Until I play Tales of Kenzera: Zau I thought people no longer had ways to create platform games, but the Afrofuturistic story-within-a-story setting for a mythological platformer about healthy ways to deal with grief certainly taught me not to underestimate human creativity. I really liked Tales Of Kenzera, and I was annoyed by a bunch of things too – and the divide seems to be that a lot of the first falls on the story and design side, and the second on the mechanically, which I guess is not ideal for a platform game. But I still think it's worth persevering.
You play as the titular Zau, a young shaman dealing with the recent death of his father. His solution is therefore to help Death, personified by an older man called Kalunga, by defeating three powerful spirits who refuse to advance. If he succeeds, Kalunga will owe him a windfall, which he plans to use to resurrect his father. Here we have a very understandable video game story, in which the three spirits in question function as historical boss fights against, say, a great lightning eagle or a wood owl made of fear. These are striking designs.
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But Zau's story was written for – and is read by – Zuberi, by her father, who also recently died. As you play, Zau discovers the natural rhythms of life and death, sees how much the land suffers when spirits refuse to leave, and meets other characters like a father whose son misses and a young girl whose mother escapes death. Thus, Zau and Zuberi also gradually learn to accept their grief. It's like Gray, but less boring for me, specifically. In fact, framing the story as a retelling of a mythological fable really enhances the story, because it's exactly the kind of practical moral you'd encounter in a tale passed down from your ancestors.
Zau learned his shamanic skills from his father, and chief among them are the Sun and Moon masks which you can switch with the press of a button (the controller is recommended, here), and which give you separate animations – a detail that I loved. – as well as distinct skills. Moon's powers are more ranged and crowd-controlling in combat, while Sun gives you dual spear and melee combos, and they both have huge special attacks that deal big damage in a pinch. As you continue, you get more abilities layered on top of each other to make traversal easier. You get jumps, double jumps, and a dash, of course, but later your Moon form lets you freeze water so you can jump into waterfalls or run down railings, and your Sun gets a spear long range that activates switches. Add to the list a more powerful momentum, a sort of lasso jump, the ability to glide, and to reform or destroy certain structures.
You can upgrade Zau to have additional abilities (like Sun combo attacks setting enemies on fire, which is a good thing), but you can also perform Shaman Trials – very difficult platforming elements – to tokens that give you passive buffs or shrines. or other sources of additional power to level up faster. Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/EA
That's a lot, and if you let this game last more than 72 hours, being generous, you'll probably forget all the controls (and the game doesn't have a diagram of these in the menu, so good luck with those). understand yet). But there are times when, during the crossing, you enter a beautiful flow pattern, where you jump and glide above the hot air, avoid a few crystal spikes near a mosquito's pubis, jump over a load of collapsing platforms and you rush to safety, without breaking. a sweat. At the same time, there are sections that rely on the timing of your jump to a lava explosion that you can't really see, or in which grabbing a jump at a slightly wrong angle will send you hurtling into a environmental danger. Respawns are pretty instantaneous, but an unskippable chase sequence that you complete by memorizing it through repeated failures isn't so fun when your next failure happens just as quickly.
The world you explore is rather an unadulterated delight. The world map is deceptively large, with a few fast travel points – although I found them too sparse to be useful, and despite the collectibles and hidden challenges, Tales Of Kenzera doesn't really work as a Metroidvania anyway – and has surprisingly different domains. You travel through deep mines, barren plains, and lush jungles, each home to the remains of a village. They're all gorgeous, with tons of detail and depth, even though Tales Of Kenzera is a side-scrolling game, and it feels lived-in and slightly magical, even if you end up moving back and forth a bit during the journey to and from your quest markers.
But if the world is full of beauty, it is also full of monsters. Your main enemies are the lingering spirits of ancient warriors, who are no fans of wandering Zau bringing death to their doorstep. There are ranged attack spirits, melee tanks, mini-bosses, mischievous little tricksters who explode upon defeat, and others who look like insects and siphon off your health. Alongside them are floating snakes that spit acid and tiny flying lizards that dive-bomb you. Sometimes the bastards will appear protected against Moon or Sun damage, to better encourage you to change your attack style. That's an impressive amount of variety.
But this is, I think, a bit too much variety in practice to be totally fun. The pacing becomes obvious: you'll have a difficult platforming section, then a bit of running, then you'll enter an area with a visible number of platforms for no apparent reason – at which point the walls covering the entry and exit slam. in place. You then have to fight off several waves of increasingly difficult enemies in an enclosed space, like opening a can of sardines and discovering that all those bastard fish want to bring you to your knees. Rather than becoming a fun, frantic exercise in using all the skills you've learned, it becomes a chore where you end up doing the same things by rote, no matter what enemy you're facing anyway.
This isn't helped by the fact that there are also some small but annoying bugs to deal with. While I was playing, Zau would sometimes stay crouched and other times he would continually jump, which wasn't good for anyone. His ranged attack on the Moon did not automatically fire directly rather than at the enemy. They're not game-breaking, but they're frustrating to face, especially in the middle of a fight, and most especially in a boss fight against the three great spirits – one of which is just a giant platforming level.
Tales Of Kenzera demonstrates great precision in the design of its characters and its world, in the writing, in the dubbing, down to the individual animations. But it lacks precision in certain areas of combat, particularly platforming, which is arguably the most important thing in a platformer. For me, I'm not sure that's the case! Despite my frustrations – I have proof in the form of angry texts sent to a friend about the number of times I attempted a sequence where you have to sprint up a waterfall to a timed door, and another that features a jump.hyphen in time to land on a platform floating on a lava fountain – I'd like to see what other stories can be told in Kenzera.
This review was based on a trial version of the game provided by the developers.
