The Legend of Kay Anniversary Review

Crash Bandicoot peaked circa 1998, with the release of Warped, triggering the beginning of the end in 3D linear third-person platformers with anthropomorphic protagonists, epic quests and cheesy one-liners. Spyro the Dragon had come before then and, alongside with Crash, they had perfected the genre to what culminated to be Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank. With its tardy entry, The Legend of Kay in 2004 seemed a bit dated in platform games. It gathers mechanics from all these games, trying to reach a higher standard, but sadly never achieving so — fully. On top of this, it was shadowed by Jak 3, coming out in the same year and adding guns to the ‘platform + brawling’ equation and as a final entry on PS2 of quite a popular saga; and Kingdom Hearts — with a second instalment about to land —, from where it draws a lot of influences. And here it comes, ten years later, the remastered version with improved graphics and sound.

The overarching history of Yenching (the country where all this takes place) has little importance for most of the game — fountains made of ‘Songstone’ and the corruption of The Way, a life ethos followed by the four tribes, pandas, frogs, rabbits and cats. The plot is primarily led by Kay’s journey across Yenching in order to liberate it from the suffocating yoke of the rats and gorillas; and find Su Ling, another cat friend with whom Kay flirts quite overtly. After becoming the errand boy for her, and joining the resistance with a bunch of pandas that do jack-all for the cause, we head to defeat gorillas and rats in their own territory – a volcano.

What is usually overlooked in Legend of Kay Anniversary is its political tinge. For me, it seemed that the association of the four different animals representing ‘good’ with Chinese traditional symbols is a deliberate reference to the Japanese occupation of China circa 1938, with the animals having a clear metaphorical significance. On top of this, there is a noticeable story arc that follows how fear, helplessness and restraint are followed by anger, disgust and rebellion. The same applies to the rats and gorillas, where they both cook up plans to betray and overthrow one another. Sadly, I couldn´t care less about their dramatics, as they don´t affect any of the ´good´ characters.

The contrast between the game’s childish and light-hearted visuals and tone, and the oppressive mandate of the rats and gorillas sparks the fighting flame in the player on a par with Kay. At some points, this game even adopts a dismal tone, with some over-the-line commentaries about social restriction — the moment a cat-mother makes her cat-child shut up because, even in their own house, he’s speaking against the occupiers — and a bit too foul language for being a game with an under-fourteen demographic target — you hear the expression ‘rat bastards’ a bit too often. It is not as dark as it sounds, though; this game’s ambitions were never to show you the horrible side of an occupation, but to make you want to rebel against it, despite there being a panda asking you to “massacre ‘em all”.

Cats, rabbits, frogs and pandas are probably more ambivalent in their meaning than rats and gorillas. Although the former all have delineated traits as a community, it is likely that in some way they represent the ethnic diversity that weighs over China’s political and social sphere. However, it seems that plenty of animals join the rats’ cause, and there is little explanation why this happens. Bears, crocodiles or turtles are some of the animals that you’ll fight, as they aid rats and gorillas with their occupation. I may be reading too much into the character’s meaning, especially in a game designed for kids, but the game feels more intricate than it seems at first sight.

In terms of gameplay, The Legend of Kay is a linear platformer with tons of fighting. This model is no novelty; all the games that I mentioned at the beginning follow, more or less, this structure. However, much like Kingdom Hearts, the fighting is totally emancipated from the fluidity of the level. Every time before a battle, you'll have some gorilla or croc having a cocky conversation with Kay — which feels completely unnecessary and a waste of your time —, trying to outsmart each other with insults like ´banana-breath´ or ´pussy-boy’, and blocking all entries and exits to the area you´re in, making the fight obligatory to continue. I didn't appreciate having to listen to the whole conversation again after I died — and don't even get me started with the accents!

The fighting system itself is quite remarkable, tossing you into actual fights against opponents rather than obstacles to overcome or dodge — you have different attacks to deal with armoured opponents, knock them down, dodge their swings, or block their attacks. You can even use magic and have three different weapons with different patterns and uses, and plenty of potions that can help you in and out of battle. Kay feel never feels too powerful; even though he´s got a full arsenal, he is vulnerable and can be overtaken easily. In fact, if it weren't for its ramped up difficulty in the second half of the game, the combat would have been quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, the difficulty setting can´t be changed after you start the game — meaning that there I was, halfway through the game and finding it near impossible to cope with enemies, which made the game pretty tedious. So now you know kids, easy difficulty is preferable to save yourselves plenty of pain. Heed my advice here!

But this is the remastered version! All these features entail no change in how The Legend of Kay played in 2005. The most notable of the changes comes in the graphical aspect where it's visible how textures and models have been improved with a much finer look. Nevertheless, the lighting is pretty bad, with shadows and lights appearing very randomly, making the style quite strange. Despite there being a considerable upgrade in graphics, there is still this major flaw that makes the improvements counterproductive. The improved graphics don't match well either with the vast open and empty areas that feel lifeless, which are lost due to the terrible camera control and angles. I'm certainly not looking for city full of life like GTA V, but even being aware of the standards in 2005, Anniversary feels like a lazy job in graphical standards.

Lastly, there is the unavoidable topic of the voice-overs. I am not the first person to point this out, nor will I be the last one, but the quality of the dubbing, including accent, synchronisation and voices, is not up to AAA standards, by far. Frogs have Jamaican accent, for some reason, whereas pandas squeak like ungreased hinges. Kay himself is impertinent, but his childish voice, that mumbles at times and has horrible pronunciation of words, make it worse altogether. Wasn't this a priority when remastering the game? Didn't anybody in the development team notice how annoying every single character is and how much needless dialogue there is?

The Legend of Kay, even with its flaws, is a game that uses such a classic structure, reminiscent of many of everybody´s first games, and can´t be deemed a bad game. It would have resonated much more had it been released five years earlier. By the time the original was released, most mechanics were dated and the theme, narrative and overall designed weren't particularly inspired. As a matter of fact, there are few children games with such an iconic underlying semiology, or with more unsettling line dialogues. This forces you to think beyond the fact that it´s a kids ‘game, and exposes you — partly — to the reality of an occupation. However, regarding this new version, it doesn't hold up, at least for being a remastering ten years later. There are a few improvements, but they are a let-down, far from what many probably expected.