Having played the game for a while found it to be an enjoyable beat em up. Its nice that there is an actual story mode too where you meet all of the crazy characters in the game. Lots of voice work too and is nice that the Japanese version has all the settings for both English and Japanese which includes the text and voice in 3 options. Voice / Subtitles / Menus.
The missions and what not are varied from what Ive seen so far and not too difficult, but some you will get cheap shotted on occasion.
With the combat, blocking does become important, so its good to remember that you can block and do dodge roll. Its fairly simple too with a weak (Square) and strong attack (Triangle). Then you have your special attack a weak and strong version which can be performed by holding down the R2 button and using either square or triangle. You can pop enemies into the air and then perform a tekken-ish type of air juggle. While caught up in that opponents cant break out of it apparently so its a lot of free hits if you can pull one off.
One of the more unique game modes for MP, though I just played against the bots is the simple 4 vs 4 american football type of game. I can see it being something enjoyable for groups of friends who want to have a bit more of an objective than totally kicking the crap out of each other. Would have been nicer though if the arena had a bit more interesting features to it. Such as traps, jump pads etc. Though for the most part its quite amusing and can lead to some pretty crazy fights over the ball.
The goals in that mode stay locked unless one of the teams has possession of the ball. With the ball in hand a meter starts to fill up. Once full the goal gate will open allowing for scoring by entering the goal zone or by successfully performing a special shot with the ball.
Thats about it for thoughts on the game for now. Overall am pretty happy, though just wish that the price of the game itself had not been so high. Since this really I think would garner more attention / impulse purchases if it was in the 5500 range tops.
Also Bayonetta is pretty badass, though her execution move takes a bit too much time.