Bayonetta 3 was one of my most anticipated games of the Switch era. I am a huge fan of Bayonetta, having played Bayonetta 1 and 2 previously on WiiU before finally beating them on Switch. Bayonetta really opened my eyes to the "character action" game, a friend of mine once described Bayonetta as a game where you play as the overpowered superboss and I think that explains why I love them so much. That's not to say there's no skill in Bayonetta, though I know some people would definitely argue that's the case, learning your combos and equipping the best load out possible for your playstyle is still a huge part and, while Bayonetta is overpowered, many enemies are on her skill level, challenges to overcome. But the sheer power fantasy of Bayonetta, the ability to always feel like you're the strongest character in the room, it's an incredibly fun time.
As such, when Bayonetta 3 was announced at The Game Awards in 2017, I was excited. The trailer showed a potentially darker direction for the series, Bayonetta in her Bayo 1 design appearing to fall at the hands of some unknown villain. Even if it was only less than a minute long, it showed much promise for Bayo 3. Potentially a darker, more mature story about the end of Bayonetta, a crazy idea for a franchise with as much legs (heh) as Bayonetta has. This was a GOTY contender in 2014, a landmark franchise which left its mark on the gaming landscape. To promise that we may, in its third entry, already be seeing an end to the story was quite the play. Myself, and many other gamers, were excited to see and hear more from the game, which would surely be coming soon. After all, how long could it take a Bayonetta game to be made, right?
It seemed for a very long time that Bayonetta 3 was never going to come out. There was kind of a holy trinity of Nintendo Switch games that were announced very early into the console's lifespan and then just seemed like they weren't coming, Bayonetta 3, Shin Megami Tensei V, and Metroid Prime 4. All games announced in the first year, all games that didn't come out until the console nearly ended. I wouldn't have been surprised, frankly, if Bayo moved production to whatever Switch successor was coming, to be honest. As the console went on, the inadequacies of the original Switch became apparent, it struggled with consistent frame rates both docked and especially in handheld and a lot of games, even games designed specifically for this hardware, looked kind of muggy and bad. Both things that you do not want for an action game like Bayonetta which kind of relies on stable framerates for the combat to work.
But, during a Nintendo Direct in 2021, the game finally made an appearance. In a trailer designed to fake you out, we enter a scene of Tokyo being attacked by a mysterious force. Everything in this trailer is designed to make you believe this is the trailer for an Astral Chain sequel, down to including the mascot character from Astral Chain. Very quickly, though, we reveal Bayonetta in her new design, an incredibly interesting look that sees Bayo looking younger than she has in the previous game(s), invoking more of her child self, Cereza. After a couple quips, we delve into the gameplay, showing both the classic Bayonetta style we all know and love before revealing the game's newest feature: giant monster battles. Bayonetta can now summon her demons from the underworld in their full glory to do battle with her enemies. Bayonetta 3, from the reveal, looked to be the biggest and most ambitious Bayonetta game yet.
Moreover, it looked like a love letter to all things Platinum. Obviously it drew heavily from Astral Chain already, but the general theming of the game seemed to invoke the Wonderful 101, the soldiers shown in the game looked like they were connecting back to Vanquish. And the trailer ends with a character who resembles Vergil from the Devil May Cry series. Bayonetta 3 was setting itself up to be one of the greatest action games of all time and a love letter to people who love character action games. With excitement running high, I, as well as many others, were stoked for its release to come the following year in 2022. There were some roadbumps along the way, some which almost caused the game to sink at the last minute, but when it was released I was excited. And then for various reasons it took me three years to play it. But earlier in 2025 I finally sat down and played all the way through Bayonetta 3. And, well...
...We need to talk about Bayonetta 3.
I Like Bayonetta 3 Actually
I will be heavily criticizing the decisions made in Bayonetta 3 as we get to the later parts of this blogpost so I want to establish as a baseline that I like Bayonetta 3. Nothing that I am about to say later on in this blogpost changes that fact. They do impact my experience quite a bit, mind, I think that if things like the story were better, Bayonetta 3 would not only be my favorite of the trilogy but one of my favorite games of all time. What is far more important in the context of Bayonetta, though, is the gameplay, the story is simply a vessel to move that gameplay along. I ultimately think very highly of Bayonetta 3 despite my issues. So I first wanted to highlight some things I really like about it.
Equipment
Bayonetta 3 is very interesting in terms of its equipment system because, when you first start playing it, it almost seems more restrictive than the previous games. The previous Bayonetta games handled equipment in a pretty freeform way, you had equipment slots where you could equip different weapons you obtain throughout the game by either progressing the story, finding collectibles, or beating optional challenges. This allowed you a lot of freedom with what to do with your kit, you could equip different weapons to your arms and legs to create your own Bayonetta playstyle, allowing the player to essentially form their own combos. Sure, some weapons just cannot be equipped together and some weapon combinations don't exactly pan out in practice. But this level of control over how you want the game to play is admirable if nothing else.
Bayonetta 3 balks this by having each individual weapon be an entire kit. Every weapon has a built in suite of melee and ranged options and, rather than equipping multiple weapons at the same time to develop your own unique playstyle, you instead equip multiple weapons that you can switch between in the midst of play. At first this seems like a downgrade, that Bayonetta 3 is taking something away from the player. But as I played the game, I kind of found myself liking this style a lot more. It streamlines the process a lot, the player can more easily jump into any weapon because they have such distinctive gameplay styles and roles. It's visually more of a spectacle, while previous Bayonetta games certainly had some visually impressive weapons, Bayonetta 3 really takes it over the top. And because each weapon is a homogenous kit, it allows the game developers to get more creative with how they work. The previous Bayonetta games allowed for a lot of customization, obviously, but this customization limited how crazy they could go with the weapons as they had to be designed to play well together.
Combat
Bayonetta 3's suite of entirely unique weapons also adds a lot of depth to the combat. While you may not have as much customization over your equipment, allowing you to find a unique playstyle, the game more than makes up for this fact by making every weapon an entirely unique fighting style. The game eases you into this change by, naturally, starting you out with Bayonetta's most iconic kit: her guns. The classical combat of any Bayonetta game, a fighting style made entirely of fast punches and kicks, mixing in Bayo's four pistols for extra damage when need be. And, of course, every combo ends with an assault by the gigantic limbs of Bayonetta's demonic companion, Madama Butterfly, which are manifested through Bayo's enchanted hair. It's a classic combat system and I imagine most people will be likely to keep this weapon in rotation throughout the game.
But then, something radical happens. See, every Bayonetta weapon is tied to a demon that Bayo has made a contract with. Her most iconic weapons, her quad pistols, being the contract with the mighty Madama Butterfly, obviously. What Bayo 3 chooses to do is make each weapon not only more invoke their demon visually, but also better represent the demon in combat. So her second, representing her contract with Gomorrah, drastically changes how Bayonetta fights. This weapon is a combination club and rifle, it's slower moving and more precise than Bayo's normal kit, but it allows her to deal massive damage. A drastic change in combat that allows the game to be more creative with conveying Bayonetta's relationship with the demons.
Combat then, understandably, is probably the most nuanced in the series' history. Sure, you have less actual control over what Bayonetta's builds will be as every weapon is its own build, but you have so many more options for how to fight. It rewards players for learning how to best use new weapons and actually accounts for different playstyles. Even with the variety of weapons and builds you could have in other games, Bayonetta would always be a DPS build, her focus is always on fast moving flurries of hits. Now, she has the capacity to be so much more, to be a heavy or to sacrifice direct damage entirely for more of a passive build. Some of the combat styles you unlock later on also just get ridiculous with it, having ludicrous ideas like Bayonetta singing to combat opponents or doing stage magic. It's the most experimental and, in my opinion, most fun the combat has been in the series so far.
