With a third installment now out for the world, Bayonetta has cemented itself as a titan of a franchise. With a mix of flashy combat, mechanics with more depth than they can see, a ridiculously campy nature, and one hell of a femme fatale, it’s no wonder that people have fallen in love with the title.
Bayonetta has a class of its own, though, as it’s in a bit of a niche genre, so there’s not all too much exactly like it. But while nothing is exactly like it, there are plenty of games that use those aspects Bayonetta put together so great, so no matter what made you a fan of Bayonetta, there should be a game for you somewhere on this list!
10 Celeste
Female characters in games deserve to be better, as while more are being well-made, they’re still prone to getting the short end of the stick in terms of writing, which is why Bayonetta feels like such a breath of fresh air. And if you want a game that gives so much depth to the main heroine, you can do a lot worse than Celeste. Celeste follows Madeline, a young woman dealing with a lot of issues, as she attempts to climb Celeste Mountain and overcome herself.
The game itself takes the form of a 2D platformer and a tough-as-nails one at that, offering brutal yet fair challenges to platform through as you ascend the mountain. While the game is fantastic for just how good the controls and level design are, the star of the show is Madeline, as she is so well-written. We get to see a candid version of what it’s like to live with mental health struggles while also getting plenty of her fun side with just how stubborn and snarky she can be. If you enjoy Bayo’s sass, you’re bound to love Maddie.
9 Hades
It can be hard to find action games that meet the level of pure energy that Bayonetta does, with so many being either basic or very restrictive in order to have their scripted action rather than letting the player create their own action. But luckily, that’s just the experience Supergiant Games delivered with Hades. Hades is a top-down dungeon crawler roguelike as you follow Zagreus, son of Hades, trying to break out of the Greek Underworld.
The game offers heavy action and can be tough as nails to get through for most of it, asking for mastery of the movement, weapons, casts, and enemies in order to get by, making for heart-pounding combat. But the true shining point is the story it tells as Hades offers an interesting look into Greek Mythology. You get to know characters who will remember you between runs and whose stories you can work on over the course of several runs, creating a very dynamic narrative experience.
8 God Hand
As said before, Bayonetta is in a class of its own, being part of a rather small sub-genre known as spectacle fighters, third-person games that focus on the spectacle and beauty of taking out enemies above all else. And within this limited space, God Hand is the nichest in an already niche genre. God Hand sees the player gifted with the power of two arms known as the god hands in order to stop a demon from being resurrected in this strange mix of a western and samurai story.
The game is odd in other ways, though, such as gameplay -- giving an odd experience with the controls and camera in combat. But perhaps the most fascinating part of it is its approach to combos and special moves. Combo potential and learning the move set is important for a spectacle fighter, and God Hand goes so much further, allowing the player to customize every single attack with different ones, creating their own way to play and their own combos to unleash on foes. If you wish you could do even more in games like Bayonetta, God Hand may be the game for you.
7 Furi
No matter what genre you’re playing, boss fights always manage to be the most memorable parts of so many games. They test the player's skill and knowledge while just being a grand spectacle. They’re the best part so often, so Furi decided to simply cut the middleman and have only boss fights. Furi sees you taking control of a strange swordsman held prisoner in a strange facility above a planet, having to kill their various jailors in order to free themselves.
As said before, Furi is all boss fights, as the game offers ten tough-as-nails opponents to face off against, each with unique challenges and set pieces. The game gives you a complex set of tools to take the foes -- a sword and a simple gun, each with various ways to make use of them. They also have a unique parrying system, as you’ll go between dealing with larger bullet patterns, attacks, and close-range melee combat. And with how difficult they are, honing your skills enough to take one down is a rush unlike any other.
6 No More Heroes
It’s honestly strange that spectacle fighters always seem to lean into comedy despite being a rather open genre. All these games lean into silliness and absurd jokes, such as Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and others. And No More Heroes leans into that harder than any other. This game follows Travis Touchdown, an anime, and video game nerd, as he wins a laser katana in an online auction. After killing a contract killer, he finds himself as part of an assassin association and is forced into fighting other assassins.
The game actually makes use of motion controls for its main combat to determine high and low strikes, deal finishers, and recharge your laser sword -- making for a fast-paced combat experience that makes you think a mile a minute. But while combat is fun, No More Heroes earned its fame more so through its writing. The game is full of strange characters with plenty of witty dialogue, led by Travis, who is just the perfect mix of cocky badass and an absolute loser. The game is a wild ride from start to finish that Bayonetta fans are sure to love.
