I just now realized that I had already written a "pros" of this game and forgot to come back around and write about what I think are the deficiencies in this game. Every coin has an opposite side and while the overall experience with Kena was a positive one, there are some major flaws with the game that I feel need to be addressed.
This will contain spoilers
If you are interested in this game just know that I suggest getting it, but maybe wait until it goes on special, which will probably be pretty soon and just before Christmas.
Very limited combat options
While I appreciate simplistic controls because I am a casual gamer at best I can see how this game would be quite boring to any dedicated gamer. Combat might be a little too simplistic in that there really aren't that many ways to approach a battle.
Basically, every encounter goes like this
- pop off a few shots from range that do very little damage
- wait for an enemy strike then dodge
- light attack light attack light attack
- run away and repeat
There are a few enemies that the parry will be required but other than these few enemies that you encounter, there really isn't any reason to ever parry since your dodge makes you invulnerable and has much better reaction time after the fact. Most gamers will probably find themselves locking on to an opponent and then just dodging like mad for the entire time.
Basically everything is a boss fight
Aside from very early on in the game where they are introducing you to the controls, there are very few encounters that will happen that are not some sort of "instance" that involves multiple enemies that all spawn at the same place and will appear in a very predictable manner. While some people may appreciate this, I kind of enjoy having the random enemy here and there to whack on. Whenever an enemy appears there will always be a lot of them and then you will have large areas where there is nothing in between. While I appreciate the lack of trash mobs that are just annoying, it would be nice if it wasn't just one boss fight after another. Furthermore, the game is somewhat XP driven and since there is no way to grind for XP this is an aspect of the game that you can not fudge to increase your stats.
Difficulty slider is absurd
This one might be a little more difficult to explain: Basically the steps between "Normal" and "Easy" is too great. When I was playing the game on normal I would get my ass handed to me on a regular basis. After trying a dozen times or so to get past something I change it down to easy and then I storm through all the enemies who just stand there and let you stomp them, on the first try.
I tried the game once on the highest setting and all i have to say is "hell to the no!" This might be a lot of fun for those Dark Souls types out there but that was just nuts. I am not that hardcore. The problem for me was that Normal was way too hard (even early on) and Easy was entirely too easy. There should have been a middle ground.
In game currency is useless
One of the great things in all adventure games is when you discover a chest somewhere, right? You could be getting something really great to add to your arsenal. Not in this game! Most of the chests will contain some sort of collectible that doesn't actually affect your stats at all or they will contain whatever the name of the in-game currency is - which would be fine if there was something of substance for you to actually purchase. Unfortunately, the only thing you can buy in the game with this currency is hats for your little cute followers.
This would be all fine and dandy if the new hats actually changed something about the game but it does absolutely nothing at all. It doesn't matter what hats your "rots" have on, they behave in exactly the same manner. Once you discover that almost all chests contain something useless or more currency, there is very little incentive to actually try to 100% this game. There is very little reason to backtrack to the areas where your newly acquired skills would open up another pathway because all that you are going to get at the end of said "side mission" is more currency to buy more useless hats.
I'm sure there are some people out there that enjoy this but I can't really put myself into the mind of a person that would be striving to have awesome skins for their pets in a 1-player game.
Final boss takes away all your skills
There are a few games that have done this before and I've hated it all of those times as well.
The long path to the final boss is a fun one, but then you get to it and all of a sudden all of your add on powers get taken away from you and this introduces a couple of questions: What was the point of getting all the upgrades.... and how is it possible that the final boss is capable of doing this?
Gradually your powers are restored and this is a multi-stage boss fight and it is actually really cool. However, there is no explanation to why your powers have disappeared and this means you are going to make a lot of mistakes since you are instinctively going to go to hit some sort of button combination only to realize that you don't have that power anymore.
Even without these powers the final boss is pretty easily dispatched on Easy and I guess I'm a punk for playing it on that setting.
tl;dr
Overall, I still think this game is worth getting but perhaps wait until the price has dropped for Christmas before doing so. It isn't perfect but it is better than most games like it that I have seen in recent times. It is quite rare for studios to release a fully-offline 1-player adventure game with no sort of microtransactions and for that I applaud the developers. These days it seems like almost everything is designed for online multi-player and I am one of those guys that doesn't actually want to do this.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits, despite its shortcomings is still one of my favorite games of 2020 and if they make some DLC for it I will admit that I will probably get suckered into buying it :)