#legend of kay

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Legend of Kay

After years of developing handheld games, German studio NEON Software jumped to consoles with what became their final title. Legend of Kay is an ambitious Asian-inspired action-RPG, with plenty of charm, depth and solid gameplay that make it worth a look for fans of the genre. 

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[miloscat]

[Review] Legend of Kay Anniversary (Wii U)

An unremarkable PS2 action-adventure.

After immersing myself in Avatar media for so long I looked around for any other games set in Asia-inspired fantasy worlds but made by Westerners. This let me knock one off my Wii U backlog, the 2015 remaster of the 2005 PS2 game Legend of Kay. Neon Software, the German studio behind the original game, are known to me for their Amiga Sonic clone Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad, and it's somewhat fitting that their final game before closure was this other furry platformer. Some of the Neon cofounders went on to form Keen Games, which seems to have morphed into a new Kaiko... the original Kaiko being the company that the Mr. Nutz Hoppin' Mad team left to form Neon in the first place! Who knows how long they'll survive now under the aegis of the troubled and layoff-happy Embracer, but it's been four years since their last remaster...

Anyway, this game is a sort of 3D Zelda-like-slash-3D platformer filled with anthropomorphic animal characters, which as a Rare fan sounds up my alley. Comparing it to Starfox Adventures may be a little generous though: this is very much a B-tier PS2 action game, and a graphical revamp for new generation consoles can't magically fix the mediocrity.

To get the plot out of the way: it's extremely Normal. Kay is a "plucky" (read: obnoxious) protagonist, using his martial arts training to fight back against the occupation of his cat village by evil gorillas and rats. He travels his island to settlements of rabbits, frogs, and pandas to free them from oppression. I think it's telling that there are no credits given for story or writing; anything story-related is constantly undermined by overly shallow characterisations, completely functional video game progression (go here to get key to open door to go there etc.), and the most brain-dead "banter". For example, Kay thinks the height of action hero quips is to call a rat "cheese-breath" about a hundred times.

The latter issue is not helped by some misguided voice acting choices. It's a fully voiced game but you'll wish it wasn't with Kay's bland sarcastic schtick and almost every other character uncomfortably presenting as a borderline racist caricature. Mostly it's white people doing faux-"Asian" accents, although apparently crocodiles are Eastern European and frogs are... Jamaican, for some reason? I was glad to find a setting that let me skip any dialogue scene with a quick tap of X, because there's no other way to speed up the tedious exposition and pointless back-and-forth when you meet enemy groups.

There's only a handful of what you might call "puzzles", and the platforming ranges from "not bad" to "OK", serviceable but doesn't excel. The biggest strength and biggest weakness of the game is its combat, which is pretty involved. You can swap between three weapons which have different attributes, you often have to get around enemy blocks so there's a Wind Waker-style roll around move to hit their back, but you can also zip between targets during a combo, or use rolling, crouching, or jump attacks. You can carry up to 5 usable items which sometimes are used to explore but you have to rely on them for combat encounters late in the game when they start throwing waves at you with hordes of armoured enemies. When the difficulty spikes like this, it all just becomes too much and goes from an exercise in creatively using moves to keep your combo up to a struggle to survive (and if you die, you lose any consumables you used in your last attempt, also there's a lives system for some reason??).

I said combat might be the game's strength and it was clearly a focus of the project, but I had the most fun exploring the little worlds. There's lots of goodies to collect, mostly in the form of chests and pots containing money. You quickly end up with more than you'll ever spend but I still liked finding it. The point multiplier mechanic may seem superfluous but when you get accustomed to the flow of the platforming sections, grabbing coloured crystals to keep this combo going to make your fights and coins worth more points becomes addictive. The level design may be nothing special but the zones you traverse have some character to them.

It should be noted that this is a semi-linear game, in that the levels are mostly open to explore with events and sub-dungeons within them, but you progress from one field to the next with no way to go back. This bit me on more than one occasion when I blundered into the story trigger to move on before turning in one of the rare sidequests or going down a side path to find a health extension, making it permanently missable. This frustration prompted me to occasionally consult a Gamefaqs guide with maps during each subsequent chapter. The game does give you a minimap in the corner of the screen but it can't be expanded to a full map so it's less useful than it could be.

Legend of Kay would have felt middling even at release but rereleasing it just makes its deficiencies even more obvious. It's still got some charm for being "of that era" (I was often reminded of The Hobbit's action-adventure game from the same generation, but with fewer instant death pits), so I got some enjoyment from it. And it has some ideas that work, like the acrobatic combat and combo system. While some of the environments look nice there were just as many drab areas, and the repeated character model reuse got old. Oh, and sometimes you ride an animal and it's not fun. On the whole, I can't recommend this one... even if you ignore the cringey cultural stereotypes!!

[playstationgamemania]

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 1x05 - "Everybody Wants to Be My Enemy" ↳ "You need to let Powder die. So the fear of pain will no longer control you. You're strong now. Just like you were always meant to be. Jinx is perfect."

[supremechancellorrex]

I kind of find it interesting that some fans think that Zuko owes Azula anything. Even if Azula did in some part care about Zuko between throwing lightning at him or twisting the knife on Zuko's trauma, that doesn't mean Zuko himself owes her forgiveness. Azula mocked, bullied and hurt Zuko on his shortcomings nearly all his life, she goaded him into embarrassing himself in front of the Fire Lord, she mocked him over the possibility of his father killing him or locking him up, she insulted him, she smirked as he was scarred, she manipulated him constantly. Just because Azula had a raw deal in the end too and there were a couple moments here or there where she seemed half-way decent to him doesn't change that, it doesn't erase it.

