I Don’t Get The Legend of Korra, But Okay

October 26, 2014

The Legend of Korra is an interactive electronic artwork based on the classic M. Night Shyamalan cinematic masterpeice, The Last Airbender. Which in turn is a loose adaptation of the historical accounts of Avatar, a small bald child raised by monks long ago to master the power of wind (I assume from his butt). As with all history somewhere along the passage of time this power of wind became interpreted as literal control of the chemical compound of gasses that act as an essential life force here on Earth, but that’s not possible because everyone knows magic has long been dead in this bleak and cynical world.

For whatever reasons, possibly Japanese because The Legend of Korra is made by PLATINUM GAMES (responsible for other games with exploitable Punch-Kick-Punch combos), baldy has been re-imagined as a fit, olive skinned lass named, you guessed it, “Legend”. I’ve gathered from the few cut-scenes I haven’t skipped that “Korra” is her hometown, or perhaps a mystical ancient artefact (also scientifically impossible), and the nonsensical English “The Legend of Korra” relative to these definitions is just lost in translation, like we see so often with weaboo crap.

korra1

Anyway, much like how Avatar’s buttforce became “control the power of wind literally”, Legend too has been fluffed up to now control more or less every mythologically categorised elemental force. So stuff like water, earth, fire, and heart. You start out with all of these abilities and rip shit on a bunch of colour coded frog monsters and then the game takes them all away (even buttforce) and makes to fight with your fists.

This typical bait-and-switch, making you work for the fun stuff, isn’t too bad because fist fighting is actually pretty fun anyway. Even without the flashy (and totally unrealistic) elemental forces each element has its own unique fighting style animations, damage, and flow. Fighting with earth unable to throw dirt in the enemies eyes like the filthy cheap tactic fighter you are still feels different to fighting with water even when you don’t have access to water-sports. Also it doesn’t take long for you to get water-sports as your first power anyway so the fisticuffs don’t last that long.

Fighting is typical for a PLATINUM GAMES title in that you’ll want to do a bunch of dodging, blocking, and countering, and unless you plan on playing at scrub difficulty you’ll get a good workout. Maybe it’s because I’m a blind BASED PLATINUM GODS fanboy but I’ve always felt the developer has an extremely consistent and developed understanding of the crucial fighting components for character action games, where every attack within the core battle system needs to feel rewarding and also open to mastery, and the challenges themselves pressuring you to pursue that mastery. At least until you find an exploitable item and attack combination. Though I guess that could be a bullet point game feature for all their games at this point.

korra4

Levels I’ve played so far are littered with repetitive, simple assets and a general sense of lifelessness like my love life but I don’t really mind because it’s a budget game and most of the studio were probably busy with Bayonetta 2 and Kamiya’s Monster Hunter ripoff. You’ll run from fight to fight (how original) and beat up dudes. Sometimes they’ll have weapons and sometimes they’ll have their own elemental powers, and you’ll have to experiment to find the most efficient way to dispatch them. I think it’s bullshit that the fire guy didn’t get totally annihilated by my water-sports because Pokemon RED had conditioned me to believe water has the edge on fire but apparently this isn’t so. Whatever.

Countering stood out as a really important part of the fight system, meaning you have to block just before an attack or projectile makes contact to trigger a ground-breaking QTE. Countering deals a significant amount of damage and becomes particularly important during elemental fights where your asshole opponents is pegging fireballs or whatever other bullshit power he has across the arena. Countering and sending them back works wonders, and the game hits its highs when your opponent counters your own move and  you re-counter again to ruin his day.

Sometimes you ride a big white dog. Like, as big as a bear. Bigger. And you ride it through cities, with old timey cars. Evidently historical accuracy had been completely thrown out the window, but I spend a lot of time locked inside afraid of the outdoors so maybe somewhere in this great big terrifying world this is all happening for real.

korra3

But in the end what Legend and her journey have taught me more than anything is the power of the human spirit. Because even when I have no idea what’s going on and don’t really care much for the source material and really, really don’t want to sit through the cut-scenes I still wound up having quite a lot of fun. Beating up bad dudes (they’re bad because reasons???) is satisfying in its own way, and while the combat system obviously draws inspiration from other PLATINUM GAMES expensive budget with poor market performance titles this is hardly a bad thing. Might as well adapt from the best and remix it as a budget Nickelodean game.

I recommend The Legend of Korra to anybody who likes cartoons, holds an academic degree in Southeast Asian history, or wants to give PLATINUM GAMES more money.