Masquerades
 |
| An example of the "monster girl" designs of the Masquerades. |
 |
| The Train woman, clearly the best Masquerade. |
Viola
This is not a safe space for Viola haters. I'm just getting this out of the way right now. I have my issues with Viola, I will talk about them later, but I love this character. I love this overly self-serious dork who is trying so hard to be punk rock. I think the Bayonetta series has, honestly, been lacking this character archetype for way too long. Having an absolute dork with no self awareness who is trying desperately to be cool plays off Bayonetta's effortless coolness so well. And she's just really funny, Viola is a great addition to the cast, I love her. I still jam out to Gh()st to this day.
Viola is also a very fun second playable character. I understand that a lot of people find her gameplay controversial and, indeed, Viola is way harder to learn than even the most complicated of Bayo's weapons in this game. But I also think Viola's playstyle is very fun. There are some frustrating bits about it, if you're super used to how Bayo plays then Viola is going to be a problem for you. Rather than dodging, Viola blocks attacks, with perfectly timed blocks being a Witch time activation window. Attempting to "dodge" like you would instinctively playing Bayonetta will instead result in Viola launching herself at enemies. An important skill for her playstyle, Viola's ranged options are much worse than Bayonetta's, but still very annoying to learn.
Viola's ranged options being very bad is in exchange for her being a more powerful melee attacker. Viola is focused entirely on a powerful melee assault designed to deal with enemies quickly. She's great at fast, powerful fights, she's awful in a grind game. An article I've seen describing her gameplay describes it as "throwing Haymakers" and I tend to agree. She has a range of very strong and very effective sword attacks to build up her meter so she can then use her big finishing trick: Cheshire. Cheshire is Viola's demon, bound to her sword, and he can be summoned at any time in battle. But because Viola is still an Umbra witch in training, she can't control Cheshire, he operates entirely via AI. So a lot of Viola's playstyle is built around building up meter, summoning Cheshire, and then entering a support role where Viola is now trying to DPS until Cheshire stumbles into the enemies and kills them. It's very unique and very difficult to learn but I find it infinitely fun.
Relationships
I'm not talking about romantic relationships here. Bayonetta 3 does have romantic relationships in it and we'll get to those, oh boy, will we get to those. Rather, I want to focus on how much nuance Bayonetta 3 added to the relationships between the Umbra Witches and their demon partnerships. This is not something the previous Bayonetta games ever really discussed in depth but each time they did, the partnership was seen as being adversarial. While the demons help Bayonetta and appreciate her killing angels for them, it's a tumultuous relationship that threatens to break down at any point. The demons want something from their bound witches, their souls, and are effectively waiting for them to die in anticipation so that they may claim the soul they are promised. Most notably Gomorrah, Bayonetta's most iconic demon and her usual partner in combat, often treats Bayonetta as a nuisance and will take any and all opportunities to break his contract with her to try and claim her soul early.
Bayonetta 3 balks this assessment by consistently showing demons not as predators lying in wait, but as companions. We meet several of the "main" demons of Umbra witches in this game, basically every demon Bayonetta can utilize in this game belonged to another Umbra witch she meets on her travels. And, these demons are shown to really care about their "masters". A lot of the gameplay is built around Bayonetta making temporary deals with various demons to return them to their masters, something they do not feel they must do out of obligation but out of genuine concern for their partners. It's a very interesting place to take these relationships and I feel like it's the strongest narrative throughline in the game. If the story was more about this, about the relationships between demon and witch, I would sincerely love it.
If you couldn't tell, as well, the gameplay of Bayonetta 3 highlights this changing dynamic in the witch-demon relationships. The Demon Masquerades show how close Bayo has gotten with her partners, allowing them to essentially possess her to enter this half-demon form. These entirely unique, amazing forms really do go to show how different we are meant to perceive the demon-witch relationships in this game. Furthermore, one of the core combat mechanics, the giant monster battles, the "Demon Slave" mechanic is further evidence of this change. The name is kind of iffy and the way it's introduced is certainly something, with Bayonetta dancing to effectively enslave Gomorrah and force him to fight for her. But in practice it shows how deep we are meant to perceive Bayonetta's relationship with her demon partners this time. That they will fight alongside her in a more direct capacity than ever before, literally standing beside her on the battlefield. It's one of my favorite parts about Bayonetta 3.
Spectacle
This is the big one though. The thing I have always loved about the Bayonetta series is how over the top it all is. Bayonetta does not know subtlety, it revels in how big, how bombastic, how ridiculous it is. And Bayonetta 3 is the series' need for spectacle at its absolute best. It has all the over the top, in your face, tongue in cheek moments you'd expect from a Bayonetta game just cranked up to 11. This is the kind of game where the clouds turn into a giant bubble bath so a Kaiju sized naked woman can bathe while she battles twin monsters modeled after Sun Wukong. The kind of game where they literally have a Godzilla-style giant monster battle in the streets of Tokyo that directly references the film Shin Godzilla. The kind of game where mind controlling mosquitos force the French military to do the Thriller dance. It's difficult to talk in depth about something as visual as spectacle, but genuinely, this is the series' need for it at its absolute best. I want to love Bayonetta 3 so much, want it to be not just my favorite of the trilogy, but one of my favorite games of all time. In so many ways, I think this game is not only the best Bayonetta game, but one of the best hack-and-slashes of all time.
So What Went Wrong?
Character Problems
There are a few points I want to get to with regards to why I think Bayonetta 3 is held back, but the first thing I want to address is how I feel like the game has a reductive view of Bayonetta herself as a character. Bayonetta has always been a very strong character in gaming, from her over the top personality to her effortless cool, it is difficult not to love Bayo. One of the most interesting phenomenon about her, though, is that despite being an ostensibly sexy character, a character who wears her sexuality on her sleeve, a character who flirts like there's no tomorrow, a character who gets naked to use her attacks and dances in provocative ways, there has been very little controversy surrounding Bayonetta as being a misogynistic depiction of women. At least... there was very little controversy until Bayonetta 3. Why? Well, that's why we're here isn't it?
The Character Design
Unfortunately things don't exist in a vacuum. One of the issues with this design is that, no matter how great it is for aesthetics or for the personal story, it does a pretty damning thing to her silhouette. See, as previously mentioned at the start of this section, the discussion of Bayonetta being a character for the male gaze was not really a thing before Bayonetta 3. You'd think that there would be more of a male and, let's face it, right wing audience for Bayonetta historically because it is a game about an attractive woman who dresses and acts "sexy". See the way right wing gamers look at NieR's 2B and Stellar Blade's Eve. But Bayonetta's audience was, surprisingly, mostly made up of more center-left to leftist gamers and, moreover, queer gamers. And I think a reason for this is that while Bayonetta is sexy, she was not sexy in a way that attracted the male gaze as much.
Bayonetta had, before the third game, kind of avoided gaining a similar context. Now, worth mentioning, Bayonetta is much older than either example given and that probably has something to do with it. 2009 and/or 2014 were entirely different worlds online than either 2017 or 2024. An attractive woman existing in a video game was not going to turn into a thing back then like it is now. But I also think that Bayonetta is just not as attractive to straight men as 2B or Eve are, and I think a big reason for this is that Bayonetta's silhouette is very hard. Rather than having a character design built around soft curves, Bayonetta has hard edges. She's very tall and very long, a lot of her shape language is built on hard straight lines. Her design emphasizes her limbs more than her curves, she's very built around her arms and especially her legs. This makes sense, they are her primary weapon, her default mode is throwing hands. But it also has the side effect of making her attractive in a different sense than what is "traditional". I think, as a result, Bayonetta did not attract the same kind of audience that other character action games with sexy protagonists did.
