Review: Zenonia

Any gamer who owns an iPhone or an iPod touch knows how hard it is to find satisfying games in the App Store. For all Apple's boasting about their 21,178 'game or entertainment apps', users know very few of them pack the same satisfying punch as the average DS game; or even the average DSi Ware game. Most of them boil down to puzzle games, tower defense games, or at best, emulations of classic games you've already played to death. Zenonia is one of the few games in the App Store that fills the 'real game' void.

Story
While the Zenonia's story isn't the greatest, it's surprising that it even has a story, given it's platform. The world map, story length, and characters are nothing short of an SNES era RPG. The story may not be the most original (the righteous Holy Knights and the evil Dragon Clan are fighting for control of the nation of Zenonia) but it's definitely satisfying enough to make you want to progress forward.

The protagonist, named Regret, is actually a pretty interesting character. The story starts with the Dragon Clan tricking Regret into working for them, picking off Holy Knights one by one to avenge his father's death. However, the player knows from the opening cutscene that Regret's father was actually a Holy Knight himself, and was killed by the Dragon Clan; the necessary conclusion to this dramatic irony probably explains why he's named "Regret". While not really a tear-jerker, there are some surprising moments when we see Regret mistake good guys for bad guys, and vise versa.

The most interesting thing about Regret is that he has a short fuse and often breaks the fourth wall when frustrated. There are several occasions where he curses the developers for making a puzzle impossible, or yells at an NPC for expecting him to know expositional information when he "only just started this game." Zenonia's greatest strength is it's off-kilter sense of humor, but sometimes it can come off feeling a little unclassy. There are occasional moments when the game attempts to be tender (specifically scenes dealing with Regret's sister, Sun) that feel a little uncomfortable, given the silliness of the status quo. Sometimes it feels like I'm playing an RPG Maker game, but I've also had more than a few genuine laughs from the comedic dialog.

Gameplay
The gameplay in Zenonia is seemingly simple but slowly reveals itself to have multiple layers of complexity. There are some lame block pushing puzzles (in fact, the puzzles are exclusively lame block pushing puzzles) but the meat and potatoes of the gameplay is the realtime melee combat using touchscreen buttons; a rarity in iPhone and iPod Touch games. Both the player and enemies are all locked to a grid, and are actually surprisingly stationary. Enemies will walk a square or two and stand still; the player, too, will often find themselves picking a tactically advantageous square and sticking with it, only moving Regret in order to dodge enemy charged attacks.

This essentially boils the combat down to button mashing. But it's all about the setup. You can fight in the open and have an open square to dodge attacks or run, but you also might be surrounded by enemies on all sides. Alternatively, you can back yourself into a corner to make sure you only have to deal with one or two enemies at a time. Outside of trading blows, the only real strategy comes from using your own special abilities and items, and dodging when an enemy signals it's about to hit with a stronger-than-usual attack. There's also an interesting tactical element to critical hits; aside from doing more damage, they also knock the enemy back several squares, giving you an opportunity to escape if you're surrounded, but also forcing you to give up your position if you want to chase after them.

On top of the combat, there's also a complicated Diablo-like meta-game. There's healing potions, item recharge times, tons of optional side-quests, item and ability macro slots, item weight, elements, statuses, equipment combination bonuses, item synth, skill trees, good/evil meter, etc.. It's pretty easy to ignore some elements of it (I refuse to participate in an item synth side-quest on my cellphone) but most of them will make sense eventually. One of the neatest systems is the way SP works; Your SP heals over time, and can NOT be healed by items. However, your Max SP will deplete every few minutes (the SP bar will shrink) and you need to eat food in order to restore it. It's a little confusing at first, but it's actually a really good system, and really stops you from infinitely healing with magic or potions. The limitation on healing adds another layer of strategy to the game, as loading up on potions or ether is usually a silver bullet in most RPGs.

One of the best features is that you can literally save at any time, except for while locked in a boss battle room. When you load the game again, you'll start at the exact same spot (even in mid-combat!) with temporarily invincibility. Since you can save anywhere, you also can't really die, because it would certainly suck to save in a spot where you have no choice but to die. When your HP reaches zero, rather than getting a game over, you're allowed to revive at a cost to equipment durability (which makes you weaker) and 10% of the EXP you're currently putting towards the next level. To avoid this penalty, you can either use a potion called The Origin of Life (which usually costs $2000) or if you don't have a potion handy, you can pay $3000 to revive without penalty. Either way, you can trudge in and out of any situation, regardless of your level.

Controls
The controls are bad. But it's almost not an issue? As I mentioned earlier, the combat is surprisingly stationary; perhaps to compensate for the necessarily bad controls (give it a break, it's a cellphone game!). There are all kinds of weird things the game does to compensate for it's necessarily bad controls. For example, if you accidentally walk into a wall, rather than react like any sensible video game would, it makes you walk in the direction it thinks you meant to walk. Sometimes in tightly packed corridors you can find yourself accidentally pressing up, but meaning to press right--but going right anyway? It's confusing, but it kind of works.

Graphics and Sound
The graphics are really surprisingly good. There's so much detail in the maps it's almost a shame how simplistic the gameplay is. Sometimes you'll see a neat little formation of rocks and trees and expect it to be a clue; then you'll realize there are no clues in Zenonia, because the only puzzles are block-pushing puzzles. But it's still pretty to look at.

The special effects are also pretty surprising; there's transparent ice and fire, sunbeams filtering through dungeon ceilings, and a cool air-ripple effect around Regret's sword slashes. Some of the special effects actually have gameplay purposes. For example, the way damage is depicted seems to be relevant to the amount of damage dealt. A 100 HP hit will shoot off a few sparks, but a 500 HP hit will flash and shake the screen. It's such a sliding scale that it's really fun to see the hits slowly get more dramatic as both you and the enemies reach a higher-damage playing field.

The sound effects are fine. The music ranges from cute to annoying, and can luckily be muted (either with or without the sound effects) to play your iPod music on top of it. Nice touch.

Overall

It's hard to rate Zenonia. For it's genre, it's a little bit above mediocre, but definitely playable. But for it's platform, it's solid gold. Few iPod or iPhone Touch games can hold a candle to it's depth, complexity, story or button mashing gratification. If you have an iPhone and are getting tired of tower defense games, it's definitely worth the $5.99 price.

8 out of 10

Bradamantium
Posted to Reviews on 15 September 2009 · Comments (1)
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