Excited for Bayonetta 3? Play Valkyrie Elysium

polygon.com:

At a recent Nintendo press event, I played a demo for Bayonetta 3, in which I tore through a procession of demonic enemies with monstrous clubs, incisive swords, and a collection of tri-barreled handguns. I also summoned friendly demons to fight by my side, and at one point, rode on the back of a demon ally who was, in turn, using a pair of train cars to water-ski through the narrow confines of a Tokyo canal. Having not played a Bayonetta game before, I left the event feeling both foolish and elated: Why have I not touched this series before? I thought. That absolutely ruled. I was now officially excited for the game’s Oct. 28 release.

Fast-forward to me, that evening, dabbling in my video game backlog, only to find them all lacking a certain panache. Assassin’s Creed Origins was a known quantity. Total War: Warhammer 3 would require too much thought. Even Vampire Survivors, which I count among my favorite games of the year, felt staid. For about an hour, I was sure Bayonetta 3 had ruined my existing library of games — until I tried Valkyrie Elysium.

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In the most recent entry in Square Enix’s experimental slate of 2022 releases, you play the part of the titular Valkyrie, a proxy warrior sent by Odin to do damage control during the mythical apocalypse Ragnarok. As opposed to its more tactical predecessors in the Valkyrie series,Elysium plays out in action-focused, third-person combat — combo chains, elemental attacks, weapon swapping and all. The battle system unfurls slowly, pitting your character against homogenous enemy mobs while providing a limited move set. But by the third discrete level, I was grapple-hooking onto distant archers, targeting flankers’ elemental weaknesses, and juggling flying enemies