This changes in Bayonetta 3. There are lots of reasons why the kind of weirdos that normally wouldn't be into Bayonetta suddenly really liked Bayonetta 3, we'll get to most of them, but I also think that Bayonetta's character design plays a part in it. While the design does not de-emphasize the qualities that the other games did, they don't radically redo Bayonetta's figure or anything, her flared skirt, giant bow, and massive twintails do give a very different silhouette comparatively. It's a lot softer, than her previous appearances, it draws the eyes towards her hips more, towards her curves. It creates the illusion that she's in the same vein as 2B and Eve, even if the character design does not have the same level of curviness. It sort of creates this sense that Bayonetta, a character who has always seemed to avoid the male gaze in a lot of ways, is now leaning towards it in subtle but noticeable ways.
The Voice Acting
I'm just going to start this off by saying that what Hellena Taylor did was shady. If you did not know, for Bayonetta 3, Bayonetta's voice actress she's had since the first game was replaced by veteran voice actress Jennifer Hale. Hellena Taylor took to social media to post a series of videos talking about why she was no longer voicing the character, stating that PlatinumGames had offered her a comically low amount of money to return to play Bayonetta for the third game. In the videos, Taylor not only railed against Platinum for this decision, but implicated series director Hideki Kamiya, veteran video game company Nintendo, and even took pot shots at her replacement Jennifer Hale, effectively saying that Bayonetta belongs to Taylor. She also discouraged people from continuing to support the series, stating that it's likely going to set up an end for Bayonetta(foreshadowing is a literary device...) and a bunch of spinoffs featuring numerous other characters.
Most of this was untrue. I would say all of it is untrue, but I guess in a technical sense some bits were true. What seems to have actually happened is that Taylor was approached for the role in question and negotiations started. But Taylor just... wanted an absurd amount of money. Like "retire off this one game" kind of money. Hundreds of thousands to return to do the role, instead of what was pretty standard industry payment, and also get royalties off the game. An incredibly unreasonable request to have for a game that would likely only ever sell 2-3 million copies, actors working on games that sell 40x that don't get that kind of payment. Needless to say, negotiations fell through. The team was hopeful, however, that they could get Taylor to return for a cameo appearance and offered her the final amount of money that she would later state was ALL they were paying her. She would dispute Platinum's claims but she did a pretty poor job of it, leading reporter Jason Schrier to state that she had corroborated all of Platinum's claims by the end of it.
It is not hard to speculate what Hellena was doing here. She released these videos in just enough time to where the majority of people who cared could cancel their preorders but not enough time to where if/when the lies were exposed, people would still be so invested in the story that they would see the other side and still buy the game. I can't say for certain that this controversy sunk the game or even made a dent in the sales, Bayonetta is niche and arguably on the wrong console for what its audience is/should be. With the proximity to release, the story blowing up on Twitter, and her effectively encouraging a boycott of the series, it's easy to allege that she was acting in malice, trying to sink this game before it had a chance. It was incredibly uncouth behavior and I am personally glad she is gone from the role of Bayonetta despite anything else that I may say in the upcoming portion. I do not like her and I do not support her.
With that all out of the way, I think, regretfully, she is the better Bayonetta. I would never besmirch the work of Jennifer Hale, mind, Hale is one of the greatest voice actresses of all time and her impact in the medium of gaming cannot be overstated. However, I think that for some reason, be it the voice direction or having to take over a role that was so built around Taylor's performance or what have you, I think Hale kind of fails to capture what is great about Bayonetta. I think if Hale had more time to grow into the role, mind, she would find it easily, she is a much better voice actress than Taylor and I think if a Bayonetta 4 comes out, Hale would blow Taylor out of the water. With our current information, though, there are some issues that Hale's Bayo has that I think make Bayonetta a much weaker character.
Under Taylor, Bayonetta was always tongue-in-cheek. While she was flirtatious and provocative, Taylor's version of Bayonetta always did so winkingly. Like none of this was real to that version of Bayonetta. She was the kind of character that knew she was hot and knew she could get a lot in life because she was hot, but clearly was always teasing. Her flirting was driven primarily to maintain a power dynamic, getting the person she is flirting with all flustered so she can maintain control. This is one of the things I've always loved about her. She is THE femme fatale, a woman who is in total control of her agency, who owns her sexuality, and weaponizes it to get exactly what she wants because she knows that the people she's conversing with are easily swayed by it. It's one of the many ways that she never feels like she exists for the men, she oozes confidence, oozes charisma, and she owns every scene she's in as a result.
Hale's Bayonetta, at her best, is a decent impression of this. There are certainly times when she is performing as Bayo where I can absolutely see how, with more time with the role, Hale's Bayonetta will evolve into probably being better than Taylor's. But with Hale, there's something missing a lot of the time. There's a sincerity to the way Bayonetta acts in this game that wasn't there with Taylor's version, Bayonetta's flirting, especially with ONE CHARACTER IN PARTICULAR, kind of translates as "she says she doesn't mean it, but deep down she does mean it". Because of this change in performance, Bayonetta often feels off. Like she isn't as confident, like she's saying too many things that mean something to her. It's a subtle but noticeable weakening of the character that adds to an overarching problem with Bayonetta in this game. It's strange because it's not like her personality is that much different, she's still sassy, she's still charismatic, she's still confident. But it doesn't play right.
The Homunculi
The Bayonetta series followed a very particular arc with its enemies. The first game is, largely, about slaying angels en masse, Bayonetta is on a one woman crusade to lessen the influence of Paradiso on Earth. The second game shifts the balance the other way, Bayonetta must dive into the depths of hell and much of her opposition are the demons of Inferno. Therefore the third game would, logically, have a threat from the mortal plane. The mortal plane, or Purgatorio as it tends to be called even though it's not exactly what Purgatorio is in the context of the Divine Comedy, is where most of Bayonetta takes place and it was only inevitable, given the ridiculous things that happen in it, that they would create something to fight back against the invisible war between angels and demons occurring all around them. A war they are not privy to, but still manages to have a large impact upon their reality.
Enter the Homunculi. The Homunculi are a force of militaristic androids made up of dozens, if not hundreds, of human souls which operate like nanomachines, fusing together into one solid construct. What their exact original function was is unclear but it can be posited that they were designed to combat the invading forces of Heaven and Hell and their agents on Earth (the Umbra Witches and the Lumen Sages). However, their central command, an artificial intelligence named "the Singularity" quickly overtook the operation and started seeking to eliminate all chaos from the multiverse, bridging gaps between universes until it found the anchor beings for each universe and absorbed them, thereby causing said universe to crumble. This is what brings it and its army to Bayonetta. In her universe, Bayonetta is the anchor being, if the Homunculi were to absorb her, they would absorb her universe with her.
