Before Bayonetta was an ass-kicking witch rocking multiple pistols, she was Cereza, a young girl lost in the forest.
Or, at least, that is the premise of Nintendo’s latest installment. In Cereza and the Lost Demon, the prequel to the bestselling games, Cereza is a young girl only just starting out on her journey. Raised as a pariah thanks to her heritage (half-light and half-dark witch, in case you were wondering), she’s on a quest to free her mother from prison, where she’s languished for years.
The only problem is that Cereza isn’t hugely magically adept and she’s scared of her own shadow to boot. Regardless, she ventures into the forbidden Avalon Forest and, in trying to protect herself from the faeries that live there, she summons a demon into her stuffed cat, Cheshire.
It’s gorgeous: think Harry Potter crossed with Studio Ghibli
From there, the adventure unfolds. Together, Cereza and Cheshire must track down four Elemental Cores and fight their way through hordes of faeries to uncover the mystery at the heart of the forest and upskill enough to break Cereza’s mother from jail.
Fans coming to this game expecting lashings of the original Bayonetta games – that is, nudity, violence, and incredible attack combos – will be disappointed. But that’s not the point of Cereza and the Lost Demon: there’s more than enough to love here, but it’s an entirely different beast from its predecessors.
One thing that deserves special mention is the brand new – at least, to me – way of controlling the characters. The player controls Cereza with one side of the Switch’s controls, using the left joystick and buttons, and Cheshire with the other.
They can move and act independently, which requires a level of dexterity usually best left to piano players, but it’s a novel way of shaking up the gameplay – as is the way that Cheshire can snap back into his plush toy form and be carried around by Cereza in ‘Hug Mode’.
The two also have different strengths that complement each other perfectly as the game progresses. Cheshire is the bruiser of the two, with powerful attacks capable of slashing through faeries and obstacles; Cereza, on the other hand, plays more of a support role, unable to do much more than hold enemies in place with strangling vines while Cheshire pounds them.
This is all very fun – and Cheshire’s skillset (and ability to access new areas) expands as the pair encounter more Elemental Cores – but don’t expect the combat to develop much more beyond that. Complicated this is not; what there is instead is cutely designed skill trees where you can unlock special attacks and recharge the pair’s abilities faster.
The forest is a fairly small place to explore, but with hidden areas that become accessible as the pair level up. Cereza and the Lost Demon also makes the welcome decision of adding in mini-levels, named Tír na nÓgs after Irish folklore, for the pair to solve. These can take the form of anything from Zeldaesque dungeons to straightforward combat scenarios and help add another layer to the game.
The other thing that deserves a mention here is the design. In a word, it’s gorgeous: think Harry Potter crossed with Studio Ghibli. Cereza is decked out in witchy shades of black; Avalon Forest is gorgeously rendered in shades of blue and green; we get to traverse everything from lakes to treetops and all of them feel unique.
This dreamy fairytale style suits the gameplay: in fact, the story unfolds via a series of picture-book-style cut scenes, and there’s even a narrator, who voices all the characters bar Cereza with gusto. Sadly, Cereza herself sounds like one of the Railway Children – a tad too posh to be credible or, at times, likeable - a far cry from the confident Bayonetta of later games.
However, Cereza and the Lost Demon’s heart is very much in the right place: this is a sugar-sweet, wholesome slice of fun that hits all the right notes and acts as a great standalone in its own right.
And will the ending leave a bit of a lump in your throat? You bet.
