YMMV / Bayonetta 2

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Despite the fact Light Is Not Good was a big theme in the first game, and they are still not very nice, the angels in this game (especially the Cardinal Virtues) are actually trying to restore balance to the Trinity by assisting Loptr ascend into Aesir, since doing so would restore the Eyes of the World. During the Final Boss fight the Cardinal Virtues continue to be summoned by Balder, meaning at this point they don't care about Loptr/Aesir anymore and no longer have any reason to ally themselves with the Big Bad.
  • This game pokes some holes in Bayonetta's self-confidence by considerably upping the stakes for her. The first game has her looking to regain her memories before eventually being saddled with protecting Cereza, while this one sees her go up against angels and the demons that give her power, with Jeanne's life on the line if she fails. As a result, she's far more serious in this game than the first, and many times she's visibly worried or stressed about the situation getting out of hand, with examples like her reaction to possibly being too late to put Jeanne's soul back in her body adding to this idea. Is Bayonetta really as self-confident and in control as she presents herself? Or was that only possible because she originally had nothing to lose?
• Anti-Metagame Character: If you've unlocked Rodin in Tag Climax, he makes the Jeanne-dominated online metagame a piece of cake... as long as you or your opponent are only picking weak enemies like Acceptances or Compassions. If you're fighting bosses, minibosses, or even some tougher enemies like Allegiances, Rodin isn't worth it.
• Award Snub: Bayonetta 2 was nominated for "Game of the Year" alongside Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Dark Souls II and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor at The Game Awards 2014; the winner turned out to be Dragon Age: Inquisition. Although the latter is considered a great entry, some felt Bayonetta 2 deserved the award due to achieving higher acclaim, while others felt Inquisition was given the win in order to increase sales over the holidays. It was made worse after it was revealed one of the judges on the panel had a personal distaste for the game due to its oversexualization of the main character, stating he would have quit if Bayonetta 2 had won. This caused many fans to call out the unfair bias.
• Awesome Music: The series has its own page here.
• Best Boss Ever: Several bosses in the game qualify, in particular the fights against the Masked Lumen. Much like the fights with Jeanne in the first game, the Masked Lumen fights on equal ground with Bayonetta every time they go up against each other. However, each fight progressively ups the ante with the summons, to the point where Madama Butterfly and Temperantia are fighting each other as Bayonetta and the Sage clash in the foreground. The number of fights in other games that come remotely close to matching the spectacle in these fights can be counted on one hand.
• Best Level Ever: Chapter XIV, also titled "The Witch Hunts", has Bayonetta and Rosa battling massive hordes of angels as they rain destruction down on the city while piloting Umbran Armor. The entire chapter is a series of setpiece battles in which you will tear through the minibosses from both Bayonetta games, all while set to Awesome Music (segmented to fit each section of the level, no less) and then proceed to defeat not one, but two of the Cardinal Virtue angels from the first game in short order. It's a level that perfectly captures the Crazy Is Cool spirit of the series and PlatinumGames titles in general.
• Breather Boss: After dealing with two Cherubim bosses, both of which are Glamors and can be fairly challenging affairs, then comes Valor whose attacks are all blatantly telegraphed. His dedicated chapter is by far the shortest chapter in the game, leading the player to likely go "...that's it?" when the end-of-chapter clouds show up.
• Broken Base: Bayonetta's short-haired design. Some people find it to be more aesthetically pleasing than the first game's long-haired design (which gave her an odd Beehive Hairdo to emphasize her hair-based conduit powers), while others dislike it for making Bayonetta look "old" and "like a mother". Both costumes are available in-game and in Super Smash Bros. to appease both sectors.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The tail end of the Loptr battle after Loki destroys the Eyes and takes away the evil God's power. Loptr stumbles around helplessly and lets you annihilate the rest of his health bar (and you can continue beating him up afterward for as long as you want), before summoning Omne to dropkick the bastard and feed him to Jeanne's Gomorrah.