Designwise, the Homuculi are all these clean, soulless machines of silver and green and white. They're beings built for efficiency, a sterile force of endlessly resurrecting warriors, only limited by the human souls they have stored. They are a contrast to not only Bayonetta but the enemies she has fought in the previous two games. The designs in Bayonetta 1 and 2 have so much life in them, angels wearing armor to make themselves appear beautiful but when you break that away they are monstrous, demons with complicated designs of sharp edges. The previous games' designs embrace the over the top, revel in their excess. The Homunculi are the opposite. Cold. Rounded. Perfect. Empty. They are the end of the world, not a bombastic bang, but an all consuming whisper. The Homunculi.... suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
The Problems With Being Intentionally Boring
 |
| The standard enemy in the Homunculus army, the Stratus, a template of the design. |
So instead I'm going to criticize how these incredibly boring designs are an active detriment to gameplay. Like most action-adventure games, Bayonetta's combat is built around pattern recognition. You have to learn to read enemy tells, get used to their attack patterns, and dodge at perfect intervals to gain your advantages. Bayonetta's most famous mechanic is witch time, when Bayonetta hits a well timed dodge, time will slow down allowing her a pathway inward to start assaulting the opponent. It's a massive part of what makes Bayonetta so satisfying to play. And a huge part of this is not simply reading enemy movements in the short term but memorizing them in the long term, saving the information you have obtained from battles to help you in future ones. You learn to read enemy patterns and predict movements. At least, you're supposed to. How does that work when all the enemies look the same?
The problem with the Homunculi's design philosophy is that they do not have particularly unique looks. This is not to say they all actually look the same, I want to make that clear, every Homunculi enemy more or less has a very distinctive silhouette and a lot of them do look pretty radical designwise. But they all have the same color palette, the same general design ideals, the same cold, sterile appearance. In the grand scheme of things I feel like it's easy to tell different Homunculi apart but in the midst of battle, it's easy to get confused which of these silver and green humanoids is which. As someone who is bad at combat in every game he plays, this is an especially large hurdle for me to get over. But I think it's also just a general problem with these designs, a lot of the grunts look the same especially early game, and a lot of the Homuculi are only different based on size. It's a frustrating design aesthetic that makes one of the key philosophies of this style of combat just more annoying for no reason.
The Problem With Being Intentionally Boring And Then Deciding You Don't Want To Be Anymore
 |
| The Sun-Wukong inspired "Arch-Pyrocumulus". |
Notice I said early game though. See, the Homunculi do not stick to their core aesthetic that well long term. Bayonetta's inability to be subtle in even the slightest is eventually going to come for even the most soulless of designs. As the games goes on, the Homunculi embrace the ridiculousness of this world. They go from having these empty, soulless forms to being inspired by Chinese mythology, kaiju movies, Michael Jackson, etc. In a sense, this addresses my key problem with them. They may have started out being generic empty footsoldiers but now they do have designs full of life, full of personality, it should fix everything, make them a better enemy force.
But the whole point of them was that they didn't have personality. It feels wrong somehow to have the Homunculi be like more standard Bayonetta enemies. It's a bizarre Catch-22 they find themselves in. The entire purpose of the Homunculi is to be this faceless invading force conquering and sterilizing the multiverse, absorbing and eliminating all chaos within. They are very literally meant to be the order in the face of the series' chaos. To make them as is standard for the series, they diminish the purpose. But to pursue their purpose, they end up dull and stagnant, a forgettable army of barely recognizable green and silver blobs. The Homunculi are confused, unsure of what they want to be and inconsistent on when and why they want to be it.
And I feel like it doesn't need to be this way. Several times throughout the game they imply that the Homunculi's goal, the absorption of anchor beings is what's causing this. That as they further their goal, they are absorbing so much chaos that this is making them become chaotic themselves. They are becoming showy because they are under the influence of beings who are showy. And this would be an interesting direction to take it, that instead of assimilating, they themselves are being assimilated. For much of the game, it seems like that's the direction it's going in, actually. But for reasons I will disclose later, this doesn't really work as an explanation and, even if it were what was happening, the Homunculi's behavior is too erratic and ever changing to where it would be a satisfactory explanation.
Jeanne
Jeanne is, by a pretty wide margin, the character in the series who has the most emotional resonance with Bayonetta. A lot of the series' emotional stakes are built around both Jeanne and her possibly romantic relationship with our protagonist. She's the last remaining person who knew Bayonetta before she went into the ice and, as such, is the only living person who ever knew her as Cereza. She is not only our protagonist's best friend and confidante, but the only person who can keep up with her wit, her charm, and her power. Jeanne is such an important character that people were even hoping she would join Bayo in Smash Bros. as an Echo Fighter. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the duo was shipped by basically the majority of the fanbase.
Now, I want to be clear, Bayonetta and Jeanne being involved romantically was never explicitly text. This is like the only argument that the weirdos who jumped on board this series when they found out what happened in Bayonetta 3 and pretended they were always big fans actually had in the discourse. There was never anything that explicitly said Bayonetta was gay and/or that Jeanne was her lover. However, it's also one of those things that's like "all but text". Like basically anyone who does not have extremely literalist views on the art they consume would very quickly pick up that Jeanne and Bayo were, as the kids would say, roommates. There is an emotional connection between the duo that goes deeper than just "being good friends".
In fact, this deep connection between the two is literally the driving force of the plot of Bayonetta 2. Bayonetta 2's opening chapter ends with Jeanne being very literally dragged down to Hell. This act is the catalyst for the story, if Jeanne doesn't get dragged to hell, Bayonetta never tries to find a place where the hard lines between realms are weakened. If Bayonetta never tries to find out where the lines between realms are weakened, she never meets the character she has to guide through the journey. If she never meets that character, she never begins being hunted by her father. So on and so on. Rescuing Jeanne's soul is not only the emotional centerpiece of Bayonetta 2 but also the reason the plot happens at all. This is not just a friend of Bayonetta, this is THE person in Bayonetta's life, even if they are not romantically involved, they are so important one another that what they have can only be described as "true love" even if it is not itself romantic. Y'all have seen Frozen, you know a sisterly bond can count too. So for such an important character, you know her role in Bayonetta 3 has to be significant, right?
What Jeanne is doing in Bayonetta 3?
Now, in one way, Jeanne's role in Bayonetta 3 is her most significant yet. Not only is she an active participant in the plot, but the player has multiple stages exclusive to her, stages which take place as interstitials between the main chunks of Bayonetta 3. These take the place as fun little side scrolling stealth sections, points where Jeanne must sneak around and use tactical takedowns to overcome Homunculi in her path. They are both nice moments of levity in between watching universes die as well as fun little breaks in the gameplay. And, in a way, Jeanne has the most important role in the game. Bayonetta and Viola could save hundreds, thousands of universes, but they would never reach the Alphaverse, reach the Singularity's central hub from which it operates, if not for Jeanne's goal to find the professor.
In another way though, you could very easily argue that Jeanne is getting sidelined for yet another game. That despite her incredibly significant role in both the series and in Bayonetta's arc as a character, Jeanne is once again being placed somewhere away from the majority of the game. Jeanne is, in effect, being placed on a shelf and then taken off the shelf whenever the game decides it wants to play with her. Not only that, but the multiverse traveling team barely interacts with Jeanne after the larger group splits into two. She contacts them between universe hops with news about how she's doing on her quest to find the Professor and that's about it. Unironically, there's a variant of Jeanne in one of the universes that Bayonetta finds herself in that gets way more screen time than our Jeanne, the emotional core of the last Bayonetta game, receives. It's disappointing no matter what way you slice it.
Luka
Speaking of characters from the previous Bayonetta games who are handled pretty weirdly in this game, let's talk about Luka. So Luka is a character who originates in the first Bayonetta game. Something of a secondary antagonist, Luka is a swashbuckling journalist who spends much of the game trying to hunt down Bayo on a misguided revenge quest. Luka blames Bayonetta for the death of his father, being human he did not see the batch of angels who arrived on Earth as Bayonetta was awoken from her slumber, an event he and his father were present to see, and so believed that the witch must've murdered his father somehow. Luka has been training his entire life to hunt the witch, even training his nose to pick up incredibly subtle scents so he can track Bayo when she is invisible. He is a recurring problem throughout the first Bayonetta game, a nuisance who desires Bayonetta's head. Bayonetta, for her part, seems to genuinely regret what happened to his father and does not wish to harm the boy as such.
