Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a magical story-driven, action adventure combining exploration, platforming, puzzling and fast-paced combat with the usual RPG-lite element that just about every game seems to have these days.
Playing as Kena, a young spirit guide, you must untangle the past as you go in search of the sacred Mountain Shrine. Unique wooden masks are carved to honour the dead, these masks crumble over time and mean the dead cannot move on to the afterlife. Kena must collect masks and help free the trapped spirits. You are helped by the Rot, adorable (yet powerful) spirit companions that maintain the balance by decomposing the dead and other corrupt elements.
Despite having a rather yucky job, the Rot are extremely cute forest-dwelling spirits that Kena must find and recruit to help. You collect a growing squad of them and they can move objects and also help you as you fight various enemies, both with healing Kena and aggressive and restraining moves.
As you explore you will find certain plant stems that the Rot can place a jewel-like "tear" upon. When empowered with a "Tear of the Forest" the Rot can group together to form a fearsome serpentine dragon-like spirit that can destroy the corruption that has infested the forest, and even help you fight enemies. Your adventure cannot be completed without these friendly little creatures' various abilities, and the enhancements they give Kena.
'LB' (Left shoulder button) generates a 'pulse' of energy which can light the way and reveal hidden items. 'RB' is a quick attack with Kena's staff, Right trigger performs a heavy swipe. 'B' is dodge and 'A' is jump–two presses and Kena performs a double-jump to reach higher or more distant ledges. Sprint is set to 'L3' (left stick click) and you interact with objects and items with 'Y'.
At the start "pulsing" (press 'LB') illuminates effervescent markings on the cave walls and lights torches on the walls. It also reveals ghosts/spirits and the path onward. Later holding 'LB' acts as a shield against all but the most powerful attacks, and a well-timed parry can temporarily stun an enemy. Kena can also grab ledges and climb up from them or drop off them with 'B'.
There are lots of chests and barrels to open, but some may be cursed and you will have to defeat a string of enemies to earn the contents! Most searches reveal blue jewels, which can be spent at stalls that are dotted around the map. Here you can buy hats for your ever-growing team of Rots, and also outfits for Kena. Charmstones can be earned or bought and give Kena extra abilities such as recharging her shield fully upon a successful parry.
Visually, Bridge of Spirits is an exceedingly attractive game, optimised for Series X/S and it really shows. The world feels lush and vibrant, and the game engine supplies nice touches such as Kena's energy pulse wave making the undergrowth move.
If the game has faults then they're only minor ones. Given the presumed target audience, the medium difficulty isn't easy, but isn't overly hard either, and you can always revert to the 'Story' difficulty that weakens the enemies. More of a flaw is that for some reason you lose control of the camera for a few seconds after using the Rot spirit (Tear of the Forest) creature. Kena also fails to grab some ledges that she clearly should. Other than those minor issues the only other thing I'd say is that some of the puzzles are a bit obscure, but are never impossible. Some of the optional Challenges may well be though, and are extremely tough ways of perfecting Kena's combat abilities and earning new charms and outfits.
Bridge of Spirits is a good game that welcomes and rewards exploration and looks great, but the combat is the game's strongest point. This means you're always looking forward to the next battle or challenge. A fluent mixture of whacking enemies with Kena's staff flows seamlessly with accurate and instinctive bow shooting, and the combinations and enhancements given by the Rot make for fun, powerful, exciting and spectacular fights. Boss fights often require that you hit them in weak spots, and jumping and aiming triggers a slo-mo mode to assist this. I don't think I've had as much fun in fantasy combat outside a Zelda game, and that's praise indeed.
Many thanks to Ember Lab and PressEngine for the review code.