Bayonetta takes damage, loses clothes, lies prone with her arms tied behind her back, and the villain reclines smoking a cigarette.

Holy shit, that's awful!

I think a main issue of this whole debacle is that, some male gamers are really offended by the notion that the game they're playing may be sexist or misogynistic because they believe it as some sort of personal attack. As if that the game is their identity in that sort of way.

I love this. As a feminist and a gamer, this is my view on Bayonetta exactly. However, I think it's within anyone's right to be offended by Bayonetta just as much as it's my right to find her empowering.

"If games don't offer us complex heroines, then we apparently stop looking for them." That's critic Maddy Myers discussing kink, sex positivity, and female empowerment in Bayonetta in an excellent essay for Paste. Give the whole thing a read, and remember to check out our review of Bayonetta 2.