Genre: Action-Adventure
Release Date: September 21, 2021
Platforms: PS4, PS5
Total Gameplay Score: +10 Total Story Score: +3
Summary
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a wonderfully crafted action-adventure game with the spiritual DNA of the 3D Zeldas. Though the game’s activities, tone, and general structure are similar to The Legend of Zelda, the scope isn’t as large. Kena is about half the length of Ocarina of Time, yet it uses the time spent on its content wisely. Whether you’re going through the main zones solving puzzles and fighting enemies to progress, or you’re doing side activities like restoring the village huts or collecting the various rots for your army and their many different hats. Overall, Kena is a solid indie Legend of Zelda with a surprisingly sophisticated and intense battle system and interesting story.
Gameplay Pluses and Minuses
+ There’s a lot of miscellaneous optional activities like collecting rots, posing with rots, rot hats, spirit chests, and spirit mail that ties into the game loop in a fun and non-intrusive way. These activities are not only rewarding in that they can give you currency to buy more rot hats and even improve power output, but they’re fun to do in and of themselves, especially if you’re a collectathon gamer like I am. The little puzzles and detours necessary to complete these activities range from merely noticing the sound of a chime and pushing a single button to collect the shinies, to challenging more difficult timed enemy encounters. These side activities do a good job encouraging exploration and taking a deep breath for a moment to enjoy and interact with the beautiful world of the game.
+ Best puzzles in the game are probably the bomb puzzles. These puzzles are essentially a form of the stasis bombs from Breath of the Wild; a sticky bomb you throw at certain rock formations to create timed platforms. Interesting solutions like firing the bow at glowing spots to rotate the platform are an entire puzzle game in itself and reminded me of the platforming in the Atlus game Catherine. Though there aren’t many of these puzzles, and they could have expanded it more, it was always enjoyable and spiced up the gameplay just that much more.
+ Several boss fights are quite good. Corrupted Taro fight is fun due to the different phases and the lantern weak spot. This boss is also funner than smaller boss fights because it doesn’t summon adds to distract the player, it’s just a one-on-one fight against a corrupted fox, and that’s cool. The weak spots on bosses in general are neat because they force you to go behind the enemy and give you something to aim at instead of brazenly whacking.
+ Woodcutter boss fight is the best battle in the game. This fight rewards using all of your tools and abilities obtained thus far. It also requires the primary puzzle mechanic used in the boss’s dungeon. The boss attacks and behaves just how the character was portrayed, which is a good usage of gameplay/story integration. Lastly, it didn’t frustrate me like some other battles that threw tons of trash mobs at you at once. Yes, there’s a couple enemy adds but they’re used well, and function as a backup for when the actual boss is fixing the pillar mechanism.
+ Open-ended level design is fun and like a miniature breath of the wild in a way. The two main zones have plenty of exploarables and each one gives you 3 keys to do in any order you want. The freedom to just go wherever and do things at your own pace while being still slightly linear and curated is good.
+ The three Toshi relic levels are easily some of the most creative and fun in the game. They utilize all tools you’ve obtained to this point and introduce the last ability, which is basically a warp strike dash, that uses spirit energy
+ Mask Maker fight is unique in the disappearing tricks and interesting antics the boss uses. Though it may seem annoying for a boss to be teleporting around, this fight is among the best examples of this mechanic because once you do track it down, pummeling on the boss is incredibly satisfying. The color-coded incense puzzle is also pretty interesting to do in the middle of the boss fight. Overall, this is a replayable boss fight with some unique mechanics that feels really good to overcome.
+ Hunter fight is a simple yet electrifyingly fun boss fight. This is a one on one bow and arrow duel, and the Hunter is the best archer around as she has flurry attacks you have to dodge swiftly and ultra-precision shots that require parrying. What I love is the frenetic pace of the fight and how the boss only has a handful of moves and mechanics, yet it always feels so fresh and interesting every time. This is due to the wonderful AI of the archer here, she is unpredictable in her movements and it requires quick thinking and expert use of Kena’s bow.
+ Toshi fight is literally one of my favorite one-on-one duels in any game; it’s that good. Toshi is the penultimate adversary of the game and the fight is like an epic no holds barred samurai duel to the death. While Toshi’s sluggish movement makes this fight less difficult than others in the genre like Sekiro, the combos and moves Toshi unleashes are super fun to dodge and counter. It’s really like a tuned version of something like the Gwyn fight in Dark Souls, though toned down a lot in difficulty. Still very fun and great replayability on different difficulty modes.
+ Kit past the second half of the game is quite an expansive repertoire and fun to battle with. There are plenty of different ways to fight by this point to keep things really fresh and make you feel more in control and powerful. I think the sheer size of your arsenal kinda makes the game a bit more forgiving past this point, but the good thing is this range of moves allows more experimentation and general replayability.
+ Power progression curve is smooth both in terms of overcoming terrain, puzzles, and enemies.
+ End game from a gameplay perspective is great, the best aspect of the entire game.
– Fishing Shrine puzzle is very badly designed and led to me (and most everyone else) looming online for the solution. The tiny nondescript candles are supposed to indicate the order to shoot the 4 bulbs in, which is ridiculous in itself because there were no candle puzzles earlier in the game and they look like doodads. But the real kicker is when you shoot the bulbs in the wrong order 2 enemies come to fight you and the puzzle resets upon defeating them. The whole game till now has taught the player that fighting enemies (timed sometimes) will open the puzzle. So this puzzle is multiple layers of bad.
– Lock-on got me killed more than it should have. The worst aspect of the combat by far is the inability to toggle lock-on off and on while performing an action at the same time, such as jumping, attacking, sprinting, etc. Combine this with a rigid grid-like left and right movement that negates your free movement when locked on and you have a bad lock-on mechanic that frustrates gameplay.
+12 -2
Total Gameplay Score: +10
Story Pluses and Minuses
+ Vivid art style is like a playable Pixar animation. Environments are detailed and have a comforting woodlands atmosphere.
+ Cutscene storyboarding and music direction are nice. You can tell this studio made animations before this game, such as a cinematic Majora’s Mask video, because of how well animated and directed the scenes are. Camera work and lighting are professional, and as mentioned before, there’s tailor-made musical storytelling complimenting the visuals. The larger cutscenes after completing a large boss are especially great.
+ Plot comes together really well at the end, tying the entire mystery in a satisfying and conclusive way. This is very much a backloaded story, and it’s executed with the right amount of foreshadowing and continuity to be justified being an 80% endgame type of story.
+3 -0
Total Story Score: +3
Overall Score: +13
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