Bayonetta

My massive notes for a general run

Route & Info: This is mainly for a New Game Normal Run.

Obviously, take the quickest possible route through levels, getting Kilgore, Durga and the whip.

Italic Text is for New Game+ runs but probably isn’t that useful.

I suggest you read all the text for an idea of the run. If you have any suggestions, fixes and other gumph, please tell me.

Weapons, Accessories, Items and Suggestions - New Game Only

Durga – takes 15 seconds or so to get, is used in most fights afterwards.

Whip – A good item, worth getting for chapter 8 and harmonies and so on. Lovingly convinced by sshplur and psychochild.

Odette – I don’t think I need these. Panther is faster and fire claws give lava immunity.

Weapons - Pretty much the entire time I've played, I have used Sword/Fire Claws and Whip/Kilgore when I have the choice with Sword/Claws being used for a majority of fighting and whip/kilgore being swapped to when needed.

Spending Halos – Stiletto (20k?), Air Dodge (20k), Crow and Bat Within (available after Chapter 6) and Moon when available. Red lollies will be a wise purchase, especially for bosses. Dark rosary beads are great, but unsure if faster for the entire run. I definitely have it equipped some times though. Gaze will possibly make bosses faster. Should have more than enough money for these if you’re not getting hit.

Crow Within – As of right now, I don’t know if this is necessary, but I’m sure you will use it for skips at some point.

Tetsuzanko – Some people love this move for the instant wicked weave. Worth getting for Sapientia. Can easily kill him in one round of his final phase with this. Also helpful for finishing off Jeanne and Balder

Angel Attack – Does not count toward time gained. Trade all points for halos until you need no more. After that, you should aim to get 30-50 points every round for a Red Lolly. Get a Moon Pearl for chapter 14. -> Idea from Psychochild.

Moon Pearls – If you have plenty of left over money, buying all of these at the shop can make parts of the game slightly quicker and easier. Especially for chapter 14

Witch Hearts - I would suggest these for a single segment.

Kilgore – ESSENTIAL for the Kilgore glitch.

Angel Arms – Staffs for groups, Bows for big enemies, Grace claws for Glory early, then use them for next set of enemies later on. Ardour sword for following enemies too.

PANTHER EVERYWHERE ZOOOOOOOOOOOM NNNYYEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOMMMMM. before Panther, you should stiletto as much as possible.

Combo It may be necessary to keep up your combo as much as possible early on to get enough halos. This depends on how much time you lose (which I think you’ll lose time if you don’t) and how many halos you need. Taunting all bosses at the right times to help chain combo points is essential

Pre-Game

Change camera speed and if possible, un-invert rocket/gun controls for preference~

Next to each chapter, is a minimum target.

Prologue - 3:31 - 3:25

Aim: Get a Pure platinum for halo bonus.

Verse 1 - Just kill enemies here really. PPPKP~K for super punish.

Verse 2 – Use all magic to torture. 3 Charges = 3 tortures = done. Taunting best.

Chapter 1 - 8:16 - 6:10

Need – 20k by Gates of Hell for Stiletto. Onyx roses aren't particularly good, so you may as well run around th LP. Verse 1 - Sprint to Key room, pick up key and skip enemies. PKP the door and the chest.

Verse 2 - Water gap can be jumped with Panther. Break door and go up. Run down hallway, buy stiletto.

Verse 4 - Fight at fountain. Get a staff and a trumpet dropped for beloved. Use Torture on affinities where possible.

Beloved – One staff spin, a trumpet shot and a combo will kill him if attacking the jewel thing on his back. Pick up the axe

Verse 6 - Throw the axe carefully so that it breaks the door but doesn't hit any angels so you get to keep it. On a new game run, this is a very easy pure platinum for easy halos. Perhaps do it as bayo likes to not hit the door here.

