Legends of the peoples of Africa are rarely reflected in modern artistic culture. The debut project from Surgent Studios takes the mythology of the Bantu peoples and classic elements of combat platformers as a basis. All in order to tell the story of personal grief. What was the path of the shaman and whether it is worth going down this road – we figure it out in the review of Tales of Kenzera: ZAU.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was released on April 23rd simultaneously on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series, with PlayStation 5 users able to play the game via a PS Plus Extra subscription.
“A new story begins where the last one ends.” Plot is usually not the primary focus of action platformers. However, the opening words of Tales of Kenzera are a reminder that the game’s narrative is based on a story of loss. Surgent Studios founder and actor Abubakar Salim uses the game to cope with the loss of his father. However, Tales of Kenzera is an example to me of how not every genre lends itself to creative vision. But first things first.
The Way of the Shaman
The opening scene of the game introduces us to Zuberi, a son who cannot find the strength to say goodbye to his deceased father. However, the ancestor, driven by a sense of inevitability, wrote a story for the son that will help him cope with the loss and find his place in the world. We play as the hero of these “tales of Kenzera”. Zau, a young shaman of Amandla, makes a pact with the god of death, Kalunga. In exchange for the return of his father to the world of the living, Zau must lay to rest three lost spirits. Thus begins our journey through the world of Kenzera, and Zau sets out on the Path of the Shaman.
If you go through the plot superficially, our mission is simple – kill three bosses to bring back our father. In this adventure, we will visit various colorful locations of Kenzera: from blooming mountainous regions, jungles and swamps, to scorching volcanic fissures.
But underneath the colorful adventure, there’s a story of deep emotion. Throughout the campaign, Zau goes through the classic stages of trauma: denial, anger, depression, resignation, acceptance. Each stage is revealed to the player through dialogue between Zau and the death god Kalunga, as well as through meeting the other characters in the story. Each of them symbolizes a certain stage of grief. For example, Liana, the daughter of the spirit of Heaven, whom we meet at the very beginning of the game, is going through a stage of denial. She refuses to accept that her mother has changed and that they can no longer spend time together like they used to.
The entire game is built in a way that is not obvious at first glance. Unable to be with his father, the hero at the same time takes over his responsibilities and becomes a new beginning. This is a story about experiencing loss through overcoming one’s barriers. Even the increase in health occurs during meditation inside the tree, when Zau reflects and sorts out his own emotions, after which he returns to the world renewed and with new strength. At first, I was delighted by this approach to merging game and narrative design. However, the emphasis on the psychology of the narrative ultimately had a negative impact on the gameplay.
Killing progress for the sake of history
After going through a short tutorial explaining the basic mechanics, the hero gets a solid arsenal at his disposal: the shaman masks of the Sun and Moon, a double jump and a dash. I admit, at this point I already thought that the game could quickly run out of steam. But more on that later.
The Moon Mask allows the hero to use long-range attacks, and the Sun Mask allows for melee attacks. A solid starting set is soon supplemented by powerful magic, the use of which requires spending spirit fragments. They are also used for healing. Like Hollow Knight, we are faced with a choice: to hit harder or to heal. Unfortunately, this is almost the entire combat set available in the game.
The character progresses through exploration and battles, which at first pleases with variety. Skill points for leveling up are spent on learning skills from the Moon and Sun branches. By completing difficult platform challenges, we replenish the collection of amulets with various effects. And combat challenges reward an increase in the number of “mana” cells, new slots for amulets and also give a few skill points. Visiting trees for meditation increases the main character’s health, but most importantly, progressing through the story opens up access to new abilities and tools that allow you to visit previously inaccessible locations. And everything seems great, but.
Skill points can be spent on unlocking sixteen abilities, which essentially increase outgoing damage and nothing more. Only three (!) abilities modify the gameplay in any way. In the Luna branch, you can learn the ability to reflect projectiles flying at you, as well as learn to throw enemies with low health. The first can be obtained at level two or three, and I periodically used this ability. But I tried throwing an enemy for the first time after finishing the game, since there is simply no need for it.
The Sun branch is even more lackluster (ironically). Of the “active” abilities, one can note the ability to hit from a jump to the floor and that’s it. The other abilities, one way or another, simply increase the damage from blows or magic.
