GOOD MOURNING
Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a beautiful metroidvania-style platformer about grief. In terms of quality, it’s a two-headed beast. The story feels fragile, as if it needs a gentle pat on the head and reassurance that everything will be alright. The gameplay, on the other hand, is confident, challenging, and mostly enjoyable. I had a good time playing—but the wordy narration and sluggish voice acting kept interrupting that fun.
Critiquing how someone processes the loss of a parent is never comfortable. Abubakar Salim founded Surgent Studios to tell this story after his father’s passing. Salim is a skilled actor with an extensive résumé across film, television, and games. He delivered Bayek in Assassin’s Creed: Origins with remarkable emotional range and played Father in Raised by Wolves with impressive restraint.
In Tales of Kenzera: Zau, he is equally convincing as Zuberi, a young man mourning his father. His mother presents him with a book written by the old man himself. As Zuberi begins to read, he realizes it’s a final message, passed from father to son.
The game unfolds within this story-within-a-story. It presents a vibrant fantasy world inspired by Bantu mythology from southern and central Africa. You play as Zau (also voiced by Salim), a young shaman desperate to bring his father back from the dead. He summons the god of the afterlife and strikes a deal: in exchange for his wish, he must deliver three souls.
The quest resembles Wander’s journey in Shadow of the Colossus. You guide Zau across the world in search of these boss souls, each residing within a mythological animal beast. Hunting them down feels morally dubious, like you’re being a selfish asshole. Interpreting them as metaphors for psychological struggles might circumvent the guilt.
Much like Ori and the Blind Forest, the game features a clean, metroidvania-style structure built around obstacle courses. It feels mostly linear, with side paths leading to optional challenges, upgrades, and lore. In the grand scheme, these extras feel insignificant. What matters is how good Zau feels to control. Running, jumping, and air-dashing are handled with excellent precision and speed.
Zau wields two masks. One represents the sun—a fiery stance designed for aggressive melee combat. The other channels the moon, enabling ranged attacks and freezing abilities. Salim has explained that this mechanic draws from his own experience of putting on different “masks” to cope with grief.
It’s a strong metaphor. You’re constantly switching between the two to overcome obstacles or create new paths. Platforms and walls appear or vanish depending on the active mask. Some sequences demand rapid mid-air switching, constructing or dismantling platforms above lethal terrain. These sections are the most Ori-inspired, but I actually enjoyed them more here. The difference lies in control responsiveness: Zau’s movement is well-tuned enough that success feels earned rather than frustrating.
Traversal isn’t just fun. It’s uplifting. The African fantasy setting, presented in a 2.5D side-scrolling perspective, is both vibrant and readable. The game never cheats the player. Color-coding communicates danger, and the environments never obscure what you need to see. Savannahs, waterfalls, and crystal caves aren’t especially novel, but—much like the music—they create a smooth, frictionless atmosphere that complements Zau’s graceful movement.
Combat, however, get tedious. Fighting enemies in the open world is fine, but the game frequently locks you into enclosed combat arenas, refusing to let you proceed until several waves are defeated. These encounters are clearly inspired by Super Smash Bros.—a series I’ve never cared for—complete with platform-heavy layouts and environmental hazards. The juggling and stun-locking mechanics only make the comparison more obvious.
Some enemies are immune to one of your masks, forcing you to switch. That’s fine in theory. In practice, I quickly discovered a ground attack that inexplicably bypassed this limitation. By spamming it, I could defeat nearly every enemy, except the flying foes. From that point on, combat became tedious. There’s too much of it, and not enough depth to sustain it.
While I don’t dislike the story itself, I strongly dislike how much of it the game insists on telling me. It overexplains everything. Whenever you unlock a new mechanic, the god of death appears out of thin air to deliver a lore dump. Pick up purple life force for the first time? It’s called Ulogi—a fancy name for experience points.
We all know experience points. But instead of letting that speak for itself, the game explains:
“Ulogi is the spiritual property that resides in everyone and everything. Through your resonance as a Shaman, it can accentuate your inner power…” And so on. Then a tutorial screen pops up to explain it again. You can level up! You can gain skills! Your masks can grow stronger! It's experience points!
I love lore-specific terminology—but brevity matters. The wordiness becomes especially grating when certain characters enter the stage. Some voice actors mistake slow speech for depth, stretching every line into a dramatic crawl. Meanwhile, the subtitles appear instantly, allowing you to read everything long before it’s spoken. You can skip ahead—and I strongly advice you do that.
The story contains genuinely powerful moments—particularly involving certain boss souls—but the ponderous narration dulls their emotional edge. That said, the ending lands well. It’s effective, and surprisingly clever.
Dramatic tedium notwithstanding, Tales of Kenzera: Zau is fun to play. It’s a damn shame it sold poorly. With weak exploration incentives, I’d recommend it more to Ori fans than to players searching for the next Metroid. Surgent Studios nailed the hard parts—the movement, the world, the core feel. Combat and narration could easily be polished in a follow-up.
Sadly, with the studio currently on hiatus, their future looks uncertain. But if we ever return to Kenzera, I’d be more than happy to support them.
Comments
Post a Comment