Review: Bayonetta 3 is a love letter to gaming’s most wildly creative action star

videogameschronicle.com:

If Bayonetta 1 was a love letter to action games, then the third game is a love letter to Bayonetta herself: a multiverse mash-up that catapults the witch into the orbit of her ‘what if’ alternatives to swap one-liners and crib new tricks to fold into her toybox. If you thought the Bayonetta of the first two games was pushing at the limits of what could be done with an action hero, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Let’s talk about the train. Bayonetta’s new power is to summon giant demons to fight in her place. You hold a shoulder button, they pop out and you take control, dealing kicks or claw swipes with the creatures – like the giant Madama Butterfly, or demonic dragon Gomorrah – that appeared in earlier games in cinematic finishers. Tag-teaming Bayonetta’s surgical style with sky-blotting dropkicks is wild in itself, but only gets loopier as her bestiary grows. This includes, after a trip to alt-universe China, a vintage locomotive.

Summon Wartrain Gouon and time slows to a crawl as the camera pulls to a birds eye view. From here you lay a train track, plotting a course to steer Gouon through enemies while also programming in attacks to activate on desired stretches of the line. Y’know: a burst of scalding hot steam here, or maybe a loop-the-loop to shunt angels into the sky. Perhaps you hit the breaks and allow demons to disembark and fight on your behalf. It’s as if Bayonetta and Railroad Tycoon had a baby: a bonkers blast of first-class originality.

And the oddballs keep on coming, through the story and beyond. Later she enlists a frog who, if allowed to complete four parts of a song in sequence, can drown arenas in acid rain. Too impatient for its recital? Just whip demons from afar with its massive tongue. Or better