Amulets are also a kind of modifiers of characteristics. Some are aimed at accelerating the accumulation of mana, others at increasing outgoing damage, others at reducing incoming damage. And the amulet that increases the experience gained stands apart. The description of amulets and their effects fits well into the philosophy of the shaman, but does not bring anything interesting to the gameplay.
As part of the campaign, the hero visits shamanic sanctuaries, where he discovers new abilities needed to explore locations and overcome obstacles. First, we get the ability to freeze water and enemies. The ability is extremely pleasant, since even bosses are subject to freezing, which allows you to deliver several additional “free” blows or simply safely dodge an attack. Next is the ability to throw a spear like Kratos in God of War: Ragnarok – this is necessary to activate the buttons, and it deals a solid portion of damage to enemies and pushes them away.
All of the above is obtained during the first hour of the game and at this point the main character’s combat arsenal stops expanding. Subsequently, Zau gets the ability to attract, fly, break and build walls. All of this is not used in combat, but at least it is intended to dilute the platform segments and puzzles with new mechanics. All abilities, except for flight, are used in strictly designated places and in no other way. The last one gives us the ability to dash through walls, destroying them. Again, this only works with certain walls, but at least it is useful in the battle with the last two bosses.
Overall, the character progression system turned out to be poor and uninteresting. It is impossible to create a unique character build here, and the combat system stops developing after the first act, which, combined with the low difficulty of the game, brings boredom.
Simple and clear
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is a simple, sometimes too easy to learn project that forgives any mistakes. There is no punishment for death, and invisible checkpoints are lovingly placed almost after each platform. In many games, much attention is paid not only to the character’s progress, but also to improving the player’s skills. I don’t like “precise” platformers, where you need to hit the pixel exactly, but here the platforming is simplified, and sometimes even necessary so that the player occasionally presses at least some buttons along the way, except for running.
The exceptions are platform challenges to obtain amulets and story chases, or rather “escapes” from bosses. As a rule, these are challenges to overcome an obstacle course, where the skills you have already mastered are tested. And this is the only content in the game that can make you sweat. However, given the “usefulness” of amulets, going through the most difficult ones does not make much sense. For example, for the most difficult challenge I received an amulet that increases damage when the character has one hit left in health. Very useful.
In the area of combat, there are no exceptions, alas. While platforming challenges evolve somewhat as the hero gains new movement abilities, the battles throughout the game only become more drawn-out and routine.
The local bestiary has only eleven types of enemies, including bosses. All of them are based on the legends of the peoples of Africa, and even their attacks resemble the abilities of mythical creatures. For example, Adze is an anthropomorphic insect that sucks out health, appears in the myths of the peoples of Togo and Ghana and is presented there as a vampire firefly. And the first boss, Impundulu, is not only a direct reference to Ridley from the Metroid series, but also a bird from South African legends that can throw lightning.
The boss fights in the game look spectacular, but have an unforgivably low difficulty. If you carefully go through the game and fully level up, in the last two battles you don’t even have to dodge attacks, all the bosses’ damage is simply “healed”. Nevertheless, I managed to die as many as two times – I didn’t notice the edge of the platform and fell off it.
It’s fun to cut up regular enemies for most of the game, there are few enemies, but they are all different from each other. There are “turrets” that stand still and release energy balls, flying creatures that dive and spit poison, elusive melee fighters, and even your own “juggernaut”. Towards the middle of the game, enemies gain elemental shields that can be broken by certain types of attacks, which only emphasizes the main idea of the combat system – to juggle mask changes skillfully to defeat all enemies. However, towards the end, battles become routine: there are more enemies, battles drag on and become boring. Towards the end of the game, I stopped healing in order to use magic more often, so that battles end as quickly as possible.
Intestinal cysts
What do we love about metroidvanias? For the discovery and spirit of exploration, when you don’t know what’s hidden behind the next screen and you unravel the topographic tangle step by step. For Tales of Kenzera, I have only one definition – gutoidvania.
Local locations have a clear structure at their core, each biome is equipped with only one entrance and exit. Locations loop up and down, forming a kind of labyrinth (especially when you look at the map in the menu), but throughout the adventure I did not leave the feeling that I was moving strictly in a straight line.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that upon entering a new biome, a full map of it is immediately revealed. This is neither good nor bad. It is terrible. Not only can you immediately tell where the meditation tree or the amulet test is by carefully studying the map, but almost all the “hidden” passages are visible on the map, which completely kills the feeling of exploration. On the other hand, a completely open map can confuse players accustomed to the “fog of war”. Since it is unclear which places you have already visited and where you have not yet been. And the cherry on the topographic cake is the quest marker, showing where you need to arrive to continue the plot.
