Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon (Review)

Normally, you won't find much about the Bayonetta series on this blog, where so far I have never finished any of the main games and they also don't have much in common with the main topic of this site – Zelda and similar Action Adventures. But Bayonetta Origins has changed this. It's a Metroidvania through and through with a couple of Zelda-elements in there, where I've actually enjoyed the game quite a lot, beaten it, and nearly completed it. So, let's take a deeper look here...

Story

As the title suggests, this game takes place before the events of the trilogy at a time where Bayonetta – who is still known as Cereza – is the apprentice of a mighty witch, named Morgana. She receives training in becoming an Umbra Witch, so she can eventually help her mother, who is imprisoned at the time.

They live next to the forest of Avalon, where the Faeries are up to mischief and Cereza is forbidden from entering it. But after having visions from a boy named Lukaon, who suggests that she can find the power she is looking for inside the forest, she goes there anyway. 

To defend herself against the Faeries she summons her first demon, who then inhabits her stuffed toy, Cheshire. She doesn't know how to send him back to Inferno, but promises him that she will be able to do so once they find the hidden power in the forest... So, they team up and develop a heartwarming friendship over the course of their adventure, but only after a good amount of bickering.

Overall the story of the game can be perfectly enjoyed as a first-timer of the series. There are some references to the main games, of course, and certain characters make an appearance, like Jeanne early on, but it doesn't take away from the experience, so that newcomers and series veterans can enjoy this alike.

Visuals & Presentation

The game really wants to present itself as a fairy tale (or "faery tale"), where it comes with an art style that is part paper cut and part hand-drawn. It looks very pretty and turns the world of Avalon Forest into a truly magical experience. Of course something like this is usually what works best with the Nintendo Switch and therefore runs fluidly for the most part.

The only problem comes during the combat, where Bayonetta Origins often overdoes it with the visual effects and everything gets very busy. It can be easy to loose track of what's even happening then, so you might just end up mashing the attack button.

Like Bayonetta 3, the game makes use of dithering to handle transparency, where then certain objects and effects may appear in a see-through pixel pattern. If you've played Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, then you will be quite familiar with this as well. Luckily, it never gets as bad as in these games, because the dithering can really break immersion.

You will be taken out of it nonetheless, because there are also a lot of interruptions, where the game suddenly turns into a book and delivers some exposition, which can get annoying from time to time and often isn't even that interesting. You can skip the cutscenes, however.

Musically the experience will remind you of Breath of the Wild early on, with lots of small piano tunes, but it gets a lot more melodic later on and has some really good tunes in some of the areas. There is also great voice acting for every character with the exception of Cheshire, who always gets voiced by the narrator. But Cereza makes up for it with her adorable British accent.

Gameplay

As already mentioned, Bayonetta Origins follows the way of a Metroidvania. So, you explore a connected world and find new abilities, which then will give you access to new areas. Those abilities are all elemental forms for Cheshire, where Wood Cheshire for example will let you use a long plant tongue as some sort of grappling hook. But Cereza will also be able to absorb certain structures of these elements to increase Cheshire's magic and to open new passages. Using different elements for new abilities is something you will most likely have seen before, but there are still some good ideas and fun mechanics in there.

On your way you will fight lots of monsters, of course, and also solve obstacles where both playable characters are utilized in different ways. A lot of this happens inside the "Tír na nÓg", mini-dungeons very similar to the Sheikah Shrines from Breath of the Wild, in both style and concept. They are a bit more flashy, however, and heavily distort reality around them, where you need to reach and destroy the core inside to dispel the illusions. Some of these shrines need to be completed in order to move forward, others are hidden and completely optional, where there are 37 in total.

But the majority of them are simple combat shrines, where you have to defeat a number of enemies and that's really it. Those may have special rules, like a time limit, and they offer certainly more variety than the Tests of Strength from Breath of the Wild, but it gets a bit stale after while. Meanwhile, the otherwise excellent obstacle courses, where you have to use Cereza and Cheshire in harmony, are an absolute rarity. Also, don't really expect any clever puzzles, this game has only few and they are mostly outside the Tír na nÓg.

At the end of these mini-dungeons you will usually find a treasure chest with a Vitality Petal, where this is another thing that will remind you of Breath of the Wild or Zelda in general. The chests open with a small piano tune and collecting five Vitality Petals will result in a Vitality Blossom, which are this game's Heart Containers and can be seen in the bottom left corner. There are also a ton of treasure chests hidden on the overworld, but most of them just contain potions, compounds for concocting these potions, and gems, where the whole game essentially just keeps throwing elixirs and Rupees at you, but nothing unique, so you will be in for some disappointment.

