Love hurts, and regularly hangs with Hatred and their bitch mom Obsession
Truth.
Super Mario 64 and Castlevania 64 have always impressed me with how good the visibility is on those, and it's mostly because the camera's quite willing to zoom out nice and high to maximize what you can see, even if it's not "cinematic".
Bayonetta on the other hand has the camera go super low to the ground facing upwards, while remaining close behind you, for the sake of making big bosses look big. However, this has the direct impact of hiding what's going on around you, and in the secret chapter there's several fights where it's a big dude with a half-dozen little helpers flying around. Here's an example from a run
where I don't manage the camera as much. Big guy can also summon meteors which are telegraphed on the ground prior to hitting, but due to the camera angle it's really hard to actually see them. You can get better visibility by jumping, which then moves the camera above you at its normal angle while in midair, or just by speedkilling the damn thing (the camera only behaves annoyingly while it's alive).
The camera also does this thing where if you touch a wall (the ones at the far opposite ends of the arena) it'll swing the camera around suddenly so the arena isn't visible. It does this so it avoids having to make walls invisible for the sake of looking pretty, but I'd far rather the game behave like God Hand where the game will make walls transparent if they get in your way behind you, maximizing visibility. Or, make the camera zoom out more and stay above you like the God of War games. With the shielding accessory it's all very manageable mind you, but it's definitely a source of frustration in some fights, especially
some of the Jeanne fights in the story chapters (she'll scamper around the walls of the arena, forcing you to follow her if you don't aggressively knock her down).
The last fight against her starts in a fairly simple, open arena, but rapidly goes downhill to two segments riding rockets where the camera is horrendous (learn to dodge based on audio cues or just go for parries!), and ends with a section where she can run away up a wall to hide.
The secret chapter in Bayonetta also reuses the enclosed arena for the alfheim fights you need to find in the story mode. Compare this to the Devil May Cry games where the equivalent bonus marathon mode,
Bloody Palace, has an open-walled arena so there's room for the camera even at the edge of the floor. Devil May Cry's circular, open arena is frankly a far better design for visibility.
The worst sections for camera issues are actually the minigames that Platinum included as a nod to Sega. Why Sega didn't step in to address these is beyond me, especially since they have 3D games like Outrun 2/2SP under their belt and know how to nail that perfect angle for racing cameras. However,
when it comes time to ride a motorcycle, the player characters are so tall that when you're shooting your guns it's hard to see what's directly in front of you. Their outfit's large trailing sleeves also don't help, particularly when going uphill or downhill. Couldn't they have moved the camera up a bit? And it's also one of those obnoxious racing games where going faster causes the camera to zoom out (and go slightly lower!) for cinematics' sake, further reducing visibility. Screw that, gimme Outrun 2/2SP or Wangan Midnight where the camera stays glued in position no matter how fast you're going. Because Zero's only about 2/3 as tall, and has no standing up while shooting animation, he's actually the easiest to see with here and makes this minigame considerably more bearable (despite the whole dying in 2-3 hits thing). Here he is
at normal speed, and again
at high speed, both while upright and firing.
There's also a minigame based on Space Harrier and Afterburner, but in contrast to the relatively thin player sprite there, you've commandeered a missile that happens to have a giant bright thruster with a huge metal base, that makes it hard to react to enemy shots in front of you. It also is EXTREMELY button mashy with a slow-as-molasses autofire rate that basically demands button mashing (or using rapid fire ;3) to make it bearable, but once you know how to speedkill enemy waves, you can easily score kills before the dangerous stuff fires on you. It also helps that the dodge here lets you chain i-frames together and can dodge infinitely with no penalty other than likely dropping combo,
so you can always just mash on dodge when in trouble. Dodging does make the entire screen spin with no option to disable this, so god help anyone with nausea issues here.
Bayonetta's an extremely fun game, but with a lotta lovable jank. You also can't remap the controller... unless you're on the PC version where you can do it just fine in Steam's interface (though if using a keyboard + mouse Bayonetta supports full remapping...). It also doesn't explain many of the mechanics properly, doesn't provide a tutorial for Dodge Offset (the special move that lets you dodge without resetting your combo you start the game).You're rewarded with discovering the existence of Dodge Offset if you take the time to read the manual or the ingame documents, but the game otherwise doesn't mention it. Bayo also doesn't provide a good training area with a dummy to beat up, the shop tutorials don't give you a magic meter to use so beginners get confused about the true potential of the "If you have enough magic when you use this attack, it summons a big ol fist" moves, and so on...
I've even seen players try out the perfect dodge move (where you can dodge just as you're hit to turn into bats and negate the damage), then NOT buy it because they've missed the point of it. The tutorial basically tells you you've failed if you don't land the perfect dodge, but the real point of it is to extend your dodge window so even late dodges become successes. However, it's not explained that way, so some beginners (who aren't versed in these kinds of games usually) will think that it's a move you're supposed to do on purpose deliberately, see it as way too hard due to the tutorial's minimal explanation of it and ignore it, rather than seeing it for its true value as a buff to your dodge that will occasionally trigger by accident if you otherwise dodge a bit late, and that also lets you dodge while taking damage out of multi-hit strings some enemies do!
Bayonetta's a really neat game when you know what you're doing but it takes some patience and dedication to get there, a real willingness to experiment and learn. It has lots of frankly powerful attacks, so it's far less difficult than other similar games I'd say, but a lot of folks get in the bad habit of button mashing which results in never firing off their weapons. If you're just tapping the attack buttons, you're basically just doing scratch damage by comparison to what firing your guns can do. It also results in getting parried by higher tier enemies who are deliberately designed to deflect your attacks if you try to just mash the buttons on them, but who can't block stuff like a shotgun blast to the face.
Shamelessly watching for the tunes
On the menu was Rolling Gunner,
Stage 5 from REDPULSE, a couple remixes from Rolling Gunner Overpower,
Solid State Survivor S4, 5, TLB,
Akai Katana's FM remixes, then some DFK and Ketsui.