Tales of Kenzera is inspired by the best of the genre and uses standard mechanics typical of “metroidvanias”, but in its development it marks time and even takes steps back in some places. However, its simplicity becomes a plus if you are just looking to get acquainted with the genre of combat platformers.
Purple is the color of the season
I have the fewest questions about the technical execution of the project. Visually, the game looks decent and it is difficult to demand something more “for that kind of money”. There are about twelve biomes in the game and each one is made in its own style and refers to the diversity of African nature. Our hero’s path runs from blooming mountain ranges through caves and mines to jungles with poisonous swamps and desert terrain with volcanoes. The color palette can please with its diversity and colors, the world looks magical, mysterious and bright. The visual style is definitely one of the strongest sides of the project. And yes, there is not as much purple here as it might seem.
The audio designers clearly had the principle of “this is my job, so I need to do it well” in mind when working on the game. While there are no tracks that you’d want to listen to again, the biome themes create the right mood and set the pace of the game and are unique to each zone. In combat, you’ll never miss a surprise attack, as both your and the enemy’s actions are highlighted by recognizable sound effects, which is essential in a dynamic platformer.
It’s hard to fault the acting – there’s not much of it here, and the lead role is played by Abubakar Salim himself. However, I will note that sometimes his voice sounds a bit rougher than you’d expect from the clearly young guy we’re playing for. In addition to English, the game has Swahili voice acting. And it sounds great, but in this case, you’ll have to read the pop-up text, which isn’t very convenient for platforming. Unfortunately, Russian localization is not available in any form.
In technical terms, this is a well-polished project. On PlayStation 5, I did not encounter any bugs or freezes during my playthrough. The only technical “chocolates” arose at the last location. When I entered it, I experienced a drop in fps, which lasted for about five seconds, and then the counter of accessories collected at the location broke, which will be discussed below.
There are three difficulty settings in the game: relaxing, balanced and extreme. In fact, the only significant difference is between relaxing and extreme. If at the first difficulty level an ordinary monster dies in a couple of hits, then at the last level monsters have four times more lives.
It took me about 12 hours to complete the game on the highest difficulty. I managed to complete the main story and close all locations by 100% (but there is a nuance). I completed all platforming and combat trials, found all the trees for meditation and echoes with pieces of lore. After receiving the last amulet, the counter in the game did not update and showed 0/1 in the location The Enduring Rite. Thus, the game thinks that I did not find all the secrets. Despite this, the platinum trophy still appeared in my profile.
Analysis
Talez of Kenzera: ZAU is a fascinating, colorful immersion into the mythology of the peoples of Africa, which tries with all its might to stand in line with the best representatives of the genre, but loses halfway. The game is a great start in the genre of combat platformers, but it has nothing to offer the sophisticated player except a touching story. But does a metroidvania need such a story? Many will answer that it does not. And I tend to agree with this. Such a story is cramped within the framework of the genre, the essence of which implies reactive gameplay without excessive reflection.
Abubakar Salim, as the African proverb goes, “having two legs, tried to climb two trees” – as a result, the game failed at release. The peak online in the Steam service on the day of release was 287 people and it is unlikely that the situation is better on consoles. In my opinion, the project deserves more attention, despite all the minuses. Perhaps, if you follow the plot strictly and initially perceive it as a linear adventure, then the combat system will not have time to get boring and the overall impressions will be better. Is it worth paying $ 20 for it? It’s up to you, but at least with a subscription or with a good discount – I would take a closer look.
Would I like to see Tales of Kenzera 2? Absolutely. Hopefully Surgent Studio will work on their mistakes and put more emphasis on developing combat mechanics in their next project, even if it means sacrificing the narrative. So far, I have the feeling that Abubakar Saleem dreamed of his own The Last of Us, but only had enough money for a combat platformer. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, although not as juicy, is still the best Metroidvania of this year.
Pro
- Atypical setting
- Great design
- Suitable for beginners
- Interesting approach to storytelling
- Made with love
Contra
- Low difficulty
- Linearity
- Doesn’t go beyond the basic mechanics
- Imaginary progression