5 Asura’s Wrath
Bayonetta is a game that leans into its campiness and silliness to create a lot of its fun personality, a beloved part of the series. But, there’s campiness, and then there’s ridiculousness… And then, way further than that, there’s Asura’s Wrath. Easily one of the most over-the-top games of all time. Asura’s Wrath follows the main character of Asura as he hunts down and kills the demigods who have betrayed him.
Asura is less of a game at parts and more so an interactive movie, as you can only ever do quick-time events in boss fights. The actual gameplay is limited, but this isn’t bad, as it allows these fights to be as crazy as the director wants. And, well, crazy doesn’t begin to describe it as just in the first fight, you fight a giant man and launch him into space, where he becomes the size of the planet. He then tries to crush you with his finger, which you catch. You punch it to the point where all of your arms break and cause the planet-sized God to explode. If that doesn’t say what kind of experience this is, we don’t know what does.
4 Catherine
Let’s be honest with ourselves, while Bayonetta is a finely designed gem in terms of gameplay, the female appeal is why it’s gotten so popular. Bayonetta is a game that knows the target audience and leans into it with pride, using it to build up a personality and a story, something it shares with a smaller game, Catherine. Catherine follows Vincent, a young man haunted by strange nightmares as he is torn between his long-time girlfriend, Katherine, and a strange new woman, Catherine.
Catherine is a game all about female appeal, diving deep into the topic for a strange psychological story. Catherine is a mix of a puzzle game as you deal with nightmares and try to survive your sleep and a social simulator as you make hard choices about your relationships. Catherine uses this to discuss what love truly means, how it can be seen as just an object, the nature of sexuality, and plenty of other hard topics. It forces the player to confront their own opinions on these matters. Catherine certainly won’t be a boring experience for those who want another game that uses its female appeal for something meaningful.
3 Metal Gear Rising
For games like Bayonetta, you can’t do worse than something straight from the same creators, Metal Gear Rising. Metal Gear Rising was a collaboration between Platinum Games and Kojima Studios to make a more action-based spinoff to the main series. The game follows Raiden, a character from MGS 2 and 4, now as a cyborg ninja going on his own crusade against a group known as Desperado, trying to plunge the world into war once more.
While somewhat similar to Bayonetta in some ways, Metal Gear Rising sometimes feels very different. It switches out the slower flashy combos for pure aggressive sword fighting as you string together any hits, only pausing for a moment to parry and eventually slice them in half to tear out a spine for healing. Combine this new brand of beat ‘em up combat with a surprisingly interesting story and way too much campiness, and you have an utterly unforgettable experience.
2 Ultrakill
Part of what makes Bayonetta so great is how much skill it requires from the player at higher difficulty, forcing them to master the game’s complex mechanics to survive. It’s a sense of achievement and skill that’s hard to match. And for those players who have perfected Bayonetta and want a new game to conquer, Ultrakill is asking for it. Ultrakill is an FPS that sees you control the robot V1 with one simple goal it explains as so: “Mankind is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full.”
Aside from the excellent level of design, extremely creative world-building, excellently told stories through the environments, and sheer love for the FPS genre, Ultrakill excels in everything. While the main levels won’t require it all too much aside from understanding your weapons, in order to perfect rank or reach high levels in the waves mode, players are expected to dig into the game’s deeper mechanics. Ultrakill has a high skill ceiling with coin techniques, movement tech galore, enemy quirks, and so much more to master to reach the highest level of play, and it is such a satisfying grind.
1 Devil May Cry
Topping the list is a game series that is practically Bayonetta’s grandfather, the Titan of spectacle fighters: Devil May Cry. It was the first in style, and it continued to improve everything with entries. It was the start of Platinum Games and was Bayonetta’s creator, Hideki Kamiya’s, directorial debut. The games follow Dante, a demon hunter, as you have to deal with a demon invasion of Earth, and from there, things only get more wild as Dante is pulled deep into this strange conflict.
Although the older games in the series may be clunky by today’s standards, they laid the groundwork for the style meter and the combat for its future titles. Although sometimes rocky, the games would continue to improve by adding more complexity to the combat, more spectacle, and embracing the goofiness of the games. The newest games are easily some of the best spectacle fighters there are, easily rivaling Bayonetta. They offer incredibly refined combat, a fascinating story, and a buttload of personality.