  • "The Witch Hunts" delivers some of this thanks to the Umbran Armor. The first two fights are against miniboss enemies, Beloveds and Beliefs, except that you're piloting a mech so powerful that you're taking on a half-dozen at a time and the game isn't even giving them health bars. Then there's the chapter's only Alfheim, which lets you warm up on a Fairness, a Fearless, and Grace and Glory, which do get health bars and are notorious for their ability to break up a combo at will. Sounds tough, right? Except you're still in the mech, and you can plow through their defenses without even flinching from their attacks. Knocking out half of their health bar with a three-punch combo and unstoppably smacking them around the arena will make you let the time run out on purpose so that you can do it again and again!
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The identity of the Masked Lumen should be obvious to anyone who pays attention during the intro, seeing as it makes clear that they possess two items of Baldur's, the Right Eye of the World and an engraved lipstick that commemorated his and his wife's love.
• Common Knowledge: Because Hideki Kamiya is the director of the first Bayonetta game, there were people who believed and assumed that he's also the director of Bayonetta 2. This actually annoyed him at some point, since he had to repeatedly clarify on social media that he's not the director of this game, it's Yusuke Hashimoto.
• Complete Monster (includes the first game): Fortitudo, Bringer of Flame, the Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude, is one of the top four members of Auditito who, despite being a minion, stands out for his despicable crimes. Seeking to awaken Jubileus, the Creator, in order to allow Auditito to claim all of reality and rule over the universe, Fortitudo manipulated Father Balder into orchestrating the Witch Hunts, wiping out the Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages so that nobody can stand in their way of claiming the Eyes of the World needed for Jubileus's awakening, even participating in the Witch Hunts himself.
• Contested Sequel: To some, Bayonetta 2 is an Even Better Sequel that squares in on, and refines the combat of 1, pairs it with more vibrant art direction that's much more pleasant on the eyes than Bayonetta 1's endless grey and brown all while cutting down on, or removing its most hated aspects: namely the quick-time events and minigame segments. To others, the game is only a superficial upgrade that makes all sorts of changes to the core combat that railroad the player into an overly defensive playstyle: The most notable complaints being the game's nerfing of Witch Time while increasingly relying on enemies who cannot be launched, or can break out of combos without it, the overpowered nature of Umbran Climax, and the scoring system that rewards damage over extended combos.
• Default Setting Syndrome: Don't expect many players online to play as anyone other than Bayonetta. It doesn't help that most of the other characters are generally more difficult to master or have shortcomings that overcome their advantages: Jeanne has a tighter window for Witch Time, and Rodin and Balder are slower and thus more difficult to string combos with. Rosa can make up for her low defenses with her high damage and otherwise similar moveset, but she requires beating the game on Hard.
• Demonic Spiders: Demonic enemies in general (rather fittingly) tend to give you much less Witch Time if you dodge their attacks, often only enough for the first punch of a combo. If you're used to fighting angelic enemies for most of the game and throughout the entirety of the first Bayonetta, with enough Witch Time to finish off an attack string, the demons will absolutely blindside you.
• Difficulty Spike: En route to the gates of Inferno, appropriately enough. After a boss fight with the Insidious, Chapter VII introduces common demonic enemies, with new patterns and harder tells, as well as a rematch with the Masked Lumen. The chapter after has an ambush by a Golem, who's significantly tougher than in the first game.
• Disappointing Last Level: While the game definitely improves upon its predecessor in many ways, some feel the final level, more specifically, the final boss in the level, isn't anywhere near as memorable as Jubileus was in the first game. To put it in perspective, while the final boss of 2 displays more divine power than Jubileus, the climax of the battle takes place in the upper atmosphere while the climax of the Jubileus fight spanned the whole solar system. Additionally, the final boss is roughly the same size as Bayonetta, while Jubileus was the size of a skyscraper.
• Even Better Sequel: Many reviewers are hailing it as this, and even as one of the best games of the year. Some specific examples include better controls, boss fights that are even more awesome than the first game's, and removing the hated Press X to Not Die sequences.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Devil Trigger for Bayonetta's new Super Mode, because of Platinum Games' most famous pre-Platinum work.
  • Fans are also referring to the Umbran Armor as "Bayomecha".