Verse 7 - Fortitudo – Don’t run to the other witches on the bridge. Shoot and punch the boss in witch time. Reflecting with Moon will help damage

Verse 8 -Beloved at Bridge – The axe should kill it and it'll throw you the earliest it can. PKP with sword owns it. For Phase two kill as fast as you can. No real fast way.

Chapter 2 - 9:30 - 7:30~

Verse 1 - Jeanne - ON PS3 IT’S POSSIBLE TO HIT HER WITH WICKED WEAVES AT THE START DUE TO THE LOAD TIME. Unfortunately, this is very hard to reliably time due to variance between attempts. Get close and attack. PPPKP is very effective, almost a guaranteed hit. In Witch Time, PPKKK does most damage (maybe). I've found the fastest way for this is to do PPPKP -> PPKKK and repeat. two of those should kill her. It's a bit luck reliant, but amazingly most consistent Moon counter attacks give a lot of witch time, use accordingly.

Verse 2 – Skippable but torture a Staff wielder grab the staff then skip. Use Dears+Decorations for really fast magic.

Verse 3 – Use spin kick to deal max damage at the start. First affinity always drops Bow, so save torture for the others to make killing easier. Make sure you have a bow for a beloved. Torture second bow wielder. Kill everything normally. Torture last Tuba. Use second bow to kill everything here and grab tuba for next fight.

Verse 4 – Dodge tram, Tuba has three shots and will one hit kill each wheel.

Verse 7 – Courtyard. Fight the wheels. Get LP for sword. Obv use Axe on second beloved.

Verse 9 – Torture first Affinity, spin kick the other. You can stiletto accross this gap from the floor. You can Panther jump across without needing to use the bridge.

Verse 10 – Just kill the boss and don’t screw up the QTE. Taunting boss and comboing it gives big halo rewards. Stick on the right side as it's much easier to kill from here.

Chapter 3 - 8:03 - 6:29

Verse 1 – Not sure about this. Shoot them, use angel arms, witch time and torture attacks to kill quickly~ Consider magic flutes here

Verse 3 – Run a lot.

Verse 4 – Kill a dog. I don't know the fastest way to kill this first dog on normal. PPPKP -> (air) PPPKKK works quite well.

Verse 6 – Run and remember to do the QTE.

Vardinator's Skip This skip also partly works without panther and does save time. "There was another trick in The Burning Ground, as well. During the Witch-Walking segment after you surf across the magma with that angel, go to the right wall. When you come to the point in which the wall explodes, Panther-jump over the gap. You should overshoot it, and then a Super-Mario-Galaxy-gravity effect will take hold and you'll be swung around straight to the clock tower, if only a few meters off. Definitely faster than running through that section normally."

Verse 7 – Kill two dogs.

Verse 8 – Completely skippable. Run past them all. You can start stilettoing safely at the half wall break.

COURTESY OF VARDINATOR @ SDA

“Well, I found a Panther Within related trick in The Burning Ground for an IL or NG+ run. Basically, as the Panther, if you jump and then dodge out, you get this huge speed boost which is great for clearing gaps. Like, for example, the broken bridge. Normally, you'd have to enter Paradiso to get the hour glass to repair the bridge. However, it's possible to jump across. This is even more effective when combined with Crow Within.”

This skip works and is quite easy to time. Brilliant skip, want to see more of these!

Verse 9 – (Whip LP is here) Just kill these enemies.

Verse 12 – Run right across the bridge, ignore enemies then do the QTE. You can stilletto the second bit but it doesn't seem to matter.

Chapter 4 - 5:11

Verse 1 – Fortitudo:

I’m really not sure how to do this one quickly. You can use witch time and knock fireballs back~. An easy boss, but remember to tap shoot to do more damage. Phase 2 is simple. When he’s sitting in the middle of the stage, you can beat him safely. You may have a Moon by now(?!), if so, reflect all his fireballs with that.

Fire Durga or Odette will be no worries about lava. Use big glowing deadly attacks and kill him and remember to reflect fireballs with moon.