This all changes near the end of the first game. Luka finds out the truth of what happened the day his father died and decides to ally himself with Bayonetta in an attempt to prevent the end of the world. This causes a pretty dramatic shift in his character. Now without an all consuming desire for revenge against the woman, Luka can now see things more clearly. Appreciate who Bayonetta is outside of his lifelong hatred for the woman. Become her friend rather than trying to constantly hunt her all the time. And Luka... is a creep. Luka spends the final Chapter of Bayonetta 1 and most of Bayonetta 2 as the butt of every joke. A lot of the games' slapstick is built around Luka, he is frequently depicted as crashing into things while trying to impress the centuries old witch. He is often depicted as ogling the Umbra witch's body, ending up in bad situations because of it. He is, in a way, a commentary on the people who only see Bayonetta as a sex object and don't look deeper. He is creepy and annoying and trying way too hard to look cool and as a result ends up as the comedic foil of the series. I mean, he even wears a fedora!
Similar to Jeanne, though, Luka is a cast member who spends much of Bayonetta 3 offscreen. The de-emphasis on existing cast members could be its own issue entirely but given the nature of the game, I think it's whatever all told. But unlike Jeanne, Luka is just fully missing. He does not appear in the earlier meeting where Viola introduces herself to team Bayonetta and really doesn't appear in the story proper until about the halfway point. Wherein it's quickly discovered that Luka, not a variant of Luka but the Luka Bayonetta knows, is also multiverse hopping through some as-of-yet unknown means, means that even he seems unaware of. But when we do meet him, something feels different about him. He's still flirtatious and still swashbuckling, but he's more unsure, older, more tired. So, it begs the question.
What is Luka doing in Bayonetta 3?
You'll notice that I said Luka does not appear "proper" until about the halfway point in 3. That is, because, Luka's arc in this game is about dealing with a curse inflicted upon him. His jumping through multiverses is a large part of the curse but a much bigger part is that Luka is now a werewolf. Not like literally a werewolf, he's sort of this really cool looking stained glass faerie wolf monster, it's an incredible design. In this form, Strider, he is able to rip through the dimensions, compelled by a singular desire to find the one true anchor being, the one who holds not only their universe but the entire multiverse together, a being known as the "Arch-Eve Origin" (we'll get to it). Strider is a recurring boss in the game, a boss you have to battle both as Bayonetta and as Viola several times, before eventually Luka reveals he IS Strider and that he is slowly losing himself to it.
Strider is not simply a magical being though. Strider is a culmination of every version of Luka from every universe the Homunculi have destroyed. It, at first, appears as a manifestation of a spectral version of Luka who seeks revenge for his universe but slowly grows to encapsulate every Luka through their shared faerie connection. Luka, thus, behaves weirdly in this game, bogged down with memories that are not his, unable to piece together which version of Luka he actually is. This is notable in how he interacts with Viola, a person one variant of him knows and thus Luka assumes that relationship with her instinctively even if he doesn't consciously know what it is. Strider is, therefore, actively driving Luka mad, ultimately threatening to overtake him at any time and permanently turn him into a monster who hurts the people he cares for. Viola ends up taking it upon herself to try and bring Luka back from the brink, a cause she is ultimately unsuccessful at.
Luka is, as such, a far more tragic figure in this game. Very few of the jokes that used to be at his expense are told for effectively the entire game, instead Luka is meant to be taken seriously. He is solemn and losing his mind, trying hard to maintain dynamics that he is slowly slipping away from, and running off to avoid his friends seeing what he has become. Even Bayonetta, who normally has a very jokey relationship with the lad, seeing him more as an adorable pet than anything, shows concern for him. The emotional stakes of Bayonetta 3 heavily revolve around Luka and this character dynamic, a tragic story of a man seemingly destined to hurt the ones he loves and losing himself to violence. It is a concerted effort to make a character that used to be comic relief into a compelling, emotionally resonant character.
The only problem is that the past two games have been feeding us the idea that we aren't supposed to like this guy. Luka was not simply a comic relief character, he is specifically designed to be unlikable. He makes commentary on the audience who only enjoys Bayonetta for her looks. He's not simply "the guy who falls on his face a lot", that's a different character, he is a guy who stalks Bayonetta in an attempt to get her to look at him in a romantic way. A lot of these games are built around Luka almost doing something cool, being distracted by Bayonetta's body, and ending up facing consequences for sexualizing her. And until Bayonetta 3, I thought that was supposed to be the point. That we're not supposed to like this guy and see him at best as an annoying little brother and at worse a commentary on people who only see Bayonetta as a hot woman. The way they handle Luka not only makes Bayonetta 3 feel much weirder, as they take a character we are seemingly not meant to like and make him the emotional centerpiece of the entire game, meanwhile Jeanne, the literal emotional centerpiece of the last game, is offscreen for most of this time and barely interacts with Bayonetta!
Also the game suffers a lot from the fact that we're now taking Luka seriously. Luka was a central piece of the comic relief in the previous games, his slapstick was an important part of Bayonetta's "devil may care" tone. Him now being a tragic figure leaves a void in the story that, without someone to fill it, kind of makes the game feel kind of dreary tonally. And I understand that the stakes of this game are high, that literally all of life across the entire multiverse is facing extinction but also this is a Bayonetta game! The first and second games are literally about religious zealots who have amassed deity level powers trying to put an end to free will and assert themselves as the supreme rulers of all realms and they manage to have levity to them. And so, if Luka is to be our tragic figure, who will rise up to fill his role, who will be the new butt of every joke. Who will be Luka if Luka isn't available?
Viola
They did my girl DIRTY, y'all. So, I like Viola, I've made that clear, I think she's a really fun secondary character and a nice foil to the sense of effortless cool that our main character puts off. But, I also have my issues with how the game depicts her. In the absence of Luka being our source of comic relief, that role must be filled by someone else. Someone constantly trying to be cool and falling flat on their face is an important part of the tone for the Bayonetta series. The series demands someone or something to play off Bayonetta's effortless sense of cool. So the game introduces Viola to the cast.
This is, once again, something that works in a vacuum. Bayonetta is a very nonserious series, almost every character except for the woman herself exists for comic relief. Even Jeanne, Bayonetta's partner in cool, has jokes about wardrobe malfunctions. The issue here, I feel, is that Viola is not only a central character to a rather high stakes story, but also one of the playable characters. Viola is in the awkward position of being both the most emotionally and narratively significant character in the game, both for reasons we'll get into later and for the fact that she is the last survivor of a dead world cast into the multiverse to find the person who could help her right things; while also being the game's primary source of comic relief.
This is not an unfamiliar line for the Bayonetta series to walk, of course. As previously mentioned, a majority of Bayonetta characters walk the line between serious and goofy depending on what the moment desires. Viola would be the odd one out if this weren't the case. However, I do think it's odd that Viola is both the primary source of comic relief and a significant playable character who you spend half the game with. This is a character we are meant to take seriously, a character who has her own story and her own arc we see her go through across the story, a character who ends up in a different, more respectful place at the end of her journey than she starts. But throughout, we are also meant to see her as the buffoon, the butt of every joke against her. She is both always meant to be mocked and always meant to be seen as a serious character, leaving Viola as being tonally dissonant not only with the high stakes story but with herself.
