Notices by MeriBeri🍒 (maribari@witches.town), page 2

What she says: Dark Souls 2 is a good game, but not a good Souls game.

What she means: I idolized Dark Souls as the epitome of game design, and when DS2 had a different design philosophy I rejected it on principle. By the time DS3 was released, the Souls games had been established as a genre and not a singular experience, so I was more well-adjusted towards unique design. I haven't gone back to play DS2 since I decided I hated it, reinforcing my view that it's the "black sheep" of the franchise despite the fact that my only real evidence is game feel and my smug superiority complex in relation to difficulty.

Literally anybody: *mentions the Howl's Moving Castle movie*

Me: *rotates my head 360 degrees and screeches with unholy rage*

Okay I love y'all but I'm gonna go radio silence for a bit until these notifications calm down a little. I'll respond to stuff in a couple hours

@Zeether @Vann I've googled it and apparently the magic meter does the following things I never knew about: :blobhyperthink:

> Torture attacks & climax
> Accessories
> Several specific moves, such as the stomp

I'm being eaten by notifications. Help

@Zeether @Vann I don't even know what to use my magic meter for. It's a mystery to me :oh_no:

But I'm very excited for Bayo 2 to be an improvement. I've heard it's very, very good. I don't mind having to git gud so long as it doesn't involve getting dunked on for hours on end

OKAY ONE LAST THING

This game has a lot of cutscenes. It loves cutscenes. Every time an enemy is introduced, there's a little cutscene.

But, as usual, Bayo plays dirty.

Besides the aforementioned clairvoyance-requiring cutscene QTEs, it's possible for enemies to attack just before the end of a cutscene. And once the cutscene ends, it's up to you to dodge/counter/tickle that attack.

There's no indication whether a cutscene will have an attack immediately after it.

It is possible to die because a cutscene ends with a fireball in your face and you were, you know, watching the cutscene.

*sigh*

I'm not trying to say that Bayonetta is a terrible game or even a game for masochists.

It's a game for perfectionists.

If you don't care about score, none of this matters. You can happily play through the game and get stone on every level and probably have a much better time with the game than I am.

But when I see that the game is doing everything in its power to embarrass me and punish me for playing the game for the very first time, it kind of kills my desire to keep playing. I don't want to play a game that mocks me for trying. (And hot damn, I am TRYING.)

It's extremely frustrating. I hope Bayo 2 is better.

The game is poorly tutorialized, too. Every ability in the game is given a "tutorial," which consists of doing the ability once. There is no indication of how it should be used, just that you can use it.

Weapons have no tutorials. You just learn their movesets in trial by fire. I'm not using my weapons correctly, because the game won't let me experiment. Experimentation means death. Death means stone.

Some bosses don't even give you indications of how to avoid damage. You can't tell the difference between "attack I need to dodge" and "attack I need to counter" until you see the QTE three picoseconds before it hits you.

QTEs are usually instant death if you fail them. Abilities need to be purchased, which means grinding the same levels over and over for money. Some abilities aren't even unlocked until later levels, so NO MATTER WHAT you are going to be underpowered the first time you go through levels.

Oh, and level seven is an escort quest.

You cannot control the escort.
The escort always tries to stay close to you.
The escort can and will get hit.
The escort getting hit also damages you.
Countering enemy attacks doesn't stop them from hitting the escort. There is no way to defend her or get her out of harm's way.

@Zeether Yup! Many quicktime events are an instant death if you fail. And they can happen seemingly randomly during cutscenes.

@ambyrb This is true, but Bayonetta's scoring system isn't about speed-- it's about perfectionism. You have to have insane levels of insight, luck, and skill to avoid getting mocked with a stone reward after every single level in the game.

Remember, this is about playing the level for the very first time.

There are hidden combat sequences that you won't know exist until you beat the level and see the fights you missed. They're counter-intuitively hidden, too, so you have to scour levels to find them, which kills your time, and nets you stone rank.

Every level (thus far) has introduced at least one new enemy, and most enemies can wreck your shit if you don't know their patterns. Have fun memorizing the patterns while you're getting your face kicked in. Oh, oops, you died because that new enemy had an attack you couldn't even see coming. Here's your stone rank.

Deaths cost you points. LOTS of points. So many points that if you die more than once, you're almost guaranteed to get stone.

"So just heal yourself."

Well, that's the problem. Using any item in the game, without exception, has the same effect as half of a death. Using two items is the same as dying once, essentially.

So you can't die, or you get stone. If you use an item to stop yourself from dying, you also get stone, just half as quickly.

"So play carefully."

You can't. The game constantly times you and grades your combo score, so playing cautiously ALSO gets you a stone rank.

The entire game is designed to get you to fail levels. There are six ranks of trophy that you get at the end of each stage: stone, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and pure platinum.

Platinum and pure platinum are almost certainly impossible to get on your first try through a level. More likely you will get stone. I have gotten stone on every single level in the game besides the prologue.

I have done no-damage max difficulty boss runs in Revengeance before. (Same developers, very similar game design.)

So here is why Bayonetta is deliberately designed to fuck over first-time players.

It's gonna take a bit to explain why, hope y'all like text dumps and game design

Bayonetta is so mean to me ;-;