Kena: Bridge of Spirits

This game is overall pretty good, and it could have been fantastic if not for a pile of small issues and some genuinely bad combat design. It looks nice and has a strong visual aesthetic, but it still has that typical Unreal Engine feeling where you never quite feel grounded in the world. It’s like you’re on a conveyor belt, unable to interact with anything. Picking up items is just hitting the ground with your staff, and if attacking a wall your weapon pass straight through it. There are also plenty of invisible walls and the usual immersion‑breaking quirks that come with this engine. The music is solid, and the exploration gameplay is genuinely enjoyable. The story is passable but not particularly engaging. The main character isn’t fleshed out well; aside from a small attempt at backstory that fizzles out, there’s not much to make you care about her. The game ends up feeling average mostly because of odd design choices and poor combat mechanics, which I’ll get into below. Exploring is fun, and the environments look great. I could see this being a good game for hunting down hidden items, and it has a bit of a Zelda‑like vibe. People debate whether it’s “soulslike” or “soulslite,” and I think that’s fair given the parry mechanic and boss‑focused structure. the combat problems: Combat is where everything falls apart. Your character has a sort of soft auto‑lock, but the hard lock‑on is frustrating, it’s sticky when you don’t want it to be, and it breaks for no reason when you do want it. The camera is terrible in combat, especially when locked on, sitting too low and giving you a bad view. An over‑the‑shoulder angle or even a slight upward tilt would have helped a lot. Healing requires picking flowers almost always on the edges of the arenas, which you can’t do while locked on and is super awkward when you're rushed to heal in a time of need. Inputs feel inconsistent, and sometimes button presses just don’t register. Attacks have no impact or weight. You can’t adjust aim and camera sensitivity separately, so you’re stuck choosing between a sluggish camera or a camera so fast it’s impossible to aim on a controller. Most pickups are worthless, mostly cosmetic hats, and one of the main currencies is also just for hats. If you don’t care about cosmetics, a lot of treasure feels pointless. I ran into several glitches, including softlocks that forced me to quit out and load to fix. In some fights, enemies literally trapped me in place until I died. Combat encounters feel isolated and artificial. There are no free‑roaming enemies; nearly every fight is a scripted event where weaker enemies spawn endlessly just to swarm and annoy you. This applies even to boss fights, which makes killing the normal enemies pointless since they just instantly respawn. There’s almost no variation in combat design at all. Difficulty and other notes: I played on the default difficulty. It’s nowhere near Dark Souls, but some of the late‑game bosses are genuinely challenging, mostly because they throw swarms of normal enemies at you. The final battle has an exponential difficulty spike, drags on forever, includes a platforming section, and has no checkpoints; fail once and you redo the entire sequence. I think this is going to derail a lot of players, and if you're looking for a more casual experience it may be a good idea to just go with an easier difficulty. I think the game would be a good one for even young kids on one of the easier difficulties. There’s also a lesbian romance subplot, which is fine, but feels a bit forced. It isn’t sexualized, but it comes across as something added for the sake of catering to the modern woke audience and to check some boxes rather than because it served the story in any way. It may feel out of place, especially for children who might not understand what’s going on. The only reason I even bring this up is because this seems like a good game for young children and that may not be something you feel like explaining. Final thoughts: Despite all my complaints, I still had fun overall. The exploration and visuals carry the experience, and the game is worth checking out, especially if you can grab it on sale.