Kena: Bridge of Spirits Reviews

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is ranked in the 86th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
8.5 / 10.0
Sep 21, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a cracker of a debut for Ember Labs. While it may not offer anything groundbreaking, the game is still a fun romp with thrilling combat, genuinely fun platforming challenges, and a stunning world to explore.

Review in Arabic | Read full review

7 / 10.0
Sep 21, 2021

You feel the passion of Ember Lab to craft a cinematic game with Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Visually and aurally, they achieve their target as it's a beautiful game, but from a story point-of-view and as a video game, it doesn't quite hit the mark.

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80 / 100
Sep 22, 2021

As a fan of old-school platformers of the PS2 and Gamecube era, I'm down for Ember Labs' first-ever game offering. It could have ended up being an overproduced and bogged-down mess, but Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a wondrous 10-hour experience from start to finish.

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8.3 / 10.0
Sep 22, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits turns out to be more than just a solid video game debut of ember lab. With cutscenes at the same level as pixar movies and a gameplay that don't need to hide behind games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, players get a beautifully crafted package. A bit more focus on the gameplay elements and riddles would helped the game as a whole a lot but otherwise waits probably one of the best adventures of this year for you.

Review in German | Read full review

Sep 22, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a completely inoffensive, if somewhat bland adventure that will mildly entertain for the duration of its runtime, but won’t live long in the memory.

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8 / 10
Sep 23, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a fantastic achievement, one that celebrates the wonder of adventure games with a story to fall into, characters to root for and a ton of collectibles to uncover. The ‘Now That’s What I Call An Adventure Game’ nature of the mechanics offers little in the way of huge originality, but presents them in a world so full of beauty and wonder you’ll soon forget all about it. The future is bright for Ember Lab.

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Wait
Sep 24, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits makes a strong first impression with its beautiful visuals, engaging soundtrack, and decent combat that you'd mistake for a AAA title making its rounds. After a while though, the many little hiccups that I've experienced in the game wore me down, ending my journey with a whimper.

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9 / 10.0
Sep 24, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a strong game, it’s a contender for game of the year and it’s ultimately one well worth playing. It’s a stunningly astute and whimsical take on death, life, and where we fit in all of it. The game is about Kena finding her place and helping others find there’s too. Beautiful, immersive, and dynamic, I can’t recommend this game enough.

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Recommended
Sep 24, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits harkens back to classic game design, offering a visually appealing and satisfying experience.

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75 / 100
Sep 25, 2021

Despite its important shortcomings, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a game that can be enjoyed by players who love the genre with its artistic aspect, animation structure and atmosphere.

Review in Turkish | Read full review

8 / 10.0
Sep 27, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a relaxing game with fantastic visual direction and fluid gameplay. It is a remnant of the past with modern touches in many ways.

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7.5 / 10.0
Sep 27, 2021

A visually charming adventure, with an unexpected challenging combat plagued by some technical issues and repetitive structure.

Review in Portuguese | Read full review

8.6 / 10.0
Sep 27, 2021

If you are as enamored with the visuals in the trailer as I was, Kena was worth the wait. With their first game, Ember Lab has something here, the beginning of something fantastic. At $29.99 there is tremendous value there. Although, during my play-through, I could not help but wonder what it would be like if it were a $70, AAA game that spent five years in development with hundreds of developers. Maybe next time, Ember Labs, maybe next time.

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7.5 / 10.0
Sep 29, 2021

If you ignore the laziness of Ember Lab in everything that has to do with items and weapons, and as long as you are not bothered by technical issues, you will spend ten hours very pleasantly with Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Review in Greek | Read full review

8 / 10.0
Sep 29, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an incredibly solid and beautiful first entry from Ember Labs.

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8 / 10
Oct 3, 2021

A masterpiece of staging paired with an entertaining, highly digestible and occasionally motivating game design is probably the surprise hit of the year: Kena: Bridge of Spirits impressively proves that it definitely doesn't take an experienced video game developer to create a stable overall construct that not only knows how to captivate emotionally, but can also entertain. The action-adventure hardly brings any innovation to the busy genre, but clearly creates a certain uniqueness due to its discrepant structure. The cuddly Pixar look meets a darker, clearly more grown-up narrative as well as an (over)demanding battle scene, which nevertheless never manages to lose you on a motivational level. In combination with the clearly digestible gameplay and the really successful technical implementation, the action adventure manages to emancipate itself from its indie niche and fights its way into the relevance range of its AAA competition. Minimal lapses like the miserable focus system or minor frame drops are forgiven for the entertaining adventure, of course. What remains in the end is not only an animation studio that has skillfully proven how a holistic vision can liquidate a lack of experience, but has also given us the second reason to own a PlayStation home console in September. Now we just have to hope that Ember Lab exploits the immense merchandising potential behind the cuddly Rott - they deserve it.

Review in German | Read full review

Unscored
Oct 3, 2021

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is without any doubt a great looking game, in a very familiar and old format, that overstays its welcome mainly because of poor level design and inconsistent gameplay mechanics.

Review in Portuguese | Read full review

7 / 10.0
Oct 3, 2021

Kena Bridge of Spirits is a good start for Ember Lab and we're curious to see what the studio has in store in the future. When it comes to visuals, the game is up there with Sony's major AAA studios. Unfortunately, it's the gameplay that lags behind quite a bit.

Review in Dutch | Read full review

3.5 / 5.0
Oct 5, 2021

The overall gameplay will be very familiar to 3D adventure fans, but the visuals and charm help to make it feel like a fresh experience in the genre. More adventures for Kena and the Rot would be very welcome.

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INVEN
Top Critic
8 / 10.0
Oct 5, 2021

"Kena: Bridge of Spirits" seems to incorporate some game elements in a great animated film. It will give a great fun as long as you adapt to its unbalanced and unadjusted difficulty level.

Review in Korean | Read full review