Legend of Korra plat Get, #58.
For a licensed game and for a $15 download-only title it was pretty decent, not great. It's based off the cartoon Legend of Korra which is a spin-off of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, both by Nickelodean.
The setting is a world which is similar to a futuristic vision of the 1920s. So there is older style technology like black and white, silent film, but electrified gauntlets and giant, mechanical robot suits. Certain people also have special abilities called "bending" which allow them control one of the four natural elements: Earth, Fire, Wind, or Water. The Avatar is a being who reincarnates after death in the body of another bender, sort of like the Dalai Lama. The Avatar is the only bender who is able to master and control all four elements and is charged with being the world's protector.
Very little of this you would know if you only played the game as it just assumes you have seen the series and are aware of the back story. The game takes place between the 2nd and 3rd season and features a 1 dimensional, villain named Hundun who has a grudge against one of the Avatar's past lives who defeated him and trapped him in the spirit world. Early on Hundun employees a class of warrior's called Chi-blockers who have the ability to temporarily stop a person from being able to bend the elements. The rest of the game is reclaiming your four bending abilities before confronting Hundun.
Early on you only have access to water bending which is a bit of a drag because it is quite weak. It's main use is that it has far longer range than any of the other bending abilities, able to snipe at a distance of about 50 feet. The next one unlocked is Earth which is slow, but powerful, most hits will stagger enemies. Fire is incredibly fast, and has slightly longer range than Earth, but does not do as much damage. Finally air creates mini-tornadoes all over the place while you punch that damage enemies. Once unlocked you can switched between any of the bending styles by pressing L1 or R1. The first 3 bending styles have a nice balance: weak but ranged; slow, but powerful; and medium damage, but quick. Unfortunately air bending is so much better than all the previous 3 styles against multiple enemies that there is little reason to switch off it once it is unlocked, which destroys the balance between the bending styles.
Defeating enemies with a particular bending style levels up that bending style which gives you access to new combos for free (viewable on the Korra's room menu) as well as combos that must be purchased in the spirit shop with the in-game currency, spirit energy. Also in the spirit shop are consumables such as health potions or Chi-boosters as well as talismans. Talismans grant specific abilities when they are equipped in one of the four equipment slots. Some examples of talismans are one that halves max HP, but doubles attack power; or halves attack power, but doubles the amount of XP received to level up that bending style. Consumables can also be mapped to any of those equip slots, this allows the use of them by hitting the d-pad direction which corresponds to that equip slot.
Square is light attack and triangle is strong attack. Either can be held down to temporarily charges up the Chi-meter which causes the strength and utility of the bending style to increase. For instance, when fire-bending is fully charged, if you press the attack button you will automatically lunge to within striking distances of the nearest enemy. Charged up air-bending will create many more mini-tornadoes. X is your jump and circle is used to do a finishing mode on stunned enemies.
The other major systems are guard and dodge. Holding L2 blocks normal attacks and prevents damage. If guard is pressed as you are struck by a melee attack, then they are stunned. If guard is pressed as you are struck by a ranged attack, then the attack is reflected back at the enemy. Electrified attacks cannot be countered or blocked, they must be dodged by pressing R2. You can dodge 3 or 4 times in a row before Korra will have to stop for a little over a second to recover.
Also the runner segments where you ride on Naga's back (a large polar bear-like animal) can be pretty annoying as you have to move from side to side in the various lanes or jump or slide to avoid obstacles. What a lot of the times messes me up is it isn't a straight line, you have to press left or right to make turns at junctions. Often right after a turn if you are in the wrong lane it is difficult to avoid an obstacle. On easy you can have 5 HP, normal 3 HP, and hard 1 HP. That means if you get hit with enemy attacks or hit a breakable you have to start way back on a checkpoint on hard difficulty. Around the mid-point they combine a boss battle with a Naga Runner which becomes pretty tedious as the boss has a lot of HP.
The environments have a nice cell shaded look so everything looks like the TV show and a lot of the original voice cast is on hand with at least a few lines of dialogue.
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It's perfectly functional, but is just missing something. The story is threadbare, the environments are pretty simple, and there aren't that many of a variety of enemies. The runner segments might not be so bad in small doses, but they pop up a little too frequently and combining it with a boss battle was probably not a good idea. There also isn't a good enough use for all the bending styles. Water is required for range, but for melee air trumps all the other bending styles in crowd-control. This leave Earth bending as somewhat of a fifth wheel. It's staggering ability would be helpful, but it doesn't work on bosses, so the speed of fire bending is much more useful. Earth also has some crowd control abilities, but it isn't as good as air bending. It would have been nice if they introduced some mechanics to encourage switching like a shield that requires being struck by rocks to break or enemies using flaming weapons that could be put out with water bending. Perhaps if they had more time / budget.
