why game that is 12 years old have better audio and visual cues than the game that is a week old. They still think that B2 design with copy-pasted wink sound is so distinct and cool.
That Witch Time critique is what's making my Infinite Climax playthrough unbearable, because those shield bastards show up and you basically can't do anything to them. I can't imagine the later bloody chapters if I'm already burnt out in Chapter 5. Also the time requirements yes! I feel like I'm fucking up my wrists trying to do everything at once to beat these fights in time.
I was wondering in tag climax that i was getting hit pretty damn easy even though i was making sure that i was dodging like WTF??! I actually thought my skills wasn’t good enough but when i play Bayo1 there’s nothing wrong with my skills then what’s wrong? I never though that the issue is with the game Even though i feel that Bayo2 seem so so so slow with the craziness of Bayo1 in comparison
I really enjoy critical analysis like this. I think you should go into as much detail as you want if/when you do another video like this. "I could spend another 30 minutes explaining why sloth is probably the dumbest enemy in all of action games-" But, please do! (maybe that's just me)
9:50 - "We now have attacks wich only have the flash and nothing more" *video shows flash in the eyes WITH SOUND EFFECT twice* I agree the timing is short, but the sound effect still there. You can hear when the eye flashes.
But there’s no distinct sound, the normal enemies AND demon enemies all have a similar sound for the flash so imagine hearing that not being able to discern which attacks are which and you get pummeled with attacks coming from every direction, not to mention you can get attacked off screen.
Great video.= going over the particular changes to the sequel. Very comprehensive. I'd love to see more form you in this style! For no particular reason, I have yet to play Bayo 2. I've pure-platinumed Bayo 1 several times on different systems and I'm working the switch version right now. When I'm done I was going to get into Bayo 2, but after watching this I'm dreading it. All I heard from people up to this point was that Bayo 2 was a step up from 1. Oof! Also, I'm assuming the Bayo 3 vid never happened lol
These were things I noticed upon playing for the Wii U. I pretty much maxed out the game clock on Bayo for 360. To me I always felt Bayo 2 was the better paced and well constructed SP game but Bayo was the better overall combat. Many of the points you illustrated where things I noticed jumping into the game. I still love Bayo 2, but I hope Bayo 3 does fix some of these issues. My personal take though is, I don't have an issue with the combo counter also rewarding for damaging moves because frankly I think the timing and patience to pull off some of these hard hitting moves should be rewarded just as much as a string of combos in another set that take longer to get to. There is some number tuning to it, but decay certainly should not have been removed. Let enemies telegraph attacks better again because that stuff annoyed me in Bayo 2. Demons were the worst offenders I felt. Magic costs/gain needed to be re-balanced and Umbran Climax is perfectly fine as a concept but needed balancing. Lastly, Umbran Climax needed more playtesting and time to balance because of what you showed. It just was frustrating dealing with enemies that would dodge everything and interruptions were far too much. It forced you to deal high hitting destructive attacks. (Hammer time?)
I personally think that Bayonetta should have a style meter like DMC instead of combo points. You can see the number go up, but what is that reletive to. There's no way on telling how many points you need to get platinum unless you look online. Seeing how many points a punch or kick does is too much information for me. I already put all my attention on reading enemy attacks, I can't also concentrate on how many points each attack does and how mamy points I need. I also do wish that they took away the button mashing or analog stick wiggling quick time events, and button prompts. The QTE requires no skill. You either mash the button (or wiggle the stick) or you don't. The button prompts for the torture attacks and umbran climaxes is a small thing but it was a little annoying. There is no need for a prompt telling you to use such common placed moves. You can see clearly if you have one magic bar full and they both use different button inputs. They could have at least put in an option to turn them off.
I haven't played Bayo 2 since it launched on the Wii U. Well...I tried revisiting it about a year later but just couldn't get into it. I loved the 1st game but the 2nd game just didn't have the charm the original had. Now watch I'll try it again and things will be totally different but all in all your video seems to be well made and I believe your points are sound. All in all the 1st game is hard to follow up and I can't blame Kamiya if he didn't feel like directing another. A part of me wishes they had just left it be without any sequels.
My favourite enemies in the game are Resentment,Sloth,Hatred,Hideous,Belief,Valiance,Urbane,Gravitas,Enrapture,Glamour,Valor,Golem,Allegiance,Pain,Pride,Greed and Malicious
Making a video before Bayo 3 releases is not on my list anymore. I am planning on streaming the game on day 1 at least. If anything, I might do a review/critical look on Bayo 3 after it's been out for a while. But for now I'm just laying low and praying that the game will be good.
for a good challenge you can use gaze of dispair and the braclet of time (without using it bc when you dodge you don't get witch time) with the handguns
Just seeing the Sloth enemy on screen makes me feel sick. I swear that enemy is part of a government experiment designed to test my patience. Not only can you not launch it and it dodges everything like other enemies in this game but it's attacks seem like they were PERFECTLY timed to hit you even if you got witch time by having a follow up attack that you can't interrupt that hits you the FRAME witch time runs out.
Bedroom Bunny I hated that enemy with a passion
no you just suck at the game dude, lol, i love the sloths, one of the few enemies in the game that was always a proper challenge, sloths, grace, glory, if they gave me a mode where i just fight those over n over again i would spend tons of time doing just that
@@MegaBigmac87 No, I just don't like the Sloth enemies. I've got Pure Platinum rankings on all difficulties in both games.
ooo, so you are crazy at the game then fair enough, still if your that good i figured you would enjoy the sloths, since they are one of the few enemies that are actually HARD to deal with plus they have aa very diverse moveset, so u never know whats comming, trust me these things made nightmares for me at first, which made slicing them up into bits even more satifsfying
@@MegaBigmac87 I like difficulty but I wouldn't say they are hard. I find Sloths incredibly annoying and unfair. I would take an enraged Gracious and Glorious on Non-Stop Infinite Climax any day over a Sloth on Hard.
They are artificially difficult because they are programmed to be the antithesis of your abilities. They dodge everything with no hesitation, have very little wind up on most of their attacks, have attacks that will hit you even if you get witch time because they NEVER flinch unless you are using Umbran Climax, and a whole host of other problems that will make this comment even longer than it already is.
After getting my Pure Platinums I just use a torture attack to kill them instantly because fuck fighting those things. They singlehandedly made me hate going for Pure Platinums more than anything in Bayonetta 1. Kinships would have been preferable and that's saying a lot.
Agree with every single point. Bayonetta 1's combo system with the polish of B2 would be a perfect game.
what polish does Bayo 2 have over 1, really?
@Yeti and the speed of combat as well; Whenever i play both of these games, i always say that the best bayo game would be one that has the combat system of bayo 1 and the fluidity of movement of bayo 2. One of the things that i absolutely appreciate bayo 2 over bayo 1 is that i's combat is definitely faster, emphasizing the sense of fulfillment one feels to dish out numerous combos and a blistering pace
Camera control in the second game is better.
@@Yetaxa The speed. 1 looks pretty sluggish.
@@MrMoises621 Bayo 1 looks slower than 2 only on Switch where you can experience frame rate drops in certain section, otherwhise both games are capped to 60fps. If you want to experience Bayo 1 in all its beauty and speed I suggest you to play that game on every other platforms expect PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii u (the last two have frame rate drops such as on Switch while the PS3 as many other issues). I played Bayonetta 1 on PS4 drops and then Bayonetta 2 on Switch and I can't see any difference in terms of speed and fluidity.
My friend called me crazy when I complained how much of bayo 2 is literally just spam dodge
I've always preferred Bayo 1 to Bayo 2 but could never quite put my finger on why but thinking about it now while watching this video, yeah, the witch time and enemy design sections perfectly explain my issues.
