REVIEW -- The Legend of Korra (Video Game)

The Legend of Korra is a 2014 third-person beat 'em up video game developed by Platinum Games and published by Activision, based on the animated television series The Legend of Korra. It was released in October 2014 for Microsoft Windows,PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and received mixed reviews.

The game is one of two video games based on the same plot from the series. The other, The Legend of Korra: A New Era Begins, is a turn-based strategy game for the Nintendo 3DS.

Premise:

The events of the game occur in the three weeks between what happened in the second and third seasons of the series, which aired in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Korra is opposed by a "chi-blocker" who, at the start of the game, strips Korra of her bending abilities, which she has to regain in the course of the game. The game's main villain, Hundun, is named after a chaotic entity in Chinese mythology. An ancient, evil being previously trapped in the spirit world, he was released into the physical world by Korra's opening of the spirit portals at the end of the second season. The game sees him sow chaos in the world and pursue his grudge against the Avatar.

Overview:

The Legend of Korra is a third-person action game, supporting single-player play only. Players control Korra, the series' heroine, as she fights villains from the first two seasons of the series with the bending arts, a spiritual and physical practice similar in appearance to Eastern martial arts by which practitioners move and alter the elements of water, earth, fire and air. Korra can switch between four different elements on the fly, each with its own combat styles and special moves.

Waterbending is acquired first and specializes in ranged attacks. Earthbending, acquired next, features slow attacks that are very powerful and cannot be blocked. Firebending is a balanced style that once upgraded, features all three forms of attacks: Fast combos, slow but powerful, and ranged. Airbending, acquired late in the game, features fast and powerful attacks that can affect all surrounding targets. Korra also acquires a so-called "avatar state" near the end of the game; this state lasts a shorts period, but grants Korra powerful attacks that combine all four elements.

The game tries to persuade the player into using counterattacks. The player can initiate a counterattack by blocking an enemy attack just before it connects. Counterattacks are orders of magnitude more powerful than direct attacks. Counterattacking is the only way of defeating bosses in a reasonable amount of time, as defeating them with direct attacks can take hours. Electrical and earth-based attacks cannot be countered.

The game takes about four to six hours to play through, but contains "a New Game+ of sorts". These include an endless runner with Naga, and pro-bending matches, where teams of three try to bend each other out of an arena. This mode, which implements the pro-bending rules depicted in the series, is available after completing the game, with the player controlling the "Fire Ferrets" team made up of Korra and her friends Mako and Bolin.

The Verdict:

I remember when this game came out at launch, people were whining and complaining about how bad it was. At first, I was inclined to agree to the skeptics but then I understood why most people, namely the hardcore Platinum Games enthusiasts, were underwhelmed. The game doesn't really reward you for flashy combos in this game like most of Platinum Games other titles, such as Bayonetta, Anarchy Reigns, or Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Instead, this is game HEAVILY reliant on precise timing and counters to do massive amounts of damage in a short time. You could chip away at a boss' health guage for hours on end with normal attacks, even with the specific bending type that enemy type is weak against, but it won't mean shit in this game where you can do one counter and INSTANTLY kill a group of enemies if timed correctly. The best way to defeat the bosses of this game is to study their attacks, then evade and counter when the button prompt appears onscreen to deal the maximum amount of damage.

When you start the game in the tutorial, you have all four elements of bending, but after the tutorial, you lose the ability to use all of the elements and Korra has to relearn how to tap into each element throughout the course of the story campaign. Waterbending is mainly for distance and long-range attacks, earthbending is slow, but packs a punch - delivering massive, unblockable damage for successful strikes, firebending is fast, but not quite as powerful as earthbending, and last but not least, airbending is the jack of all trades, offering massive damage with each successful strike and offers tons of maneuverability to boot. Truth be told, after you acquire airbending, you're not going to be using the other elements much other than waterbending and even that's going to be rare as airbending does it all. I personally felt that Platinum Games should have spent a bit more time balancing out each of the elements properly. Firebending comes off almost extremely useless for the bulk of the game outside of it's mobility options and a lot of the high damaging combos tend to whiff on opponents.

The narrative here isn't anything to write home about, but it's decent, yet simplistic for what it's worth in this rather short adventure. My biggest complaint was the lack of Team Avatar (Mako, Bolin, and Asami) in this. Sure, you get to team up with your fellow Fire Ferrets in the Probending Mode, but that's the only real dialogue or interactions with them throughout the entire game. Asami doesn't even pop up in the game at all, despite the fact that her father's MechaTanks and Shock Gauntlets are used by the Chi-Blockers throughout the campaign. Tenzin and his family are absent as well, with the exception of Jinora who acts as spirit guide for Korra throughout the story. The game assumes a lot from gamers to know everything about Korra up to this point and it's lazy storytelling to just throw players in the thick of things in this game's narrative and not even explain anything leading up to this point. I did appreciate that the game does sport some animated cutscenes created specifically for this game by the series' creators, but it seemed a little half-assed that they didn't go farther than that to enlighten newcomers to Korra's world.

Overall, the game isn't bad. The story mode tends to get redundant pretty quick after Korra regains all four elements and unlock the Avatar state. The game then turns into a contest of building meter fast enough to lay waste to everything around you with the Avatar State. That's essentially what the final boss fight comes down to - countering his attacks to wear down his health and build up enough meter by killing his underlings to activate the Avatar State to finish him off. If anything I would have to frown upon about the game is some of the bad camera angles in a few sections of the game and the Naga Riding sections are a bit of chore outside of the one where you fight three MechaTanks as a boss fight.

There's a little replayability with the game as players can collect items found in chests hidden throughout the levels in the story campaign. You can do a New Game+ of sorts, where your skills and items carry over for higher difficulty levels, but the game isn't much more different on higher difficulties other than different enemy layouts and the massive amount of damage enemies inflict. Your chances of survival on that mode are extremely low if you haven't mastered counters, evasion tactics, and have purchased the proper offensive and defense accessories from the in-game shop.

Buy It, Rent It, or Don't Bother?

For a downloadable title, this game is still rather pricey. The last time I checked it still goes for $14.99 on PSN and XBLA, but a little less than that on Steam. I honestly didn't pay more than $5-10 for this and I don't expect you to either.

The story campaign is over a little too quickly for my taste and by the time you get all of your bending back and acquire the Avatar state, airbending comes across as the most overpowered set of attacks in the game and normal combat just comes down to precision timing with counters to do massive damage to your foes to defeat them as quickly as possible. After completing the story mode, you are able to play through the game again with all of your items and skills intact on higher difficulties, but that gets rather redundant as the game only changes around the enemy types so that the enemies from the last few levels appear more regularly.

Probending is a nice escape from the redundancy from the story mode, but if you hope to defeat the last tier of opponents, I suggest you max out Korra's bending as your teammates' skills are a reflection of those skill levels. Even then, it's still quite the challenge to overcome with extremely unforgiving enemy AI at that tier.

For action-enthusiasts and fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, this is worth a purchase if you can catch it on sale. Everyone else though? I suggest skipping this game as the Avatar license as a whole deserves a MUCH better game than this.