Notes~ Try to stay on the bridge for as long as possible. Pretty sure grabbing isn't really worth it. Possibly is to do it at the last second. When the boss starts destroying everything with fire for the first time, the lava doesn't hurt, so just wait around to do the jumping. You can do some chip damage before the big grab, but I don't think it's worth it. For Phase 2, PPPPP into the Jewel can easily just be spammed for an easy win.

Chapter 5 - 12:04

This level is really freaking hard. Get the Durga claws asap.

Verse 1 – Skip~

Verse 2 – Kill Grace. Pick up the dropped claws and kill the remaining Glory with the K move.

Verse 4 – I think this is skippable aside from the Fairness/Fearless. Kill them the normal way.

Verse 5 – Avoid the floating heads. Kill the Grace and Glory in the same way as earlier (or a faster way if I have one) then kill the harmonies. The one on the left is the fire one. Don’t use Torture. The LP is here somewhere…

Verse 6 – Kill the two Ardours. Take the sword. One always drops.

Verse 7 – Skippable run and jump over the fire/magic rune thingies.

Verse 9 – Another G&G Fight. Both claws can drop here. It might be worth killing the Blue one first, then dealing damage to the fire one and using those claws for Inspired.

Verse 11 – Climb the ramp. Get LP halfway up. I suggest against jumping over the wind serpents in panther as this can go horribly wrong, it’s much easier/safer to just dodge them. Kill the inspired with Grace's claws.

Verse 12 – Run and jump over the fence to skip.

Verse 14 – Don’t use panther for this first part as you’ll die as you miss a jump. Someone told me you shouldn’t jump off the third platform, but instead wait for a prompt. I’m not sure how this could be faster, but I will investigate. Kill Jeanne. Remember PPPKP->PPKKK. This time, you can own her face with your awesome weapons (firebombs).

Between chapters – Buy the new techniques: Bat and Crow within if needed.

Chapter 6 - 8:28

Verse 1 – Kill the two Ardours. Make sure you get a heavy sword.

Verse 2 – Kill two inspired. Shoot them and run to where the first one lands. Use the heavy sword to deal massive damage. Repeat with the second one, remembering to use the K move for silly damage.

Verse 3 – Dodge spikes and use panther for maximum speed. Get heavy sword for G&G

Verse 5 – G&G again. Might be able to save claws for Beloved, unsure. You can catch the first two G&Gs with a sweep kick and bomb them to kill them.

Verse 6 – skip this bit.

Verse 7 - Run through the tunnel.

Verse 8 – Run straight to the beloved to despawn the fairness/fearless. - Psychochild

Verse 9 – Kill/Chase. Nothing special here so far. Be warned that running this section in Panther without getting hit can be quite annoying so you'll need to work on this. Kill the joy before she splits (should be easy)

Chapter 7 - 4:56

Verse 1 – Temperantia

Phase 1 – Kill this thing. Fire bombs don't seem very effective. I don't know what hurts this the most. Throwing the trams does little damage and takes longer.

Phase 2 – Evil Rosary does good damage to the head here but might be less than witch timing. When the head spins, dodge the laser for witch time once, then when that is done, run into the mouth to get the stick twirling event. This will knock the head down, leaving to have the crap kicked out of it.

Chapter 8 - 8:30

Verse 1 – Use the whip to pull enemies above the road, then jump on them for an insta kill. Get away from the Ardour. He will block your whip which will drop you to the road. Fortunately, he will despawn randomly. <-Psychochild. Try and have some magic for Verse 2~.

Verse 2 – Kill the Joys. Standing on the side of the road means you won’t get hit by cars. Sometimes cars interrupt you, or knock Joys around so this is preference. Sometimes the cars are horrible. Stand on the lines and you should be ok.

Verse 3 & 4 – HOLD FORWARDS. TRY NOT TO GET HIT Tap two or three shoot buttons if you need to shoot anything. Don’t ever go on the left side of the road as if you hit a car, it is death time.

Verse 5 – Kill 3 Braves. Rosary is very effective here. If no rosary, then PKP or Jumping bombs are good too.