  • It's of little surprise that some people prefer to refer to Loki as "Yugi", due to the fact he wears a golden upside-down pyramid around his neck and his weapons are (tarot) cards.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Salamandra, with its fast attacks and meaty damage, will allow you to rake in the combo points like mad. Granted, it doesn't have any Wicked Weaves and the range is a bit lacking, but the damage output makes up for that, and the range and damage are both bolstered with Umbran Climax anyway. Taken one step further, Salamandra's charge modifier, while unfamiliar and mechanically different from every other weapon's, lets the player perform a quick slice that effectively doubles the damage you've dealt before it — and in Infinite Climax difficulty, which strengthens charge modifier attacks, this is ludicrously effective.
  • The Punch-Punch-Hold Punch combo in the Umbran Armor will shred and stagger anything in the game that isn't a giant-size Beloved, and the combo points it provides are key to the halo-farming trick mentioned below.
  • The Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa accessory makes a return from the first game, and its still referred to by fans as one of the most useful accessories in the game (that doesn't disable scores, that is), allowing Bayonetta to conjure up a shielding glyph to block attacks and stagger enemies, even getting a Counter-Attack if used with exact timing (similar to Bat Within). Even better, the Hero of Hyrule costume allows you to have this ability without even needing to equip the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa, meaning you can still use two other accessories along with it!
  • This Halo farming trick, which, when done correctly, nets you 3 million halos in about 6-7 minutes (give or take).
  • In terms of characters, there's Rosa. While she takes about three times as much damage as other characters do, rendering powerful enemies capable of killing her in a couple of good hits from a full health bar, the four revolvers she wields, Unforgiven, rake in combo points like crazy with even the smallest of attacks, and destroy any enemy they hit, to the extent that boss life bars go down in about a few seconds and boss themes barely get any time to finish a complete loop, if at all. As you may imagine, getting Pure Platinum and Platinum ranks with her is a ridiculously easy feat.
  • The lollipops, while powerful in the first game, came with a heavily penalty on the player's score for using them. That feature was removed from Bayonetta 2, which means now you can use as many as you want with no repercussions. This is particularly devastating as their effects stack, so Bayonetta can use the Bloody Rose and the Yellow Moon to increase her attack and gain invulnerability, and then use a Purple Magic lollipop to give her instant access to her Umbran Climax and completely destroy any enemy for an easy Platinum Rank, even against the final boss! (They can't be used in the Witch Trials, however.)
• Genius Bonus: Baal in religion was referred to by Christians as 'Baal Zebub' and eventually Beelzebub. Beelzebub means "Lord of the Flies." Baal in this is a giant frog.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Enrapture and Malicious. Both have the same functions: hanging back from the fight and attacking you from afar when they aren't buffing their allies by enraging them like you've just taunted them. They can also trap Bayonetta in place to leave her open for attacks from their allies. Enrapture also can use its staff to drain Bayonetta's magic and when near death, will attempt a suicide attack on Bayonetta by latching on to her and self-destructing. Thankfully, they aren't too durable.
  • Accolades with shields are not particularly dangerous, but the method of taking them out efficiently and without an Umbran Climax, Torture Attack, or enemy weapon is not easily understood by most players. One Muspelheim challenge is a Single-Combo Challenge that involves a squad of these shielded Accolades, and it is quite likely that you will fail again and again from emptying the combo list before you can finally hit them.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Everything to do with Balder in the first game. Of particular note is Bayonetta's declaration that he is beyond salvation. She then proceeds to kill him, and in doing so, save him from Loptr's madness.
  • Gomorrah trying to kill Bayonetta at the beginning (only to hit Jeanne instead) can be harder to watch if you take the ending of Bayonetta 3 into account where he does it again. Only that time, he succeeds. Though Luka kills him before any more damage is done.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Rodin's area-of-effect attacks, shield mechanic, and high combo points per (slow) hit can make him difficult to compete against in verses that feature multiple weak enemies. While Rodin certainly can't compare to the other four characters' combo potential, he can quickly end the verse with a good-but-not-great combo score before his opponent can build up a better one. His playstyle of simply clearing the screen before his opponent has time to outperform him seems to come across as cheap, especially considering the more technical playstyles of other characters.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Bayonetta first meets the Masked Lumen during the game's prologue, she commends him for his desire to fight her immediately, lamenting that the last Sage she fought wouldn't stop talking for twenty minutes. Little does she know that the Masked Lumen is a younger, time-displaced version of said Sage, Father Balder.