This is all INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. I really hope someone at Platinum sees this.
puu.sh/zTRgO/ba93d0fa1b.png :)
This happened years ago though, because I got tagged in a conversation and he blocked everyone that was part of it.
TIL Kamiya bans have a splash radius.
I think/hope they are already aware of these critiques because they are somewhat common.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. "I really hope someone at Platinum sees this". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
@11:43 No please, explain why Sloth is bullshit. Fighting Sloth crushes my soul.
Because he dodges all of your attacks most of the time, and his attacks come out of nowhere.
Dodges everything outside of Witch time, has super armour even during witch time, can cancel recovery into attacks for seemingly no reason. They force a very defensive playstyle from the player, even more so than any other enemy in the game. They're just super boring to fight, in a normal run all I do is charge Shuraba, dodge an attack and then release PKP.
Kafka does seem to hit them quite often though but good luck getting Platinum with it.
I once did a Infinite Climax run without Witch Time by equipping Bracelet of Time but not using it...it was not fun, this enemy is borderline unbeatable at that point. My only option was to slowly chip away or get lucky with hitting very high damage moves, until I had enough magic to torture attack.
So yeah, just take the humanoid bosses and make them even worse and you get Sloth.
Thanks, guys. I needed this.
the sloths are one of the "proper Challenges" in this game, most enemies are easy, even on harder difficulties, but those sloths on infinite climax difficulty............ooooo man, i know what you mean,m but trust me if there is a will there is a way, i loved fighting those things, but they didnt make it easy...which was kinda the point
@@MegaBigmac87 they are difficult, but its because they're basically grace and glory on ketamine. Sloth has a varied moveset, but its insanely fast and can catch you immediately after witch time ends, which is very annoying in a game that values using witch time so much. It dodges everything and has super armor, so your only options are torture attack, umbran climax, or witch time (which we've already established is unreliable). But because you can't hit them, how are you gonna get magic? The lollipops, but where is the skill/fun in shoving a million lollipops up your butt and using it to set off a nuke?
To me, they're just very annoying and borderline not fun to fight against
the only people mad about veterans’ complaints w/ bayo 2 are the people who didn’t take time to understand and master the combat system in Bayo 1 and think it’s too hard to enjoy. bayonetta as a game is meant to be ruthless and brutal to its higher level players who’ve devoted to time to learning the combat, so that we can see how stylishly and efficiently we can finish verses.
toning down some of the more unnecessarily punishing elements would’ve been fine imo for example climax finishers and torture attacks being ungodly to get max bonus (seriously I’m only like 300 hours into bayonetta 1 and I’m starting to get carpal tunnel) or how the mana gauge would still drain even if you were getting true combo’d (I think the uppercut combo that GnG could do had like 4 hits that you couldn’t escape out of and the each of those hits would drain 5 mana points which is 2 full bars) but making the climax finishers/TAs easy as all hell to get max bonus was not the way to go and completely removing mana penalties for getting hit was again not the way to go (I think mana penalties shoulda worked similarly to how alfheim health worked where if you got hit there would be a short invincibility period where you didn’t take any damage but could still be staggered to prevent getting one combo’d on alfheims that weren’t one hit only which would’ve made it punishing but not so punishing it was like getting nuked) also items don’t bring down your score which means you could just chug mega invincibility lolipops and get through entire chapters without having to dodge once which again was not the way to go
WORD
combat in bayo 1 was better, more technical, enemies get new moves and combos as you raise the difficulty, combat in bayo 2 was "FASTER", the higher the difficulty, the faster the action was, it just sped up the attack animations for all the enemies and projectile attacks, basically making you even more reliant on witchtime,
@@MegaBigmac87 Maybe Platinum thought that players would love the faster gameplay in which fighting is all about having to keep moving while in battle?
Bayo 1 Certainly held more strength and skill especially without Witch Time.
Bayo 2, however, seems to hold more speed and maneuverability while in combat, sacrificing the technical and skill based aspects that were prominent in Bayo 1...
No we just don't like elitist
@@nomight273 its okay you have to play the game on normal, you tell me the difference in infinite climax difficulties between the games
One thing that kinda annoyed me is that there are too many air battles than necessary, especially during boss fights and it got a little old when you fight Valor.
Holy hell, I was wondering why Hatred and Hideous were so damn hard to dodge when I put Gaze of Despair on. The lack of audio cues and the way their rage-colored models blend into the background cheapened the fight. I'm turning that accessory off now, thanks. lol
Dude don't bother using Gaze of Despair ever. There is no reason to. You don't need the additional combo points of enraged enemies in this game because combo's don't become stale anymore, enraged enemies no longer give extra magic, and enraged enemies give you almost 0 witch time now. All you are doing is letting enemies hit you harder, faster, and give you less with time for no benefit.
Unreactable attacks in Bayonetta 1 were an exception, not commonplace like they are in Bayonetta 2. Off the top of my head, Joy's whip attack, Fearless/Fairness grounded bite (15 frames iirc, and it has the grab property so no Bat Within) and Inspired's bite attack. The thing is that in Bayo 1 there IS counterplay for unreactable attacks: Positioning. For example, Joy's unreactable whip attack can't really hit you if you are diagonally up from Joy, so from there you can safely attack. Fearless/Fairness only do the bite attack when you are fairly close to them so you either keep distance or you can preemptively dodge offset after hitting them once or twice.
Bayo 2 minimises the effectiveness of positioning vs unreactable attacks by having enemies (particularly demons) that constantly try to close the distance on you. The reason Bayonetta 1's enemies typically move slowly when not attacking is so that you have time to position yourself in spots that are advantageous to you.
When I first played Bayonetta 2 on Switch a year ago, I felt something wasn't quite right but I couldn't figure out what. Your video helped me a lot, let's hope Bayonetta 3 will be more similar to the first in terms of enemy design and score meter.
god one of my biggest gripes with Bayonetta 2 was how it allowed enemies to all attack you at once. In Bayo 1, if an affinity lunged at you, the surrounding affinities usually wait until the former one finishes it's attack before attacking themselves. The best example of this is the clip at 10:00 with all the angles. All of them are just lunging and slashing at the player without any sort of room to breathe or attack. Even if you dodge one of those attacks, it's more than likely that once the HALF SECOND of witch time is done, you'll get hit by the last few frames of a different enemy's attack :////// The flow of combat in the second game is so god damn clunky.
IKR
When I did witch trial 5 in bayonetta 2 I could barely even keep track of all the enemies because they all attacked at once.
this comment makes no god damn sense. They made the angels ruthless meaning you couldn't focus one at a time and THAT MAKES IT CLUNKY?
any other time this would be considered a con of any fighter "why do they only attack one at a time" and here you are crying when they actually add more than one fighter.
@@frogradar it’s bad game design no matter how much you try to convince hope . The fact that the enemies are constantly attacking you and not giving you any chance to breathe would be nice if it were any other game but it’s bayonetta and the combo system relies on using different combos and different setups. you can’t do that when you have to dodge OUT of your witch time to stop yourself from being bounced around by enemies like a deranged pinball . It’s clunky because it makes you unsure of your next inputs therefore forcing a player into a box of dodging relentlessly. In B1 affinities would attack you with a slower windup and only two would attack at once so you had time to get WT and then finish and begin your next combo . You’re stripped of any combo freedom in this game completely because of the crackhead enemy balancing.
@@jamallox1125 just dodge
Ironically this video got me excited to play some bayo2 again and I have no idea why.
Balder story more mod for bayonetta 2 please !!
Because it's still a great game, it just has some serious balance issues that become apparent when the difficulty increases.
