Beat on Easy. I tried hard at first in the forest stage and was confused until I checked a walkthrough. It was about switching back and forth between fighting the boss and healing the flowers. On Hard I was taking so much damage and the boss was so tanky that I doubted I could even win. And even if I somehow could, it would involve repeated trips to heal flowers. Fuck that design, with Easy I beat the boss down so fast that I never needed flowers. Then I did the mine cart stage, which was about as bad as most on rails platforming. The boss here was very hard because he shot repeated volleys that were too difficult to dodge. The factory was a time limit escape viewed from the same isometric angle as the mine cart. It was not too bad and the jumping was actually quite forgiving. The oil rig was the only stage that played like a proper 2D platformer, and was the best stage despite the boss being a real bastard. Then were a series of short gimmick stages; a wall jumping stage, a vertical fall race against the ceiling, and a series of back to back boss fights. I discovered cheese against the evil clone by hanging off a pipe thing and kicking his face every time he jumped at me. He seemed incapable of doing any kind of aerial attack. The final boss was surprisingly easy with actual patterns to learn, unlike the other bosses which felt more like button mashing clusterfuck. I did not realize I was supposed to destroy the asteroids so the Earth was 90% destroyed when I won.

This game felt more like a tech demo or series of mini games instead of a proper game. Why have so much gameplay variety in such a short game? It really felt like they forgot to add more than half of the stages and instead cut them in favor of just short sequences and bosses. Especially when looking at the variety of attack moves Zen had, which seemed overkill for these short stages. The game really needed to focus more on proper length 2D platformer stages and easier bosses, since the foundation was there.

5.5/10