But it's more than that. Viola isn't just filling the role of comic relief in this game, taking over for Luka from the previous games. She is exactly Luka. Many of the jokes that come at her expense are very literally jokes that would, in previous titles, come at the expense of Luka. I've alluded to this before, but the fanbase as a whole is very mixed to negative on Viola. There are other reasons why people dislike Viola, but I think that one of the key reasons why Viola is so controversial is that she is filling a role that we, as the audience, have already been told is someone we are not meant to like. This is a character type we have been trained to find annoying, a character whose attempts to be cool are supposed to be eyerolling and who we are meant to take great pleasure from seeing fail. Viola is just set up to fail. She is meant to both be endearing and likable, a character you want to play as and want to see what her deal is; while also being annoying and unlikable, a character you are meant to despise and want to see fail because it's funny. In propping up Luka, they kind of spelled Viola's doom.
The Plot
Alright, let's get into this whole mess. So the plot of Bayonetta 3 is, by a pretty large margin, its worst part. It is the thing that really makes the whole thing drop from being the perfect Bayonetta game. To a lot of people the ending is the worst offender, and I concur, the ending is really bad, but also I think a lot of the plot itself is just bad. It's just bad. Like is the plot in a Bayonetta game important? God no. Is it being bad a huge detriment to the whole package anyways? Yes. Mainly because the plot being bad does noticeably impact the gameplay as well.
The Multiverse Stuff
I will fully admit that part of the reason why the multiverse setting doesn't work really is because of cultural factors outside of Platinum Games' control. In the time between this game's announcement and this game's release, two massive film franchises, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, both bet very hard on the multiverse. The former was seeking a path forward, after the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Infinity Saga, they tried to use a multiversal saga to maintain the momentum. The latter was struggling immensely and was turning to the multiverse to right the ship, essentially create a brand new universe so they could maintain their cast without the baggage of the previous universe's failures. In both instances, it faltered, audiences grew tired of superhero media and it became clear pretty quickly that the multiverse's sole purpose was to provide fanservice more than it was to tell a story. To criticize Bayonetta 3 for incidentally latching onto a dying trend would be ludicrous.
But, I still think the multiverse kind of kneecaps Bayonetta 3's story and its gameplay regardless. The biggest reason being that it lessens the strength of the level theming considerably. The previous Bayonetta games had a pretty heavy focus on the fantastical. Bayonetta toured lost cities, climbed mountains to the heavens, went to hell itself. Bayonetta was a series with a lore that went back for centuries and it chose to explore that lore in the modern day. Bayonetta 3 has a fantastical area, this island that contains within it all these doorways you can use to move between Earths. But the majority of the levels take place in familiar locales, Tokyo, China, Egypt and Paris. It's disappointing to say the least, a series so built upon the fantastical opting now, instead, for the relatively mundane. The interesting parts about these levels often being how they've been warped and destroyed by the Homunculi invasion.
Moreover it starts with the worst offender, Tokyo. Tokyo, as depicted in Bayonetta 3 is, I feel, the dullest locale that Bayonetta has ever or likely will ever visit. Tokyo is, of course, a city with a lot of iconography in it. Various games are set in Tokyo and they have very memorable iconography. They represent the city well. Bayonetta makes the city look boring and soulless, a void of grey, bland buildings that you're not overly upset when it gets destroyed. Tokyo in Bayonetta is both insulting to the city of Tokyo AND one of the worst levels in Bayonetta history, it sets a bad impression from the onset. The other locales are, thankfully, moderately more interesting, ancient China, ancient Egypt, and Paris, but by the time you get to them you have already gotten a bad impression of this game's levels.
Bayonetta 3's multiverse also isn't explored in enough depth to make it satisfying. Going to only four universes is disappointing and it only seems to be this way because Bayonetta games tend to have a very specific number of chapters. Bayonetta 3 is thus separated into five "Acts", four segments of levels that take place in each universe that Bayonetta visits and then the final act which takes place in the Alphaverse. We do not spend enough time in the multiverse to become invested in it, as we are spending time with only four settings and not getting a full scope of the multiverse. It is only at the end, when we have a big "Avengers Endgame Portals" moment where we see dozens of Bayonettas across the multiverse teaming up do we get a larger scope of the multiverse and it is underwhelming. A clever usage of the previous games' assets as we see a lot of reused Bayonetta costumes from 1 & 2, but underwhelming.
Bayonetta 3 tries to have its cake and eat it too with the multiverse storyline, essentially. It wants to provide the illusion of going on this multiverse spanning adventure without committing to actually creating windows into these universes. It wants to remain a solo Bayonetta journey while also introducing interesting variants for her to team up with. It wants the audience to engage with these new Bayonettas, but does not want to deal with the baggage of what these alternate Bayonettas are like and how they could genuinely impact the story. To draw a comparison to Marvel, it's akin to what Dr. Strange and The Multiverse of Madness did poorly. That film introduced the idea of a wide multiverse that you could traverse, only to end up with their best idea being "what if a popular fancast for Reed Richards got to actually be Reed Richards". Bayonetta 3 is either unwilling or unable to truly dive in deep with the multiverse, to get really wild and creative with it, so its depiction ends up feeling shallow and toothless. It's an unfortunate net loss, both in terms of story and gameplay.
The Singularity
The Singularity flip flops on what his vibe even is more than his army does. There are multiple cutscenes where the Singularity will be cold, calculating. Condescend to the Umbra Witch as if she is an entity so far beneath him that he doesn't need to acknowledge her as a threat. Just another being to be assimilated. But at other points, he's funny. Jovial. Bantering. He's full to the brim with personality and wants to match wits with Bayonetta. At first, much like his army, it seems there is a natural progression to this. After he absorbs the first anchor being, it seems like he develops more of a personality. But it only seems like this. In practice, he just feels like an exceedingly inconsistent character and a poorly written villain, all told.
But none of that's why I wanted to talk about him. Being inconsistent and not matching both the vibe of Bayonetta and the contrast they wish to go for fully is just a problem with the villains of this game in general. To make a separate section just to reiterate these points would be a waste of time. On brand for me, I feel like a lot of my writings are plagued with redundancy, but a waste of time nonetheless. No, the reason I wanted to talk about the Singularity is that the Singularity is at the center of one of, if not THE worst bits of Bayonetta's 3 plot. For you see, it's time for us to talk about one of the worst plot twists in gaming history.
The Twist
Bayonetta is incapable of subtlety. This is a point I have made a few times throughout this article. This is a series that revels in being as over the top and direct as possible. It's a very literal series with obvious good and bad guys and the occasional crossover between them because the point of the story is, usually, to craft interesting setpieces and lead the characters between them. This is all to say that Bayonetta does not handle twists well, they are obvious and honestly to call them "twists" is being generous. The first game is built around the "mystery identity" of a little girl who is very obviously just a younger Bayonetta and the second game has quite a few twists that are fairly obvious. So when I tell you that the twist of Bayonetta 3 is so bad, that it makes its characters look astronomically dumb, and that this is an extraordinary feat? You should know that I'm not mincing words.
If you'll recall, Jeanne spends basically the entire game on a side mission. While Bayonetta and Viola are traveling the multiverse to, hopefully, minimize the damage that the Singularity is doing, Jeanne is staying back in the "main" universe to find Professor Midmyers Sigurd. Midmyers Sigurd is an expert on the multiverse, he was allegedly the first human to discover the multiverse existed and, in doing so, found that the Singularity has been going through the multiverse assimilating universes. He proceeded to get into contact with other versions of Sigurd across the multiverse, namely the one from Viola's universe, a soldier named Connor Sigurd, and got to work on researching the "Chaos Gears". The Chaos Gears are hidden across the multiverse and, when you collect enough of them, you could pilot the bridges between universes to end up at the Alphaverse.
