Just finished a Pure Platinum score run on 101% Hard. Figured I'd post my final thoughts on the game:
+ Very unique gameplay. It feels a bit like Pikmin + DMC + a fighting game. The Pikmin and DMC influence should be obvious, but the fighting game part comes into play when you go to switch forms. In order to use Wonder Red, you have to draw a circle with the right analog stick, in order to use Wonder Blue you have to draw a line, Wonder White requires a shoryuken motion, etc. It's unusual for an action game but it works pretty well, for the most part.
+ Lots of enemy variety with well designed move sets.
+ Very good level design and pacing. There are a couple of awkward segments that I don't care for, but the game never starts to feel too repetitive.
+ The difficulty settings are the usual action game fare. On Hard, every battle is remixed to include more dangerous enemies and/or more difficult enemy combinations. Most of the battles in 101% Hard are the same as Hard, but you no longer have 'bullet time' while drawing shapes. I also think your attacks use more energy on the higher difficulties, because you can run out pretty quickly if you keep using strong attacks and cancels.
+ Very good scoring system - much better than Bayonetta's. Bayonetta's would have been great if it weren't for the fact that enemy weapons gave you retarded amounts of points and multiplier. You'd always want to pick out the enemy that has the best weapon (usually the staff or bow), torture attack him for the guaranteed drop, then use it to kill the rest of the enemies in the verse. Rinse and repeat forever. Thankfully they fixed that issue in TW101. Some items are still very good, but for the most part you just rely on your character's moveset to rack up huge scores. The only downside is that it's fairly simple to optimize your score, but at least it's always fun. Especially when something like
this happens.
+ There are a couple of Punch-Out segments that I really enjoyed.
+ Good art and graphics.
= The story. It's not bad (nor is it good), but there's WAY too much of it. Cutscenes are frequent and they're almost never short. At least most of the cutscenes are skippable. I'm actually tempted to list this as a negative, since there are a few segments where enormous character portraits and text boxes obscure the action on screen, making it really hard to see what the hell is happening (009-C being the prime example).
= QTEs. There's a ton of them, but it's practically impossible to fail any of them since they give you a ton of time to complete the motions. It's probably the best implementation of QTEs to date, honestly.
= I don't care for most of the boss fights. They're not bad at all, but I never look forward to replaying them. The stages are far more enjoyable to me.
= Kahkoo-Regahs. These are basically the Alfheims from Bayonetta. Most of these missions give you some type of restriction to deal with (eg. you'll have a small team, which makes dodging, blocking, and attacking difficult or outright impossible; you can only use a certain number of transformations; you can only use items, etc.) I didn't like being forced to do these gimmick missions in Bayonetta every time I replayed a chapter for ranking or score, and I don't like it here. Ninja Gaiden does these 'optional' challenge portals right by placing you in an arena and sending a huge gauntlet of enemies after you. No silly restrictions or gimmicks to deal with, just a bunch of enemies to cut down.
= Unite Big + Immorta is laughably overpowered. I don't know if I'd consider it a negative, though, since it lets you breeze right through the shitty parts of the game without much trouble.
- Load times can be long and annoying, especially if you're retrying a Kahkoo-Regah. For some reason, selecting 'continue' after failing one counts as a game over, so you always have to reload the stage and re-enter the portal. This means you have to sit through 1+ minute of loading every time you want to retry the mission. I don't know why they did this since failing the Alfheims in Bayonetta never counted against you. You could restart them almost instantly.
- Awful shmup and vehicle stages. Remember the ones from Bayonetta that nobody liked? Well, they're worse and more frequent in this game.
- Waaaaaaaay too many collectibles. There are probably 300+ in total and you have to find every single one if you want to unlock the hidden characters.
- When you first begin the game, you are way too weak. There is absolutely no reason to force the player to buy basic functions like dodging and blocking from the shop, and I'd argue that the 'witch time' custom block should be a basic feature as well. This also ties into my collectibles complaint, because the more Wonderful Ones you find, the more room you have to attack, dodge, use powerful attacks, etc. And you also have to do some grinding, since each guy in your team can be leveled up four times. It's nothing but needless padding.
- Sometimes the overlapping mechanics can be frustrating to deal with. For example, in order to recruit civilians into your group, you have to draw a circle around them. If there's a battle in the middle of the city and you want to draw a huge circle for a powered-up Wonder Red, you might not be able to complete it because civilians take priority. Or when an enemy is stunned, if you try to draw a circle to switch to Wonder Red and it goes through the enemy, your minions will try to pick him up for a throw - a move that is borderline worthless. Another worthless move is the multi-rocket launcher version of Wonder Green that's drawn with a square, which isn't too far off from Wonder Red's circle. Nobody will ever want to use Green for that, so all it does is get in the way when you're trying to switch to something that's actually useful. All of that can be really annoying.
Overall, it's an excellent but heavily flawed game. I think I'd put it right at the top of the action game B-tier, just below Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden II, DMC3, God Hand, and Bayonetta, but above everything else.
