Combat mechanics

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Even though I consider B1's combat the best, I'll likely never play through it again. Will definitely never touch 2 and 3 again. Decided to sell 3. Might sell my Bayo/Vanquish collection too.

>Sorry to be blunt but should we move the discussion to the DMC3 thread?
Yeah I got a bit carried away lol. Sorry for the inconvenience. Will continue in the DMC3 thread.

>Why did this turn into a DMC3 vs DMC5 war?
This is no war, just some (hopefully) friendly action gaming discussion.

> hopefully friendly discussion
Seemed all well and good enough, no worries about that. Generally I'm not against crossposting either, but Bayonetta 3 is pretty new so I can understand people wanna talk about it in a dedicated topic.

> minigames
To circumvent them you need to exit and rechoose the chapter though, I mostly mean just "play the game". I mean sure you can skip the minigames, thanks to chapter/verse select, but it's a bit of a work of loadingscreens etc. to avoid a 1-2 minute minigame. Enfin, you get my point.

> setpieces/backtracking
Mostly disliking the alfheims currently on replays. Some of them are just such a chore, especially those where you have to protect Cereza/Yourself. Hate those sections. The plane-chapter is the worst imo. Also dislike the Alfheim's that require you to basically run back through the entire stage.

Also encountered a bug from time to time where a fight remains 'unranked' somehow. I complete the fight but there's no ranking screen and the medal is empty near the end. Really weird.

> lumbering hitboxes
For sure. Some have some creativity to them, like the chapter IV (?) boss (twin dragon head). There's at least some things under the hood like stagger-values and reflecting his fireballs back. Other than that, not much to it sadly.

> riddled with things nobody wants to play
It's fucked, for sure. Not a lot of 'clean' action-games around. Sifu is one. Ninja Gaiden 2 in a sense too but that one has a lot of segments some players would rather die than play again (Gigadeath).

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To cheer up our boy Set, I thought we'd revive this thread. I'm playing on expert, and put the gaze of despair on for more challenge. Everything's been fine so far, but the jellyfish killed me over 15 times before I finally got them. They split into 2 when your demons hit them, and their final form is a flying bomb. The bomb doesn't have to touch you, the explosion has a radius of what looks like 2-3x the bomb's size.

They have a telegraphed lunge attack, and the big ones drop bouncing orbs. However, they all have a spinning attack, and it seems the hurtbox is active before the animation even starts, because I've been hit and triggered witch time before even seeing them spin. I decided to challenge myself by not using demons for the fight, but with their sponginess, it seems splitting is less of a punishment and more of an intended gimmick. Especially since only a couple bombs will enrage your demon and make them go berserk.

They also attack off-screen, but that's been well-documented for Bayo 3 enemies. I almost caved and bought bat within, but I'm trying to learn enemy mechanics, and maybe even do a no-upgrade run on my first try. Anyway, am I right in calling these enemies ch*ap, or is it a skill issue? Also, if you were doing a NUR, would you buy the moon of mahaa kalaa? Also, do deaths not deduct scores anymore?

i haven't played Bayo 3 in a little while because i've been busy with Elden Ring so i can't help you with specifics right now because the details of the game are fuzzy to me at this point. my only memory of that enemy is having trouble with it for a little while on my initial encounter with it, so yeah it's definitely a tricky enemy at first but since i have no memory of it past that i'll assume that you just have to get used to it and not that it's badly designed.

worst enemy in the game for me-- the only one that sticks out for me as badly designed-- is that big lego tower thing. it just sits there and does no attacks of its own and sits behind a barrier that your character can't go past and you can only hit it with your demon so it's nothing but a time waster. and an extra annoying one at that since you also have to constantly switch between mindlessly mashing on it with your demon and controlling your character to move because invisible enemies are constantly on your ass trying to hit you. it's not a fight whatsoever, it's just a really obnoxious waste of your time. you can't even skip this fight with one of those super-powerful demon moves, the max damage you can do to that enemy is capped-- which i think that's the sole enemy in the game that has that exception and of course it's that one. beyond idiotic.

Anyone else still playing? I just finished my first run of Infinite Climax last night, and the game finally feels like it's clicking as a combat experience.

I gotta say, there's a massive conversation to be had about the Bayonetta series and how there's always one part of the "climb" from NG through postgame that sucks, but for Bayonetta 3, it feels literally everything surrounding this fantastic and inventive combat system is doing its damnedest to hold it down.

