Looking for a comprehensive Kena: Bridge Of Spirits Review? We’ve got you covered! A Spirit Guide looking to help lost spirits, a Quest for the Ages, and the mysterious corruption threatening all. Here is our Kena: Bridge Of Spirits Review.
Developed by Ember Lab and originally released in 2021 for PS4/5 this is finally coming to Xbox Series.
STORY
The game starts off with the lead role, Kena, dropping into a cave and teaching you that you can use a pulse ability by tapping the Left Shoulder Button. As introductions go this seems to drop you right into the lion’s den without much explanation or preparation. As you gain control of Kena and start to explore the environment you start to learn things that only ask more questions;
- What are these ‘Rot’ creatures other than spirits?
- Who is Kena?
- What’s this strange Spirit man doing, and why does it seem like he’s controlling the corruption?
All these things get answered as you progress, however, where you are in the game to this point, you are still just being introduced to the events that are unfolding. The game really opens up once Kena accepts the role of looking for the children’s brother, which leads you to a village with fewer puzzling answers. This leads you to hunt for 3 artifacts that are related to the spirit you are trying to help. Each of the spirits you need to help will require you to find 3 artifacts that will let you confront the corrupted spirit and lay them to rest. Eventually letting you complete your own quest of heading to the mountain shrine.
While this story is very reminiscent of Ready At Dawn’s God Of War, Kena on the other hand is looking for the mountain shrine which is the main goal of the game, the “helping spirits” portion of the game, while it is the a core component of the game, it is also a clever way to distracted the player and make the story longer, the same as God of War does.
Mechanics, Graphics, & Technical things
Mechanically the game puts me in mind of Overlord, only in the sense that you control a group of AI minions called the Rot to complete actions throughout the world. That’s as much as where the similarities coincide, however, you still have a main protagonist character, in overlord it’s, well the overlord, in Kena you have Kena, a Spirit Guide on a quest. Both characters utilize the ability of the minions to progress and navigate the world they are based in. Overlord uses the minions for just about everything whereas Kena utilises the Rot mainly as a traversal mechanic. While she can use them to combat enemies, and for some, this is a recommended strategy, it kind of feels out of place to use them for all enemy classes.
The power of the mechanics comes from what the Rot really is, and the weak character you portray. I should make it completely clear that Kena is by no means a “weak” protagonist, the only reason the term “weak character” is used is because she is still young and has yet to gain experience. Getting back to the mechanics, Kena’s mechanics might sound limiting but they really aren’t. While the heart of the game comes from utilizing Rot to complete actions, traverse the environment, and even support you in battle, they are the single most important component of the game. That being said, there is a ranged combat system that plays a big role in encounters and some traversal systems, that unlock with story progression.
Graphically the game has a stylistic appearance, much like Darksiders, but more real-looking. While the aforementioned Darksiders is a hand-painted texture workflow Kena utilises a PBR workflow which has a less real and more cartoon style. The fact that Darksiders has been used as a comparison is no accident, it was chosen as the game that best resembles the feel for how the flow of the game unfolds and how graphically similar yet far apart they are from one another.
On the note of Graphics, I want to bring attention to something that is a driving force for horror, which is Lighting. Lighting in Kena is almost all naturally sourced, meaning it’s coming from the “Sun”, however, there are times when the game takes you into cave areas and areas away from the light of the sun. This isn’t out of the ordinary but it’s how the developers drive the lighting condition to a more real feel. The aforementioned PBR Texturing workflow feeds this by providing a more realistic Reflection, Refraction, Absorption, and Diffraction, making the lighting a more important part of the fundamentals of the game than just a source to provide visibility.
CONCLUSION
Overall, as stated, the game feels a little like the 2018 God Of War, where your main goal is to reach the tallest point in all the realms, completing the objectives you are given to facilitate that outcome. Kena needs to get to the mountain, helping the lost souls along the way and finding a path to the mountain.
All told the game can be completed in around 12 hours with some clean-up for trophies, there is even a cheat for the Master Spirit Guide Trophy to make it achievable in under 20 minutes. While the game is enjoyable, holds graphical potential, and is an excellent adventure, when it came to the end I found I wanted to see more.
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