So uh, a lot can happen in 24 hours. I went from, I'm not moving completely on from Twitter yet to essentially packing my bags to leave. So while I haven't made it official on Twitter yet (I have one last thing I'm waiting on), Cohost is going to be my primary, public social media account for the near future at least.
While the Twitter collapse has been happening, I largely stopped tweeting about the games I've been enjoying. If you don't know me and couldn't tell from my profile picture, RPGs are definitely my favorite genre and I'm a big fan of platformers, fighting games, and music games as well. After wrapping up a replay of Trails From Zero with the recent official release, I moved on to playing Bayonetta 3 and Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope. These were two of the biggest games I was looking forward to this year and while they were each not quite as awesome as I hoped, I had a great time playing both.
Let's start with Bayonetta which I finished first. The two big new things are the demon summoning and the new multiverse focused story. Demon summoning wasn't really doing it for me in the campaign and the biggest reason is because the game moved away from fighting smaller enemies to significantly larger enemies that obviously take longer to take down if you rely on just Bayonetta herself. Demon summoning is largely about queuing up the next attack or just pressing a button at the end of a normal Bayonetta combo. It looks spectacular obviously to summon a giant godzilla monster for example, but there's a level of disconnect in the action that feels less satisfying. Not to say it couldn't be cool. In the post game arena battles especially, I had fun successfully juggling opponents and extending my combos, but overall I think Bayonetta 2 remains the pinnacle of the series for gameplay. I sort of dug the multiverse stuff as well as an excuse to have cities explode all around you in the big setpieces which looked and felt amazing, but it was counteracted knowing that it all ultimately wouldn't matter to the ultimate conclusion. If there are spoiler tag options on Cohost, I'm not aware of them yet, so I'll just say unfortunately that ultimate conclusion was very disappointing on both the gameplay and story fronts.
Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope is in some ways better and some ways lacking compared to the original Kingdom Battle which I ultimately prefer. The beginning of the game is strong as you choose how to develop your characters and figure out your go to strategies and spark combos (usually a buff, spell, or summon generally). My regular plan was to have Mario use his strength buff, activate Luigi's Steely Stare and have him walk as far away as possible, and then have Mario and Rabbid Peach either dash foes or use fire to get them moving. Luigi's Steely Stare is absurd because it can shoot through walls and it becomes exponentially more powerful the farther away he is. Incidentally, Luigi is also the MVP when it comes to moving around maps with his huge movement ranges and the ability to do two partner jumps in one turn. I was worried about Sparks of Hope as the middle really starts to blur together as my normal strategy felt unstoppable, but thankfully the back third of the game starting with the Wiggler battle shown in previews picks up with stronger foes and more interesting maps.