The things I don’t like about bayonetta 2’s enemies are the human bosses, what I mean by that is, bosses like Aesir, Masked lumen, and Alrune, forgive me if I butchered that name but, the point is, in the original bayonetta game, I loved fighting against Jeanne on hard mode not because I got my ass handed to me, but because it was a match of equals, Jeanne can do everything you can do and also has recovery so that she can’t just dodge her way out of wicked weaves like the lumen sage in bayo 2, everything in Jeanne’s fight was fair so if you get hit it’s on you it was your fault for getting hit by jeanne’s attacks, but in bayo 2 the lumen sage just keeps ghosting his way out of wicked weaves, not to mention that some of his attacks were not telegraphed and the fight is frustrating because he keeps dodging, It wasn’t a match of equals.
Except Jeanne’s uppercut wicked weave attack, that shit sometimes comes out of nowhere, like blink and you’ll miss it kinda thing. Obviously this isn’t as bad as the bayo 2 bosses (nothing can be that bad, I’d hope) since it’s at least manageable compared to the lumen sage who I really think is the biggest offender of bullshit attacks, I don’t think anything can be worse or as bad as him.
JickBoi 308 I agree
I feel this so much. The Witch Time and combo system balancing were by far the worst parts of 2 for me and really made the game feel less like a game of skill and more like a game of "Hit R when I tell you to". It never felt as grounded or challenging as 1, especially with Umbran Climax being introduced. In many ways it felt... loose(?) if you catch my meaning. Like all care for how I played went out the window so long as I mashed that dodge to build up into my Umbran Climax and I didn't realize my issues with the game till I hit the Lumen Sage and saw how he reacted to attacks, witch time, and wicked weaves and that was really disheartening to me after 1 put such a high emphasis on fast and thought based skill. The game's still fun on its own and definitely pales in comparison to the first, but I can kind of get the appeal of having an easier entry after watching my sister get into Bayonetta 2 after being reaaaaaally put off by the first, but it sucks when one fan has to suffer for another's gain. I can only do what everyone else here is doing and just hope 3 meshes the best of both worlds. Also, c'mon. Gimme a Turbo Mode. :P
But is Bayo 2's combat system better for casuals than Bayo 1's combat system on easy?
Umbran climax is so weird, cuz Kamiya definted what a good super mode should be with devil trigger. .
Interesting how this affects mainly high level players, I'm a casual Bayonetta fan and I find the second game ai mprove in basically anything, maybe if I dedicate time to learn the game deeply, I would start notice the flaws mentioned. I personally think part of those decisions was deliberate or maybe a request from Nintendo so the game is more accessible for the casual playerbase their consoles have
Idk I still play it the same way! It just seems easier than one!
I know this vid is old af and I am late but I finally played and beat the game for the first time today and ended up here after looking up stuff about mechanics. And man it kinda confirms a lot of my worst fears. I really liked the game, don't get me wrong but certain things felt off when I was playing. I think the biggest one was just not being able to infinite combo enemies, but I never stopped to actually test and figure out why cause I didn't want to break the flow of the game.
But honestly, that wouldn't bother me so much if not for how scoring worked. Seeing that getting platinum rankings favors playing efficiently vs playing fun and pulling off long cool combos really dampens my mood to even bother trying to plat every level. That's like missing the whole point of these kind of games.
Also magic generation being so slow just bugs me. Even ignoring how OP umbran climax is it just feels wrong. I think I ended up using like 3 torture attacks the whole game. Was one of my favorite mechanics in Bayo 1 and here you're lucky to use it like once per encounter (not that using it is worth it obviously.) Meh, anyway, like I said I had fun and I am gonna go through all the difficulties but kinda bummed about the score chasing aspect of the game as that is what I love about action games most tbh. Nothing hits as hard as finally earning those S ranks (or insert grading system here.) But the way you achieve that in this game is lame.
Currently pure platinuming B2 on Infinite Climax. Holy shit, everything you said is how I feel about the game. Initially, I love my first playthru of B2 on the Wii U. But after putting in over 100 hours in on B2, yeah, you can see the adherent flaws with the game.
This is also issue. Many people just complete game once and done with it. I also liked the game when I first done it on Wiiu, but now trying to unclock more stuff//PP in bayonetta 2 on switch you can clearly see all the problems.
feralbeast67 Yea I played Bayo 1 first and got destroyed on normal. I didn’t even try hard. I went to to and felt how nice and smooth the game felt and did way better on hard mode than normal in bayo 1.
After getting some platinum trophies in 2 I went back to one on hard mode and immediately got trashed on chapter 1, however I eventually got really good at bayo 1 and thought and enjoyed it a lot more on hard mode. I played hard mode twice in bayo 1. I found out things like dodge offset and perfect countering naturally by playing on hard mode.
I then went to bayo 2 and the game felt so weird to me. I realized every single problem explained in this video. I hope astral chain and Bayo 3 will be much better.
Wrong
I actually don't mind enemies breaking out as an idea. Offense and defense are so interwoven in Bayonetta's controls that you can do something like have enemies break out with an attack that you can dodge and then punish their counter attack. Think Revenge Value from KH but instead of forcing you to stop your offense. You can continue your offense. Sucks for combo videos but makes enemies more responsive and aggressive.
finally someone who notices the witch time issue! i thought i was the only one!
what no one seems to say is that the weapon load out, once you unlock all of them, is WAY better in Bayo 1, Bayo 2 has the double swords and the dual whips which are both Awesome, but in bayo 1 you get dual rocket launchers x2, the durga claws x2, laser guns, the nuncuck thing, basically the combo possibilities in Bayo 1 are way mores diverse because of all the cool weapon set ups, bayo 2 has good weapons, but i was very sad when i finished bayo 2 and realized there were NO rocket launchers or laser guns like in the 1st game, SAD, they kinda dropped the ball here, i hope they bring some of em back for bayo 3, especially the Durga's
and dont forget the figure skates or the lightsaber......none of which made it into the 2nd game....SAD
Honestly I love 2’s variety in weapons the problem that they seem to have run into with this is that some weapons feel extremely situational to downright useless. While I wish 1 had variety, at least I found each weapon useful and knew that if I tried to use it, it’d be viable regardless. I do hope we still have variety in 3 but the weapons don’t feel niche or useless.
Everything you've said is perfectly on point. I can't land a goddamn combo unless I'm using Umbran climax. And even then I'm open to surprise damage from enemies I'm not wailing on.
If you can't land a combo then you have to work on dodge offset
Seeing this video and the comments, it justifies why I only played bayo 2 for 2 months on wii u release while 13 years later, I'm still playing bayo 1 lol
as someone who plays Bayo 2 way more than 1 (because Tag Climax), i can finally understand why pros love the first over the second. Tag Climax basically gave me the habit of using the same 10 combos using only Love is Blue or Scarborough Fair and to do Wicked Weaves like every 3 seconds to maximize score and damage, but it does get bland after a bit tho.
I think one of my main complaints is that the weapons had more of a "form over function" deal. I found myself hardly using any of the other weapons except for love is blue, rakshasa, alruna, and chernobog. In the first game, I used nearly every weapon for differing playstyles, from shuraba, to odette, to onyx roses, to Lt Kilgore, etc. they were all fun to use, but the weapons in bayo2 seemed like they wanted them to look cool over them feeling good to use.
I don't know, that could just be me sucking at games like DMC (tho I love dmc)
Yeah that is exactly the problem. Like the whip in 2 looks cool but in the first game it had way more functions.
I think they tried to improve on this a bit by giving some weapons different special moves on the same input, but since the game stops you from doing anything stylish it really just makes those moves useless.
I think they can definitely improve even more on weapon functions and uniqueness in Bayo 3, but that's a topic I will be discussing in the next video.
Daedron12 can't wait, I really enjoyed this vid.
Honestly a very made video and critic of Bayonetta 2's gameplay problems. I will definitely use this video as reference when talking or debating Bayo 1 & 2 in the future. Cheers!
