Zenonia

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Zenonia is a Top-Down Action-RPG released on iOS in 2019, ported to Android and PlayStation Portable in 2019, as well as the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service that same year, and it was later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released. This game follows the story of a young man named Regret (yes, really) as he seeks to uncover the secrets of where he comes from, as well as to fight the demonic threat that attacked his caretaker.

Unfortunately, Zenonia’s story is poorly localized, resulting in stilted, poorly-paced dialogue and some odd name choices. In addition to Regret, this game features characters named Vague, Tender, and Pardon. Yeah, it’s like whoever named half these characters just opened a dictionary and selected random words.

The presentation here has some decent-looking 2D pixel art visuals, though their charm is undone somewhat by choppy framerates and poor animation. The game’s synthesized RPG-style soundtrack doesn’t do it many favors either, being completely forgettable.

As for the gameplay, Zenonia attempts to replicate something akin to the Mana series with its Action-RPG-style gameplay, with players actively swinging at enemies, and hidden RNGs deciding if your strike hit and how much damage it did, with players leveling to boost skills in multiple categories and power up magic abilities in a skill tree. This setup is fine, but it’s brought down by sloppy, slow, inaccurate controls that often make it feel like your character is seeing your controller inputs as only a suggestion, and hit detection that’s just as bad.

I know that when it was released, Zenonia managed to get a few fans, but I honestly cannot see why – it’s a sub-par Action-RPG with a poor localization, bad pacing, shoddy controls, poor hit detection, and an unimpressive presentation. You have so many better options available to you on Nintendo 3DS, don’t waste your time and money on this one.

tl;dr – Zenonia is a Top-Down Action-RPG about a hero named Regret (yes, really), that does very little to distinguish itself, and that’s in addition to a terrible localization, bad controls, poor hit detection, and dreadful pacing. Skip this one.

Grade: C-

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