Welcome to my review of Kena: Bridge of Spirits for the PlayStation 5. Developed and published by Ember Lab, it’s actually hard to believe this is their debut video game. Prior to Kena, Ember Lab produced animated videos for companies as well as a short movie that went viral. This was based on the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and was titled Terrible Fate.
Enter The Spirit World With Kena
I’ve waited a while to play Kena. So how does it fare in the world of PlayStation? Continue reading to find out. You can also check out our previous reviews.
The Game
So, the game itself. What we have here is a third-person action-adventure game where we play as Kena (Kay-na). Kena is on a journey to find the sacred mountain shrine. The sacred mountain shrine is hidden past a forgotten village. Kena must help this village to uncover the secrets of this forgotten place.
In Kena: Bridge of Spirits we must help Kena find “The Rot” who are a bunch of mysterious creatures who can help Kena out on her journey to the sacred mountain shrine. By the way, these little creatures are very cute. Kena also has a staff that aids her in her adventure. The staff is for our main form of combat and has basic attacks such as light and heavy attacks.
The staff also has various powers including pulse, a shield, and more. But that’s for you to find out when you play the game.
We start the game with an intro video that gives us some information about the story, which again that’s for you to find out for yourselves. No spoilers!
We must travel the land, find more of the rot, find hidden areas, and more. The rot can also wear little hats, and my god they’re adorable. There are plenty of puzzles for you to try and wrap your head around, as well as quite a lot of fights for you to combat through.
Later into the game, we unlock more weapons including a bow. Each weapon you unlock can be upgraded to be a bit more powerful or to unlock new powers for that weapon. These upgrades are applied to Kena and her weapons via a skill tree.
As we progress through the game and unlock new powers, we can venture further up the mountain to find the aforementioned sacred shrine. Such powers are being able to use the bow on giant plants to grapple your way across the world.
Another allows you to throw special bombs that can damage enemies as well as activate special rocks around the world, these then allow Kena to reach higher places than she could previously. The player will need to be quick as these are timed and will return to their original form in no time!
Later in the game, we can also use portals to get around the world a lot quicker. These can also speed up the pace of the game dramatically when you’re in a chase or running from something.
This game has been very well made from the ground up. It’s fun from start to finish, there are some frustrating boss fights but once you nut up and shut up, you’re fine.
Look & Sound
Kena: Bridge of Spirits looks absolutely incredible on the PlayStation 5. I don’t know how Ember Lab has done it, but they have truly smashed it. The game runs at a locked 4K60 fps on performance mode and resolution mode sees you playing at 4K30 fps with some improvements to the graphics, although in my opinion it already looks bloody fantastic on performance mode. I didn’t experience any frame drops whilst playing neither. During all of the battles, exploration, intense fast-paced moments, it was fluid.
The audio in Kena: Bridge of Spirits is tremendous. From the chilled ambiance when you’re near streams and traveling the world, to the hectic fights that happen during the game. It all sounds very good, especially if you have the PlayStation 3D Pulse headset.
Length & Replayability
Kena: Bridge of Spirits can take anything up to 25 hours to fully complete the game. Of course, that’s if you don’t get stuck in an area or in a boss fight. There are 42 trophies for you to unlock, including that coveted platinum trophy that quite a few PlayStation fans crave. Of course, these are all offline trophies as this is only a single-player game. The bad news is you’ll have to play Kena: Bridge of Spirits twice to get the platinum.
This isn’t such bad news though as it really is a brilliant game. In fact, that’s the only bad news I can think of for this game.
Conclusions
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an absolutely beautiful game. The graphics, the gameplay, the story itself. All of it is just top-notch in my opinion. If you have a chance to play Kena, I highly recommend you do so. I give Kena: Bridge of Spirits a top score of 10/10! Now go and play this game.
