Bayonetta/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Bayonetta are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Bayonetta herself gets a ton of it.
      • Moviebob, in his guise as The Game Overthinker, believes Bayonetta is not so much sexually appealing as much as she is sexually intimidating, and feels she is unique in this regard.
      • There is quite a debate on Bayonetta's sex appeal nature. Is she blatant adolescence pandering, or is she a satire of said pandering? And if it is the latter, does it fall into the Do Not Do This Cool Thing problem? The way she's characterized and framed by the narrative is also called into question often; unlike most video-game characters, we don't get into Bayonetta's head much. Critics have described her as being "kept at arm's length"—basically a character to watch and ogle, but not one to identify with or understand.
      • Bayonetta is a witch who is allied with the forces of Hell, the type of character that is usually evil, but in a setting, lampoons the traditional concepts. So in this camp setting, she's likely supposed to satirize the Evil is Sexy cliché.
      • She might also be a Stepford Smiler. Think about it, how do you cope with the fact you're doomed? You've entered a bargain with the Devil, you've accepted eternal damnation in exchange for your powers, you have no way out, and sooner or later, he's going to come and collect. Maybe her dry wit and sex appeal nature is her way of keeping sane and blocking it out of her mind.
      • The lyrics to her theme song "Mysterious Destiny" support this, claiming that she buries her loneliness deep down in her eyes and that sadness lies in her smile.
    • Enzo, Butt Monkey, perpetual goof, but knowledgeable informant and assistant working for two of the most powerful and dangerous people in existence, a human face representing some of the strongest of Hell itself. If he was among his peers instead of hanging around Physical Gods, would he transform from the comic relief into a feared mobster?
  • Broken Base: The motionless models used in certain cut-scenes. Some argue that it was a creative way to make the game stand-out, as well as likely a way to save large amounts of the budget for actual gameplay sections, not to mention a great way to slow down the pace to allow the over-the-top fight scenes to seem even more impressive. Others, however, argue that it comes off as more lazy than a style choice.
  • Complete Monster: Father Balder seems like a pretty straightforward example given that he was responsible for the genocide carried out against the Umbra Witches, until the sequel reveals that he was being manipulated by Loptr, who does qualify for this trope.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Asides from... everything else in the game, there's:
    • One cut scene where Bayonetta has just defeated the boss and elects to blow it up by shooting a stream of gasoline coming from a peeing baby angel statue. When it fails the first time, she shoots the statue in the spout. When the head flies past in the ensuing (huge) explosion, it's crying.
    • The first time we meet Joy, cue the gentle laughter when there's a little impromptu dance off. Drop your jaw in shock/horror/hilarity when Joy chooses to finally... reveal herself. And then the line is tossed out of the window when you perform the torture attack on her.
  • Crossover Ship: Dante/Bayonetta is a surprisingly popular one.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: It's even inspired this song by MC Lars.
  • Demonic Spiders: Fairness & Fearless. Grace & Glory. Inspired. Joys. Braves. Kinships. This game is a giant nest of Demonic Spiders that have a shameless disdain for the Mook Chivalry.
  • Evil Is Cool: Balder. He looks silly, but he's so badass and Affably Evil that he utterly steals the show.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Hoo boy. Is Bayonetta evil? Arguable. Sexy? Sexy as all hell.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Some fans don't seem to like the Bayonetta/Luka pairing. Luckily for them, two Bayonetta/Anyone pairings have emerged from the fandom.
    • There is a decent amount of artwork featuring both Dante and Bayonetta, often as a couple, and has been around even before the game was released. Not surprising, considering many things. Both characters are the brainchild of the same guy and feature the same sort of gameplay. They could even be considered the Distaff Counterpart of one another, as they are equally Badass while one fights demons and the other fights angels, but both are mostly on humanity's side. Even more interestingly, and also featured in fanarts, is that this contrast could lead into them facing one another - which would be indisputably awesome - but be it Opposites Attract or Foe Yay, the chemistry needed for Shipping would be there, and it would be more than enough. There's arguably a bit of Ship Sinking with Bayonetta claiming to not be fond of the talkative type, but then again, her way of treating her talkative enemies is the same way Dante applies to his.
    • Bayonetta and Jeanne appears to be a popular pairing as well, thanks to their Foe Yay-ness. It doesn't help that she resembles Dante.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With fans of Devil May Cry, constantly, despite both games being the brainchild of Hideki Kamiya, a rivalry that ranges from friendly to ugly. To Hideki's credit, he's slipped quite a few DMC Easter Eggs into this franchise.
  • Fashion Victim Villain:
    • Jeanne is pretty bad with her red jumpsuit, poofy purple collar and fuzzy gun tassels. Her weird eyelashes are somewhat unfortunate too, and her jumpsuit makes her look almost deformed. For Balder though, this trope probably was intentional. Oddly enough, Bayonetta can get in on the fun with the d'Arc couture bullet, which puts Bayonetta in a black version of Jeanne's dress, and it's sexy all of a sudden.
    • Balder's dead white peacock stole, single glove, and golden quarter-mask with piercing-attached monocle is even worse.
  • Fetish Retardant:
    • Maybe it's the beehive hairdo, maybe it's finding clothing made of hair less than appealing, etc. During her analysis on Death Battle, Boomstick commented that he couldn't decide whether it was sexy or gross.
    • It's odd that Bayonetta's proportions and actions can end up so amazingly over-sexualized that she can become largely unsexy. Sort of like a sexy version of the Uncanny Valley: she's too sexy to be taken seriously, but not sexy enough to overpower the ridiculousness.
  • Foe Yay: Bayonetta with Luka, Jeanne and Temperantia.
