Kena: Bridge of Spirits

From the very first moment till the very end of your journey, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a heart-warming experience and a real pleasure between the visuals, puzzles and combat. Atmospheric music, beautiful lively graphics, believable heroes and cute little Rots - each little element is woven into the amazing whole that is the gaming experience provided by Kena.

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.

The compact game plays consistently excellently, because no gameplay element seems superimposed and the feeling of progress is so successful precisely because Kena focuses on the essentials. Only on the story level was I left a little disappointed. The game makes an effort to touch the player emotionally, but it didn't really work out because the story and characters are shifted a little too much into the background. Nevertheless, the gameplay and presentation are so successful that they easily carry Kena over its ten to fifteen hour runtime and keeps me waiting eagerly for the studio's next project.

Stunning action adventure that delights with a challenging combat system and a breathtaking game world.

The strongest feeling I got from Kena: Bridge of Spirits is that it is "eclectic". It extracts the folk culture and religious culture, and then injects them into the Disney-like art style, creating a wonderful chemical reaction that is shocking enough.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is "to the point": visually it's a feast for the eyes and with an interesting percussion-based musical score. It's fun, thoughtful, made with care and inspiration, even if it doesn't offer anything original in its individual areas. Especially considering that this is Ember Lab's first effort, the future is bright, and we can already imagine an even better sequel.

With a charming and nice adventure, Kena Bridge of Spirits invites us in a cute and dark world. The gameplay is rather simple but offers interesting mechanics that allow you to have a good time no matter what happens. With tons of resources to collect and an original scenario, Kena is clearly the kind of independent title that you want to finish. And this is perhaps its biggest strength: a relaxing game, with a challenge, that you want to finish at 100%. In the end, Kena doesn't invent much but offers a beautiful and memorable journey.

While we might have to arguably wait for future games to unlock the series’ true potential, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is still a great first outing for Ember Lab. If the breathtaking visuals don’t suck you in, then there’s the satisfying and challenging combat as well, or the wide world to explore. Or maybe you just want to find all the teeny hats for the Rot in order to make them as ridiculously adorable as possible. Whatever the case, there’s going to be something satisfying for everyone here in Kena’s debut.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is gorgeous and extremely well made, but there's less heart here than I was expecting. It's still a worthy adventure with great controls and lots to see and do, though.

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.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a title of high artistic value, but one that stumbles in gameplay. It's got charming characters and setting, a decent story and great looking cutscenes, but actually playing through the experience is largely underwhelming.