TheLinx Kena: Bridge of Spirits Review

Mandatory heavy remark: Kena: Bridge of Spirits has finally released on a platform that does not support the decay of the gaming industry through exclusivity deals and low quality products. The developers of this game have produced a gem, but have in mind their business practices might not be in the interest of their own craft in future releases (if any). [Referring to the Steam release one year after it's release on Epic Games Store] With that out of the way! Kena offers a great story of a spirit guide that walks the path of the ultimate goodness by helping spirits pass on. Or maybe just the toxic grind of a girl that wants to amass enough power to prove herself better than her predecessor (her father) by masking her true motivation with help for others. I don't know, we live in a varied world, different people will see this story in different ways. What is true is that the story, although appealing and well presented, is not the brightest aspect of the game. Bridge of Spirits is presented to us by the same studio that created that one amazing "Majora's Mask" video some time ago. After they spend some time animating for some big movies, they unavoidably decided to take their shot at the ultimate art form - video games. And what a shot, perfectly designed and animated characters in their intended Disney style, cute pet fluffballs that follow you and are the source of all your power and an amazingly well-designed world to tell the story. This is one of the best translations of all that creativity that we find in animated movies, into game form, and is very well appreciated. That team of professional animators and artists must have found an equally professional developer team to build the back-end for their playable animated movie, because the game is very solid. Kena: Bridge of Spirits does not break, there are no misplaced assets, the music plays most of the time at the intended moments, the sound design is solid and the mechanics are a great mix of low to moderate difficulty combat with moderately big spikes to underline the importance of some boss enemies. "Family friendly souls like" I've seen someone call this game and that is very spot on, it's much easier that the usual souls, but strong enough on the bosses to create that sense of danger with each following bigger enemy. There are few low points in Kena and all of them are not deal breaking. A bit more of optimization could suit the game well as there have been some frame rate drops here and there which were not very well justifiable. On another note, although the music in the game was mostly perfect there were some parts of the game that were silent for some reason and that void was too noticeable sometimes. And what is the on little detail that disappoints me most in many games is the fact that there are achievements that are unlocked only with a replay of the game. Whether it is a New Game + or just in the highest difficulty, it doesn't matter, I want to 100% the game sometimes without going through it yet all over again (100 hours in some cases, Assassin's Creed Odyssey for example). And the fact is, there isn't much replayability in Kena once you have seen the whole of the story. All in all, you should not miss Kena: Bridge of Spirits, it's a fun and beautiful 20 hour game. So much so that I am nominating it for "Outstanding Visual Style" in this year's awards. [Steam Awards]