A beautiful coop game, designed to be played in singleplayer | Full Review - Bayonetta Origins

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a brand new adventure game with puzzle elements, and a cooperative experience designed to be played in single player.

🟩Pros

+Beautiful graphics and presentation

+Highly engaging game mechanics

+Extraordinary two-character gameplay

🟥Cons

-Minor camera problems

📝Notable points:

Not everyone is going to like the departure from the classic Bayonetta gameplay, so those people might like to sit this one out.

Bayonetta is a series that has never been known for its immersive storytelling and child friendly nature, but that is about to change with the release of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. Teased as a secret chapter in Bayonetta 3, it is a full blown adventure game with a children’s book style approach. It is now available for the Nintendo Switch as an exclusive, following Bayonetta 2 and 3.

From Action to Art

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon’s art style, soundtrack, are accordingly tailored as a children’s book presentation. It features hand-drawn watercolor-esque artwork rendered in vibrant cel-shaded graphics, while the soundtrack is a mix of whimsical, lighthearted, with a faint touch of Bayonetta’s music style.

And they’re not just going for a children’s book aesthetic, the game’s story is literally told as one, jumping back and forth between live gameplay and literal book pages to tell the story. These pages are sometimes animated and are narrated by an amazing voice actor who helps sell the children’s tale vibe.

Before badass, there was cute

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, or Bayonetta Origins for short, tells the story of the girl Cereza — the main character of the series — also known as Bayonetta later on, many, many years before the events of the trilogy. It shows a never before seen part of her life and her struggles as an outcast Witch due to the nature of his parents. At the start of the story, she accidentally brings a Demon to their world and it becomes her companion, hence the title of the story.

Gameplay Analysis

The gameplay is a far departure from the hack-and-slash stylish intense action of the trilogy and instead a classic puzzling adventure game with modern 3D controls. It still has combat, but not anywhere close to the action-packed combat that we’ve known.

Players control the two eponymous characters — Cereza and the Lost Demon — simultaneously, Cereza using the left stick and two left bumpers, while the Demon — named Cheshire — is controlled using the right stick and two right bumpers.

If you think this control scheme is a familiar one, then you might have played something similar before in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, both games are coop experiences designed to be played in singleplayer. Players control two characters at once, and while it is possible to play this with two players, the game isn’t optimally designed as such.

There are two main modes to the controls, since Cheshire is bound to a doll, he can return to it at will and be carried by Cereza in a Hug mode form. While Cereza is in charge of the two’s movements, you can still control Cheshire in this mode, by extending his body from Cereza to reach stuff out.

On the other hand, Cereza can summon Cheshire to a full blown demon monster form and both move independently from each other. The seamless alternating change from summoning to returning to the doll reminds me a bit of Pokemon.

A cooperative-singleplayer experience

As Cereza and Cheshire travel across the enchanted mysterious forest, navigation around various obstacles will require close coordination with each other, such as jump boosts or creating bridges to help the other character cross. At some points, they will be forced to slightly separate and go their own tangential paths, but not too much as Cheshire is magically bound to Cereza and gets weaker if far enough. If they both get too far with each other for too long, the game fails.

Cereza possesses a witch magic called Umbran Arts that she can use to alter the environment, manipulate plants, grow them to form bridges, and hold off enemy attacks. She can also do lightweight stuff like crossing thin vine bridges or throwing Cheshire as a doll to reach high ground. Using Umbran Arts requires a bunch of left stick gestures to be performed in order to pull out the spells, however as an accessibility feature, you can make these spells automated, needing just a hold of a button.

Cheshire can, on the other hand, do heavyweight and offensive actions such as destroying obstacles, attacking enemies, and throwing Cereze to perform a jump boost.

Controlling two characters in a shared screen, especially when separated, can prove to be a difficult task especially with the limited camera controls that players have (since the right stick is reserved for Cheshire), sometimes leading to awkward camera angles that can bring frustration to players.

Aside from the kind of slow start, Bayonetta Origins never felt dull during the first few chapters that I’ve played so far, it’s a very engaging experience that is easy to pick up, fun to play, and is varied enough not to feel repetitive. The very premise of having to simultaneously control two characters in alternating different modes, plus the varying obstacles that you have to creatively surmount makes this adventure game a solid entry into the genre and a testament to how game franchise shouldn’t be just constricted and walled off by their own usual genre, and can instead try out new things.

As players go deeper through the story, Bayonetta Origins incorporates more and more combat to the gameplay. Aside from encountering random hostile plants and enemies across the platforming / puzzling segments, sometimes the game also puts the characters in a sort of Arena combat where waves of enemies attack both Cereza and Cheshire, and you have to survive. There are also occasional traditional boss fights in the game that follows the same arena setup.

Conclusion:

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is an adventure game clearly made for those who love classic puzzling adventure games, it’s suitable for youngsters as well with its children’s book style storytelling and lighthearted tone. If you’re a big fan of Bayonetta that also happens to like the adventure genre, then it’s even a perfect combination and I could not recommend this game enough. However, if you’re more used to the action-packed gameplay of Bayonetta, this game is far from it.