I played bayo 1 last month and I fell in love with the series so when I got to play Bayo 2 yesterday I was over the moon but when I finished it I kept telling myself it wasn’t that bad but now I just accepted the fact I’m disappointed with the sequel, don’t get me wrong the game is great but everything I loved about bayo 1 was just stripped away especially the quick weaves. Umbran climax definitely made my experience less enjoyable since I took the time to learn the best finishers and how to use my magic gage properly. I’m so excited for bayonetta 3 but I am praying most if not all these issues were resolved.
thats explains why i play more bayo 1 than 2. in my experience i played bayo 2 first then the bayo 1. bayo 1 totally felt different its hard kind of way but challenging, the alfheim missions is better and fun. but i hated the verses with the motorbike and the jet/rocket shooting it takes too long
I REALLY hope Platinum Games take a look at this while following up with Bayonetta 3.
As much as i still enjoy Bayonetta 2 overall (well not as much as i did at launch), its painful going back and forth between Bayo 1's NSIC & 2's IC which really opened my eyes on the latter's various severe balance issues that were introduced. Its just mindboggling considering that Hashimoto knocked it out the park as the enemy designer for Bayo 1.
He was the enemy's visual designer, not their gameplay designer.
The issues brought up in this video are why I only play B1 seriously (playing on the highest difficulty or going for pure platinums). In my opinion there wasn't anywhere to go but down after the original in terms of gameplay and B3 hasn't changed my mind.
Another thing I disliked about B2 was the simplified movesets. I liked that in B1 you had a huge list of combos and that a lot of them had tricky timings. I think some combos should be difficult to pull off. Makes it more satisfying when you do.
Wow, this is actually extremely accurate lmao. I still cant stop playing it but these points definitely echo my frustrations lol
I’d be fine with them making enemies harder to launch/more defensive if they made it so that you had to use a specific move to make enemies launchable like in the wonderful 101, but saying that is kind of stupid because THEY ALREADY DID THAT WITH WICKED WEAVES
Totally agree. I was introduced to Bayonetta by Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and finially played Bayo1 followed by Bayo2 in the past month. I was so impressed by Bayo1 that I spent a whole week getting pure platinums (normal difficulty tho), even though I never played any action games before. But for Bayo2 I just don't feel the passion.
In addition to what you already mentioned, it is also frustrating every time after defeating a boss, I see in the next CG scene bayonetta gets grabbed/hit by the BOSS, waiting to be rescued, falling into water or so. In Bayo1 this only happens to little Cereza, like bayo is confident enough to dodge any incoming attack in CG.
Bayo3 is coming in a year. I really wish to see something more like Bayo1 than Bayo2. Bayo1 without the shooting and driving parts would be a perfect game.
Also near the end of Bayo2, couldn't figure out why Balder is supposed to dance. Then after hitting an inifiniton punch, I still need gigaton bites to finish it? Comeon you must have other ways for Jeanne to make an appearance...
But bayonetta 1 has insta-death QTEs and the button mashing is more difficult.
I'm glad those are gone, they have no place in an action game like this.
They are. But how does that make Bayonetta 2 better? Imagine if it was the first entry in the series or even Bayonetta 1 did not simply existed? That doesn't excuse other things at all.
Bayo 1 elitists tend to ignore those on purpose
"I'm glad those are gone, they have no place in an action game like this."
Guess you didn't see what I wrote.
No one likes the QTE's, but just because they're gone doesn't make Bayo 2 the better game.
Now I have not played Bayonetta 2 yet since I am relatively broke right now but will get to it someday. One thing that really annoyed me in Bayonetta 1 where the burning enemies. On Hard and lower they where no big deal thanks to witch time but on Infinite Climax they where so dam annoying.
Great video, pretty accurate. I hadn't notice those things on Bayonetta 2 because I could play it until the end just one time, and I was too excited with the experience to care. This video does a great job at explaining the flaws, I really hope they go back to Bayonetta 1's quality, and raise it even more.
Yeah I'm disappointed with Bayo 2, haven't played B1 in eons so I'm not sure if it had the same issues as the sequel..
Wow you could make a great analysis channel. Very informative. That's the type of information I look for when I want to buy a new game of this genre, not these shallow reviewers that youtube are full of. Thank you a lot!
I've been replaying the game on Infinite Climax and I'm currently stuck against Alraune. She just dodges every wicked weave, summons plants to obstruct view, parries constantly which ends my combo and witch time is incredibly short. Even during Umbran Climax she dodges about 70% of it.
But Daedron, don't you see? It's totally ok to use lollipops as much as you want because it's canon to the storyline.
Seriously speaking, I'm really glad you made this video. I had always wanted to make a video like this but never had the time and patience. You've pointed out many things I've had issues with, stuff I'm sure you've seen me say :D
It's hard to critique Bayonetta 2 without coming across as looking like a bunch of hipster elitists, but hopefully this is something more players can understand and it's something I really hope is addressed in the 3rd game.
I had to change the script around a lot to not sound like just another ranter, definitely was the hardest part when making this video. Eagerly awaiting Bayonetta 3. As long as it takes the good parts from both games and leaves out all the bad, I'm sure it will turn out great.
I hope Bayonetta 3 adresses all these issues and gives us an AWESOME Bayonetta sequel with improved combat options!
Bayonetta 2 is a difficult one to judge, i believe these changes come from a 'well intentioned' effort by Platinum Games and Director Hashimoto to make the game more accesible, enjoyable, casual friendly and easier, so it can reach a wider audience and sell more copies because the second game ALMOST didn't get done😢, effort was made to remove the 'tedious' parts, pretty up the graphics/art, simplify the story a little etc. Instead of the usual expected in sequels of these types of games: more complex combat systems and higher difficulty.
That and a rushed development cycle (and without Kamiya) for Bayonetta 2 made it what it is,and it WAS still a fantastic game, problem is dumbing down the combat allienates the core fanbase that purchased Bayonetta in the first place, and Bayonetta 2 didn't ended with higher commercial success either, with Bayonetta 3 they appear to have noticed this problem and are making a 'proper' sequel with longer development cycle to focus on expanding the combat options 🤞
Even tho there's flaws to the game I'm surprised Platinum did good in such a small development cycle
I think this is all thanks to Kamiya's tradition of making someone else director for the sequels of games he started, but I have possible good news as the guy that directed Bayonetta 2 left Platinum games which means he won't be involved with Bayonetta 3, so there is a possibility that the new director could bring back what actually made Bayonetta a good game and balance everything again. I don't know how involved Hideo is with Bayonetta 3.
Edit: Apparently Hideo Kamiya is directing Bayo 3 so... GREAT!!! Now I feel more hopeful.
I disagree on the combo point system. Yes it required some skill, but there's a limit to what skill SHOULD be required. Bayonetta 1 penalised you for using powerful weapons, meaning some weapons just became annoying to use during combo PP runs. Onyx rose and Kilgore being suffers of this because they produced too much damage to efficiently garner a substantial PP combo score.
B2 wasn't better in this regard in that it did the opposite, in that using the most powerful weapon was the way forward, meaning if you loved using Alruane and LoveIsBlue you'd be up shit creek because the combo score would be like "nah, use the hammer".
Like you said near the start, there needs to be a finer line between the two.