I am sure if you have been reading this article and been paying attention, you have already figured out the twist. Midmyers Sigurd IS the Singularity. Allegedly the Singularity murdered the original Midmyers Sigurd and took his place, when I played the game I got the impression that Midmyers Sigurd was always the Singularity. That many things about his backstory were just disingenuous and that he orchestrated this entire thing from the beginning. Either way, it's an incredibly obvious twist that the audience should pretty clearly pick up on before the reveal. And that's okay. One of the biggest things about storytelling, especially in visual mediums like video games, is that the audience often has information the characters don't. We are a third party to the events of the story and often either get told or find information that the characters in-universe will never learn or will learn slower than us. It does not make the characters less intelligent to not know things at the same pace as the audience, even if it sometimes can be frustrating to wait for them to catch up. However, as soon as Sigurd is on screen, this should be obvious to the characters in Bayonetta. The fact that they trust Sigurd at all is frankly absurd. If you've never seen Bayonetta 3, if you do not know what Midmyers Sigurd looks like, take a pause and refresh yourself with the general design aesthetic of the Homunculi, okay.
Midmyers Sigurd being the Singularity is such an obvious twist in the text that the characters are unequivocally worse off for not realizing it. Jeanne takes this man all the way to the gateway to the Alphaverse, Bayonetta hands him the Chaos Gears, and he banishes his archenemy to the Alphaverse where his army is the strongest and they just let him do it. It's a level of our character being dumb in order for the plot to work that just ruins everything, our main cast is now unintelligent and it's for no other reason than the plot dictates they have to be. It is infuriating, even in a series where characters sometimes have to say and do dumb things in order for the plot to progress, this is inexcusable, it is shoddy. It is writing yourself into a hole you do not know how to get out of and so just deciding that your best course of action is to brute force it no matter how clumsy the end result is. In my mind it is not only a game ruining twist but possibly one of the worst twists in fiction. It's really bad.
Oh and also Sigurd just kills Jeanne and absorbs her like she was nothing. One of the most important characters to Bayonetta and the woman for whom the entire emotional stakes of the second game were built around. Bayonetta's best friend, confidante, one of the only people who can match wits with her. A character who it's implied several times has a deeper relationship with Bayonetta that goes beyond a simple friendship. The villain just kills her in one fell swoop and absorbs her so that she doesn't get a chance at being revived this time. Really cool game.
The Romance
I have kept a lot of information from you, dear reader. I have used terms like "anchor beings", have referenced alternate Bayonettas, and have even once alluded to the term "Arch-Eve Origin". But I have kept from you what these terms mean. Like obviously terms like "anchor beings" are common in multiverse fiction, but what I haven't told you is that, in almost every universe, Bayonetta IS the anchor being. In three of the four universes we visit and countless more implied by the story, Bayonetta is what is considered an "Arch-Eve". The fourth one, Ancient Egypt, has Jeanne as its Arch-Eve as that universe's Bayonetta was considered too meek to assume her role. The Arch-Eve is part of a duo that are central figures to their universe and said universe(s) cannot sustain themselves without the continued existence of one or both of them. Being the "Arch-Eve", they are metaphorically and spiritually the "mothers" of their universes and as such if you cut them off the universe, their "child" cannot continue existing.
The Bayonetta we play as in this game is, moreover, considered the "Arch-Eve Origin", as it's implied that the entire multiverse spawns from the events that occur in the first game, either through her being the original Bayonetta or the first variant of Bayonetta caused by having her child self get time-displaced. The "Prime" Bayonetta is the most important of all the Bayonettas and her assimilation is ultimately the Singularity's goal. She is not simply the "mother" figure of her own universe but rather the entire multiverse, the origin of all that has arisen since. This iconography of Bayonetta being the "Eve", being the Genesis of the entire multiverse is central to Bayonetta 3. And where there is an Eve, there must also be an Adam.
I am going to state something that is, perhaps, controversial among at least the kind of Bayonetta fans I wish to talk to: I don't necessarily hate the idea of Bayonetta getting into a relationship with a man. While I am personally a bigger fan of the Bayonetta/Jeanne relationship and I feel like that was the natural conclusion, it's not like Bayonetta was a canon lesbian before this. Her sexuality has always been very hard to place and I could see strong arguments that she is either bisexual or heterosexual and just, you know. Likes to flirt. And while I personally think that it does have some nasty side effects, namely that Bayonetta 3 feels like a betrayal to much of its audience of queer folk here in the West as it almost confirms that Bayonetta is for the dudes; I also can't be too mad about it. It was not my place to state definitively that Bayonetta and Jeanne was end game and while it's certainly disappointing that didn't come to pass, if the relationship is done well, with a character that I really like, I'm open to it.
This does not happen, unfortunately. The Arch-Adam is, in all universes, consistent and, in all universes, unlikable. The "Arch-Adam" is not introduced until pretty late in the game, while the player can certainly parse it as a concept given the invocation of "Eve", it's not totally certain who it is. One may even assume the Arch-Adam is Sigurd, that much like in previous Bayonetta games there is an inherent balance between Bayonetta and her archenemy. Sigurd is, after all, the first to discover the multiverse, in the way that Bayonetta "gave birth" to it, Sigurd is the one who sewed his seeds around it, a metaphorical father. You may also be awaiting the introduction of a new character to complete this metaphorical pairing, a character who could match wits with our protagonist and prove to be a worthy love interest for our Bayonetta. But the Arch-Adam is unfortunately someone we know. And not only is it someone we know, it is someone we have been conditioned to dislike. Ladies and gentleman, returning to the stage: Luka.
So, for starters, I just want to highlight how weird I think trying to establish Luka and Bayonetta as end game is in general. I'm not going to sit here and moralize about how I think the age gap is "problematic" or whatever. A lot of fiction involving witches have immortals falling in love with mortals and to believe that this is a problem is disrespectful to the medium of witch fiction. I do however think it is exceedingly weird that this game attempts to establish not just a romantic relationship, but a confirmed physical one between an immortal woman and the man she has literally known since he was 8. It becomes weird when you know them as a child to me, I don't know. I wasn't going to like this relationship regardless but I'm sorry, this is so not the vibe!!! Even if I did Luka and even if I believed the series had made him a character I was supposed to like, that would be weird to me and would still make the whole thing feel dirty.
As I've stated in previous sections of this article, it is my opinion that the Bayonetta series has, up until now, set up Luka as a person we are not meant to like. At best, he is akin to a little brother, someone Bayonetta finds exasperating but amusing, a minor nuisance. At his worst he is a representative of the audience that, before Bayonetta 3, I believed the Bayonetta series was attempting to separate themselves. It was making fun of the awful dudes who saw Bayonetta as nothing more than a sex object by having them fall on their face. As such, the romance feels like a pretty major betrayal. Like after many hours of these games telling us that this kind of guy is unwelcome into the fold, we are suddenly catering to them by literally having their representative hook up with the main character. For so long, Bayonetta felt like she was above the male gaze, that she was so much better than the people who would reduce her to a piece of eye candy. But Bayonetta 3 reveals that she was for the horny dudes all along. Bayonetta was never for the people who appreciated her, Bayonetta was always for Luka.
