SophieBubbles

Welp. Bayonetta 3 is the best and worst finale to a near perfect trilogy of character action games you could ask for. It changes up so much of its gameplay and tries to do so much. Some of it it messes up, but most of the time it's just as good as the first two games. It's like Metal Gear Solid 4. It's a perfect conclusion that's flawed in many ways, yet just feels right. "A love song, my darling, a moonlight serenade."

Now this is what I call perfecting the formula. Yo-kai Watch 3 is the peak of the series. It's **** massive and brimming with content, tons of fun new features, characters and more. The fact it's on the 3DS and runs as well as it does is genuinely impressive with how much content this game has. The gameplay got a massive shakeup in this one, and it's genuinely the best in the series. Every fight isn't too easy or hard, it's just right. The game does lean inherently into the goofier aspects of 2, but the game doesn't really try to take itself as seriously this time either, so I can give it a pass. I don't think any other RPG has been able to be this consistently fun while still being ginormous for a 3DS game. High up there on my recommendations.

Both versions are basically the same, I just chose to review the version I'm most familiar with. It's shockingly really fun. Some elements of it aren't great, but damn it if doing everything in this game wasn't a blast. The gameplay never gets boring and the bosses are usually great, which is good for a game with so many of them.

It's still just as fun as the first game, but it feels like it didn't expand enough on what made it as good, so as a sequel it feels underwhelming. Leaning into the goofier aspects of the first game and its comedy makes the story (which is a major focus now) feel way less dire than it actually is. The new stuff they introduce, such as expansions to the overall gameplay of the first game, are great, but some extra inclusions such as trading don't really work. The Blasters side mode in particular kind of **** and is pretty much just a demo for Yo-kai Watch Blasters. The game is also much easier. The bosses go down in about 2 minutes now and it feels a lot less challenging, if more fun overall. The game's ending is really bad though, with two awful and ridiculously difficult bosses in a row where grinding to make the two fights easier is incredibly boring due to story circumstances. It might be the worst difficulty spike in any game I've ever played, and the whole playthrough is basically preparing for that singular boss. It bogs the game down, to say the least. Again, still fun, but feels like it's missing things to make it a true successor to the first game.

It's a fun enough game, but I feel like the sequels do what this game did better. It generally doesn't have a plot for a good majority of the runtime, and the later games just kind of improve on what this one did mechanically. It's still super fun, though, a great monster collecting RPG with a fun premise.

I got my 3DS a decade ago from a family friend with two games on it. The first game I ever bought for it? This. I think this may be my legitimate favourite game of all time.