The Legend of Korra Review

Developed By: Platinum Games

Published By: Activision

Release Date: October 21st (Windows, PS3, PS4)/October 22nd (Xbox One/Xbox360)

Platforms: PS3, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about The Legend of Korra is that it’s easy to see that the game had so much potential. A bending game brought to us by the team behind Bayonetta? That allows you to switch bending styles on the fly? To plow through waves of enemies? It sounds like a dream come true! Unfortunately, the dream turns out to be more of a frustrating nightmare.

Raise your hand if when you heard about a Korra game your first thought was “Boy I sure hope you get to start out having lost all your abilities!” For all two of you who probably raised your hands, congratulations. For the rest of you, this game essentially immediately starts out as a giant disappointment.

The game more or less has a story that boils down to “a bad guy is doing some generic bad guy things” in the form of Hundun being Hundun and that includes chi blockers that immediately wipe you of all bending techniques. Why in the world anyone thought it would be a fun idea to make a Korra game where the first two levels are more or less spent punching enemies and crying over chi blockers I really don’t know. Yet on your quest to get your powers back, you ultimately end up having to engage in some generic “the power was within you all along!” nonsense to get your various abilities back. Considering the game is short (roughly 5 hours long or so), I hate that you spend a decent portion of the game not even bending elements or only having limited resources at hand.

The game also fumbles the way items are treated in a way that I really can’t comprehend. Not only do you have to visit the shop that’s at the main menu, you then have to go into “Korra’s Room” and equip each item to a slot. I wish you could do this from the shop itself because ultimately the only reason to visit Korra’s Room is to do these equips. While there is a large portion of the screen devoted to your bending abilities, ultimately all you can do is look at the various combos you haven’t unlocked and see what level your bending is at. Korra also has various costumes but seeing as how they require beating the game or inputting special codes, and there’s only about 5 costumes or so, not a whole lot of time will be spent here besides equipping items.

You don’t ALWAYS fight these guys. Sometimes they have red shirts on!

Which is also baffling because a game over screen will allow you to enter the shop, but you’ll still ultimately need to restart and head to the menu to do anything with them. And considering the fact that restarting at a checkpoint wipes you of any items you used previously, this is something that ends up happening a hell of a lot and is more annoying than anything else. Used all your items trying to fight that boss? Ended up dying? Cool, have fun restarting, exiting to the menu, entering the shop, entering Korra’s room, and exiting back to the main menu to finally head back into the chapter just so you can equip some more potions.

Ultimately though, the reason why this is so annoying is that the gameplay itself is actually great. Those familiar with any Platinum Games titles will be pretty at home with the large combo building and fairly easy to understand controls. One button dodges, one switches bending, one is a heavy attack, one is a light attack, and holding either of those charges them up. When you get into fights they’re tremendously fun and mowing down the enemies with the various bending techniques, especially as you level them up, is truly a blast. Fights are fun and frantic, the action is heavy, and you essentially never stop moving due to the amount of enemies you end up fighting and the constant need to dodge attacks.

Again though, this could be better. For the most part, the enemies are simple palette swapped versions of each other with some kind of small trick to differentiate them from each other. One enemy type may have the ability to electrocute you while another has the ability to tie you up until you break free (which predictably allows other enemies to take the time and rack up some damage on you). Considering Korra has such a rich world, this seems like such a poor decision. And when you fight various bending masters, you end up fighting legitimately the same enemy type over and over and over again. No lie, I believe I fought the same group of 3 at least 3 times within an hour.

There’s some rather frustrating game-play choices as well. Considering the game consistently throws in your face the need to dodge and keep moving, I found it odd that constant dodging is penalized by Korra needing to take a breather which leaves her wide open to attacking enemies. The camera is fairly wonky as well and I found myself finding the need to run away from walls simply so the camera wouldn’t get hung up on a corner and make it impossible to see the battle going on. It’s frustrating, especially considering Platinum Games has made the battles so frantic. It sounds like a minor complaint until you realize that it can often mean the difference between life or death, as many enemies’ attacks have a habit of knocking you back and/or stunning you which can lead to a frustrating cycle where you can’t get a hit in.

I also wish that the game utilized the different bending styles in a better way that didn’t feel forced. It would’ve been nice to see certain enemies have certain weaknesses to certain elements but there’s not much there to make you want to change up your style besides the occasional chest or doorway requiring a certain elements to break. Chaining together combos is pretty cool but its also fairly limited until you really start unlocking abilities which means that a large majority of the game is spent with very low level bending abilities because it takes awhile to even unlock them all.

The game itself looks wonderful and the animation during game-play is pretty much identical to the TV show. The cutscenes, however, are remarkably amateur looking and I almost wish they just gave us the plot points within the game itself so it would look better. After all, the major plot points are essentially “the bad guy went here” and “I got my bending power back” so its nothing mind-blowing. Fans of the series will be happy to hear that all voice actors from the show are reprising their roles here in the game. Which, again, needs to be taken with a grain of salt as pretty much everyone besides Korra gets nothing but a small one-liner here and there. And certain characters are introduced in a way that feels remarkably gimmicky, such as Naga’s odd endless runner mini-game that is just kinda there.

Considering the writing team for the cartoon worked on the script for the game, I don’t really have any excuses as to why they allowed the story to turn out so poorly. The video game more or less gave them so free reign to flesh out the story (this game bridges the second and third seasons of the show) but its like they just simply did not care.

At the end of the day though, I honestly can’t say I wouldn’t recommend it. For only $15 the game has a decent length, the bending is ultimately fun when you get down to it, and the game manages to be remarkably challenging in the way we’ve come to expect from Platinum Games. Did I hate my time with Korra? Not at all. But it certainly stands that the game could be a whole lot better and definitely reeks of being a last minute cash in. Which I think is where the frustration lies for me. I’ve played games that are definitely worse than this that cost a lot more money. But if Korra had a longer development time, it had more money going towards it, and perhaps the companies weren’t busy trying to shoehorn this in between their own major projects, Korra could’ve been a remarkable game and one of the best tie-ins to a franchise we’ve ever seen.