To be fair though, one could very easily state that this is an overreaction. That due to the nature of the multiverse, the idea that these two get together can be easily written off as just a incident in a couple universes. After all, even in our short adventure through the multiverse, we see at least one universe where Bayonetta and Jeanne have a very deep relationship that is implied to be romantic. While I sympathize with this viewpoint, I think that the usage of Adam and Eve iconography does kind of put a damper on this idea. Like I said, as far as we've been told, Luka is always the "Arch-Adam". That's a big reason why his Strider form is so out of control, it is made up of thousands of Luka's trying to coexist in the same body all at once, all trying to fulfill their own goal of finding their "Arch-Eve". The game is, by invoking the Biblical story of the first couple, two humans literally made by a divine entity to love each other, implying that Luka and Bayonetta falling in love is a canon event. That they are the metaphorical father and mother of the entire multiverse, that their pairing is inevitable. Maybe it doesn't always have to be romantic, that's certainly possibility, but it is always going to happen.
The reveal that Luka and Bayonetta are destined for one another is one of the most noteworthy examples I can think of where an author misunderstands both their audience and their own series. Hideki Kamiya even referenced this diconnect, in an interview with VGC, Kamiya states:
Kamiya: So I don’t know if this will answer your question, but with Bayonetta 2 and 3, and Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, with those games, although I wasn’t the director, I supervised the series production. What I saw with those games was that, as each one was released, the fans’ idea of what Bayonetta is, and what a sequel should be, grew stronger.
That created a gap between what we at Platinum wanted to do and what fans expected from the now firmly established image of Bayonetta. It was a bit of a perplexing experience for me seeing how fans reacted when Bayonetta 3 was released.
Bayonetta was a series so beloved by an audience that clearly wasn't what Platinum intended and, to them, this ultimate reveal of Bayonetta and Luka's destiny felt like a betrayal. I certainly agree, I think that this is just the worst possible outcome the finale could've brought forward, an ending point for Bayonetta which weakens her character to being unrecognizable. That betrays the stakes present in the previous games. That doesn't understand her relationships, her wants, her needs. Whether or not it was Platinum's intention, whether or not this was always where they were heading, it almost doesn't matter. They wrote a different Bayonetta and a different Luka from the characters they intended to be and then were shocked when the audience didn't enjoy where they ended up. It's disheartening as a long time Bayonetta fan, and it's THE moment, above all the others, where I realized that in spite of how much I enjoyed Bayonetta 3, I could not love it like I wanted to.
Bayonetta 4(?)
Alright, let's talk about the reason why people actually hate Viola. First thing's first, Viola is Bayonetta and Luka's daughter from another universe. We know she's Bayonetta's daughter very early on in the game but her father is kept from us for a lot of the game, with it becoming clear over the course of it that she's Luka's due to her emotional investment in Strider/Luka. So not only are Bayonetta and Luka the metaphorical parents of the multiverse, they are also literal parents. I bring this up in its own section and not in the relationship section because I don't think the idea that Bayonetta and Luka have a kid is any more egregious than anything else about their relationship and, also, I'm a Viola fan. The game doesn't do her any favors but I'm a big fan of this cringe wannabe edgelord. There is a very relevant reason why Viola being Bayonetta's daughter is, to much of the fanbase, a problem. And I can't say I'm particularly plussed about it either.
After the defeat of the Singularity, Bayonetta is spent. She just simply has no more life to live, she's out of second chances. She is dying, her contracts with the demons are being fulfilled, and they are coming to collect. Her longtime ally, Gomorrah, fractures her soul from her body and she begins being dragged down to Inferno. In a last show of their love for each other, Luka sacrifices himself for her, the two choosing to be dragged to hell together. Their daughter, Viola, watches the scene, her parents dying together for the last time. It's a sight she has seen before but now it is not a murder. It is an act of endless love. The two kiss, and are dragged down to hell, leaving only Bayonetta's glasses behind.
Viola, being the last survivor of the Singularity battle, watches as the universe she's in collapses around her, prepared to be thrown to another world. Instead she is confronted by the "Dark Eve", a shadowy figure resembling the main universe's incarnation of Bayonetta. The Dark Eve is, unknowingly to the player, a shadow that has been cast over the entire game. The Dark Eve's demon, a Kraken with scythes at the end of its tentacles, appeared at the very start, a boss Bayonetta faces at the the Singularity's initial invasion. The implication being it is a straggler, the last remnant of a Bayonetta from an alternate universe who is trying to end the Singularity in death. In the way that Strider is a manifestation of an infinite number of dead Arch-Adams, Dark Eve is the manifestation of the anger and hatred of the lost Arch-Eves. And she is Viola's final test. A test to prove that Viola is capable of saving the multiverse, that Dark Eve can rest. Upon Viola proving herself, the Dark Eve returns to her original form, the Alphaverse's Bayonetta, and moves on, bestowing onto her daughter from an alternate universe the title of "Bayonetta".
This is, perhaps, even more controversial than the romance. The idea that Bayonetta was a title, a legacy if you will, has never been setup by this series. We have, obviously, encountered multiple Bayonettas. That's literally the point of this video game. But it's never been stated to be something that could be handed down to someone else. Bayonetta was a name that the main character adopted because she was an amnesiac, it was designed to highlight her choice of weaponry and combat prowess. The idea of Bayonetta handing down her title to a character that people don't especially like after the game she's had is ridiculous. I'm a Viola defender and I think it's ridiculous. I want more Viola, I want games starring her. I want this series to continue and I think, in time, Viola will be as beloved as her mother. But to do what this game did to Bayonetta and then go "now someone else is Bayonetta and it's a character that we made to be goofy and a little unlikable" is absurd. I can't believe they would do my girl like this.
Moreover, they just kind of make her... not Bayonetta despite giving her the title. I understand that Viola is still a witch-in-training and so it'd be setting my expectations too high to assume she's doing the full Bayonetta thing. She doesn't even technically have a proper demon contract yet, her skills instead being tied to an inherited demon from her mother. But Viola's activities as Bayonetta after the game finishes are truly headscratching. She goes on missions but they're stuff like rescuing a cat from a tree. Even she seems upset at how sidelined she is, Rodin, who has taken her in since both of her parents are in hell, being overprotective to a fault on her mother's orders. And I get it's meant to be comedic, that Bayonetta, the witch who isn't fazed by anything, is being an overprotective hellicopter mom. But it's just not doing Viola any favors. Her mother was Thor and she's Spider-Man. It leaves the player on a questionable note, one that I think, unfortunately, reflects poorly only on Viola.
Final Thoughts
I cannot stress enough how much I wish I loved Bayonetta 3. When I am actually in the process of playing the game, of experiencing this gameplay, I adore it. Bayonetta 3 has my favorite gameplay in the series, my favorite depiction of the demons, some of my favorite setpieces. Bayonetta 3 is, in my mind, almost the perfect charact action game. If certain things had gone differently, if the plot and character work were better, if the way Bayonetta was depicted kept my favorite parts of what I loved about the character in the first and second games, this would be one of my favorite games of all time. And I still really liked it, despite my numerous complaints on its plot I rated it an 8 out of 10 on my personal tracking. It was, for a long time, one of the best games I played in 2025.
But while I think the story and its consequences, for as much as I have complained about it, is ultimately not catastrophic, it is not negligible. Bayonetta 3 does feel like a betrayal in many ways, a game that not only is upsetting to people who really liked Bayonetta but a game that changes who Bayonetta is. To take Bayonetta 3 into account is to acknowledge many of the things that people liked about the character are incorrect. Bayonetta was not the series we though it was, the character is not the character we believed she was. And not even in interesting ways, it takes a character who fought against stereotypes for attractive women in video games, especially Japanese games, and played into those stereotypes. It takes a character who seemed so progressive, so confident and charismatic and self-assured and makes her entire story about a guy. Not even an interesting guy either. Bayonetta 3 is disappointing and I wish desperately that its plot was entirely different. At least it was really fun.