  • Game Breaker:
    • An officially recognized gamebreaker is the Climax Bracelet, normally unlocked by obtaining every achievement/trophy AND collecting every crow on one save game. Equipping the accessory invalidates any score made on a level where the accessory was equipped. When you can Pure-Platinum the penultimate boss without a sweat using something, you know it's a game breaker.
    • The Durga-Kilgore glitch, which lets you unleash an overpowered combo using a specific set of weapons, and thereby gets huge amounts of halo and combat score points.
    • Let's put it in perspective: The second-best halo-farming method in the game only nets around 1 million halos per run, and can take upwards of 4 minutes each. The Durga-Kilgore combo? not only does it blow that 1 million out of the water with upwards of 13 million (Take That, Adam Smith!), It also maxes out the combo score in a lot of the scenes.
  • Genius Bonus: All of Bayonetta's summons and torture attacks are evoked in Enochian, the language of angels.
  • Goddamn Bats: Dears, Decorations, Enchants and Harmonies have a nasty tendency to get in your way and make comboing impossible until you've wiped them out.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • You can save at least 2.8 million halos (and a lot of effort) by spending 5 million halos to unlock the Climax Brace before finishing Normal Mode and then use it to finish off Normal mode. The game will give you a total combo score of 9999999 and a total time of 00:00:00, unlocking the Bracelet of Time with no additional effort.
    • The Durga-Kilgore glitch can shred through anything and give you the halos and rankings that normally require lots of finesse and work, making it a great way to unlock everything quickly.
  • HSQ: Most, if not all, of the cutscenes will have you saying 'Holy shit' about as often as you say 'What the HELL is going on? And why is it so AWESOME?'
    • The first ten minutes of the game will lock the visual cortex of your brain into visual overload, but it's so awesome you won't care.
  • Internet Backdraft:
    • Occurred when Sega announced that the games would be region-locked for all releases. They quickly ate their words and claimed that it was a misunderstanding and that only the Xbox 360 version is region-locked, as a result of the resulting threats of boycott.
    • When it was first announced that the sequel would be exclusive to the Wii U, most fans were angry. Thankfully, most of the backlash has died down now.
  • Les Yay: Between Bayonetta and Jeanne, thanks to some rather... close quarters style fighting.
  • Memetic Sex Goddess: If not considered one yet, Bayonetta's well on her way to become one. Her creators surely wanted her to be.
  • Narm Charm: It's incredibly campy, to the point where spotlights appear out of nowhere when the title character reveals herself. Like its spiritual predecessor, it's done in a way that gives it a lot of charm and appeal.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Balder. While he's not actually on-screen till late in the game, he steals every moment of it.
    • Also, of course, Jubileus is the single most remembered part of the game.
  • Porting Disaster: The PlayStation 3 version of the game is seen as inferior. Platinum Games handed over the code to Sega for the finalization process on that platform, which lead to noticeably reduced frame rates, poor textures, extremely intrusive and long loading times, and other technical issues. Platinum has even stated that because of this, they flat-out refuse to outsource their games to outside studios for porting ever again. The PS3 version later received a patch that allows you to install the game to the PS3's hard drive, largely cutting the loading times. However, the other most glaring issues with frame rates and textures remain unaddressed.
    • Word of God clarified this by stating the bulk of the game's development was on 360 hardware.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Out-of-body fights. They're tolerable in the story mode, where you're given tools to wail on angels with and Cereza isn't constantly in danger, but when they're made an Alfheim challenge, you have to leave your body behind to fight; that won't stop the angels from going after it anyway (which will hurt your regular lifebar), unless you waste one of your two accessory slots on an item that forces Angels to attack you... but also makes them stronger. That very mechanic forces you to use a lightpole to fight Affinities while protecting Cereza, since they are not in the same dimension. Not only is the "weapon" painfully slow, it slips out of your hands if you stop to dodge an attack. Granted, you can use Rodin to attack them directly but the thing is not exactly easy to get...
    • The mini-game to send Jubileus into the sun isn't so bad in Normal mode. In Hard and Climax mode, however, the planets are much harder to avoid, and failure is counted as a death, which can completely ruin an otherwise perfect score. Considering how long and difficult this fight can be, this is frustrating to say the least.
    • Insta-Death Quick Time Events in general because it's sometimes damn near impossible to know exactly when to push Square button, and each death counts against your score. They were so hated that they were basically removed from the sequel, largely replaced with climax style button mashes that reward quick reflexes, but don't necessarily punish missing them.
  • Scrub: One of these may come out in video comments to signal that using the Kilgore glitch is cheating and that if you do you're not really skilled.
  • Squick: Joy's Torture Attack. Completely gratuitous and kind of unsettling.
  • That One Attack: Jeanne's goddamn missile during the third fight! The QTE requires a hyper-fast reaction time and failure causes a lot of damage.
  • That One Level:
    • For some, the rocket ride section goes on just a bit too long. Combine this with the fact that it's the only place in the game where you can't un-invert the camera, and well... Start. Options. Controls. Scroll over to the rocket icon. Switch up and down. Problem solved.
    • The double Kinship fight. Dear God, those fuckers take Bullet Hell to a whole new level. It takes a good level of Witch Time skill if you don't wanna be pelted by a dozen missiles at the same time. This is somewhat alleviated by the fact that you can actually board the kinships and smash their wheelhouses, and their corpses remain as a platform to board the others.
    • The beginning of chapter 8 and the "disapearing platforms" part in chapter 15 also qualify on Play Station 3, mainly because the framerate operates a breathtaking drop in these two specific parts.
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