Surgent Studios' new adventure features a world set in dangerous but complex Africa. Tried alongside solid 2D platforming Tales of Kenzera: ZAUHowever, telling a tragic story often becomes far too cheesy. We played on the PC for the test.
Kenzera forever!
The action begins with Zuberi, the son of the shaman Zau. In the course of his grief, Zuberi reads his late father's memoirs, in which the actual story takes place. Here we control Zau, who begins his journey through Kenzera to bring his father back from the realm of the dead. In order to do this, he contacts the god of the dead, Kalunga. This then accompanies him on his journey.
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The approximately twelve hour story deals a lot with grief, family and identity. Nevertheless, it is the biggest point of criticism: Anyone who has only briefly looked into the development history of the game knows that the actor Abubakar Salim is dealing with the death of his father here.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing in principle, but in many places the dialogue feels more like a therapy session than it is really relevant to the story. The rest of the plot is rather simple and somewhat predictable, which is why it didn't captivate us much. In addition, there are constant dialogues between Zau and Kalunga.
While pop-up dialogues don't really bother us parallel to the gameplay, we also find ourselves in so many conversations that stop us completely that they quickly become annoying.
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Source: Steam
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU in the test: No magic (1)
Although the dialogues are set to music by good actors and can be played in English and Swahili, the content is less convincing. We hear tons of calendar sayings and wise phrases. At some point in act two, these even bother our mostly whiny protagonist.
The problem here is dealing with the loss. Although Zau constantly talks about his father and later also about his mother, we are only introduced to both of them secondhand. This makes it difficult to empathize with Zau and his grief.
With Zuberi in the present we at least see Zau's coffin and his mother tries to comfort him. The exact cause of death of neither Zau nor his father remains unclear throughout the game.
That may sound heartless, but unfortunately the game fails in its attempt to retain our sympathy. There are so many good video games in which the themes of death and loss are presented and dealt with well. This includes both older titles like Zelda: Majora's Mask and newer ones like Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. The five phases of grief can also be found in Zau, but here they are rather subtle and scattered.
Metroid(va)-well
The game describes itself as an action-adventure platformer Metroidvania -Style. The name is complicated, but very apt. Because if you're expecting classic Metroidvania with backtracking and hidden abilities, you'll probably be disappointed.
The story shows us the way through the different regions of the game. We always have a target marker available on the map that shows us the way forward in the plot. Anyone who tries to look around without the marker will quickly notice that the game is even more linear than expected.
Source: Steam
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU in the test: No magic (3)
We tried our best to take unconventional paths during the test, but ended up going straight to the story marker. Then we used the map to first search for the junctions next to it. The secrets were therefore easy to find.
Thanks to the linear gameplay, the new skills are right on the way and can be used directly where you need them most. Unfortunately, there are hardly any new passages in old districts.
However, how the game sets itself apart from other Metroidvanias is through the storytelling surrounding the new abilities. While we are in the Metroid sharing get the morph ball without context and in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Don't question why Alucard gets the bat form, it looks different here:
For example, as soon as we get our ice ability here, Kalunga tells us how a shaman was once able to stop large floods from the mountains with this ability. This contributes positively to world building. The music in the game is mostly nice and atmospheric, but it doesn't offer a lot of recognition value. The only things excluded from this are the battle theme from act three and the music in the final boss fight.