Kena: Bridge of Spirit convinces at first sight with its beautiful appearance. But there is much more behind the pretty façade.
Before we delve deeper here, let’s make one thing clear: Kena: Bridge of Spirits is no cakewalk. Those who expect easy puzzle fun with shallow battles because of the fluffy Disney look should read this review especially well. Because Kena, which is currently only available for PlayStation and exclusively in the Epic Game Store, breaks with expectations in many ways – in a good sense.
Behind the pretty façade is a really demanding action adventure that makes us sweat again and again and sometimes even think. The story is also darker than it seems at first.
At the beginning, however, you don’t learn much about it, because Kena starts out seemingly simple. As a spirit guide, you set out on a journey to the holy mountain shrine. On your way there you will meet some ghosts who are staying in a poisoned village and are waiting for redemption.
To continue your journey to Ghost Mountain, help the restless souls of the village find their eternal rest. Some of them are friendly to you, while others are so distraught that they cannot find peace. They need your help to remember their past lives and find redemption.
The more ghosts you help, the more the game world opens up for you. It’s not as huge as Greece in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, but it offers enough opportunities to roam around and discover a secret or two. There are no superfluous side quests or annoying “fetch, bring” tasks.
The story is as straightforward as your path through the incredibly beautiful game world. You will learn in bits and pieces what actually happened in the village and why it is home to so many unfortunate souls. Although you shouldn’t expect a story twist like in Fight Club, the fates of the individual deceased will still take you away emotionally in the fantastically staged cutscenes with English soundtracks.
You can see exactly what this looks like in the launch trailer:
Although many questions remain unanswered at the end, during our journey to the sacred mountain shrine we not only discover the village and its past, but also keep learning bits and pieces of Kena’s life: Why does she set out for the mountain shrine in the first place and why do the Rott follow her? Similar to Horizon Zero Dawn, in Kena the path is the (story) goal.
A word about the technology
Kena runs almost smoothly on the highest graphics settings on our test system, which meets the Recommended Requirements. Every now and then there were short frame drops at the beginning of a cutscene or a particularly exciting fight. Our frame rate was mostly between 50 and 60 FPS.
Courageous Rott
You’re not entirely alone on your journey, by the way. This is where the little black knobbly animals called Rott finally come into play, purring and cooing as they follow you everywhere. Your fluffy entourage not only looks cute and adorns every game cover, but also fights bravely with you. To do so, however, it must first become braver.
Because the little ghosts are basically afraid of the gnarled opponents and prefer to hide at the beginning of the fight. But with every hit Kena lands, the Rott gather a little more courage and are eventually able to take heart and support us in the fight. Sometimes a demonstration is needed first. With the press of a button, you can command your black swarm to hold the enemy, confuse them or connect with your weapons to deliver a powerful hammer blow or fire a charged bow shot.
Depending on the chosen difficulty level, it is harder or easier to collect this courage for the Rott. If the bar fills up by itself on the easiest difficulty level, you will even lose courage on the highest level if you are hit. However, the difficulty level not only influences how quickly you collect courage, it also makes the enemies tougher – and smarter.
Unlike many other action-adventure games with different difficulty levels, in Kena the enemies really do get smarter and more aggressive. This forces you to change your tactics and leads to shortness of breath and sweating every now and then, even on normal difficulty. If you’re looking for a challenge, this is definitely the place to be.
Fighting system with gumption and a missed opportunity
When it comes to normal enemies, there’s a whole range of enemy types that you can use different techniques to reduce to small pieces or ghostly goulash. For example, you can only destroy your opponent’s wooden shield with a powerful attack or you must first crack the hard shell of an enemy with bombs before you can reach the vulnerable interior.
The different enemy types, in combination with the chosen difficulty level, offer a real challenge even without boss fights, so that they rarely become boring or even annoying. Their number also fits perfectly into the flow of the game. At no time do we have the feeling of encountering too many or too few enemies.
Lost focus and overview
Kena’s combat system is action-packed and relies on well-timed dodging, especially on a higher difficulty level. However, you often roll past the opponent and then have to turn your camera again, which costs valuable time.
This problem is supposed to be solved by aiming at the enemy, but unfortunately it is not that easy. Again and again we have problems while playing to aim at the enemy while running. On top of that, we keep losing focus when we unpack our bow, which leads to one or two moments of frustration and death during the fight because the camera or the focus doesn’t quite want what we want.
The situation is similar with your arsenal of weapons. Basically, you only have three different types of weapons. Thanks to a simple skill system, you can upgrade them and add new attacks. There are also a few other options, such as parrying attacks or a ghost sprint, which you unlock in the course of the action.
Through the rather exciting mix of melee and ranged attacks with different Rott skills, you can develop your own fighting style. By using skill points in the form of focus, you then have the additional option of setting your focus on your preferred weapon.
Where Kena shines in terms of innovation in the combat system and smaller groups of enemies, however, appearances pale when it comes to the intermediate and final bosses. Although they are generally tougher and dish out more, we can almost always eliminate them with our preferred tactics. Those who hope for exciting fights like in Zelda, where we have to make use of individual weapons or techniques, will often be disappointed.
Wonderful, mysterious world
Less disappointing are the puzzle interludes that keep us entertained between the combat and story parts and are fantastically built into the game world: Sometimes we have to open a gate mechanism, sometimes we have to jump over some platforms with the right timing and sometimes we shimmy over a precipice with a bow shot on special flowers or temporarily move stone blocks with special bombs.
The individual puzzles hardly ever give us a headache, but every now and then we have to pause for a moment to get an overview of the situation or to understand a mechanism. But if you’re sitting in front of a puzzle and can’t figure it out or can’t get the timing right, Kena doesn’t give you any help. You are on your own. Basically, however, the jumping and the general movement control works well, so that you usually reach your goal after one or two failed attempts and jumps into the void.
If you explore every nook and cranny of the game world, you will be rewarded for our efforts with a number of collectibles. Time and again, you’ll find hats in chests, for example, which you can use to turn your black swarm into a colourful party.
Be sure to try it out: Photo mode
Whether you like becoming a photographer in games or not. Be sure to try out the photo mode in Kena, because your little Rott always make a perfect subject. Whether they’re hanging out in a bowl, trailing behind you or shining through a pot on your head, it’s incredible fun to be on the lookout for the perfect shot.
You’ll also find ghost mail that you can deliver to blighted houses in the village to clean them and find more Collectibles. Or you may come across new Rott companions. The more Rott you collect, the higher your Rott level will rise and unlock new skills in the skill system. Apart from that, all other collectibles have little or no influence on our gameplay.
Regardless of the puzzles and collectibles, Kena: Bridge of Spirits enchants us again and again with its incredible atmosphere. Be it the beautiful graphics, the soundtrack that gets under your skin or the history of the village or its inhabitants.
All of this weaves together to form an incredibly coherent overall picture that we keep pausing to take in, as if in a museum. Together with the story, this creates an incredibly beautiful adventure that Disney or Pixar could not have staged more beautifully in any film.
Speaking of the end: Kena: Bridge of Spirit is quite entertaining at around ten to fifteen hours, but it’s worth every minute. Unlike many other action adventures, Kena gets by without annoying side quests or an overloaded game world. It’s like a balm on a battered gamer’s soul, tired of large open-worlds and trivial tasks. Whether the short playing time is worth the purchase price of 40 euros is something you have to decide for yourself.