  • Hideki Kamiya has expressed on more than one occasion that he would really like to develop a Star Fox game. Go back and play Chapter XVI while wearing the costume based on Fox McCloud and see what happens... It became even more Hilarious in Hindsight when Nintendo actually announced that PlatinumGames was developing Star Fox Zero.
  • Back in the first game, when visiting Rodin at the Gates of Hell bar, there's a chance he may say "no matter how much you ask, I'm not puttin' a chainsaw on your arm". The new "Salamandra" weapon in Bayonetta 2 are a pair of a chainsaws worn over Bayonetta's hands.
  • The Nintendo references in Bayonetta 2 (and added retroactively to the Wii U version of Bayonetta) were quite absurd; it's hard to imagine Bayonetta actually interacting with the family-friendly, E-to-T-rated denizens of the major Nintendo series. And then she went and did just that -- twice, in fact.
  • This piece of bonus artwork promoting the game's Nintendo content (a twisted parody of official artwork from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) is even more hilarious now that in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Link can attempt to ride Lynels - centaur-like monsters native to his series - and attack them while doing so (although compared to Bayonetta's ease of pulling this off with Acceptances and Accolades, Link's going to have a much tougher time with Lynels).
  • If you scan a Smash Bros. amiibo at the Gates of Hell, Rodin will mention Bayonetta's "little fight club" and asks her to let him tag along next time. Come June 2018, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is announced with Rodin being one of the first Assist Trophies to be shown off. Looks like he got his wish!
• I Knew It!: Quite a few people managed to guess that the Masked Lumen is a younger version of Balder.
• Inferred Holocaust: Look at the devastation that occurs to the cities during this game. In the prologue alone, multiple skyscrapers are destroyed in the middle of the day. Then half of Noatun is demolished in the angels' search for Loki. We saw from the first game that physical changes in Purgatorio actually affect the normal realm. The civilian death toll must be in the tens of thousands.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!:
  • Some fans consider the game's combat system to be a step back, depth-wise, from the original Bayonetta. Objectively, there are fewer movesets to master ^note Bayonetta has thirteen unique weapons if you count Fire and Lightning Durga separately, while Bayonetta 2 features nine unique weapons, the Master Sword and Arwing Guns as costume-specific reskins of existing weapons, and Shuraba and Scarborough Fair as returning weapons and some techniques, such as Witch Twist and Breakdance, now always use Love Is Blue instead of having weapon-specific effects. In particular, Kafka and Takemikazuchi are considered wasted weapons for their ineffectiveness in comboing and low damage per second, which actually gets worse on high difficulties. Meanwhile, the game's top weapons, Salamandra and Alruna, are derided for their simplicity and effectiveness, as players can achieve high damage and combo scores by simply using the charge modifier at any point in any combo. ^note  The game does, however, introduce some new comboing innovations in flexible Wicked Weaves, a stagger option in Witch Strike, Umbran Climax, and the Rakshasa weapon, which has speed, depth, and combo capabilities on par with Sai Fung from Bayonetta. The Chain Chomp has also been well-received for its diverse applications in combat and breaking the hack-and-slash trend of heavy weapons being done poorly.
  • Fans of the difficulty in Bayonetta almost unanimously view the challenges in Bayonetta 2 as inferior. 3rd Climax (the equivalent of Hard in the first game) does not swap out specific enemies and only increases their skill, while Infinite Climax still allows the player to use Witch Time. The Lost Chapter equivalent is also split up; rather than pitting the player against a long wave of enemies with no healing as Angel Slayer did in Bayonetta, the Witch Trials in Bayonetta 2 are split into five chapters that provide healing items, scaling with difficulty setting at the end of each verse.
  • Since items no longer carry a penalty to award calculations, and Umbran Climaxes can trivialize many Verses, Pure Platinum medals and awards are easier to obtain, and many fans feel that they lose value as a result. While you're still limited to buying 3 of each "minor" lollipop and 1 of each "major" lollipop, nothing stops you from creating item quantities that exceed these soft limits or collecting them as tomb drops or Muspelheim rewards, meaning that enough grinding makes the time, damage, and even combo quotas painfully easy to meet.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: While "sucks" is too strong a word, whenever there's a review of the game that doesn't demonize Bayonetta's hypersexual nature, they will denounce the fact that the game is basically a polished version of the first one; from story, to humor, to gameplay. Of course, while many reviewers will point this out, they will also argue that this fact isn't necessarily a bad thing.
