Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead, well, at least how you know her. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon might be the second time gamers get to play a Bayonetta game in just a few months, but this is the first time players have seen her quite like this.
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon takes us back to when the umbra witch was yet to be known as Bayonetta and to a time when all she was, was a young girl named Cereza, still trying to master her magic.
To call Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon a game doesn’t seem right. Yes, the gameplay takes centre stage, but it feels far more comparable to an interactive fairytale, and that’s one of the most significant departures from the standard Bayonetta formula we’ve ever seen.
The story, I mean the game, starts by taking players through a storybook-style recreation of the events that have transpired to bring them to where they are. Cereza’s mother and father shared a forbidden love that resulted in the young one. As a result, her father was exiled, and her mother was thrown behind bars.
Cereza, unable to face the world as a pariah and completely alone, starts sneaking into the prison to visit her mother until one fateful day when her mother is moved deeper into the prison to a place the young one can not go.
However, all is not lost; Morgana, a powerful witch no stranger to being shunned herself, takes young Cereza in and starts teaching her how to control her magic. That is where the game begins.
Now I want to avoid going into any more story details here. I’m not about that spoiler life, so I’ll tell you that a demon inhabits Cereza’s stuffed toy, and she names him Cheshire. Accept it, don’t ask any questions and let’s move on. Together, Cereza and Cheshire must navigate the world to help Cereza find the power to save her mother and return Cheshire to his own world.
The core gameplay mechanic of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is that you will control Cereza and Cheshire simultaneously. It’s mainly a puzzle game with combat mixed in, and both Cereza and Cheshire have their own skill trees.
There is much to play with here, depending on your playstyle and the approach you want to take to combat. Although Cereza is the only one of the two that can die, when Cheshire is defeated, he reverts into a stuffed toy, and players will need to wait for him to become a demon again.
As players progress through the game, they will unlock multiple forms for Cheshire to adopt, allowing them access to previously blocked-off areas. Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon will often have players revisit the same places to unlock everything it offers.
The simultaneous gameplay mechanism is also used in combat, where Cheshire is the only one who can take down enemies while Cereza is the only one who can lock enemies in place.
Now I’m not going to lie to you; the confusion my hands experienced while trying to control two different characters simultaneously was something to behold. Thankfully the game’s developers, PlatinumGames, created many accessibility options that make the chaos more manageable. I thank them for that, and so do my very confused fingers.
Going into the game, I was apprehensive. I had never played a Bayonetta game with this style before, and I was curious how the simultaneous controls would be implemented. However, after a few hours of playtime, that apprehension was gone because everything worked. As if by magic.
Everything in the game is fluid, the performance on the Nintendo Switch is truly something to behold, and while different, the fairytale vibes suited the backstory of young Bayonetta in a way that is so perfect it’s hard to describe.
