So I played Bayonetta 2 at a gaming expo in London today, I'm not much of a reviewer but I'll chuck my impressions in here:
The first thing I noticed (while in the 3 man queue) was that the difficulty had gone both up and down. It sounds a bit weird, but the enemies and bosses seemed to deal more damage and have more health, presumably to balance the Umbran Climax feature (which not only increases you damage output massively, but gives you some health back on activation too). On the other hand, the first enemies were very easy to predict and there were health things everywhere (there was also a Red Hot Shot equipped from the start), but I think this was probably because it was a stage demo which had to cater for both the newer people who want to win and the experienced players who want to win and get more than just a bronze rating.
When I actually got on the game I was going to test out the touch controls, but the only difficulty options with them were Very Easy and Easy, so I backed out and went with the normal control scheme that offered the Normal difficulty. Anyway, I started it up I was greeted with a wonderful cutscene and thrown right into the action against some angels. They were incredibly easy to beat up, only attacking every now and then giving me a chance to get to grips with the new Umbran Climax feature and the available weapon in the demo. The first boss (a mini boss, I assume) came along and the difficulty ramped up, mainly because he was attacking more often than his minions but also his attack pattern was less obvious than before. The final boss of the demo was very easy for the most part, but dealt crazy damage upon hit, I think this fight was more focused on being visually astounding than anything else though.
The boss fights were more interesting than in the first game, this time they kept freshening things up every quarter and sometimes fifth of health increments, instead of the usual half health stage change that featured in most bosses in the first game. This improvement applies to mini-bosses too, which is especially nice.
The cutscenes and the gameplay both have spectacular graphics, the only change I noticed in the cutscenes was the inclusion of fancy lighting effects but, other than that, it was hard to discern any difference; in some cutscenes I even thought I was still playing or that a QTE was incoming.
Overall, if the rest of the game is as good as this demo then it will be significantly better than the original Bayonetta and be one of the best games released in the past 5 years as well as the best Wii U game until Smash Bros comes out. It was excellent.