Chapter 9 - 7:59

Before activating verse 1, run to the far right, break the wall and chest for Kilgore fragment 1. Use PPPPK to combo break.

Verse 1 – Kill the enemy with the key, pick it up and use it.

Verse 3 – Kill the enemy with the, key pick it up and use it.

Verse 4 – Run away. Use panther. Simply jump to not get hit by the light. Actually not sure if this hurts you, but dodging isn't necessary.

Verse 5 – Start with the chest once clockwise from the one below the stairs. For Grace and Glory, simply dodge straight after you break their chest. This should give witch time and allow you to Bomb combo them and one hit KO. The fearless has a decent fight spot. Unsure if bombs are faster on these at the moment. Torture would be nice. You could try killing all enemies at once here.

Verse 6 – KINSHIPS! KINSHIPS! KINSHIPS! You can use Dark Rosary (if you have it) as it kills all missiles for you. Jump on the moving ship first and enjoy killing the best bosses ever. PPPKKK with Durga bombs on feet will kill these very easily. Once you're on the ship, they don't usually hit you.

Verse 8 – Dodge tentacles and skip the joys. You fun hater you.

Verse 10 – Jump across the broken bridge, break the wall to get the Chest. Use PPPPK to combo break. There is a Gates of hell before here and after getting the LP, go get Kilgore and enjoy the rocket fest. Set Durga claws to hands and fire and kill Golem with Jump, PPP with the final attack charging into a bomb right into the core. This may not be the fastest way, but it's the easiest. When the core is broken, you can try kilgoring to bombing normally to finish it off. You can fully charge the beam sword here and one shot the armour, leaving the core free to be smashed. Unsure if faster <-n472a

Chapter 10 - 6:43 - 5:03

Verse 1 - Kill 3 Joys. Kilgore combo will kill a joy.

Verse 2 - Pretty sure you can sprint to the next bridge and avoid this.

Verse 4 - Kill the Harmonies. These are easy to kill with a single fire bomb, jumping and Air-PPPK Charge should kill them all in around a second.

Verse 5 - Fortitudo and Temperantia fight. Kilgore them. n472a has a video on him one shotting the Fortitudo with Rodin's trumpet shot~

Verse 6 - Enchants inside spinning building. You can break the door and skip this. If you jump off the building, you will respawn at the right place.

Verse 7 - 3 Kinships. skip them =(

Verse 8 - Gracious and Glorious fight. Kill Dark one first and save the claws.

Verse 11 - Spin kill the first brave. Kill the rest and the Inspired enemies quickly. Bomb the Braves, PKP the Inspireds with a sword. If you die while the water cutscene is rising, the game will crash. Useless fact

Chapter 11 - 5:12

Verse 1: Iustitia

If your rock gets smashed, I’m 99% sure falling and countering will get you back to a rock faster to continue the fight. You can dodge the spinning laser things on the neck by just double tapping dodge to go straight into Panther (teency bit faster). Just Kilgore glitch him. If you die, the boss will be reset to a very easy rotation to kill it. Could see if you can exploit this.

Chapter 12 - 4:53

Verse 1 - Run through room to skip enemies. <- sshplur reminded me of this.

Verse 2 - 2nd room, falling off the crates and jumping back up to the ramp. G&G fight here. Use instant kill move if possible.

Verse 5 – Run through room again to skip enemies. <-Sshplur reminded me again.

Verse 8 - Jeanne fight. Remember the Motorbike phase. Should be easier now. Bombs are good, kilgore if you get witch time.

Verse 9 – Fight an affinity. Forgotten what this is too.

Verse 10 – Put the harm in Harmony. Run to the harmonies and fight them rather than moving to the top as all you have to do is kill them and the verse/level is over.

Chapter 13 - 5:14

Verse 1: Sapientia. Try and hide your boner from this awesome boss from nearby people.

Phase 1: The faces on the legs die best to (air) PPPK Bombs.

