Kena was an indie sensation before its release because of its colorful cartoonish looks and its Zelda influences. It does look nice and there are a few Zelda mechanics but for the most part this game feels a lot more like a long lost action adventure game of the early 2000s like a Starfox Adventure or Beyond Good and evil. It takes a while to get going but once it does Kena hits a great balance between combat, exploring and environmental puzzles.
My first few hours with this game were a struggle because it felt so basic. For the first third of the game Kena’s abilities are limited to her staff which is her main weapon. For such a colorful kid friendly looking game it’s strange that the devs decided to take inspiration from Dark Souls for the combat. Luckily there is no soul dying mechanic, it’s more that fast and heavy attacks are on your R1 and R2 buttons and there is a heavy emphasis on blocking (a shield bubble you have that regenerates), parrying and roll dodging. Your move set early on is limited to really basic combos and very meager defenses. You do get a bow and arrow with a recharging 3 shot limit but it’s only good to hit enemies weak points or take down flying bugs. The combat was stiff, the timing to parry was difficult, and animations can never be canceled so many times you are stuck doing one action and pressing a button to do another does nothing. Combat felt sloppy and overly difficult, especially with the sub bosses.
The first few areas have Kena running around shooting switches with an arrow, or using your staff to uncover glowy hiding spots of the rot which are little pikmin like creatures that follow you around. At first they don’t do much, a lot of the game world is corrupted with red and grey plants that have to be destroyed to restore the land. Most of the time a bunch of enemies will come out, kill them and a big red plant will open up this seed and then you send the rot to make it glow then use an arrow or the staff power to blow it up. It all felt very standard action adventure stuff, nothing too interesting.
There were some optional loot to find, some is valuable like increasing the amount of rot, finding life bar extensions, and charms that give bonuses. But the majority of loot is maybe the worst possible prize I’ve seen in a game, hats for your rot… the little guys that follow you around get little hats to wear. No it doesn’t give them extra power it’s just a cosmetic item. They then double down on this hat thing by creating an entire secondary currency system that is used at a hat store to buy more hats for them. If you for some reason like this, congrats, but I think for most it’s a huge waste of time. The game at least does a good job of mixing good loot with the bad loot so I always was compelled to explore and find the hidden chests.
So after 1/3 of the game is done you go to the next major section of the world and also the main village hub starts to open up more including some optional challenge trials to do. A gained a new power; the bomb, wonder where they got that idea from. But it’s not a rock busting bomb, this thing is a magic bomb that activates certain rocks to float in air. All of a sudden the environment is filled with sort of rock floating puzzles where you need to throw a bomb, shoot it to active the rocks, use arrows to adjust the rocks into certain positions all while timed. This section was way more creative with its environmental challenges and its secrets.
Your rot also gain the ability to turn into this snake like creature you can control to destroy some of the red poisoned plants and access new areas. Exploration mattered in this area, there were secret paths and optional challenge chests all around. It started to hit that zone where the action, platforming, puzzles come together. Now I will say “puzzles” cause we aren’t talking anything close to Zelda level here, but at least you have to pay attention to what you are doing.
What really shocked me is the combat started to come alive, yeah it was still kind of stiff but once you start to unlock more powers I could finally feel like I have options. The bomb for instance can be thrown to stick to enemies and then ignite them with a shield blast or arrow. The enemy will either stagger or some will open up revealing a weak spot for the arrows. The bombs can be upgrade so when they explode smaller ones spread to multiple enemies. At the highest level it can even create a bubble where time is frozen inside of it. There is also a rot charge mechanic where if you parry or damage enemies you can gain energy to spend on a super powered rot attack, or spend it to send your rot to activate a healing power. Management of your rot skill, combined with the powers you gain opened up all kinds of strategies.
Enemies start to come in more shapes and sizes. Uses of specific items is key to defeating them and the bosses. There is a whole extra power later on that allows dashing which you need to use to materialize certain enemies. By the end it was a really fun Zelda like combat system that tested me in ways a souls game does. I went from dreading combat encounters to loving them. The bosses especially toward the end were highlights, the final areas have a great variety of them that really focus certain skills.
I do like how the village hub area unlocks as you find these spirit mail items out in the world. Sadly what you find is usually just a few simple chests with more hats but for a completionist I enjoyed taking a break from the main quest to mess around in the village. Spirit trials can be found in the village as well, these are challenges which could be brutal, especially to get all optional goals on them. There are combat challenges which can last 9 minutes of multiple waves, optional goals being don’t ever use a healing item for instance. Some are environmental challenges where you need to mix your bombs, arrows and dashing to get through an area as fast as possible. Bosses can be replayed now with specific time and health goals in mind. The prizes are some charms and costumes for Kena to wear, not the best but the fun is in completing the challenges.
Graphically like I stated before it’s a really great looking, colorful animation style. That said actual character movement feels very stiff, while playing I couldn’t help feel as if it was a fan project made in dreams. It looks good but in the way those unreal remakes of a classic game look good. The music is nice and fits the mood. Anyone looking for a deep story won’t find it here, I had trouble caring at all for what is happening with the story, definitely something they could work on.
Kena is a very good first effort, once it hits its stride after a few hours I was hooked. It has all the building blocks to really push this game into the next tier of quality. I would focus on more items, more puzzles, better rewards, do some focused dungeons… make more Zelda like lol. The combat could use tweaking so it’s more responsive and they could work on the difficulty balance a bit but I like what they have right now. This is a love letter to the action adventure games of the early 2000s, back when not everything was an open world, and games weren’t bloated for 50 hour play times. It’s nice to just play a fun 10-15 hour action adventure romp.
