What an amazing action-adventure game with an awesome story and stunning graphics! It is quite a challenging game on every difficulty and has an achievement attached to the hardest difficulty. ~25h to 100%.
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 25h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 9/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2
Is there a good guide available: Yes, there are multiple. I mostly use this one from Powerpyx but I’ve also used the maps for the collectibles to mop them up after finishing the game from Rock Paper Shotgun
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, some of the achievements for doing X in a battle. Especially the one against the mage as you only will encounter him in story-related combat scenes
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes, on the first playthrough you can play on whatever difficulty you want, but for one achievement you have to play Kena: Bridge of Spirits on master difficulty
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a wonderful, beautiful, stunning, and cute Action-adventure. I was blown away by the looks, the storytelling and look how adorable those Rot companions are, they are so cute, I want one (or more) IRL, please! And to make them even cuter, you unlock hats for them during the game and you can give them all different hats. Kena: Bridge of Spirits has so many small details in the game, for example, the Rot that is normally on your shoulder moves to your head when you’re swimming so it stays dry.
The game felt a lot like a Zelda game, tbh the last time I played a Zelda game was Twilight Princess, so it has been a while but it reminded me so much of those games. The big differences between those types of games and Kena are that the game looks a lot cuter, but it is so hard! The battles aren’t easy, and most enemies have weak spots but it kept feeling quite challenging.
The story was told in an amazing way, the game left me with some questions but it has such heartwarming moments and told the story in a great way. I cried during 2 cutscenes as it was just heartbreaking but sweet. This is kinda expected from a game in which you guide the spirits of people that are stuck in this world to the next one.
Before I could start enjoying this awesome game, I had to tweak the settings a bit, as I had a lot of short stutters and some motion sickness. Not sure if I got used to the game and that made the motion sickness go away or if changing the settings did help but on my second day play (after only playing for 30 minutes the evening before) I didn’t have the motion sickness anymore and didn’t experience any stutters after changing the settings.
Most guides mention that the combat achievements are missable, and I can see that for some. I also think that some of them you can still get because you can replay the curse chests. The one with the mages might be a problem as that is one is only in a few battles that are story related. Most of the other achievements are story related, or for all the collectibles you can find during the game.
However, there is one achievement that is for beating this game on the master difficulty, which unlocks after finishing it the first time. The master difficulty comes straight from hell in my opinion, I’m now sure that the standard “Souls-Like” games aren’t my thing as I didn’t come very far in Kena: Bridge of Spirits on the master difficulty, while I already knew the game and knew where to go, that should have made it easier but it wasn’t at all. There are tricks online on how to use a glitch and still get this achievement but it seems that on the PlayStation they patched it and I don’t doubt Ember Lab might do the same with this Steam version.
I walk away from this game with some sad feelings that I have beating it, hoping that one day there will be a Kena 2 and with the realization, I don’t play enough Action-adventure games while I enjoy them so much. And Kena: Bridge of Spirits is one of the best Action-adventures out there.
This review for Kena: Bridge of Spirits was written on 15 Oktober 2022, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 41 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.