The Legend of Korra Review
I haven’t ever watched the Korra cartoon, but I have enough friends that do that I have a stronger understanding of the premise than I would like to. You aim to master four elements, earth, wind, water, and fire. Each adjust the dynamics of combat and expose enemy weaknesses. It’s a system that wouldn’t be too difficult for children or casual game fans to pick up, but it allows for enough experimentation to keep someone more obsessive from going comatose. What might be difficult for newbies is the learning curve. After an easy enough introduction, the difficulty spikes suddenly. Each time I started to get a real hang of an enemies attack pattern it added one or two different types into the mix. Enemies that are capable of using “bending”, Korra’s term for elemental magic, are very difficult at least at first, and fighting multiples of them can be a stun-locking clusterfuck. You will die repeatedly in this game, and it won’t always be your fault. Moves are harder to read than in other Platinum games, and the game clearly isn’t long enough for them to establish a difficulty curve. There are also Temple Run style segments, because that’s what the kids like these days I guess.
The Legend of Korra 
offers a functional combat system, and that might have been enough from a licensed game from ten years ago, but we live in a world where Alien Isolation and Shadows of Mordor exist. Things have changed for the better. In the limited time it took to beat Korra once, I felt it had overstayed its welcome. Enemies are often hard to read, their actions are repetitive, and the quick time events they instigate are very demanding. There is little exploration, little variation, and little to work towards in the in game shop. Your options, when playing Korra, are to forge ahead, and what follows often isn’t as enjoyable as what has been accomplished. When Korra isn’t frustrating, it’s bland. The core gameplay just isn’t that great an experience. Even if you aren’t able to find too many new discount action game experiences, there are too many good downloadables for me to recommend this to someone with a passing interest.
Boss battles come about as frequently as you would expect from a 3rd person action title. Some of them are relatively painless, even providing a glimpse into what this game could have been, but they do not improve over time. Many boss fights occur more than once with no changes to core mechanics, just stat adjustments. Enemies are often poured into boss rooms when the game doesn’t know what to do to scale up the challenge. The final boss battle is especially horrible. He has mountains of health that would be more appropriate in a World of Warcraft raid than a brawler, and his extremely repetitive set of moves often distance him further from you only to buffer the amount of damage you can do to him even further. In a well balanced game, giving enemies larger amounts of health could be an effective part of what drives tension in a battle, but this is not a well balance game.
Story here is basic, comically so. An evil wizard takes Korra’s powers and she wants them back, Korra pursues him. Because The Legend of Korra doesn’t spend time in lengthy exposition this story doesn’t get tedious, and the action game flow isn’t really broken.
The Cel Shaded style looks good, communicating the style of the cartoon well. When combined with the 3d roaming combat, Korra bears more than a passing resemblance to CyberConnect’s 3D Naruto brawlers. Its visual language is poor, I often had trouble telling when I was hit. Korra’s combat engine feels ill suited from more than 1 vs.1 battles, yet these are a rare occurrence. Fans of the series should definitely give Korra a shot, but hardcore action game fans would likely do better with Bayonetta 2. Korra is certainly more fun than Ninja Gaiden 3, and as a budget downloadable it gets the job done, but it doesn’t offer the refined, over the top action experience that made Platinum the studio it is today. Korra is brief, but it isn’t clever. It lacks the X factor that makes Platinum Games’ games special, and it lacks the design sense to appeal those further on the “Korra fan” part of this game’s appeal spectrum.
All that said, I didn’t walk away utterly hating The Legend of Korra. It needs more meat on it’s bones, stronger visual language in combat, and a story that involves more of the characters that people like from the show to be successful, but I don’t get the sense that this was just a quick cash in. Some of Korra’s worse points can be justified by an attempt to appeal to an audience outside of the hardcore console market, and the creators show a an understanding of what makes Korra herself appealing even if other characters are barely present. The game studio isn’t warping the Legend of Korra universe in any way. Korra is a fun, strong character to get to know even if her game isn’t wonderful. As a non-fan I feel like I walked away with something from my play through even though I was often frustrated, and as Nickelodeon, Platinum Games, and Activision had all probably hoped, I’m far more likely to give watching The Legend of Korra show a chance, now that I’ve been introduced to Korra’s world.
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