Score: 7.5
My first few hours with this game were a struggle because it felt so basic. For the first third of the game Kena’s abilities are limited to her staff which is her main weapon. For such a colorful kid friendly looking game it’s strange that the devs decided to take inspiration from Dark Souls for the combat. Luckily there is no soul dying mechanic, it’s more that fast and heavy attacks are on your R1 and R2 buttons and there is a heavy emphasis on blocking (a shield bubble you have that regenerates), parrying and roll dodging. Your move set early on is limited to really basic combos and very meager defenses. You do get a bow and arrow with a recharging 3 shot limit but it’s only good to hit enemies weak points or take down flying bugs. The combat was stiff, the timing to parry was difficult, and animations can never be canceled so many times you are stuck doing one action and pressing a button to do another does nothing. Combat felt sloppy and overly difficult, especially with the sub bosses.
The first few areas have Kena running around shooting switches with an arrow, or using your staff to uncover glowy hiding spots of the rot which are little pikmin like creatures that follow you around. At first they don’t do much, a lot of the game world is corrupted with red and grey plants that have to be destroyed to restore the land. Most of the time a bunch of enemies will come out, kill them and a big red plant will open up this seed and then you send the rot to make it glow then use an arrow or the staff power to blow it up. It all felt very standard action adventure stuff, nothing too interesting.
There were some optional loot to find, some is valuable like increasing the amount of rot, finding life bar extensions, and charms that give bonuses. But the majority of loot is maybe the worst possible prize I’ve seen in a game, hats for your rot… the little guys that follow you around get little hats to wear. No it doesn’t give them extra power it’s just a cosmetic item. They then double down on this hat thing by creating an entire secondary currency system that is used at a hat store to buy more hats for them. If you for some reason like this, congrats, but I think for most it’s a huge waste of time. The game at least does a good job of mixing good loot with the bad loot so I always was compelled to explore and find the hidden chests.
So after 1/3 of the game is done you go to the next major section of the world and also the main village hub starts to open up more including some optional challenge trials to do. A gained a new power; the bomb, wonder where they got that idea from. But it’s not a rock busting bomb, this thing is a magic bomb that activates certain rocks to float in air. All of a sudden the environment is filled with sort of rock floating puzzles where you need to throw a bomb, shoot it to active the rocks, use arrows to adjust the rocks into certain positions all while timed. This section was way more creative with its environmental challenges and its secrets.
Your rot also gain the ability to turn into this snake like creature you can control to destroy some of the red poisoned plants and access new areas. Exploration mattered in this area, there were secret paths and optional challenge chests all around. It started to hit that zone where the action, platforming, puzzles come together. Now I will say “puzzles” cause we aren’t talking anything close to Zelda level here, but at least you have to pay attention to what you are doing.
What really shocked me is the combat started to come alive, yeah it was still kind of stiff but once you start to unlock more powers I could finally feel like I have options. The bomb for instance can be thrown to stick to enemies and then ignite them with a shield blast or arrow. The enemy will either stagger or some will open up revealing a weak spot for the arrows. The bombs can be upgrade so when they explode smaller ones spread to multiple enemies. At the highest level it can even create a bubble where time is frozen inside of it. There is also a rot charge mechanic where if you parry or damage enemies you can gain energy to spend on a super powered rot attack, or spend it to send your rot to activate a healing power. Management of your rot skill, combined with the powers you gain opened up all kinds of strategies.
Enemies start to come in more shapes and sizes. Uses of specific items is key to defeating them and the bosses. There is a whole extra power later on that allows dashing which you need to use to materialize certain enemies. By the end it was a really fun Zelda like combat system that tested me in ways a souls game does. I went from dreading combat encounters to loving them. The bosses especially toward the end were highlights, the final areas have a great variety of them that really focus certain skills.
I do like how the village hub area unlocks as you find these spirit mail items out in the world. Sadly what you find is usually just a few simple chests with more hats but for a completionist I enjoyed taking a break from the main quest to mess around in the village. Spirit trials can be found in the village as well, these are challenges which could be brutal, especially to get all optional goals on them. There are combat challenges which can last 9 minutes of multiple waves, optional goals being don’t ever use a healing item for instance. Some are environmental challenges where you need to mix your bombs, arrows and dashing to get through an area as fast as possible. Bosses can be replayed now with specific time and health goals in mind. The prizes are some charms and costumes for Kena to wear, not the best but the fun is in completing the challenges.
Graphically like I stated before it’s a really great looking, colorful animation style. That said actual character movement feels very stiff, while playing I couldn’t help feel as if it was a fan project made in dreams. It looks good but in the way those unreal remakes of a classic game look good. The music is nice and fits the mood. Anyone looking for a deep story won’t find it here, I had trouble caring at all for what is happening with the story, definitely something they could work on.
Kena is a very good first effort, once it hits its stride after a few hours I was hooked. It has all the building blocks to really push this game into the next tier of quality. I would focus on more items, more puzzles, better rewards, do some focused dungeons… make more Zelda like lol. The combat could use tweaking so it’s more responsive and they could work on the difficulty balance a bit but I like what they have right now. This is a love letter to the action adventure games of the early 2000s, back when not everything was an open world, and games weren’t bloated for 50 hour play times. It’s nice to just play a fun 10-15 hour action adventure romp.
Score: 7.5