The Legend of Korra

I remember playing all 3 of The Last Airbender games back in my PS2 days, I find the first game pretty "meh" now, Burning Earth is utter garbage, I don't know why it actually used to be my favorite among the 3, and I haven't actually played much of Into the Inferno at the time of making this review, but I can say it's a fail because of the bending gameplay more focused for the Wii and they just slapped a port for the PS2 as it is. The Legend of Korra game released recently is considered the diamond among the mud pile being Burning Earth and Into the Inferno and the hunk of rock being the first game because I still consider it an okay game.

If only it had been developed by some other people other than PlatinumGames, I would've been more skeptical about it, because from my experience, no movie or cartoon tie-in games have ever been good, mainly because they're mostly used as easy cash grab and the developers halfass during development, except for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, that game rocks, I digress..., in the hands of PG, I'm certain that even such games can turn out at least good. This game is also a budget title, so I can understand if plenty of people think it's gonna be short and simple and since cartoon-based games are known to be bad, they might not even wanna take any chances at all, it's cheap, it's short, it's simple, it doesn't have sexy graphics quality or anything, it's a cartoon, but Platinum doesn't halfass when it comes to gameplay

GAMEPLAY

Since PG is mostly known for the challenging and complex combat system in their games, some people might think Korra won't be aimed towards kids despite being a cartoon tie-in or they're going to simplify the combat system so kids can get into it easily without having their virginity taken off in the first 3 minutes of gameplay. They took the middle option, they make easy a baby mode, and normal mode goes up to half of the usual PG style normal and I haven't tried extreme mode since I'm a pussy. I started the game on normal, I gotta say, I thought the game was tough because I was stripped off my bending powers and had to rely on fists until I restore them, but it's actually more than that. Yes, you can replay missions and squish all the enemies like a lime, but when you start to strive for them shiny platinum medals, prepare to have lime juice sprayed into your eyes. The gameplay is what holds this game together, you have to fight smart, charge your chi for damage bonus, dodge and parry your enemies at the perfect moments for crazy counterattack opportunities and be quick about it all. You'll eventually get the hang of it as you spend more time with it, but prepare to have your hair pulled, cheeks poked, and pits tickled because the journey could get pretty annoying. Especially in the later part when you're fighting 2 titans at once, their size really gets in your vision and you end up fighting the camera more than you're fighting them.

I've been talking about the combat so much because that's what you spend most of your play time with, run a few meters, and slap! Barriers appear, you're locked in an area with enemies to defeat before you can progress, some areas have enemies with long ranged attacks and smart placements so you actually need to think of plenty of smart tactics to dodge, parry, and end it with a massive counterattack for maximum points and moving around mid combat is where you find the true platforming challenges since the game environment itself doesn't have much of those and variety, you pretty much play in the places Korra's been to seen in the show, Republic City and all. You find some platforming bits here and there to find treasure chests with vanity items inside which give you bonus spirit energy to raise your overall score and to spend it on stuff.
Spirit energy is your money in this game, you use it to buy consumables, equipments, and skills. You're gonna need consumables like healing items because you're gonna die a lot, and equipments like talismans can be equipped for some stats boost but with some side effects like one that doubles damage but halves health, but this one talisman, although it's quite expensive actually gives you regenerating health constantly and without any side effects on Korra, it kinda ruins the challenge of the game for me and throws all the points of using healing items out the window, so I guess that counts as a side effect, I don't recommend it, unless you're a pussy like me, it was the first talisman I bought. You really wanna spend it on skills, though. To actually give some sauce on the already rich and juicy combat, you need to buy new combos and plenty of mobility moves which also makes gathering spirit energy so important, these things don't come cheap!
The game isn't all about fighting dudes, though, you get to ride Naga in like 3 autorunning levels throughout the game, you basically navigate Naga to turn left and right, jump over and slide under obstacles, and since Korra is on Naga, you get to use your bending to spice up the game a bit, I'm not exactly too fond of the Naga levels, they're there for the sake of variety.
I can say this game is a bit softer compared to other beat em' ups and hack n' slashes by Platinum, usually after even playing a chapter in Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising is enough to get me exhausted, but I can play this continuously during my first run when I just wanna learn and get the feel of the game, but if you're like me, replay the whole game to try to earn all the Platinum medals, this game will make you work!

STORY

The story takes place between season 2 and 3 and it is very simple, it doesn't even feel like a solid episode, it feels more like a simple tale of Korra like that one episode of The Last Airbender named Tales of Ba Sing Se and it basically tells us about one interesting day of each characters for solace's sake, but more serious.
In the main story, you only see Mako and Bolin in the first part for a solid 5 seconds before literally getting tossed of the field and never appear again, Jenora appears only in spirit form just to be the tutorial voice, so the only major characters here are Korra and the main antagonist who actually only appears in the first part for introduction and the start of complication and in the final battle, oh yes, Naga appears giving the game more variety as well.
Korra gets captured by the main antagonist who has hired chi blockers (from season 1) and some bender mercenaries to capture Korra, he easily took her down in the first chapter and blocked all her bending off, now Korra has to go on a quest to reclaim her bending powers and defeat the mysterious old man who can't possibly turn into a conjoined twin spirit monster thing, Platinum have done this surprise final boss thing in Metal Gear Rising by suddenly showing Armstrong is actually fucking Hulk Hogan with "Nanomachines, son" and mops the floor with Raiden. I'm sure they won't do the same surprise twice.

GRAPHICS
Like any other cartoon-based games, Legend of Korra's graphics quality is cartoony, in fact, if they'd made this game realistic, I might've had mixed feelings about it. the cutscenes actually use the anime style like the TV show, I kinda feel like they should've made the gameplay  like that as well, like Guilty Gear, Blazblue and the like, guess it's not actually that easy when you're dealing with a fully 3D oriented game. I find the graphics quality in gameplay quite awkward sometimes, but the motion capture is sexy and detailed and runs at a solid 60FPS! Korra moves so smoothly during combat and traversal, even the simplest change of fighting stance whenever you switch bending looks great.

SOUNDTRACK
The whole soundtrack of this game is also based on the TV show, I don't really find the tunes to be that catchy and they're not something I'd wanna have on my playlist, they suit the game's atmosphere, though. I guess that's enough, I call this soundtrack passable for being in harmony with the game, but I praise a game's soundtrack when I find it catchy and actually wanna have it on my playlist.

CONCLUSION

Legend of Korra is a good game, nothing special about it. This is not the game I find fun to replay for so long, I might go for the all platinum medals run on normal mode, but on extreme mode, just ain't gonna happen, I'm just gonna breeze through extreme mode without worrying much about the medals. Since I'm quite a perfectionist, I might actually set minimum limit for medals, probably I must get at least silver.