• Les Yay:
  • Bayonetta/Jeanne again, to a much bigger degree than in the first game. The the two are living together, Bayonetta literally goes to Hell to save Jeanne's soul, and after rescuing her, she makes an offhand comment about waking Jeanne up with a kiss. The game also features a entry in the journal echos called "Taboo", which features a picture of Jeanne next to a set of text talking about "be with the one you love".
  • Hideki Kamiya made a poll on who's the best couple from games that he directed. Bayonetta/Jeanne is one of the choices, however Kamiya has stated he didn't mean it in a romantic way and simply as in a pair of people, a team.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Ironically, for all his power and difficulty in his boss fights, Rodin in Tag Climax is considered this by many fans due to his low mobility, sluggish attack speed, inability to dodge attacks and use Witch Time, and being just hard to use in general. He has very few positives, leading many to consider him very low-tier.
• Moral Event Horizon: Loptr crossed it when he killed Rosa, and he did it to convince Balder that Loki did it so he would kill him.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Bayonetta saying "You've been naughty!" if you manage to get a Pure Platinum medal.
• Narm: Alraune's dialogue, which consists entirely of Enochian, except for proper nouns. Nothing wrong with that on the surface, but Enochian is supposed to make things feel more serious and storied, and Alraune mentions Madama Butterfly repeatedly - peppering the English word 'Butterfly' into hammy, ominous dialogue in a quasi-mystical language just snaps one right out of the moment.
  • In the middle of that same scene, Alraune randomly starts dancing for no apparent reason, which only kills the mood even further.
• Polished Port: The Switch port features local Tag Climax matches and amiibo compatibility, the latter allowing you to unlock alternate costumes and rack up halos to buy out the shop's stock. And of course it's portable, albeit with some drops in framerate if in handheld mode but otherwise fully playable. Notably, since Tag Climax can be played in local wireless mode, it is possible to play Tag Climax in "vs CPU" mode without having to connect to the Internet.
• The Scrappy: Some fans view Loki as a Totally Radical Spotlight-Stealing Squad, and the Something Awful crowd in particular has nicknamed him "Poochie."
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Wii U Touchscreen battle controls are considered useless. The way it works as by using the touchscreen a player can tap on an enemy and Bayonetta will automatically attack the target. However, it puts Bayonetta in auto-fight mode, which isn't very fun, and the AI controlling Bayonetta isn't very good, meaning the controls are only usable (at best) on First Climax which is already easy enough that the touchscreen controls still seem superfluous.
  • Aerial battles are near-universally disliked among high-level players. They limit players to fighting in two dimensions and disable jumping and all combos and techniques that can only be performed in the air, thus forcing players to fight with less than half of their normal combat options. Special mentions go to the final boss battle, where the bulk of the fight takes place aerially, and to aerial Tag Climax verses, which will prevent Rodin from using his version of the After Burner Kick to patch up his mobility issues.
• Scrappy Weapon: Just like the first game, the ordinary-ass handguns Bayonetta briefly uses in the prologue can be unlocked by completing the story mode on any difficulty. And, also like the first game, they're just a worse version of the default weapons, meaning there's no reason to use them except as a Self-Imposed Challenge, as detailed below. The only reason they're not joke weapons is there's nothing particularly funny about them.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The "Purist Gun Run", in which a player will only use Love Is Blue, the first set of weapons automatically given to Bayonetta at the end of the Prologue chapter. There's also the "Handgun Run", in which a player will only use the Handguns, which are similar to Love Is Blue but weaker, and incapable of channeling the Umbran Climax. For players who really want a challenge, there's "Beyond ∞", in which the player wears the Gaze of Despair accessory through '∞ Climax' difficulty, basically taking the already Harder Than Hard enemies and putting them in Berserk mode (not to mention only leaving the player with a single usable accessory slot).
