I’ve always been a Bayonetta fan, not to mention a pure Bayonetta enjoyment. The Bayonetta Trilogy is a non-stop action-packed explosion of endless challenge, fun and fury, featuring a witch who has too many awesome combat moves to remember.
However, despite the aforementioned “banger” status, I still had issues with the Bayonetta Trilogy. I’ve always found the action to be at the expense of character moments, and I wish I could have spent a little more free time with the Umbra Witch herself. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is exactly what I needed.
Highlights: The Origins of Bayonetta: Cherry and the Lost Demon
Release date: March 17
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Platinum Games
Publisher: Nintendo
The new spinoff is set years before the Bayonetta trilogy, featuring a young Cherry picking up the tunes after her mother’s exile, struggling with her studies of shadow magic. It’s a decidedly more laid-back adventure, following Cherry and the demonic Cheshire as they discover more about themselves, each other, and their fates in the rest of the world.
It’s a nice little adventure. Bayonetta Origins actually gives Bayonetta time to stop and have a normal human conversation, without reality collapsing around her or a short Italian-American man having a midlife crisis. The spinoff lowers the stakes and increases the intimacy, allowing Cherry and Cheshire to develop and grow as characters over the course of approximately 20 hours.
A nice change of pace
(Image credit: Nintendo)
Bayonetta Origins is a much more personal adventure than all the previous ones. This change of pace and approach really pays dividends for Cherry here, making her a character you can really root for after just a few hours. I really enjoyed spending time with this version of Bayonetta, a smaller and less capable, but by no means powerless reimagining of the character.
Cherry is more of a novice witch, so the main focus of Bayonetta Origins isn’t entirely on combat. The game splits its time between puzzles and action, putting Cherry and Cheshire through a mentally grueling storyline, before pushing them into a brief combat challenge. Encounters, whether puzzles or combat, rarely take more than a few minutes at a time, keeping the pace relatively brisk and any frustration to an absolute minimum.
(Image credit: Nintendo)
Combat is a difficult beast to master early on. Cherry works through the left Joy-Con controller and Cheshire the right, and you always control both partners at the same time in battle. It takes some getting used to – the first few hours frustrated me with moving the wrong character and dodging with the wrong Joy-Con – but after that phase it’s relatively easy, a system that works amazingly good for running two fighters at once. .
Well, calling Cherry a fighter is a bit generous. The young Umbral Witch simply binds enemies with her magic, temporarily locking them in place for Cheshire to strike with a few blows. You’ll end up spending most of your time running around screaming with outstretched swords, arms and teeth grinding like Cherry, while you wait for Cheshire to get into position to save you via a well-placed claw to the face of a hideous monster.
Dynamic Duo
(Image credit: Nintendo)
This really is Bayonetta Origins’ real Achilles’ heel in battle: Cherry is the brains and Cheshire is the brawn. Cherry is limited to immobilizing enemies and can’t kill them outright, so without Cheshire in your corner, the young witch is a bit helpless. Bayonetta Origins is about Cereza overcoming her personal fear and vulnerability, and the fight breaks that narrative promise by rendering Cereza constantly unable to hold her own against any foe.
The flip side of Cheshire is that it is also largely consumable. It’s Game Over if Cherry’s health drops to zero, but if Cheshire takes too many hits, he simply reverts to his stuffed toy form, chained for a few moments while his health regenerates. Graceful dodging and grappling are essential in combat, but ultimately seem unnecessary when Cheshire is such an indestructible force of nature in the heat of battle.
The somewhat missed potential is actually a real shame, because otherwise the fights are a nice step down from the breakneck pace of the Bayonetta trilogy. Without the threat of battle odds and time pressure, you can go at it all at your own pace, planning which enemies to chain first as Cherry and which to attack as Cheshire. Any initial frustrations with the dual Joy-Con system are quickly a faint memory after a few hours, and Bayonetta Origins unfolds like a solid, action-packed affair.
(Image credit: Nintendo)
“I really learned to appreciate the new facet of Cherry”
In addition to combat, there are occasional puzzles, and they make for a cool but forgettable bunch. These trials are usually quick and may require you to intermittently move Cherry and Cheshire through a small maze or jump between moving platforms before they disappear. It’s nothing too mentally taxing, and the puzzles act as a pleasant, brief change of pace from the combat, rather than presenting themselves as memorable experiences. If you came here looking for a deep puzzler, you’ll come away bitterly disappointed, but if all you’re looking for is a change of pace from combat, these small tasks might do the trick.
Bayonetta Origins is a great little adventure. I really came to appreciate the new side of Cherry and the compelling new story that PlatinumGames found to tell the established hero. Combat is a fun frenzy once you really get used to its dual Joy-Con system, though Cherry misses it a lot after its narrative growth, and Cheshire’s indestructible nature kicks in at its most whimsical notes. The puzzles leave no lasting impact, though if their job was to provide respite and new depth to Cherry’s combat, then they served their purpose.
Bayonetta Origins: Cherry and the Lost Demon has been patched on Nintendo Switch, with code provided by the publisher.