These things still have their use, of course, where you can unlock new abilities for Cereza and Cheshire in a skill tree via the two different gems, the "Onyx Roses" and "Avalon Drops". Most of these skills are very useful, where you might have a hard time to decide what to pick next. These can be special combo attacks, increased use of magic, faster movement, and more.

The Umbran Potions on the other hand feel a bit unnecessary, overpowered even. You may need to use a Healing Tonic in some rare instances, but giving yourself invincibility or unlimited magic is never necessary and you may feel like you should hold on to these potions for when you really need them. Only that you never really need them... It is fun to interact with the environment to get the three different ingredients, however, where you can also concoct multiple potions at once.

You can concoct potions and save your game at an Arcane Lantern, which are your Save Stations or benches in this game. They can also be used to replay the Tír na nÓg, should you have missed a chest inside them. Some of the Ancient Lanterns are found at Sanctuaries, where you can learn new skills in addition and also travel between the Sanctuaries as your only way of "teleporting".

Another thing you do as Cereza is the Witch Pulse, a dance that manipulates your surroundings. Here you will need to play a short rhythm game with the left control stick and this usually makes plants from Inferno grow, where they can be used to overcome obstacles and create shortcuts. But the Witch Pulse is also required for operating certain devices and to destroy the cores of the Tír na nÓg. And with all that this really overstays its welcome, where you have to perform this many, many times throughout the game. It just feels like they wanted to have Cereza something "meaningful" to do, since Cheshire usually does the hard work...

Sadly, the start of the game is also very slow, where you literally have to do chores for a tutorial section. Afterwards you will move through a long, linear section, which is completely separate from the rest of the game world and also just acts as a tutorial of sorts, before the actual game starts.

Controls

While under the hood Bayonetta Origins is a classic Action Adventure in the same vein as Zelda and Metroid, it sets itself apart with its two character mechanic. And this is strongly reflected by the controls, where one half of the controller falls to one character.

This isn't a new idea, where for example Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons has done this before, but it's something very rare and well implemented in Bayonetta Origins, mainly because you're playing two completely different characters. They each act as one half of a whole, where Cereza is responsible for magic and Cheshire for attacks.

You control Cereza with the left half of the controller (or the left Joy-Con), where you steer here with the left stick, perform her Umbran Arts with ZL, and use for L for context-sensitive actions and switching into "Hug Mode", which makes Cheshire return to her as a stuffed toy. In addition, the D-pad lets you activate the four different potions, with one in each direction.

As for Cheshire, you steer him with the right stick, attack with ZR, and use the R-button to unleash him from Hug Mode, but also context-sensitive actions and special attacks. The A, B, X, and Y buttons switch between his elemental forms, where the attacks are dependent on the form he's in.

This may sound like this is a game that will make your head hurt, but it actually works surprisingly well for the most part. Of course the experience will vary from player to player, where I personally found it to be quite intuitive, as long as Cereza is on the left and Cheshire on the right. Once they cross paths, things can get a bit messy. But this seems to be something that the developers accommodated for, where the characters are often placed accordingly, especially during the Tír na nÓg trials, to make things easier on my and maybe also your brain.

As long as you're just walking around, you can also use the Hug Mode, where then you only need to steer Cereza. In this mode the Cheshire plush can be extended and swung around via the right stick, which is a lot of fun and also lets you collect items. You can even unlock an ability in the skill tree that makes you go faster in this mode, where this is the best method of traversal. You only really need to bring out Cheshire for puzzles, his abilities, and for fighting enemies...

On a site note, in the later game there will be certain points where it wants you to rotate the left control stick. Keep this in mind, because that's probably not something you want to do with Joy-Cons.

Combat

Fighting foes is where you usually make out the most of the two different characters, where Cereza is able to bind enemies and Cheshire does the damage by attacking with his claws. There are also "Bind Combos", which depend on Cheshire's form and create a powerful area attack. Both this and his special attacks use up Cheshire's magic, which only slowly replenishes during combat, but you can fill it up quickly by going into Hug Mode. Of course then there isn't much you can do to beat the enemies, so you will have to be evasive for a little while.

Cereza is the one with a visible vitality gauge and it's Game Over once this is depleted, so you need to focus on getting her out of harm's way. Cheshire still has his own vitality, where he turns back into a stuffed toy whenever it runs out, but it can also be restored by picking him up. The key to victory is really using both characters in sync, so that neither will take too much damage in any given situation.

If you're fan of the mainline Bayonetta games with their intricate combo systems, then this game wasn't made for you. It's really simple in comparison and the focus is clearly on fighting with the two characters at once, where depending on your settings holding ZL for binds and mashing ZR for attacks usually gets the job done. There are certain actions with Cheshire where you have to hold and release the ZR button to perform them, like the Bind Combos, but you can set them to trigger with the next attack automatically, which then allows for the mashing. (This option is not available in the game's hard mode, however.)