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Bayo 2 axes some of the unforgiving aspects of the first game. Items can now be used without jeopardizing the chapter ranking, Witch Time is generally easier to trigger, there are no instant-death QTE's, the endless boss rushes are gone, the portals are a lot less frustrating and there are less difficulty levels to choose from overall. The end result is an easier game than its predecessor, but certainly no less intense.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: High-score hunters will find Bayo 2 a greater challenge than its predecessor. There are much fewer single-Verse Chapters than before, there are many more Muspelheim challenges per Chapter than the Alfheim challenges of the first game (which means passing them will have a much greater impact on your score), Bullet Climax chews on your magic, and Umbran Climax trades infinite "Wicked Weaves on every swing" during boss fights for brief bouts of "Wicked Weaves on every swing, Infernal Weaves on finisher" activated on command.
• That One Boss:
  • Loptr in Chapter XVI might not be as impressive as Jubileus in the first game, but he is absolutely no slouch in the combat department. Blindingly quick, hard-hitting and can break up a combo on a whim by blocking a move, including Wicked Weaves. He has a lot of moves as well, most of which he gives very little warning of when he uses them. And then he transforms into Aesir: Even more attacks are added to his repertoire and he doesn't miss a beat after transforming. But that's OK, because you've got Balder by your side fighting with you, right? ...WRONG, because the second phase makes you fight him in the air all by yourself! It makes the ensuing ultra-Omne-body-rip-dropkick-of-fatal-death much more satisfying after all that hell!
  • The fight with the Masked Lumen at the end of Chapter 4. Yes, it's epic, yes it ends with a battle in the sky culminated with a boxing match between both fighters' familiars, and yes, it's about as difficult as the typical rival fight in a Spectacle Fighter.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Witch Trials. While the first couple aren't really that bad, they escalate very quickly, with the third trial making you face several Demonic Spiders (including one literal demon spider), and the fifth one forcing you to face duos of boss level characters one after another or even at the same time!
  • Finding the crows. There's a total of 20 of them, which count towards your Umbran Tears Collection Sidequest, but the fact they are such tiny sprites that fly away if you approach them too quickly can really make this a chore. However, its the only way to unlock the Climax Bracers.
  • Chapter XV's Muspelheim has the player fight a small number of Decorations and a Beloved without touching the ground, with only two small pillars to stand on at first. The Beloved will usually break the pillars soon after he spawns, forcing the player to alternate between using specific moves that increase air time or bounce off of him, and the Beloved can tank a lot of damage. The challenge can be cheesed slightly by getting enough magic off of the Decorations to use Umbran Climax on the Beloved, knocking him back and delaying the pillar-break, but it's not an obvious solution, and the Decorations can break the pillars too if the player is not careful enough.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Bayonetta's redesign◊ has gotten this from some people, citing that her short hair makes her look "old" and "like a mother." There are also many who don't like Jeanne with long hair. Fortunately for them, costumes from Bayonetta 1 are also available in-game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Just like in the first game, playing as Jeanne or Rosa makes no actual difference to the story. Play as Jeanne? Then you're fighting alongside another Jeanne and then Jeanne has to go to hell in order to save ... Jeanne. It could have been interesting to see a different story play out if Jeanne had survived and Bayonetta was instead trapped in hell. Or whatever story could have been formulated to make sense of Bayonetta's dead mother, Rosa, being in modern times for some reason.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The people roaming the NYC-esque city's streets look extremely realistic, compared to the named/important characters, all of whom look like 3D anime characters. Seeing characters like these walking amongst a crowd of creepily realistic people just don't look right.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Easily one of the Wii U's best-looking games, mixing bright colors with lots of flashy attacks and enormous battles, all while going at a near-constant 60FPS.
• The Woobie: Balder is turned one by this game with the reveal that he was good originally, and that he had to watch his wife die. He spends the game chasing after the wrong person, is forced back in time only to watch his wife die again, and even when he and Bayonetta defeat Loptr, Balder has to seal his spirit inside him to keep him from escaping, which causes him to become the monster that he was in the original game.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Loptr's Sparkly Poncho/Kite... thing, along with a metallic speedo. That outfit alone should have clued in Balder that the guy's as mad as a hatter.