It's a crying shame, because about 2/3 through my Infinite Climax run, the game really started to click, but that's such an investment to ask even from action game diehards. I'm in a server with a bunch of Bayo diehards right now, and they were all asking me what IC was like, since most of them apparently stopped long before that. These are people who are even more fanatical about the series than I am.

Man I wish I was there with you, but I haven't finished my 1st playthrough yet. Juggling 10 different games atm including Bayo 1/2 replays. Just speak your mind, someone will pick up the conversation.

Is that Setnaro's server? I heard from his discord that enemies attacking offscreen start with the jellyfish and only increase from there.

When you say stuff holds it back, are you talking about the mini games? Or the emphasis on summons? Is it like DMC, where so long as you're being aggressive, you can stunlock and bully any enemy (no hate to DMC, it's one of my faves)?

Are you more into styling, or efficient gameplay? You probably know all the big Bayo streamers, so are there small ones (sub 1k subs) you watch? For Bayo 1, I'd plug Alex Park, Koshido Strat, Honey Champloo, AAZ The True and  Sagaevan. Also Penumbreon (Beating Bayo on hard (or at least trying to)) because I don't always want to watch a god play.

I don't know if it's me, but the Bayo 3 combo scene seems a little dry. Maybe because 1 is on so much more hardware, including PC with mods (and even Cemu with mods), but also the combos just blend together for me.

Like I'll see a Labolas launch or something, but I can't think of any defining combo. Maybe Set's enemy control over lava, but that's position control and a bit of a copout. Maybe I just need to finish it to appreciate it more.

Black Adam wrote:Is that Setnaro's server? I heard from his discord that enemies attacking offscreen start with the jellyfish and only increase from there.

You mean the Cuhrayzee server? Nah, it's another server simply called "Bayonetta Server," and has a couple of wiki editors and at least one smaller style player in there. And yes, the off-screen attacks are crazy bad. Not sure I'd say they're much worse than Bayo 2, but they happen a ton. I swear, it's like Platinum learned how to prevent that exactly one time (Bayo 1), and refuse to ever replicate it.

Black Adam wrote:When you say stuff holds it back, are you talking about the mini games? Or the emphasis on summons? Is it like DMC, where so long as you're being aggressive, you can stunlock and bully any enemy (no hate to DMC, it's one of my faves)?

I think the combat system as a whole—including the summons—are overall solid and quite good, maybe the most interesting combat system Platinum has made in quite a while. When I say stuff holds it back, I'm mainly thinking of:

• Gimmick sections: Somehow the worst in the series. I always thought the motorcycle and After Burner sections got way too much flack in Bayo 1, because hey, at least they still utilize some form of the basic fundamentals of the game (dodging, witch time, shooting, holding a combo) and can eventually be reasonably learned as a result. Bayo 3 though? There are a couple good ones where you get to directly control your demon and wreak havoc with some approximation of the game's own rules, but way too many of them are like Rock/Paper/Scissors with Gomorrah and a random rhythm game, and it's just a fucking chore to learn. You can't even reasonably skill through them in a fun and player-focused way once you learn them. I hate having to deal with those every time I play the game, and they happen constantly, pretty damn close to once every chapter or two IIRC.
  
• Technical performance: I know Bayo 1 and 2 didn't run well on their launch platforms either, but it just feels increasingly out of place and harder to deal with as time goes on and the rest of the industry is generally way better about performance now than it was when Bayo 1 came out. It's not just the frame rate either, other things that actively make the game worse to play than previous games are here too, like the awful dithering that replaces true transparency effects. In other words, good luck if your demon and multiple large enemies are crowding your camera and you need to see.
  
• Presentational elements (story, characters, graphics, art design): These speak for themselves I think, with how much rage there's been over these things.
  
• Level design/exploration: The game was so clearly an open world game at some point in development (I could tell that even before the report came out), and it just doesn't gel well with the game at all. Levels are bloated with lots of empty space for their own sake (even outside of arenas, where it kinda needs to be for the demons), and searching for collectibles feels insufferable with awful puzzles that often require specific beast within transformations to get through: Meaning you'll spend way too much time in the menu swapping weapons since you can still only equip two at a time. Until you get all your health and magic (and why wouldn't you be searching for that if you're chasing higher difficulties?), it makes going through levels feel like 85% exploration and 15% actually fighting, which is kinda crazy. And don't even get me started on the completely inconsistent out-of-bounds when you're trying to explore.
  