Phase 2: Don't really know how to do this well. Kilgore seems good.

Phase 3: You should be able to kill this in one round with Kilgore, Witch Time and Tetsuzanko. You even get to dodge the lasers for magic.

Chapter 14 - 11:15

Verse 1 & 2 – Rocket time. Save Magic for bosses and the Commando Beloveds. There is an accessory that helps you spam them. Use that. Eternal something. The enemies appear in the same pattern everytime, so just memorise it. You shouldn't ever need to dodge here. Should be able to do both bosses in two phases.

Verse 3 – Difficult Jeanne. Same sort of tactics as before. 99% sure catching and throwing the rocket is slower.

Chapter 15 - 11:40

Verse 1 - DON’T hit the statues and skip this.

Verse 2 – Kill Decorations/Dears/Ardors

Verse 3 – Kill Braves

Verse 4 – If it works, remember the awesome one hit charge for Gracious and Glorious

Verse 5 - 2 Joys

Verse 6 – Enchants. Grace and Glory

Verse 7 - Affinities

Verse 8 – Temperantia fight on the guns. Use your best button mashing to kill him faster and perma-stumble him.

Verse 10 – Iustitia rematch. Do what you did before.

Verse 11 - In basement near Jubileus statue. DON’T GO HERE or you’ll trigger it.

Verse 13 - Before this you will easily be able to panther across the floating times. Golem fight. Use the same method as before.

Verse 14 - Sapientia fight and QTE (run with panther form). Panthering to the left of his face and kilgoring seems to make the fight very simple.

Chapter 16 - 3:13

Verse 1: Father Balder. Remember watching this cutscene? It took forever. What were they thinking?

Phases: Balder is always the same. The optimal way to do this is to Moon counter an attack then Kilgore him during witch time. That is 100% the fastest way to do it. Bombs kinda work as well but only use it if he doesn't want to attack. You can kill him with no cutscenes too!

Epilogue - 13:02

Verse 1-3 Motorcycle ride up the rocket. Holding forward makes you faster again.

Verse 4 – I think you can skip this by running past things in Panther.

Verse 6 - Jubileus

Phase 1

You can use the Kilgore glitch and make this fight go very very quickly. After going through the fire/ice/lightning areas, Jubie will fall on the ground. here you can kilgore her face and do way more damage than you're meant to. Dodge the attacks and hit the faces. Panther punting makes you invincible, like torture attacks do.

In the fire area, there is a lot of lava so put on your immunity shoes. I have no advice for the other arenas. The Lightning one is horrible for reliable speed.

Phase 2 - Here, just dodge the final punch for witch time and Kilgore them. You can also hit the fists briefly as they land.

Avoid the black hole. The stupid annoying silly insta-death move. You can jump over the Blue Vortices or get hit by one and dodge the next attacks as Cereza. I think just getting turned into Cereza is slightly faster. You’ll have enough time to break out of Cereza form and dodge the final punch. You can also time batwithin on the punches and get turned back into Bayonetta. Jubielius can give you a very easy and quick rotation in her final phase (no transforming, no black holes, minimal attacks) which gave me a very fast time.

Phase 3 - The yellow bar phase is rather straight forward. Dodge and bitchslap. Bitchslap with crazy rockets.

Verse 7 – Stiletto the statue a lot.

Verses 8–10 - These end after a certain amount of time but they do actually count towards final times but honestly? Don't worry if they're slow =P. Either way, there’s no real rush here, but try and make it entertaining.

Dance and enjoy winning.

Killing Enemies and little tips ~ Should be updated a lot.

Affinity A (Staff)/Affinity E (Poleaxe)/Applaud B (Staff)

• Use regular combos or Angel arms. Remember a torture will guarantee a weapon drop. The front facing torture attack (the iron maiden) and the air torture attack (the pulley… hook, claw thing) are faster than the guillotine so always try and use these. This applies for all affinities and applauds.

