Tales of Kenzera: Zau (2024)

It is amazing how similar this is to Prince of Persia. I like the plot line in Tales of Kenzaru Zau game a lot better but the level of polish and the combat is so much more satisfying in Prince of Persia.

Still the game needs to chill out with the constant dialogue and just get to the exploration and Metroidvania fun.

Zau is a metroidvania style game that was under the spotlight due to its association with sweet baby inc. While I won't get into the weeds with that, I didn't find the writing all bad, in fact the story and the developers story behind it is a interesting way on one handles a loved one's death and the challenges that come about it. I enjoyed the story quite a bit for that reason and saw to finish the game due to it.

Now let's talk about the gameplay... The game follows a very safe style of finding powerups to get to the next area like any MV of its type does. Combat is split into melee and projectile, with enemies having armor depending on the attack required to pierce it. The issues don't become apparent until act 2 and especially act 3. One thing I noticed is enemies that excel at long range are often tanky and can stun lock you in a corner resulting in frustrating gameplay. Nothing in the skill set you earn increases your attack or stun power meaning you are in a game who can wail on the other the fastest and getting launched takes a bit more than it should to get back into the action. Enemies should be toned down a bit or the MC should get more stronger with higher level ups.

One enemy in particular that is quick and focuses on melee can be an absolute nightmare to deal with and the way the game asks you to deal with it amounts to cheesing it with ice - if you have the points for it. Good luck if there are 2 of them with armor that require switching back and forth with styles. I do not understand how the developers did not include a counter button for this so that the player is out of freezing spears they can get back into the fight with some other actions. Its not until the last part do you get a tackle ability of sorts that helps out TREMENDOUSLY with these enemies. Given that the heavy attack is outright useless, I do truly believe a counter button was necessary for a lot of the enemies you fight. You get a pseudo reflect ability, but that's limited for a few enemies.

I must of died over 200 times due to the games insistence of insta-kill hazards all over the place. I would argue that the majority of deaths the player has in the game is the result of shoddy placement where the devs knew the player would land in. Its one thing if its a challenging area but some of the timing on the platforming as others noted is floaty, unresponsive and at worse just too brutal. Set pieces involving an instakill hazard also harm the pace of the game - I do not understand what the developers were trying to imitate with this, and honestly a lot of this games faults are down to the "let's make it a challenge" without understanding what makes a game challenging in my opinion.

I really hate giving this game 2 stars out of 5 because the game could be a good 4-4.5 if the gameplay was a lot more forgiving. I get the feeling they sort of knew because death while quick has you quickly back into the action. A band-aid on a huge gash. I hope they give it some serious QoL updates down the road because there's a good game here...it just needs more time in the oven.

The whole pitch about this game being about processing grief wasn't what attracted me to this game, and the story did absolutely nothing for me. If anything, there's too much dialogue in it. What attracted me was that it looked like a cool Metroidvania, and it is.

It has some roughness to it. There's ground slam attack that looks really useful, but I could rarely pull it off. The delay in triggering the glider ability is really frustrating during platforming sections where I have to trigger it right before hitting the spikes below. There are some bugs I ran into like getting stuck aiming state, getting stuck against a wall, and my button inputs were non-responsive a few times. There were a couple of times I was pinned down by enemies an unable to do anything until they finally killed me. Hopefully, all of this is tweaked and fixed in a patch.

Movement and combat feels good and satisfying though, so I was enjoying most of my time playing. It feels pretty Metroidvania-light as it's a mostly linear experience. Not much backtracking to older areas. The map doesn't even show blocked paths you couldn't open yet, and it didn't really need to. I think I only used fast travel twice the entire game. As for abilities, there's nothing new here I haven't seen done in other Metroidvanias. And in a couple of cases, I've seen it done much better.

There a couple things this “Metroidvania” does competently, but it is far overshadowed by the bad.

It is not an Metroidvania. It is mostly linear sidescroller. Immediately I was like, why do I already have double jump and dash? But that’s because the vast majority of new abilities are just keys- ways to smash an obstacle in the way.

The map is pretty much linear, with just a few things to backtrack for. But there’s no reason to, almost every reward for exploration is a boring lore story or skill points for a lackluster skill tree. The few badges you can find are also extremely basic, little tweaks to combat stats that never change things much.

There’s a grand total of maybe 11 enemy types, and just a few bosses. Combat is absolutely mind numbing.

Now the big thing everyone says positively about this game - the story. The premise is good, the execution is not. If you want an amazing game that deals with parental loss - play Gris. This game tells and doesn’t show, the little quips from your spirit guide never hit that deep. It’s great a game wants to tackle a heavy subject but the execution just wasn’t here.

Movement is ok, some platforming sections were tricky and fun, and a few locations were nice to look at. But really, this is the most underwhelming game of the year for me and probably my least favorite metroidvania this year.

There's a joke that says that all indie games are about grief or depression. That's obviously not true, but there are a lot of them and very few use this themes as good as Tales of Kenzera: Zau. This metroidvania is one of the most sincere and heartful expressions of grief I've seen in a videogame.

It also has a fantastic world inspired by central and south african legends, with visuals and music that really puts you in that world. Voice acting is (with one specific exception) excellent. In general, the presentation is spotless. But there are some things about the gameplay that keeps this game to be a masterpiece.

Anyway, you can read more about it in my review in spanish, as usual.

Also, this will live on the shadow of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Both try very similar things and both are very good, but the Ubisoft game is superior in most aspects.