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Kena Bridge of Spirits Review Thread

I played this game for 40 minutes, and refunded it on EGS. It feels ... a bit lifeless or soul less. I can't put my finger on it but while the graphics look great everything feels super static, yeah it's a small team I get it. But if you don't even make a stylistic HP bar, for the main character and for the enemies that's a shame in a way for me.

The Dreamworks faces just annoy the shit out of me.
The graphics while look nice are just too static, nothing really moves when your character moves.
The gameplay is fine, I like the parry system, and reactiveness of the enemies
Audio design is great.

But it just feels so .... lifeless I have never felt this with a game before

It's a shame cause playing The Pathless was a great experience when it came to indie stuff but this feels like they just used a lot of basic assets and cranked up the visuals for them.
 
What's impressive is the quality of animation, lighting, character designs in a pretty decent package at a budget price of $40. It reminds people especially ones who played games from the PS2 era of a time where budget games could be pretty great in quality.

And this is from a First time "game studio". They mostly do animation and commercials and branched out to make something pretty great.

The thing that sucks is the story of someone who was fucked over by ember labs.


I see his name is in the credits under prototype but most of his animations were used in final game. Hope the guy gets something out of this, be nice if SOny recognized some of this and did something about it.

Or at least Ember labs back pays the guy from what they make.
I hate to sound mean but that's the risk you run when you go with a start up or in this case an indie game studio that hasn't done anything yet. He also only worked on it for 7 months he wasn't there the whole time and they did help on his other project. It's not really up to Sony to take care of him that was all probably all ancient history by the time they got involved with the project.
 
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game looks amazing on a decent pc

i would say looks like a next gen game (ps5)
plays like a PS2 game

holy shit this game controls are basic and clunky.. once you poke through the pretty visuals.. it's basic af so far..,
refunded

not that i wil play anything besides d2 this thursday anyway

The devs should go back to the n64 game banjo kazooie and dig into what made that game good. Intro etc.


i would recommend loop hero , hades, valheim and factorio above this game.. (as far as indie games go)
Go back and play a PS2 game and tell me it feels as smooth as this does, this feels modern but basic not like an old clunky herky jerky ps2 game.
 
Can we make a thread if we have reached CGI Quality graphics yet from the 90s? 🤪
90s CGI sucked.

FFIX_CGscreen_02.jpg


intro-import.jpg


You may argue that it still does a few things better, but overall it's not as detailed as good looking games of today, probably misses a few graphical features as well..

The most important visual features missing from film are liquid or other complex simulation.
 

Gamerguy84

Member
I won't have time to play until Friday but it looks amazing. So far the only negative I'm reading is control. If it's "clunky" that would drive me crazy.

That's the only reason I can't play R* games. Hopefully it's not too bad as this looks awesome.
 

ssringo

Member
Very cutesy and charming but character movement feels a bit off. Not sure if it's just a bit janky on my PC though. Kena will kinda stutter step every few seconds like the world is streaming and my PC can't keep up (it absolutely can should). And I don't mean my PC is stuttering, Kena is slowing her movement like I didn't have the left stick pushed all the way forward (same thing happens with kb/m). The framerate was solid and lowering settings didn't help so idk.
 

schaft0620

Member
I got my code last night at 7PM EST, I've slept for two hours and my review is almost done. 🙃 unfortunately I have a kickball tournament in an hour. Ugh.
 
I got my code last night at 7PM EST, I've slept for two hours and my review is almost done. 🙃 unfortunately I have a kickball tournament in an hour. Ugh.
Lol someone sets up an actual tournament for kickball? Isn't that just for P.E. in elementary and middle school?
 

Bragr

Banned
What a hell, all my ability points just vanished, I had been saving them up for 2-3 hours, had something like 200 and they all disappeared and the counter reset. Now I'm at 10.
 
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MaKTaiL

Member
What a hell, all my ability points just vanished, I had been saving them up for 2-3 hours, had something like 200 and they all disappeared and the counter reset. Now I'm not at 10.

Man, that's a shitty fucking glitch.
I had the same thing happen but I thought it was because I died to one of the bosses (a bit like souls games).
 

Humdinger

Member
Sounds right up my alley, happy to see games like this getting made. I watched Skill Up's review, Jaffe's review (he got me), IGN and Game Informer. I'm confident from what I saw that I'll enjoy it, although I suspect I'll get frustrated with the boss fights, as I'm not super-nimble when it comes to combat.

I still don't have a PS5, so I'll wait until I have one of those to play it. I know it's available on PS4, but a game like this would be better on PS5, so I'll save it for that. I'd prefer physical, so I'll be waiting until November anyhow.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
The bosses are tough and you can’t take that many hits and they can give you a beating.

Fodder enemies are whatever in comparison. For me at least.
But that’s usually most games, I’m currently playing the game on expert and bosses do hit hard but it’s really not that tough to parry their attacks.
 

Humdinger

Member
The bosses are tough and you can’t take that many hits and they can give you a beating.

Fodder enemies are whatever in comparison. For me at least.
Yeah, I saw that commented on in several of the reviews -- that there was a radical difficulty spike when it came to boss fights. I know that you'd normally expect bosses to be tougher than normal enemies, but they were saying the difficulty spike was considerably more than what you'd normally expect.
 

Bragr

Banned
I had the same thing happen but I thought it was because I died to one of the bosses (a bit like souls games).
But isn't there a limited amount of ability (karma) points? I thought the chests and bosses you get them from disappeared once you exhausted them?

The game kept glitching when I used the mask, I had to restart it a few times because of it, so I assumed the karma points going away were just another glitch. Maybe it wasn't.
 

Stuart360

Member
The bosses are tough and you can’t take that many hits and they can give you a beating.

Fodder enemies are whatever in comparison. For me at least.
What difficuklty are you playing on?. I beat the first 2 bosses without being hit once. I'm on whatever difficulty the game defaults on, didnt touch it.
 

Haggard

Banned
Played a few hours on PC and loving the game. It's like a cute and colorful Soulsbourne-Light mixed with a bit of overlord.
The story is forgettable but the minute to minute gameplay is a lot of fun and very well implemented. It's been a while since I've seen an Indy with such high production standards.
 

Pedro Motta

Member
Playing it on the hardest dificulty, still not hard, but the bosses can 2-hit you to death, way more fun that way. Got to the part where I get the bow, charming game, loving it so far.
 

Orta

Banned
It's an extremely charming game. Nothing mind-blowing but I can of a lot of worse ways to waste a few hours in front of a game screen.

Reminds me so far of a mix between Jak & Daxter 1 and Tomb Raider Legend.
 
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