Tales of Kenzera: Zau Review

When I first saw the announcement for Tales of Kenzera: Zau, my interest was immediately sparked. The debut project by Surgent Studios is a colorful metroidvania that tells a highly personal story, featuring an uncommonly explored setting inspired by Bantu tales.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Tales of Kenzera did not live up to my expectations. Despite being short in length, the game dragged on, with most of its novelty wearing off within the first of four chapters.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The game opens with a young man, Zau, struggling to accept the recent passing of his father. Angry, sad, and unable to visit his father’s casket, he begins reading a Bantu tale written by his Baba, and thus embarks on a spiritual journey. A bargain with Kalunga, the God of Death, sends Zau on a quest to defeat three spirits in exchange for his father’s release from Kalunga’s realm.

It is obvious that Tales of Kenzera is a work of passion, a means of telling a deeply personal story and exposing the traditions of the Bantu to a wide audience. The game does a decent job of captivating the player through its story and presentation. The unfamiliar – at least to me – setting is intriguing, and it’s easy to sympathize with Zau‘s struggles. He embarks on a journey of acceptance and self-reflection, and in terms of narrative, the game excels at portraying Zau‘s psychological progress as he evolves from an angry, impulsive boy into an accepting mourner.

Kalunga‘s realm is a colorful but deadly place. The environments are visually appealing, varied, and nicely animated, introducing new and more deadly obstacles as the game progresses. Enemies are visually distinct, with well telegraphed attacks and unique combat styles for each type. The colossal spirit bosses offer great spectacle.

These are all great prerequisites for creating an amazing game, but they are not enough on their own. Especially in the metroidvania genre, two aspects are key: exploration, and combat. Unfortunately, Tales of Kenzera is subpar in both.

Let us talk about combat first. Zau channels the power of the Sun and Moon using masks that can be switched between on the fly, each enabling a unique fighting style. The Moon mask unlocks ranged and disruptive freezing attacks, especially useful against flying or out-of-reach enemies, while the Sun mask focuses on hard-hitting melee combat. Each fighting style has its unique skill tree, with skill points unlocked by engaging in combat and finding collectibles.

As the game progresses, enemies of all types are mixed and matched, though only a handful of different enemy types are introduced throughout the course of the game. On-the-fly strategizing and quickly switching between masks to optimize efficiency can be quite thrilling. In the early stages, enemies possess a single life bar, and gain regular or element-specific shields later. While the shield is active, Zau‘s attacks don’t interrupt enemy actions, making it more crucial to prioritize correctly.

Stray enemies are sometimes found while exploring, though most combat encounters are arena-style gauntlets, with the path forward only unlocking upon defeating all enemies in the room.

Despite all these features, combat is, unfortunately, anything but methodical. While the skill trees increase the efficiency of specific attacks or enable attack variations, most arena fights result in mindless and chaotic battles. The mix and match of enemies often works against the potential depth of combat.

For example, I was thrilled to unlock the ability to reflect projectiles back to enemies, in principle allowing me to prioritize melee foes while keeping an eye on ranged enemies. However, deflecting projectiles is only possible while wearing the Moon mask, while melee combat is most efficient using Sun skills. Since enemies frequently target you from outside the camera’s view, and switching between masks has a delay, reflecting projectiles in this manner was impractical more often than not. I ended up resorting to reflecting projectiles only while approaching a ranged enemy and already wearing the Moon mask, which took away most of my excitement for acquiring that skill. Furthermore, the camera often led to enemies, especially flying ones, being out of sight, causing much unnecessary frustration.

The highlight of combat should be the boss encounters. Regrettably, these turned out to be mediocre as well. The first boss, for example, while visually spectacular, offered a very underwhelming and repetitive fight. Instead of crafting a battle that incentivizes utilizing all techniques learned up to that point, the battle against Impundulu is a straightforward, yet long sequence of running side to side to avoid the boss’ attacks while pelting it with ranged projectiles.

The second boss encounter was even more of a letdown, consisting of chase sequences with abrupt direction changes impossible to react to, resulting in trial and error attempts. These sequences were followed by the actual battle against the boss, a gimmick fight during which I spent most of my time looking for my target while fighting off regular enemies.

Tales of Kenzera features three difficulty options, though the game doesn’t proactively communicate this. I opted to play the game on “challenging”, the highest difficulty setting. Disappointingly, the difficulty options only alter enemy health and damage output, resulting in even more drawn-out fights. I had hoped for more meaningful changes, such as increased platforming difficulty, more complex enemy compositions or stronger enemy types, instead of the same enemies becoming damage sponges.

While journeying through Kalunga‘s realm, I traversed colorful and beautiful environments that progressively introduced more deadly hazards. However, aside from the occasional enemy, the environments often felt very empty, with countless overly long stretches devoid of any platforming or combat challenges. The map is large, but it feels unnecessarily so.

The issue is further accentuated given the amount of backtracking required. The placement of fast travel points is inconvenient. Workbenches, which enable equipping trinkets, are nowhere near fast travel locations, discouraging visiting them to optimize your build for the current challenge. While exploring, you frequently find locations that are inaccessible with your current abilities. Being a metroidvania, it is expected that you return once you acquire the necessary ability to progress. However, with no way to mark anything on the map, keeping track of these locations quickly becomes cumbersome. Paired with the monotony of exploration, acquiring all collectibles is much too tedious to be worthwhile.

As for progression, one single concept is utilized repeatedly. You reach a locked door that requires two keys lying in opposite direction to unlock. After unlocking the gate, progress until reaching the next locked door. Instead of straightforward passageways with smart fast travel locations, the often very long forward path eventually loops back on itself, where a shortcut can be unlocked for future, faster traversal.

All of the above wouldn’t necessarily be this noticeable if the exploration gameplay would be entertaining. But mediocre, basic platforming, somewhat abysmal hit detection – especially with spikes – and the emptiness of the entire realm make for a dull experience.

In the passion project Tales of Kenzera, the main focus is a highly personal story. However affecting, mediocre gameplay and unsatisfactory exploration unfortunately bring the game down, and don’t allow it to stand out in any meaningful way.