As for bullying enemies, there's actually a lot of potential for that in Bayo 3, but you really have to learn how to manage your demons and their synergies with both each other and Bayonetta herself. It's real rewarding to pull off. Gomorrah in particular is kinda underrated imo, because he turns anything into a flying saucer during witch time. He also synergizes quite well with a certain other ability (which I won't spoil since you said you're still early in your first playthrough).

Black Adam wrote:Are you more into styling, or efficient gameplay? You probably know all the big Bayo streamers, so are there small ones (sub 1k subs) you watch? For Bayo 1, I'd plug Alex Park, Koshido Strat, Honey Champloo, AAZ The True and  Sagaevan. Also Penumbreon (Beating Bayo on hard (or at least trying to)) because I don't always want to watch a god play.

Being real, I've been playing stylish action games for almost a decade now, but it wasn't until middle last year that I started playing beyond a casual one-and-done normal playthrough before moving on to something else. I guess in practice I tend to go for more efficiency, but I've really been trying to branch out into more spectacular play with self-imposed challenges, such as killing the Valiance in this verse, which I couldn't find any evidence of anyone else doing on YouTube, so I set out to do it myself. I want to get to more proper style play, but that'll come with practice.

I actually don't really watch streamers much at all, but there is one small style YouTuber who I rather like, named Bayo_Cerezita. He's only put out one Bayo 3 video so far, but he's also pretty prominently featured in Setnaro's Bayo 3 collab video, if you've seen that. Also, since you like watching non-gods play, that's kinda the whole deal behind the main series on my channel, where I play action games at their highest difficulty, but only halfway decently, to show people that anyone can play games like this. I also break down the basic and intermediate mechanics for anyone not familiar with how these games play.

Black Adam wrote:I don't know if it's me, but the Bayo 3 combo scene seems a little dry. Maybe because 1 is on so much more hardware, including PC with mods (and even Cemu with mods), but also the combos just blend together for me.

Like I'll see a Labolas launch or something, but I can't think of any defining combo. Maybe Set's enemy control over lava, but that's position control and a bit of a copout. Maybe I just need to finish it to appreciate it more.

This kinda tracks, honestly. I've seen some sick combos in Bayo 3, but so much of it is about how you synergize with your demons, that's where the magic happens. I'm not good at memorizing combo strings in any of these games besides like 3-5 of my favorites, but Bayo 3, I don't think I've memorized a single combo that wasn't already in 1 and 2, because I just don't see the need to do so. I'm sure that'll change with practice though.

>As for bullying enemies, there's actually a lot of potential for that in Bayo 3

too much potential for that unfortunately; once you get good enough at using demons then enemies can't do shit to you anymore à la DMC 4 & 5, at which point you need to hold yourself back unless you're in the mood for Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Featuring Bayonetta from the Bayonetta Series.

I guess I'm not good enough yet that that bothers me, lol. Though I will say that I started another Infinite Climax run today, and it's insane just how much you can get away with. Using Umbran Toll to get a free torture attack from Gomorrah's bite is just crazy.

>completely inconsistent out-of-bounds when you're trying to explore

This made the least sense to me. I was trying to cut through the alley after the child Cereza minigame on the 1st level, and it wouldn't let me. Simply being too close to the edge was also damaging.

Not only is it inconsistent where out of bounds is, but you get punished for daring to do so. Have they forgotten that Bayo 1 and 2 are full of secrets? Or that it's natural to hug the map border for secrets in a non-open world game?

I legit think it's a bug. They programmed something early in development, but couldn't take it out. Like you said, it was originally open-world. When cutting it down, they must've added a fall damage trigger to prevent backtracking, but done it sloppily.

Oh and congrats on the Valiance kill. Seems there's lots of blue water in the Bayo 3 scene, plenty of space to establish yourself! We need more mortals showing the average joe what to expect from action games on the highest difficulty.

The other crazy thing about out-of-bounds is they explicitly put a visual indicator just to denote it (the cloudy mist), but it means jack shit because you run into OoB without them constantly. It's especially bad in China, where there are tons of collectibles and secrets hidden far out in the lava where you're MEANT to explore, but then you arbitrarily go OoB and take damage for trying to explore other places that look just as visibly part of the environment as the others.

Speaking of which, why'd they bring back pit/OoB damage after Bayo 2 got rid of it? Surely they realized just how disgustingly bad the OoB indicators were in this game, so why?

Also, thank you for the compliment. I'm preparing to record a Bayo 3 longplay in the same vein in the next few weeks, so I'm excited to put a cap on the trilogy after 9 months of work!