Agree with all this 100%. My other main gripe while playing through Bayo 2 so far is the story experience. It all feels tacked on and incredibly corny, *especially* anything to do with Luka. It's not like I think Luka was a great character in Bayo 1, but it at least felt like he was a real person with some connection to the story and characters around him. In 2 he's been completely reduced to comedic relief and extremely boring narrative dump. Bayo herself feels like less of her sassy and sexy self in favor of a more dry and serious persona. Her taking care of little Cereza in 1 felt organic and natural while her babysitting Loki feels contrived and weird. I didn't even like the concept of her taking care of the little girl in the first much because in my opinion it takes away from the overtly sexy appeal she has, but this is just on another level of bad in my opinion. Overall I'm really disappointed with Bayonetta 2 and I'm *really* not digging the aesthetic of 3 much, so it sadly seems like this series will end up a bit of a one hit wonder in my eyes. Sad because the 1st is so ridiculously good outside of the gimmick levels.
umbran climax should’ve been unlocked later in the game and shoulda cost 2 bars and instead of giving every attack a WW all attacks would stagger and deal higher damage yet still way lower than a normal weave, the infernal summons could stay but again lower damage but hey that’s just my two bits
The more I play Bayo 2, the more these things bother me and the more I struggle to find any reason to play it instead of the first one.
I have a pretty good idea for how to improve UC. Maybe have it be a temporary upgrade gained by keeping your combo high for extended periods of time and have breaking your combo or getting hit knock you out of UC. It has its own problems and would probably require for the game to be heavily rebalanced, but it feels like a more dynamic and interesting system for both casual and hardcore players than hitting a button and turning your brain off.
Just realized something. People compare UC to Devil Trigger from DMC, but if you fuck around in DT, mashing buttons, not thinking about what attacks change up your combo or are good for the current situation, not only will your style ranking be garbage, you’ll have wasted your DT. UC is closer to Sin Devil Trigger in DMC5, but EVEN SDT, A FORM LITERALLY MEANT TO GIVE YOU ABSURD LEVELS OF POWER is balanced out by taking longer to attain then DT, not lasting as long as DT, not healing you like DT, and draining your entire DT meter just to be able to access SDT. Even in SDT, your style meter won’t raise if you just mash one button over and over, and you’re encouraged to use the few unique moves SDT has to benefit you in the current fight. The basic SDT combo can be weaved in between other moves, sin stinger and the Luce are good at taking out far away targets, obliteration can take out 1 powerful enemy, but takes so long to use that you won’t have SDT for long after using it, and judgement is likely to kill most if not all of the enemies in screen, and probably the only attack in the game that is good in EVERY situation, but even that sacrifices your entire SDT meter. And even after THAT, you have the ability that lets you revert back from SDT on command, but only if your style meter is currently at SSS (imagine that, being REWARDED for skillful play instead of punished).
Now take all of that considered, we’ll balanced design, and compare it to UC, where you hit L, and spam a button. The more I think about UC, the more I realize how much of a fucking disgrace it is.
@@BIGJUNK1MILLION I also compare them, but i called it a shallow version of DT, like they look at it superficial parts like oh just it's a build up and punish super mode and that's it. And since they removed magic removal on hit it makes this mechanic not risk/reward but reward/reward.
Also, Bayonetta 1 punishing you for using Items on even V-easy -> Normal was just bullshit. The fact that on your first playthrough of the game ever and the game gives you the WORST rating because you dared to heal is a shiiiiit time for any newcomers.
Well I mean if you even had to heal that would basically mean you were damaged I think the item penalty is good to prevent shit like in bayonetta 2 where you can literally spam the yellow moon lollipop (which turns you *invincible* btw) and not get punished for it AT ALL I tried it and I GOT A PURE PLATINUM, does that sound like good balancing to you?
No it isn't. Sorry that a game designed to be replayed didn't give you a Pure Platinum on your first playthrough that you weren't going to get anyway because you needed to heal damage from getting hit.
In easy and normal mode the game already gives you healing for breaking items in the scenery or defeating enemies, so having to use a lollipop means you took MUCH more damage than you should have and really deserved to be punished.
7:21 I see your jump canceling wicked wave combo finisher into tetsuzankos. Impressive shit.
Good vid. I've been playing bayo 2 and trying to beat witch trial 5. Needless to say that all the faults of this game (most of which I never noticed before) start to become glaring when I need to switch our accessories in order to manipulate witch time effects and triggering methods so that I can use alarune so that I don't have to dodge 20 different chaotic hitboxes at once.
Still fucking love this game.
If I could mod the game:
Halve the frequency (or take it down to a 1/5 of what we deal with) of blocks and dodges by humanoids and defensive characters
Wicked weaves do good damage again
Umbran Climax damage is lowered a bit (10 to 20%)
Magic Gauge is sped up a bit (50% increase)
torture attacks do only half a big orb
Testukos/heel stomps do 2 small orbs (will become a powerful option with eternal testimony)
Witch time is either bayo 1 length or an average of bayo 1 and 2
Fix the time requirements
Something really radical: make bayo's combo meter more like dmc's combo meter. Make it more visually useful in a chaotic fight. Numbers kinda mean jack squat when you have to painstakingly read them first.
I think these things would make the game the true successor of bayo 1 that we wanted.
I would love to watch more videos like this, it's comprehensive and you clearly dominate the topic. Good job!
I come back to this video every once in a while. It would be really interesting if you made a follow-up with your thoughts in Bayo 3. Would love to hear your take on how that game addressed many of your comments regarding Bayo 2. What do you think about the "improvisation" and witch time bonus multipliers in the combo system? What are your thoughts on demon slave vs umbran climax? Do you think the weapons are funner despite the removal of per limb customization?
Wow... This is just... Great.
I always say to everyone that the only thing that i think that Bayo 2 has better than Bayo 1 is the story, but in every aspect of gameplay, Bayo 1 has always been so much superior... And you nailed almost every point in the video. The other things that i would say is OST, i think it wasn't as iconic or original like the Bayo 1 OST. When i hear a track from Bayo 1 i recognize that is Bayonetta, but when i hear a boss fight theme for Bayo 2, i don't even know if is God Of War or something else. But seriously, this video is amazing. Great job, you nailed it.
I actually totally disagree with you on the story front. To me it seemed that the only real thrust of the story was that Baldur was too flamboyantly portrayed in Bayo 1 to have been believably boning Bayonetta's mom, so this game had to do the time warp and say that back in the day he was this handsome, bishy guy, who only later went coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. That's... pretty much it. That's why I think other publishers were turning the game down. There's very little substance to make a full game out of.
The big bad, aside from being completely forgettable, has a story with some really crappy retcons to Bayo 1's story. Jeanne's whole kidnapping story was underwhelming and Bayonetta losing control of her powers felt neither properly explained not resolved. Loki was such a terrible character, I found myself exclaiming "thank god he showed up" when Luka appeared, because as much of an annoyance as he was in Bayo 1, he's still so superior to anything in Bayo 2 that his entrance felt refreshing. I could say the same about how Bayo 2's enemy design is so bland that they needed to recycle Bayo 1's enemies in order for the game to deliver a shred of players feeling anything close to a "rewarding" sensation. I was also severely disappointed with the part of the game where you go to Hell. With the way Bayonetta, Jeanne, Rodin and his bar are portrayed versus the more monstrous angels, I was expecting Hell to be far more stylish. If you told me back in the days of Bayo 1 that Bayo 2 would have the player go to Hell, I'd tell you I wouldn't be surprised if Satan was a genuinely fun character designed after Graham Norton or something. What they did in Bayo 2 was the living definition of bland. It was empty, covered in thorns, and the worst that section has to throw at you is the flower lady which was stupid down to a conceptual level. Alraune's whole beef with Madama Butterfly and that being the reason Bayonetta was losing control of her powers is never properly explained in-game, and is also fairly tangential to the game's actual plot.
So to me, Bayo 1's story is vastly superior to Bayo 2's train wreck of a narrative. That's without even getting into how much shorter Bayo 2 is. It's story is so short that it could've just been a DLC expansion for Bayo 1. I remain resolute that had it not been packaged with Bayonetta 1, and were released as a $10 standalone game a la that one Infamous standalone thing with the vampires, people would get it because it's more Bayonetta but then immediately start questioning whether it was worth the price of admission. That's how substanceless it is, and due to the story not really pushing things forward, it's an entirely skippable part of the franchise. Not really what I would call "sequel" material in a trilogy.