Affinity B (Trumpet)

• Keeping these alive give easy dodges for witch time or rosaries procs. Use regular combos or Angel arms.

Affinity C (Sousaphone)

• The Tuba/Sousaphone is great at killing groups if you have it. This enemy is also great at killing its entire force with the attack. Usually faster to Torture it and use the Tuba yourself though. Like the Affinity B, You might like to keep this alive for dodging.

Affinity D (Mace)

• Use regular combos or Angel arms.

Applaud A (Bow/Sword)

• Kilgore these when possible. The Bow is great for taking out Beloveds, Applauds, Graces etc. Use it if you are fighting these before Kilgore.

Ardour A/B (Heavy Sword

• Hit them from behind when possible. The Heavy Sword is very powerful against big slow enemies like Beloveds and Inspireds. They kinda bounce off of bombs. Seen a silly clip from n742a where punishes own these hard.

Beloved

• Easy to dodge and Kilgore. Jumping and attacking their backs makes them easier to hit. Bows are very effective here.

Braves

• Just a smaller Beloved with less health. Bombs do a lot of damage here.

Dear

• Won’t ever really kill you, but can be a pain to kill quickly as the whip will nearly always pull the decorations instead. They are often in avoidable verses though.

Decorations

• Very low health and easy to kill. AoE them. Shooting them seems easiest.

Enchant

• Whip works well to pull them to you and they’ll nearly always dodge wicked weaves. Grabbing then throwing instantly is decent.

Fearless (blue)/Fairness (red)

• They can stop you in the middle of a combo with a swipe. This has the same timing every time so it’s easy to avoid. Fairness is the one with the roar and the fireballs. PPPKP -> (air) PPPKKK works well.

Golem

• Bird and Centipede forms are annoying. You will always have Kilgore when fighting this. Fire Claws on hands and PPP with the final attack charge kills the enemy easily and quickly. Charged Sword or Laser Sword attacks can break the armour of golem easily, allowing for a very fast kill on the core. <- n472a

Grace (Fire)/Gracious

• The easier one of the two; it’s slow and stupid and much easier to avoid. You can actually kill this guy with a sword using PP, dodge, PP, dodge until infinity. Grace dies quickly when you use Glory’s claws. The best strategy for a new game is to kill Grace first, then one hit kill Glory with the K move using the claws. Gracious is the darker one. PPPKKK with bombs works and PPPKP -> (air)PPPKKK works too.

Glory (Lightning)/Glorious

• The annoying one – Killing Glory with Grace's claws and the K move is the way to do it. Glorious is the whiter one.

Harmony

• Using the whip grab followed by an air kick to knock them to the floor then follow with a combo and a charged fire bomb does damage. You can also use just the kick if no whip is the preferred route. The Torture attack takes a while and the chainsaw isn’t particularly great at killing other harmonies. Jumping PPPK (bomb) is very good.

Inspired

• Fireballs don’t always hit if reflected. Just shoot them until the fall and prepare a combo for when they land. Heavy weapons work here. You often have one for these bosses.

Irenic

• These are the hell cars. They’re only here because I like them.

Joy

• Kilgore is a one shot. Taunting these will lower downtime between dodges if you need them. Kilgore will one shot them. The torture attack does a lot of damage to them but it has a long animation. Fight these like a Jeanne that can't parry or dodge. PPPKKK works well to keep them off their feet for example. Bombs work well, but sometimes they can dodge and negate the damage.

Kinship

• Dark Rosary owns the missiles for you. Kilgore owns the ship itself. Some attacks are annoying to dodge and they can be iffy to climb on but meleeing the glowing bit is the way to go. Bombs/Kilgore is good. I imagine bows are great here too but I’ve no idea if you every have one for a Kinship fight.

References

Reminders of the game order and verse numbers take from MJEmirzian’s FAQ at gamefaqs.com Pretty much everything else is by me: Lee 'Flicky' Reeves unless noted.

Contributions from: Vardinator, Psychochild, sshplur, n472a