As a young witch still learning my craft, I summon a slew of thorny vines from the earth beneath me, entangling my foe in a mesh of spikes and thick ropes. Meanwhile, my teddy bear takes on a monstrous form as it becomes possessed by a demon, and slashes at the trapped beasts with a harsh paw, its mighty claws eviscerating all that stand before me. It's electric the first time, but grows dull by the 500th. That's a major problem with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bayonetta Origins: 𒐪Cereza and the Los🦹t Demon, as it wants you to do exactly this 500 times.
Playing as Cereza, the young version of Bayonetta, we make our way through an enchanting forest with increasingly tough enemies, more complex puzzles, and longer, more winding roads. But it never really feels different enough. The game fails to develop any of its major beats, and while the setting changes offer some variety, the biggest issue Bayonetta Origins faces is that it never feels like it's moving anywhere. For a story positioned as an origin story, it's strange to just have it be a story of Cereza as she was younger with no real pathway to how she became Bayonetta at all.
Of course, by its existence it is different - it's a huge change of pace for Bayonetta as a series and that should be welcomed. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:That kind of experimentation ✨should be celebrated, but it still needs to stand alone. Given that Cereza is a young child here, I'm glad the game has removed the flirtatious and sensual elements of adult-Bayonetta's personality, but they're replaced with nothing, and we're left with a very annoying British child making her way through a world that never reaches its full potential.
Cereza is just half the story though, there's also the aforementioned demon, known as Cheshire. He is our companion in the game, and at times the relationship the two share is charming and witty, trading barbs in the classic dynamic of being two would-be enemies who don't like each other much, forced to work together for their mutual gain. But often it feels shallow and flat. Early on we find some plants which Cheshire can't get past and so must go another way while Cereza wanders through, but these rarely return and most of the time the split between the characters feels forced and inorganic. That's a particularly big problem when each character uses one thumbstick each, making controlling both unnecessarily difficult and limited, as it halves the numbers of buttons available to each.
When I previewed the game,ꦑ I was critical of the limited skill tree. It promised upgrades to both Cereza and Cheshire but even after unlocking them all, battles still felt the same. I wrote at the time that it could always develop further into the game, and I have to admit to feeling embarrassed when I began the next chapter and was immediately greeted by a skiꦑll tree double the size. However, this feeling was short-lived - I conti𒐪nued to unlock more and more upgrades, but battles still felt stale and repetitive.
There is some advancement on this front later - Cheshire unlocks four elemental forms, and these do offer some flavour. Grass Cheshire can use vines to pull away shields, Earth Cheshire can cause earthquakes, and so on, but it's still just Cheshire causing damage in the fights and Cereza running around uselessly. She can wrap enemies up in those vines, but even with upgrades it's so limited and she mostly just gets in the way.
Thankfully, a lot of the game is spent exploring, where Cereza can carry Cheshire rather than us having to control both. Here, the elemental forms also unlock more depth, but despite the game's map promising open areas to explore, the nature of the game's puzzles and locking routes behind progression means unless you have the patience to double back constantly to clear all the collectibles, you're always going to be moving in a linear fashion.
What must be said is that the game is beautiful. We're so used to judging video games by how realistic they are, how precise their finer details are, that we sometimes lose our appreciation for colouration, cinematography, and coherent aesthetic choices. Cereza and the Lost Demon embraces a storybook look, even having cutscenes narrated through turning pages and calligraphy, perfectly capturing the tones of the game and the magic it can hold when everything falls into place.
This is especially true in the Tír na nÓg levels, where the game takes on a trippy, psychedelic🗹 look as Cereza and Cheshire explore a twisted world of neon colours in platform puzzle sections. Even these begin to feel like the same old, same old by the end though.
The biggest letdown is that Bayonetta Origins is enjoyable, despite all this. The visuals do the heavy lifting, but there's a bouncing charm to the whole affair, and if combat was less frequent and more varied, the game would be so much stronger. As it is, the weakest parts drag down its strengths and by the end, even as the game finally gets into a higher gear with more exciting sequences and experimentation, I was starting to begrudge it for not wrapping everything up. A generous lead time meant the review wasn't a factor, I rolled credits with a week to spare. I didn't want it to end because of a looming deadline, but simply because I was bored of it. I loved Bayonetta 3 more than most last year, and I have a lot of time for cozy platformers - this is just too shallow to make much of an impact.
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a sweet reimagining of Bayonetta, but doesn't do enough with the series' mythos or its internal story to be much more than a decent spin-off. Cheshire adds some bite into the mix, especially once he gets his elemental powers, but the game's reliance on stale combat and needlessly fiddly twin stick controls offer a foundation of sand. There's some charm here to behold, but it doesn't live up to the Bayonetta name.
Score: 3/5. A Nintendo Switch review code was provided by the publisher.