This game was exactly what I needed to play: a semi open-world action-adventure game that doesn't overwhelm. And, besides the beauty of the environments, which were indeed overwhelming at times, nothing else was guilty of this. Kena doesn't have a huge map, thousands of pieces of loot at every corner, complex mechanics or a rich skill tree. And these are exactly the reasons why I loved it.
You play as Kena, a young spirit guide who helps dead souls cross over into acceptance and peaceful existence after death. The story itself is centred upon a now deserted village, upon which a calamity occured, and explores a bunch of characters, as well as central themes of loss, regret and hope. It's a simple enough weaving of story arcs, but a pretty good one that always feel optimistic, but also knows how to layer emotions or put a serious face on. The world exploration is pretty simple: you find two resources scattered around, blue crystals and karma. The latter is used for improving abilities or purchasing charms that you find (kind of specific buffs), while the former is used for purchasing funny hats for Kena's rot companions, cute and furry creatures that you find scattered around the world. They also help you perform certain actions in combat, and collecting a certain number of rot companions upgrades how many rot actions you can undertake.
Which leads us to combat, which again is simple yet effective. Kena has a staff that is useful for melee attacks, and pretty early in the game also gains access to a bow, which was definitely my favourite weapon in the game. Coupled with abilities that are learned later, such as a dash attack, bombs that she can throw and detonate, and a bunch of other special skills that can be purchased, the combat is fluid, and the enemies are diverse enough in order to encourage diverse ways of dispatching them. And, when not fighting, solving environmental puzzles in order to progress to the main objectives, or find hidden collectibles. The cutesy vibe of the game sort of becomes secondary in certain boss encounters, which can be quite tough until you get to learn their attacks and the best way to avoid them while dealing damage. Even so, the toughest boss fight (not the final one, in my case) took me about 7-8 retries, so it's nothing too crazy. Some might be more difficult for some people if they play melee better than ranged on vice versa - the ones where the bow was better suited were much easier for me. But I think that the difficulty balance was perfect: not too punishing, but also not a total cakewalk. And the same goes for the puzzles. In fact, I was very grateful that in most areas, you can access all hidden or not so hidden locations with the abilities you have at that point in the main quest. You don't need to acquire another ability and come back in order to get to a place you couldn't previously, therefore artificially encouraging backtracking. Some might not like it for that, but I loved it for exactly that.
Exploring the beautiful world was a real treat, and I enjoyed finding most collectibles, although I didn't really go for all of them. My main issues with the game were relatively minor. First, most collectibles will give you blue crystals, but this is a resource purely meant for cosmetic improvements: the hats for your rot friends, which play no actual role in their performance. Secondly, the combat does not massively evolve from the moment that you get your bow next to the staff. It certainly doesn't get boring or repetitive, but it could have innovated in some ways later on.
That's about it, the rest was exactly as it should have been in my eyes. With a sequel already on the way, I hope the devs will resist the temptation to make everything bigger and larger in scope, and will keep the same experience that does not overwhelm.