[kai-zuha]

Hyrule and Legend probably both got really bad posture, legend for sure (we all know this..) and he knows it, hyrule isn’t aware of how bad his posture is till the chain are all comparing heights and they tell him to stop slouching.

Hyrule tilts his head and is like “okay?” and then he unsloucthes and you just hear a series of cracks coming from his back. Legend is immediately like “pssh, thats nothing!” *the worst cracks known to man coming from his back* yeah. they’re both keeping the chain on their toes for sure.

[taliesin-the-bored]

A few things which are “canon” somewhere for people who are worried they’re stretching it too far

Arthur was killed by a giant cat. 

Arthur killed the cat.

Arthur didn’t fight the cat. Kay did.

Kay and Bedivere use salmon as taxis. 

Lucan is half giant, half lion. (This Lucan, Lucano in the original Italian, is evil and not related to Bedivere). 

King Arthur raided the land of the dead.

The human knight Caradoc Briefbras has three half siblings: a dog, a horse, and a pig.

A large portion of Arthur’s troops was killed a while before Camlann by his nephew’s attack ravens in self-defense. Arthur and said nephew were playing chess at the time and neither did much to stop it.

Merlin retired peacefully and went to live in the countryside with Taliesin.

Wherever Arthur walks, plants die. They don’t grow back for years.

Arthur had a spunky (half?) brother who died in battle after making a mysterious oath.

Dagonet is more or less able to run the kingdom when Arthur is gone. His biggest error is overspending on mercenaries.

Guinevere has an evil almost identical twin half-sister.

Hector beat up all the best knights except for Galahad while possessed by a demon.

Gawain plays tennis.

Gawain has used a chessboard as a weapon.

Near the start of his reign, Arthur left Lot in charge of the kingdom and went on a quest with a sassy parrot.

Gawain or Galahad succeeded Arthur as king. 

[elderwisp]

STILL GOIN ꩜ tessellate returns october eighth

[false-guinevere]

[mochirizu]

this speaks volumes about me, i fear

[lufdraws]

serene 🍃

a bday present for my dear friend kay @rocketspurs <3

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Legend of Kay (DS)

Out of the blue, a second Legend of Kay game was released for the Nintendo DS in 2010. It was handled by Firehazard Studio, a German developer that only worked on a handful of DS titles, and seems to act as a companion piece to the console game despite the five-year gap. The same premise is reused, along with the FMV cutscenes and a handful of Jake Kaufman’s music cues, and things play out through a fully 3D game. 

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[miloscat]

[Review] Legend of Kay (DS)

An unremarkable DS 3D platformer.

The year is 2010. Although Neon Software had shut down, I guess the publisher of the console version of Legend of Kay, Jowood, retained the rights. So they (shortly before their own closure) must have commissioned a DS conversion for some reason. Small-time German developer Firehazard Studio was chosen and the rest is, uh, history.

Don’t expect a full combat-heavy adventure game here on the DS. In fact, throw out the fighting entirely, along with the inventory, the voice acting (thank God), the animal riding, the dungeons, the ability to swim, etc. etc. What you’re left with is a fairly straightforward platforming adventure with some light stealth. With so many features stripped out, it becomes quite a streamlined experience. It took me less than two hours to complete!

It should be said that fully half my playtime was in level 1 (of 4). The order of progression is shuffled around in this, so you start with the frog swamp, then the panda city, the rabbit forest, and once again ending in the volcano. The swamp is miserable though, requiring lots of consecutive jumps over lilypads where it’s easy to slip off into the drink. Kay has seven hearts (or lives, I guess) and if you lose them all you start from the beginning of the stage. It does save your progress on objectives and unlocked doors but having to tediously retread the same ground through multiple screens before even getting to the swamp was a dreadful slog.

Things pick up afterwards with the super breezy city, and then you get the double jump ability which is a mighty boon. The level after this where you traverse a mountainous pass then climb around a towering tree is the highlight of the game, even with its trial-and-error tile puzzles. The rabbits (or hares, the game is inconsistent) give you an invisibility belt to help you avoid the patrolling rat and gorilla guards which infest the final stage. The game takes a bit of a dip here again but it too is over quickly.

It’s so short that after pushing through level 1, I never really got bored with it. To be clear the game world is in fact boring, a mostly desolate place filled with meandering spiders as the basic enemy type. This DS version contains the comic-style cutscenes of the console game, but right after the Master promises to teach Kay fighting it papers over the lack of combat with an additional in-engine cutscene espousing a philosophy of non-violence… although you can actually kill the spiders by jumping on them.

I give the DS version some props for following up the plot thread about the mystical fountains slightly better than the console version, but most of the story is disjointed and underplayed. Which is fine since it was a weak point of the original game anyway so having less of it is preferred. Again I must state that removing the voice acting entirely only improves the experience.

I would never call Legend of Kay DS good. Heavens no. But there’s something about the novelty of a little low-poly 3D platformer on the DS that tickles me, and it certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome (providing you can get through level 1). On the whole I actually like it better than its big sibling; it trims the fat right down to the bone and so makes for a cute little skeleton. Don’t play it though.

[wilcze-kudly]

Someone needs to take my image editing softwares this is getting out of hand

I had a very vivid image of Amon calling a penis a hot girthy staff of carnal desire and you have to suffwr too

[tornadoarts]

Study!

[ladybugsimblr]

Architectural Digest - Fall The Style Issue starring Bailey Kay at home in DSV

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AD Open Door Squad™️ Edition

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Latest issue of AD featuring BK & Fam is out now. The Open Door House Tour to follow on SimTube. Stay tuned.

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