Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a game not totally unlike Beyond Good & Evil, the classic Ubisoft game from 2003 that never got a sequel. Well, here it is, the sequel. The game is beautiful, cute even. It plays like a third person fighting game with platforming and puzzles.
What I like most about this game is the main character, Kena. She is adorable. The way she is animated really makes it easy to feel for her. The world is also very well crafted, even if the level design is not among the best, it usually takes you back to where you started after completing a level.
The story however is a train wreck. You arrive at the game with the task to reach the mountain shrine, but pretty soon you are sidetracked to go help two kids in the woods. It is not properly explained at all, and it takes about half the game until you understand why that sidetrack was necessary. After that the game will sidetrack you right up until the end.
It makes the story split into a lot of different parts, but sadly they do not connect in a satisfying way. You reach the end, fight the boss, which is introduced just at the end, and then the game is over. The end cinematic try to explain this is what you were meant to do, but it doesn’t hold up.
Another problem is the control scheme. It is complicated to the point that I do not want Kena to learn more skills, because I can’t keep them apart. Hold L2, press R1 and then Square to perform this move. It is impossible, and I keep mixing up the buttons. It never comes naturally which you want in a fighting game.
The environments shift up and become gradually more interesting, but I cannot say the same about the enemy design. You. fight pretty much the same enemies from the beginning until the end, and that makes the mandatory fights more of a time sink, than an integrated part of the game. They could have removed fighting from the game and still had a pretty good puzzle platformer.
I rate this game as GOOD.
Replay 