Enemies

In the tradition of the Bayonetta main games, Bayonetta Origins comes up with an entire new species of foes. After angels, demons, and Homunculi it is now time to face the Faeries, the forest-dwelling tricksters.

They look a bit like they were made out of Sheikah technology scraps and they usually fight with blades, cannons, or magic. They start small, but gradually get bigger and more dangerous. Some of them carry shields or are protected by barriers, where you need to make use of Cheshire's different elemental forms.

All in all, there are about eighteen different types of Faeries in the game, not counting the big bosses. So, there is some enemy variety to be had, but ultimately it all feels very similar and there aren't any drastic outliers in how you will handle the combat, where the only exception are probably walking bombs, which are machines made by the Faeries.

The bosses on the other hand are quite the spectacle, where some of them are lengthy and absolutely epic. There is one particular boss around the mid-point of the game that feels like it could have been the final boss, but it's only the beginning of the big bads. Later on, the boss fights get a bit detached from the rest of the game in terms of mechanics, however, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, where they offer a lot of variety, and fans of Bayonetta will get a treat here.

World & Navigation

The entire game takes place in and around Avalon Forest, which gets splits into eighteen different areas. Some of these areas are surprisingly distinct, but this won't change the fact that a lot of it will look quite similar, since it's mostly a forest. It's still very well done how the game uses landmarks to give you a sense of how everything is connected, because this isn't always very intuitive.

Luckily, there is not much need for sense of direction as long as you just follow the story, which in true Alice in Wonderland fashion wants you to follow the white rabbit, who in this case is a white wolf. Said wolf is often leaving glowing tracks on the ground, which show you the way forward.

So, the game just tells you where you need to go most of the time, which is normally a big red flag for an Action Adventure based on exploration. But it's actually quite satisfying, because the game's overall progression is linear and thanks to the wolf tracks you won't ever feel like you are missing out. You can always aim at the optional paths first and see what they have to offer, before you proceed on the main path. The Bayonetta games normally have very linear levels, where it's easy to miss something on the sidelines and you always want to be mindful of your next steps, but this isn't an issue with Bayonetta Origins.

The game world won't start to show its ugly face until the end, should you decide to backtrack with all abilities to find any missing secrets. Then things can get very confusing due to the way how the different areas are connected with each other. It's an absolute maze, which is able to let you run in large circles, while you desperately try to find a way to a certain spot that you saw either from a distance or on the map. In a way, Platinum managed to create what Nintendo has been trying to do with the Zelda series for over three decades, where this game may as well could have been titled "Cereza and the Lost Woods".

But this is mostly thanks to the camera and the map. The camera in the game is fixed, but it is not fixed in a certain direction, where it will shift and turn in whatever way they saw fit. So, you might be thinking that you're heading north while going up on the screen, while in reality you're going in the opposite direction. This can be very confusing, where you never can be sure of your current orientation, unless you keep studying the map on every turn.

The map is utterly worthless, however. It shows all the areas as a plain, but this is only true for a small part of the world. The rest of the areas are vastly interconnected in the vertical space, where one area might stretch below two others, which simply can't be depicted with such a two-dimensional map... And while the exits to other areas are marked on the individual maps, it won't tell you where these exits will lead you.

To make things worse, several vertical layers are often compressed into one on the map. Some areas are split into vertical regions, like floors in a Zelda dungeon, but this doesn't help much when each region can still have multiple layers. You might go to a point of interest marked on your map only to find nothing, because it is actually 50 meters above you. And to get there you will need to take a detour over two other areas, which you won't find out by just studying the map.

It's also hard to read how these regions connect to each other, so even if there were more of them, it probably wouldn't have helped much.. It really would have required a three-dimensional map to navigate Avalon Forest without getting lost completely, but that's not what you get...

Collectibles

So, why would you be searching through Avalon Forest in the first place? Well, for starters, there are the hidden Tír na nÓg, which will increase your vitality. Clearing the Tír na nÓg will also reveal other collectibles around them, which includes Moon Pearls and Inferno Fruits. With these you can unlock more powerful abilities in the skill tree, where the gems alone are not enough.

During your adventures you will also encounter Wisps, the souls of humans who got lost in the woods. The Faeries torture them to harvest spiritual energy for their magic, but throughout the game you will fill a hideout with 40 of them to keep them safe. With most of them you simply have to set them free, others require you to bring certain potions or ingredients... And your efforts are then rewarded with more of the things mentioned above, so it's similar to collecting Gold Skulltulas or Secret Seashells. Each Wisp also comes with a description of his or her personality, where you can read quite a bit.