I'm also going to dock points from Bayo 2 for how it removes a lot of the videogame-y fanfare from Bayo 1. Bayo 1 was gender-bent Devil May Cry, down to Bayonetta's one-liners being FROM Devil May Cry, and her Ebony and Ivory pistols. What set it apart from being PURELY that was how much love and appreciation it had for the history of videogames, from Eggman's funeral (as it was a Sega-published title) to the Road Rash-inspired motorcycle segment to the missile-riding Space Invaders-esque segment, even down to the arcade-style mini games between the levels. Bayo 2 not only removes ALL of that, but it commits an even bigger sin... what it replaces it with.
You get these parts in the game where you ride the jet or ride the horse in those on-rails segments. Being a hardcore Bayo 1 player, it just felt like they were going, "oh hey, remember that cool motorbike sequence from Bayo 1?" and then not only gave you something that wasn't as good... but made you do it TWICE... EACH! There are two pairs of segments like this which only exist to be references to how Bayonetta 1 did it better. Most of the game feels that way to me, especially when they bring back Bayo 1 enemies later. Aside from the few newer enemy additions, most of the game's enemies just feel same-y in the design, compared to Bayo 1's variety.
Part of me feels like this entire game was made using unused or left-over assets from Bayo 1 that didn't make the cut into the final game. Bayo 2's snake form even has the Bayo 1 hair style.
Personally-speaking, I LOVE Bayonetta 1... but feel it's kind of like the Matrix in that we didn't need a sequel. Bayonetta 2 had the opportunity to push the franchise forward... but then didn't. It retconned and tried to re-explain things from Bayonetta 1 and used time travel to give us a prequel, or a pre-sequel, if you will. It's not substantive enough for me to even recognize it as a proper sequel to Bayonetta 1, which IMHO didn't need one.
I do not want Bayo 3. I'd rather get Vanquish 2, considering how a propos it would be what with current events and all. I personally feel Bayo 3 should be cancelled. Just having more for the sake of more doesn't make it necessary, and 2 didn't really open the flood gates for another entry, so there's very little point in beating a dead horse, if you ask me.
Great video! I hope you keep making this kind of content, it's really interesting.
heyyy, found this video 3 years after you posted it! I just finished my first playthroughs of both games and I felt a lot of these things even as a first time player, but I couldn't put them into words, so I'm very thankful for the video. Hopefully platinum looks into them for bayonetta 3!
Late as hell to the party... I've played over 3000 hours of Bayonetta 1 and owned it for 4 different platforms. I truly think it's the greatest game in the genre. I agree with all of this wholeheartedly. You outlined all of my biggest issues with 2. It's nice to see someone else (especially with a platform) understand why 1 is a much better game than 2.
After playing it 150 hours and I'm still playing ... I agree with you, but that does not make it inferior to Bayonetta 1 (which is much better for me), Bayonetta 2 fixes several Bayonetta 1 failures in terms of playability QTEs, levels long This Bayonetta 2 is friendlier to the public, only we see those "defects" so to speak. One thing that I did not like Bayonetta 2 is the change of weapons, for example Weapons A: PPKK and can not change to Weapons B and press "K" ... it is canceled, in Bayonetta 1 you ended up with a Wicked Wave. Also missing weapons with more firepower .. I miss the B2, no shotgun, no rocket launchers ... I hope that Bayonetta 3 directed by Kamiya is going to be the real sequel to Bayonetta 1 in terms of gameplay. AH I forgot, I hate Sloth with all my soul.
didnt you memorize all the qtes after so many hours of play ?
@@tobiasarevalo9929 if there comes a time that you learn all of them, what happens that sometimes in Bayonetta 1 the buttons are sometimes random ... in case Bayonetta 2 is always the same.
@@BayonettaStuff not really,most actions are either jumps with (a) or actions with(x) and grabs are (x and y)
I liked how bayonetta 1’s chapters were longer.
@tobias arevalo What’s the point in a quick time event I can’t react to? It’s just beginners traps.
I feel like the direction of the combat system changed because of hideki kamiya's disappearance. He didn't direct the second game, however was the director of the first. I pray that the combat system is fixed in 3 because Kamiya returns in 3 to monitor/direct the game.
And now he’s left the company 🙃
Bayonetta 2 isn’t a bad game but I knew from my second playthrough that something didn’t feel right about it. For me it was the combo breaking that wa stage 1st ref flag. Both mor unsatisfying then getting a streak going but the then the game decided to break it, not because the enemy tricked you and hit you good but because the game decided “no your using witch time”
Thanks for this explanation. I've heard alot of people complain about this game at high level , some going so far as not even touching it anymore, but I never heard the reason why.
sinshenlong now that you know, what do you think of Bayonetta 2 now?
Awesome video. Now I see problems I never realized when playing Bayonetta 2. Seriously, this video deserves some reward.
Coming out of the Devil May Cry series, I've wanted to branch out to other hack and slash games so I picked up Bayo 2. But man playing it for hours straight I can see that the game feels like it wanted to deviate away from the DMC series as well as keeping up with it if that makes sense.
This video explains well the flaws that I can't really put my finger on, like the humanoid battles and the enemy behaviors. My first battle with the demons I can already tell that there is something wrong with the AI. Most of the time I also feel like the launchers are almost useless, the witch time part really explains my qualms about it.
I have to admit your points are valid and the points of the new players are valid too.
Bayo 2 is better for a beginner player, you're not punished for using items (a thing you wouldn't even use in Bayo 1 even if you're not trying pure platinum, because the penalty is huuge). What I think they should have done with the Combo and Points system was to add the more complex system on the Hard+ difficulties. This would be good. Because I have to say, sometimes it IS difficult to get pure platinum on bayo 2 just like you would on Bayo 1 because, the reasons you've pointed out. The enemies defend too much, the bosses are way too weird to fight, and the demons late game is just impossible to dodge sometimes. It makes me mad as hell. xD
@everyone
I hope the government of Cambodia sees this video
please, please, PLEASE contact somebody at Platinum and have them see this video!
I am a Bayo 1 vet, and I’ve beaten 2 and I agree. I still play 1 or 2 and I didn’t realize it was for the reasons you mentioned.
Umbran climax could’ve been fixed easily if it were an accessory, so then newer players would need to grind in order to get it, or having umbran climax locked for easy mode like the immortal marionette, and if you used umbran climax in normal+, your combo points would be reduced by half.
I'd just prefer if they balanced the Magic in he game better. With the reduced magic orb gain you are incentivised to only use it on the most powerful ability, which is Umbran Climax. There's no reason to use any other accessory or Torture Attacks, there's no reason to use Tetsuzenko or Heel Stop. It locks you into one-way play style if you want to actually get Pure Platinums without puling your hair out.
Make the magic gain more akin to Bayonetta 1, make Umbran Climax more expensive (maybe needing 3 full bars and it's a reward you unlock late game or something), make enemies more vulnerable to your standard attacks and the largest problem in this game is fixed.
++++ why can you not change the enemy in practice mode....!!!! I recently played B1 recently and I had forgotten how much more fun the combos were and felt.
The new practice mode was a step in the right direction but they can do so much more, hopefully in Bayonetta 3 we will see a fully fleshed out training room with lots of options (enemy spawning/infinite HP/etc.)
@@Daedron12 Hey! and we're here... 4 years on... let's hope the training room (if there is one) is better this time! Once again this was a wonderful video to come back to. One thing I had recently been thinking about was how the sound design really took a step back with B2, especially in regard to wicked weaves. They sound so much less powerful. All I can say is props to the B1 sound designer. They really smashed it!
