Kena: Bridge of Spirits Review

Some games feel like the developers intended it as a showcase of their capabilities more than an entertainment product, especially if it’s the first game released by an ambitious new development team. In many aspects, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an impressive example of these “proof of concept” games, as if its developers Ember Lab created it solely to demonstrate how skilled they are at building environments and characters. While some of the gameplay elements felt underdeveloped, Bridge of Spirits absolutely shines in the graphics and design area. You play as Kena, a spirit guide tasked with bringing restless spirits to the afterlife with the help of a small army of tiny, adorable fuzzballs called Rot. Considering Kena’s role, it’s no surprise that the story is full of emotion and themes of grief and letting go. In both visual style and storytelling, Bridge of Spirits feels like an interactive animated movie - and during my playtime, sometimes I felt that maybe it would’ve been a bit more enjoyable as a film rather than a video game.

This game is a highly entertaining adventure for almost the entire playthrough, and all the hidden interactions strewn about the environment are very fun to uncover. That said, many of the puzzles throughout the game are a tad too confusing to figure out. I like to think I’m generally not that bad at solving video game puzzles, but Bridge of Spirits had me wandering around the area thinking “wait, what am I supposed to see here?” far too often to be particularly enjoyable. Maybe I was just a bit blind during my playtime, but very few other games have had me consulting a walkthrough to find out just how to start solving the puzzles. Once you get started, it’s often a bit of a facepalm moment when you realise what you had to do, but then the actual puzzle solving starts being fun again. The combat is decent; a fairly basic kind of “smack enemies around and shoot the airborne enemies that are left”, but some of the more creative mechanics that are introduced as you progress through the story can be fun to use every so often. Some of the boss fights, however, can quickly overwhelm you with rapid-fire attacks that in many cases you can’t even dodge. The final boss of the game, for me, sucked a lot of my enjoyment out. Some of the frustrating platforming segments in-between phases made me want to pull my hair out!

The game features rather basic controls for mobility, and should be familiar to anyone who is moderately experienced with these kinds of console platformers. Some of the combat controls, on the other hand, might take some time to get a hang of compared to other similar games with more “standard” control schemes. I lost count of the amount of times where I got my controls mixed up in the midst of a fight, and Kena simply stood still as I tried to figure out why the attack buttons weren’t doing anything. By the time I’d realised I was pressing the wrong buttons, Kena was on the brink of death. Muscle memory turned out to be the trickiest enemy in the game, at least for me. Some of the platforming mechanics seemed creative and interesting at first as they were introduced over time, but I soon started cursing them as the game cranked up the platforming difficulty towards the end. One particular segment near the game’s finale almost had me give up out of sheer frustration, and the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that if I didn’t finish it now, I’d never pick the game up again due to the dread of having to try this part again.

In my opinion, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is without a doubt the most beautiful looking video game I have ever played. Every single frame is a work of art, and the entire game looks like a Pixar movie. It’s clear that this game was largely intended to push the PS5’s insane graphics engine to its limits, and the developers’ work has paid off. Just about anything you take a snapshot of in photo mode is wallpaper-worthy, and I’ve spent a lot of my playtime just admiring the breathtaking environments. The only parts of the game where the view could use a bit of improvement is in the numerous caves and underground areas. I’m sure these areas would still look stunning...if you could see them. This game suffers from a relatively common issue of making darkened areas too dark - while the dimly-lit caves certainly add to the game’s atmospheric nature, it can become quite annoying when you can barely see the ground beneath your feet. Objectives are fairly well-lit, but that doesn’t exactly help when the tricky platforming puzzles you need to tackle to reach the objective are practically invisible in the darkness.

The game’s sound design is very well done, and the voice actors did an excellent job providing some genuinely emotional moments throughout the story, especially in the latter half of the game. One aspect of the game’s audio that really stood out to me was the soundtrack - this game has absolutely wonderful music that sounds like no other game I’ve played. The soundtrack is composed by Jason Gallaty, with traditional Balinese music provided by Dewa Putu Berata. It adds a whimsical, almost tribal-sounding flair to the game, perfectly matching the adventurous spirit of the story and making it one of the most unique, distinctive soundtracks I’ve ever heard.

Bridge of Spirits has a decent amount of collectables and secrets hidden all over the map, but the game doesn’t do a particularly good job of actually telling the player that there’s anything to find. I was already about halfway through the game’s story before I realised I was missing that much content at all. There’s no indication that anything’s there until the player finds something for themselves - and since all the collectables are quite well hidden, that might take a while. Even once I started deliberately hunting down these extras, I quickly found that there was very little actual reward to do them besides completion. Each of the secrets gives you a small amount of currency used to purchase little cosmetics for the army of Rot following you around, and with how small the Rot are, it’s hard to really feel like enough is noticeably different to be worth pursuing. I myself am usually a completionist, but I found myself not really wanting to bother going out of my way to do much besides the main story content. Bridge of Spirits is certainly a well-crafted adventure, but in my opinion, it’s one that is only really worth doing once.

Once everything was said and done and the end credits started rolling, I couldn’t help but think “wait, that’s it?”. The graphics, gameplay style and rather large price tag made me come into this game expecting a huge, sprawling adventure that would keep me playing for a week at least. Barely ten hours of total playtime later, I felt unsatisfied with how small the game turned out to be. Maybe it’s just me, but something about all the trailers made the game seem bigger than it was. If you’re looking for a short, enjoyable story with absolutely beautiful visuals and charming characters, then by all means, I couldn’t recommend this game enough. But if you’re looking for something a bit more substantial, something that will keep you coming back for more, long after you’ve spent the rather hefty amount of money to play it, then I would look elsewhere. 6.5/10.