Speaking of, there are also Journals left behind by different travelers, which give you quite a bit to read and offer a good amount of lore around the game and the universe of Avalon Forest. It's a bit like the scans in the Metroid Prime Trilogy games, where you can read some extra information or choose to ignore it entirely. But there is a lot to study in Bayonetta Origins, should you be interested...

All of the things mentioned so far get marked on your map after clearing the Tír na nÓg, where it might seem trivial to collect them all. But as already discussed, spotting a thing on the map and getting there are two different things in this game.

There is also one collectible that is unmarked and those are the absorbable elemental objects, which will increase the magic gauge for Cheshire. These don't really count towards completion, but if you still want to find all of them, then you might get into trouble, because the ones you've missed could be absolutely anywhere and  it will be painful to find them in the gigantic forest.

In the least, nothing is missable, so you should be able to find everything still at the very end, even after beating the final boss. The game then puts you right before that boss, like most Zelda games do, and still lets you freely explore everything.

Extras

After beating the main story of Bayonetta Origins you will unlock a number of things: a hard mode, unlockable costumes, and an additional story chapter. Without spoiling anything, the latter takes place after the game's events and is essentially a small game of its own, which re-uses the main game's mechanics and environemts. It's quite short, but features a new boss and creates some interesting connections to the main games.

The costumes for Cereza and Cheshire can be used in the normal story mode and are unlocked globally by different criteria. There are variants for Cereza based on all three Bayonetta games for example, but also one that lets you play as "Jeanne and Charles". It's fun to give them all a try and they act as a more meaningful reward for completing certain aspects of the game.

The hard mode, called "Forbidden Tale", is quite disappointing, however. All it seemingly does is locking you out from the accessibility options, which included some easier controls, as described earlier, but also settings for how much damage you will take, and so on. Now, if you've already beaten the game with the default settings, then there won't be any real difference. And you may feel cheated out of a costume in that case, which is locked behind this mode.

Well, you can access this mode right from beginning via the "Platinum Code", but that's completely hidden and probably not something that most first-timers will discover. In the very least the different costumes add some value for a second playthrough, because otherwise you won't make much use out of them.

(Update: the "Forbidden Tale" hard mode actually does more than just disabling the accessibility options. You take more damage, the number of enemies has been increased, and the enemies are more aggressive overall.)

 

Time Trials

As already mentioned, you can replay any of the Tír na nÓg at a save point, but there is more to it... You can also participate in time trials to win some gems, where there are bronze, gold, and platinum scores to be achieved.

Now, Platinum Games loves to rate their players. In Bayonetta and its sequels every step of the way will get a ranking based on how long it took you, how much damage was received, your combo game, and so on. This can be very off-putting and rest assured that Bayonetta Origins does none of this. You won't miss out if you get hit once or even a couple of times. You won't miss out if you take too long to battle some foes. It's no different from Zelda or Metroid in that regard and that is good...

But Platinum Games still couldn't help it and had to include something along the lines, hence the time trials. Luckily, there are only eleven of these and for the most part they are quite fun. You can collect little clocks, which will give you some time back, similar to some of the challenge levels in the 3D Mario games, and it can be motivating to learn the trials to gradually get better.

This will test your ability to control two characters at once to its limit, however, and some of the time trials can be quite infuriating. There are four combat shrines in there, where each hit will cost you five seconds, even if it's Cheshire who has received the beating, and the last one can be particularly tricky.

You might wonder why it even matters, because naturally you will find enough gems during your travels and this isn't really a worthwhile reward for such troubles. But those are not the only rewards... Scoring gold in all time trials will unlock the "Cereza in Wonderland" outfit, while scoring platinum is required for a 100% rating of your save file. Yes, you've heard right, whenever you want to go for completion, you will also have to do all eleven time trials...

So, on top of getting dramatically lost in the forest, you should also prepare for some speed-running action in case you want to have everything cleared. And that's certainly putting a dent into the replay value.

Conclusion

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a Bayonetta game in name only, where you will explore Avalon Forest in traditional Action Adventure style. If you enjoy Zelda or Metroid games, then this is something else to look out for, next to the likes of Death's Door, Hollow Knight, or Tunic. The dual character mechanic also offers something more unique in the genre, while the visual style is outstanding as well.

Well, it's not a perfect game by any means, where it's a gold medal for Platinum Games at best. The combat can become a bit too busy visually, the map is a complete mess, and you are asked to do time trials for completion. But none of this should stop you from giving this game a try, where there is a demo available in the eShop.