All flash with no substance is quite the over exaggeration.
Bayonetta 2 is garbage.
@@TheKareem1212 no it's not
@@TheKareem1212 you need to get a life
@@nomight273 Why are you replying to 2 year comments? How about you grow up and stop being triggered by people's opinions on games. Bayonetta 2 is a terrible game. Get over it.
I wanted heard your voice. I'm so glad to see i can interact much in this channel and hope you continue uploading such content for us. I will support it fully
Perfect. At last a guy who knows what to talk about. You have earned a new subscriber.
Oh and you forgot to mention that they even didn't put the funniest weapon in B1 : Saï Fung ! It was so fun hearing Bayo shouting ATATATATA !!
You know, I think no one here will agree with me but the only thing I dislike about Bayonetta 1 is that you can't switch chars. You have to play the whole game over again to play as Jeanne/Zero. But besides that I agree. I also miss taunt offsets :(
Hey man, it's been 2 years. I'm still waiting for your video talking about Bayonetta 3 and what you'd like to see in it ;)
can't like this video enough times.
Please get back the franchise in the hands of kamiya
majukun Wait, isn’t Kamiya the director of both games?
Nah. He directed the first game. I think he only wrote the story for the second
No elitist
I mashed my way through Bayonetta 2 last night, first time playing. Bayonetta 1 long time ago, I couldnt really mash.
I'm not even trying to pure platinum, but playing hard mode in Bayo 2 as Jeanne is an utter hell. Everything hits because witch time is very strict, but bat/moth within is annoying to time because of the lack of specific cues and because I've found that enemy attacks in 2 just have a weird timing period.
there's a lot of stuff u said that i agree with you mainly the lack of knockback and how strong and reliant bayo 2 was with umbran climax, also it was way to easy to trigger witch time but i still think bayo 2 had a lot of stuff that beats bayo 1 for example the diversity of enemies made the game much more enjoyable and even though sloth is a literal monster that haunts me while i sleep, the variety of enemies made each fight feel both fun and unique, although the lack of unique enemy sound queues did upset you tbh i think the idea of a loud ding and a bright light to notify the player was more than and because of that i never had any trouble, i actually had more trouble in bayo 1 because of the design of the maps, most of the time i would get hit by an attack in bayo 1 was because the enemies would often blend into the background making it difficult to notice. i think the main reason why i preferred bayo 2's combat is because not only did it feel smoother in a good way (for example using scarborough fair in both games, bayo 2's version felt a lot more impactful) but the weapons in bayo 2 were more diverse, unique and fun like i know bayo 1 had weapons like bazooka's, ice skates and claws but in bayo 2 you had bows that shot poisonous insects, scythes that had 3 blades that could be shot like a shotgun, chainsaw's that could tear through enemies and flamethrowers that could change element also bayo 2 had unforgiven (rosa's pistols) which i still think is one of if not the best designed bayonetta weapon because it felt extremely satisfying to use and it's design was incredible. I don't want this to seem like a you're wrong and here's why kinda thing but rather bayo 1 had it's own problems too and bayo 2 did a lot of good things as well like personally in the long run i see myself playing bayo 1 more because as you said in the video higher risk reward
The worst thing is that I can't see ANYTHING. It's like a million lens flares on the screen at the same time.
Since playing the games on Switch back to back, much as you did, I began to think of the difference between Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 as a difference between how it feels to play the game, and even before watching this video, I believed it to be “I feel like my ability to fight is being tested” and “I feel like my ability to do a specific thing the game is built around is being tested.” Watching this made me glad to see I wasn’t alone in this regard, but I would have loved to see a discussion of Sloth, since all the problems I have with the humanoid bosses and then some apply to Sloth. I also think the weapon design of Bayo 2 deserved its own segment, since I found no greater incentive to use weapons beyond Love is Blue, Salamandra, Undine, and Rakshasa beyond combo point gain or damage. (My mindset was that higher damage = easier game and slower weapon = more needlessly annoying game.)
I still think Bayonetta 2 is a fun game for when I just want to cut loose, and I’d certainly rather have UC than the instakill QTE’s than the overly long and finger-destroying vehicle sections, but the game just doesn’t satisfy the itch that the first game does.
Wow you really articulated everything I felt was wrong and helped me understand exactly why I was enjoying Bayonetta 1 so much more. Keep in mind I am a low level player. I never understood why Bayonetta 2 got so much praise. It seemed to me like it was a step back from almost all conceivable angles. It was fine but far less fun and engaging compared to the original game. Only 3 more days to find out if any of this gets remedied in the third...
Because it look's more flashy, overall it's more easy and it got rid of some annoying things. But overall combat is a step down, i've not been with the series during Bayo 2 OG release, but for a 5 years i've yet to hear any convincing arguments towards Umbran Climax, countering enemies or what was even "inaccessible" in Bayo 1.
@@saaaaaaaaadasda interesting, I always thought Bayonetta 1's animations looked more refined, had more versatility and flare, had far superior enemy design, and better sound design. All that, in addition to being longer and more substantial overall.
@@JoeyFTL I didn't see any downgrade in animation, i thought they are on par, i think they probably used the same mocap equipment and actress for animation. I think special-effects are better in B2, even though they are the reason why framerate on Wii U was unstable to say the least. Problem is, with the main goal or refining, streamlining and "not fixing what isn't broken" they actually broke things at the end of the day. Some things were removed for no reason, like secret kiss move on lock-on, or dodge-roll on said lock-on. Umbran Portal was also removed, why? I guess it's too tactical for a game like this. Same with armor concept and other things. They also muffled her punches sounds, don't know why, there's so much attention to music, i don't understand why are they botched punching sounds. Don't disagreee on enemy design either. About length, i think there is a theory that was, not rushed but not being release at it's full potential, since development is stopped halfway though due to SEGA financial problems and this is where Nintendo steps in. There's actually an old interview, where they said pretty specific thing - Nintendo didn't pressure them, but they listened closely to what they said.
As an overall package, Bayonetta 2 is still the most enjoyable of the trilogy for me. I do agree with many of the gameplay flaws you mentioned; if Witch Time lasted just a second or even half a second longer against the human-sized bosses, the battles would have improved significantly. However, I also ask myself, "How do I get around these issues and will the solution(s) impact my enjoyment of the game?" To that end, I find that playing as Jeanne combines some of the best combat elements from the first and second games: you get longer Witch Time and stronger Wicked Weaves, plus access to the Umbran Climax mechanic (and her version does 50% more damage than Bayonetta's). I could also use Rosa because she can inflict tremendous damage even within a short Witch Time window, but she can become a little repetitive after a while given her single moveset and the inability to customize her appearance. You can also perform Tetsuzanko and Heel Stomp during Umbran Climax for instant Infernal Weaves, so I would not say they are completely obsolete. Also, I disagree with your description that the unlockables are unsatisfying; to me, it has the greatest variety of bonus content out of the three games (Bayonetta 3 seriously disappointed in this area; even just the the casual outfit in the prologue's opening cutscene would have been amazing to have, not to mention poor Jeanne frustratingly gets nothing), but I can understand if you prefer weapons to costumes as rewards. Tag Climax was an excellent way to compare your own skill level with that of other players, and I wish it had returned in the third game as a fun, quick way to earn seeds, halos, and/or orbs.
So after awhile, I still believe Bayo3 is the better Bayo2.
A lot of people complain and complain, but the game just is more fun and better balanced around its mechanics than 2 is.
I think the main issue with Bayo2 is it wanted to be Bayo1 a lot, but had things that work better in Bayo3.
Bayo is weak, enemies just dont stagger, fling or anything other than damage sponge and constantly block.
Bayo3 has a lot of big enemies and fewer small enemies, but i honestly didnt even notice.
