06. Kena: Bridge of Spirits || PlayStation 5 || 04.23.22
When the announcement trailer for Kena: Bridge of Spirits released in early 2021, I remember quickly being interested in the world presented and greatly anticipated for the game's release. Now, five months after its release, I've finally played and finished Kena, and my initial hype did not disappoint. In my reviews, I generally avoid referencing other works; however, Kena borrows a lot from other projects in regards to themes, gameplay, and presentation while blending them together seamlessly.
With a story and setting influenced by Balinese folklore and environments, you play as spirit guide Kena, a young adult who travels to a forgotten village corrupted by evil long ago where only restless spirits unable to move on remain. Seeking to restore this land's natural balance, Kena must liberate fallen spirits full of hurt and fear whom have a direct effect on the pollution. Across her journey, Kena will travel throughout the greater village area among forests, caverns, fields, and mountains in her pursuit to aid those driven to anger. With each of the troubled spirits whom Kena meets, their moment of total weakness were fueled by guilt and the sense of helplessness driven by loss which ultimately resulted in their unnerving anger. These themes greatly reminded me of a combination of the movie Princess Mononoke, TV series The Legend of Korra, and video game Flower.
As an action-adventure title ripe with platforming, Kena offers a gameplay experience that will be familiar to most. Armed with a staff that doubles as a bow, Kena utilizes three means of combat: standard melee, spirit energy, and Rot-infused attacks which rely upon the collective power from lost nature spirits who follow Kena as she discovers them one-by-one. While Kena is comparable to many titles within its genre, I find myself most reminded of of the Jak and Daxter and Horizon series. While fighting, Kena is swift and decisive in her controls and is able to utilize a wide range of attack options while freely dodging. However, one gameplay element which differs in Kena is the Rot. While they can be called upon in battle, the same can be said when freely exploring too. Working as a collective entity, the Rot assist Kena in puzzle-solving elements that one can't help but compare to Pikmin. Relying upon the puzzle and platforming gameplay elements, there are lonesome paths and dark corners to discover that provide just the right amount of collectibles to find as to not become a chore but instead an incentive to keep exploring.
Comprising three initial difficulty settings to choose from, Kena offers a challenge. Having selected the middle option of the three, I found the beginning hours especially troubling as I grappled with the game's combat controls. While the same can be said too of many boss encounters, my problems here were occurring due to the challenging, albeit forgiving, combat sequences. Across most of the game's boss encounters, I lost repeatedly. Each of these battles presents enemies with specific fighting styles and patterns to understand in order to overcome them. With an array of fighting capabilities, combat maintains feeling fresh as new techniques are regularly learned with some fights greatly benefiting from certain play styles. On that note, the difficulty settings can be changed at any moment during a playthrough. Without having played the third and fourth tier difficulty setting, I can only imagine the latter being only for those masterful of the game's combat and knowledge of enemies.
Returning back to discussing the Rot themselves, the execution of characterizing these creatures is overly successful as their human emotion and mannerisms exhibit loving, patient, and playful spirits. Replenish a small patch of crops, they'll scatter to eat their fill. Sit down to meditate, they'll meditate with you. Take a moment's rest, they'll circle around you. Travel across the land, and they'll follow you akin to ducklings following their mother. This last example showcases another small but worthwhile feature--the Rot's interactivity with the environment. While some Rot travel on foot, others sit idly along paths, ledges, or rocks while others may pop out of boxes and ceramics, but each group are always following Kena. With their wide eyes filled with a child-like wonder, they never seem to stop being in awe of the world and their new travel companion. Discovering each and every one of the Rot was fulfilling similar to finding Koroks in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, unlike Koroks, the Rot could have greatly benefited from more diversity in their initial discovery animations in addition to general physical differences.
Presenting itself with an art style heavily reminiscent of Pixar films, Kena is a fantastic example of successful art direction and graphics. I am not often one to invest time to dedicated photo modes that games may offer, but this was the first instance in many years that I routinely visited the feature throughout my playthrough to capture picturesque views and serene moments. As the corruption becomes more and more cleansed, lush forests, thriving nature, and striking architecture become reclaimed. While the greater village has been abandoned for some time, greenery is exuberant as even buildings has slowly been overtaken. Kena is but another example of some of the best-looking works adhering to a personalized style moreso than photorealism that age well in years to come.
However, Kena is by no means a perfect game as there are small issues worth noting. Unlike the Rot's successful characterization, Kena herself has little character development. Instead of Kena, the bulk of character development is instead delegated to the supporting cast whom Kena saves. While such development is diminutive for the supporting cast, the same amount if not more would have been ideal to experience. Another issue is the volume balancing. While combat volume would be high, all other sounds would not be, which did impact key cutscene moments as I became distracted to raise the sound levels. Lastly, there are some seldom non-invasive instances of glitching such as getting caught in-between level geometry. In spite of these issues, I highly praise the game's successes and especially so as the project was completed by an animation studio's first attempt in game development.
In short, Kena offers a memorable, self-contained story and environment that provides a beautiful end project which doesn't overstay its welcome. For PlayStation owners who are fans of action-adventure titles, this is not a game worth passing.