And thats cuz the game is better balanced, you got tons of tools to work around things, you can fling the smaller enemies and combo in the air, enemies dont block a ton and the ones that do and dont get flung around by Bayo, can be staggered and stunned with combo finishers and demons, allowing for bayo to combo or do torture attacks.
They both do different things, but i believe that Bayo3 fully embracing new things is better than a worse version of Bayo1.
That being said, bayo3 still carries a lot of my own complaints about bayo2, so I still think Bayo1 is very much the best still.
Bayonetta 2 feels like an intense strict military training programme. That being said it has improved my skills for playing Bayo 1.
I really liked your analysis, I only played Bayonetta 1 and I still intend to play 2, as I'm a bad hack n slash player I doubt I'll fix any of these flaws in 2, maybe just the absence of sound in the enemies' attack that occasionally I used the 1 to dodge. Again, as I'm forcefully a causal hack n slash player as I'm naturally bad I have no doubt I'll like 2 more. I hope at least the camera control in 2 is better, if that's better for my level of play already will make 2 much better. But it's very interesting to see the point of view of players who actually know how to play the game, I only see people saying that 2 is better, for me it was a surprise to see this video that shows that 1 is basically a better game in gameplay .
Bayo 3 is a little more balanced than 2. But the time shit still annoys me. Enemies not blocking you at every chance is a good enough improvement for me.
I'm quite positive about Bayonetta 3, despite some flaws carrying over to 2.
Time ranking way too strict.
Enemy tells not distinct enough (just the flash again)
Enemies can now all attack off-screen as well which is ridiculous sometimes considering how much shit is going on.
I'll do a small video about Bayonetta 3 later.
@@Daedron12 yah them hitting you from off screen is retarded. The on screen rule in 1 was perfect. Enemies were all fast enough that they never struggled to get on screen.
@@Daedron12 Overall I like how Demon Masquerade overrides both the old Wicked Weave combo-ender system and Umbran Climax. However, there's no meter penalty for using command specials other than that you're sabotaging your clear time. I would have settled for moves using up some meter in return for it dealing a lot more damage to the heavies, because as it stands there's no reason NOT to just clear the screen with Demon Slave.
Yeah, the audio cues are only there for the small humanoids, but not for anything else. It's massively jarring when you're fighting a group because you prioritize dodging/parrying little guys instead of the bigger ones that are doing a lot more damage. The visual cues are lost to the on-screen visual pollution.
@@DaveFallows I don't understand, why game that is 12 years old have better audio and visual cues than the game that is a week old. They still think that B2 design with copy-pasted wink sound is so distinct and cool.
I want one of these for Bayonetta 3 now lol
That Witch Time critique is what's making my Infinite Climax playthrough unbearable, because those shield bastards show up and you basically can't do anything to them. I can't imagine the later bloody chapters if I'm already burnt out in Chapter 5. Also the time requirements yes! I feel like I'm fucking up my wrists trying to do everything at once to beat these fights in time.
I was wondering in tag climax that i was getting hit pretty damn easy even though i was making sure that i was dodging like WTF??! I actually thought my skills wasn’t good enough but when i play Bayo1 there’s nothing wrong with my skills then what’s wrong?
I never though that the issue is with the game
Even though i feel that Bayo2 seem so so so slow with the craziness of Bayo1 in comparison
I really enjoy critical analysis like this. I think you should go into as much detail as you want if/when you do another video like this. "I could spend another 30 minutes explaining why sloth is probably the dumbest enemy in all of action games-" But, please do! (maybe that's just me)
9:50 - "We now have attacks wich only have the flash and nothing more"
*video shows flash in the eyes WITH SOUND EFFECT twice*
I agree the timing is short, but the sound effect still there. You can hear when the eye flashes.
But there’s no distinct sound, the normal enemies AND demon enemies all have a similar sound for the flash so imagine hearing that not being able to discern which attacks are which and you get pummeled with attacks coming from every direction, not to mention you can get attacked off screen.
10:08 he even uses an example
Great video.= going over the particular changes to the sequel. Very comprehensive. I'd love to see more form you in this style!
For no particular reason, I have yet to play Bayo 2.
I've pure-platinumed Bayo 1 several times on different systems and I'm working the switch version right now. When I'm done I was going to get into Bayo 2, but after watching this I'm dreading it. All I heard from people up to this point was that Bayo 2 was a step up from 1. Oof!
Also, I'm assuming the Bayo 3 vid never happened lol
yes, the centaur design kinda got boring after a while, but the demons looked fairly unique so it kinda balanced out
These were things I noticed upon playing for the Wii U. I pretty much maxed out the game clock on Bayo for 360. To me I always felt Bayo 2 was the better paced and well constructed SP game but Bayo was the better overall combat. Many of the points you illustrated where things I noticed jumping into the game. I still love Bayo 2, but I hope Bayo 3 does fix some of these issues.
My personal take though is, I don't have an issue with the combo counter also rewarding for damaging moves because frankly I think the timing and patience to pull off some of these hard hitting moves should be rewarded just as much as a string of combos in another set that take longer to get to. There is some number tuning to it, but decay certainly should not have been removed. Let enemies telegraph attacks better again because that stuff annoyed me in Bayo 2. Demons were the worst offenders I felt. Magic costs/gain needed to be re-balanced and Umbran Climax is perfectly fine as a concept but needed balancing. Lastly, Umbran Climax needed more playtesting and time to balance because of what you showed. It just was frustrating dealing with enemies that would dodge everything and interruptions were far too much. It forced you to deal high hitting destructive attacks. (Hammer time?)
I personally think that Bayonetta should have a style meter like DMC instead of combo points. You can see the number go up, but what is that reletive to. There's no way on telling how many points you need to get platinum unless you look online. Seeing how many points a punch or kick does is too much information for me. I already put all my attention on reading enemy attacks, I can't also concentrate on how many points each attack does and how mamy points I need.
I also do wish that they took away the button mashing or analog stick wiggling quick time events, and button prompts. The QTE requires no skill. You either mash the button (or wiggle the stick) or you don't. The button prompts for the torture attacks and umbran climaxes is a small thing but it was a little annoying. There is no need for a prompt telling you to use such common placed moves. You can see clearly if you have one magic bar full and they both use different button inputs. They could have at least put in an option to turn them off.
I haven't played Bayo 2 since it launched on the Wii U. Well...I tried revisiting it about a year later but just couldn't get into it. I loved the 1st game but the 2nd game just didn't have the charm the original had. Now watch I'll try it again and things will be totally different but all in all your video seems to be well made and I believe your points are sound. All in all the 1st game is hard to follow up and I can't blame Kamiya if he didn't feel like directing another. A part of me wishes they had just left it be without any sequels.
Good points, I know this is a old video but what is the combo string with the hammer at 15:12. I never use that weapon, that looks bonkers.
My favourite enemies in the game are Resentment,Sloth,Hatred,Hideous,Belief,Valiance,Urbane,Gravitas,Enrapture,Glamour,Valor,Golem,Allegiance,Pain,Pride,Greed and Malicious
The new trailer for bayo 3 came out a few days ago, are you still gonna make a video on bayo 3? Or have you just stopped making vids altogether?
Making a video before Bayo 3 releases is not on my list anymore. I am planning on streaming the game on day 1 at least.
If anything, I might do a review/critical look on Bayo 3 after it's been out for a while.
But for now I'm just laying low and praying that the game will be good.
@@Daedron12 alright, I’m. Glad you’re ok!
@@Daedron12 Same. Please be good, FFS.
for a good challenge you can use gaze of dispair and the braclet of time (without using it bc when you dodge you don't get witch time) with the handguns
I really enjoyed this. I hope you do more video essays, comparing games and the like, in the future.