Tales of Kenzera: Zau is one of the few games to find a balance of excellent gameplay and impactful storytelling. Being the first title out of Surgent Studios makes it all more impressive. For eight hours I jumped, fought, and persevered through the world of Kenzera. Playing as a young man dealing with the sudden loss of his father, you will journey to heal the land in a desperate attempt to change fate, and it is excellent.
Denial
The game begins with a young man named Zuberi in an Afro-futurist world trying to deal with the grief of his father’s sudden passing. His mother shows him a book his Baba (father) was working on, and the game begins as you take on the role of the book’s protagonist. Zau is a shaman, who has just lost his father and he can’t accept it. He calls upon Kalunga, the God of Death, and accepts his terms to reverse his father’s fate. “Free” three great spirits and Kalunga will take him to the afterlife.
How the game has you play through a book written by a father to help his son deal with his impending death is beautiful. As someone who lost a parent far too soon it hit me hard, matching my own feelings time and time again. Kenzera is a land fallen into sickness and death. Once beautiful it too is suffering and the trials Zau will face as he attempts to save his Baba will not only heal his soul but all of those around him.
Anger
The main relationship in the game is between Zau and Kalunga, the God of Death. As Zau traverses the world they have repeated conversations that carry him through each stage of grief. Abubukar Salim, Surgent Studio’s founder, does an incredible job voicing Zau & Zuberi. His previous work as Bayek of Siwa in Assassin’s Creed: Origins should familiarize many with his incredible talent.
The entire voice cast knocks it out of the park in their various roles, with Kalunga being my favorite. Tristan D. Lalla gives an incredible performance, taking the game’s excellent writing and infusing it with a mix of somber knowledge and understanding. This God of Death is a friend to those who pass, understanding his job is one that is unavoidable. Despite this he’s empathetic and helpful to the furious young Shaman, gently guiding him through their journey and learning what an incredible young man he is.
Bargaining
As Zau embarks on his journey the game’s Metroidvania roots spring to life. Immediately the game felt great to play. While combat was limited in what you could do, traversal was not. Both double and wall jumps are available from the beginning and the input latency is low. Zau has two modes, the Moon and the Sun. While using the Moon Mask X is a projectile attack that needs to reload with Y being a heavy swing that knocks enemies back. You can hold the left trigger to aim without moving for all projectile attacks as well.
While using the Sun Mask, Zau switches to a melee build where X is a four-hit combo and Y is a launcher that knocks enemies up in the air. Combat becomes a dance where you’ll constantly switch between your mask types to defeat enemies in a variety of manners. As you progress armor bars will appear on top of the enemy’s health and you’ll have to match the damage type before you can take them down.
This system carries over to the traversal. You will find Shaman shrines that unlock extra abilities which you will need to fully traverse through Kenzera. As the game is on the shorter side for the genre, with my full playthrough taking just about eight hours, the pacing is excellent. I never felt like I went more than 30 minutes before I unlocked something new or gained enough experience to upgrade my abilities.
There is also an Amulet system that lets you lightly customize a build to your liking. There are a handful of trials to play through that require you to find them out in the world, and as you clear each one you’ll get more trinket slots and energy upgrades. That energy is used to power your heal, Up on the D-pad, and super moves. Those are a massive energy beam in the Moon state or a swirling volcano of fire in the Sun one.
Depression
Graphically Zau is a beautiful game. It’s nothing incredible technically, but playing on a rather powerful PC it looked and ran fantastically. As per usual lately, the Xbox code came in late just before embargo so you’ll want to double-check at launch to see how the version performs. The game is light on requirements for PC and I would hope that it can hold a steady 60 fps and a high resolution on Xbox’s consoles. There is a wide variety in the game’s surprisingly large map, with each area covering different emotions, thematically.
There are forests, swamps, deserts, and more to explore with the opening area looking straight out of Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Everything is 3D, model-wise, and in the brief sections where you play as Zuberi in a future Africa, there is a stunning vista showing off this new world that Surgent has created. My only issue with the graphics is the number of times where I died during platforming on a one-hit kill spike only to see I never touched it in my recording. It didn’t happen a ton but when it did it was infuriating. There is a difficulty spike later in the game that was particularly rough as the normally abundant in number checkpointing system became far stingier.
As good as the gameplay and graphics are the writing, voiceover, and music keeps pace. While I played through the game primarily in English it is available in Swahili as well. The music is tremendous, finding the heart of each scene as the story sees Zau’s emotions rise and fall. Combat themes get the blood pumping while the more emotional story beats are accompanied by tones that invoke a tragic mix of sadness and hope.
Acceptance
Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a triumphant debut for Surgent Studios. At $20, and available on day one for PlayStation+ subscribers, any fan of the action-platformer genre would do well to check it out. Zau’s journey through loss will stick with me for a long time, and the excellent gameplay already has me itching to play through it all again.
Tales of Kenzera: Zau
Played on
PC
PROS
- Writing
- Voice Acting
- Music
- Gameplay
- Art Style
CONS
- Difficulty Spikes
- Imprecise One-Hit Kill Deaths
One of the few games I preordered. Its 10% discount on preorder with some additional bonuses. That price of a pizza got a little cheaper.
Nice review!
The story of the game has me intrigued for sure, the platforming is not really my thing though so I won’t jump on it immediately. I’ll keep it in mind for a future pick up though.
Yeah, I picked this up right away because I liked the idea and it really wasn’t expensive, and the extra goodies. Might not play immediately but wanted to support them.
Game looks fuckin’ awesome! definitely buying it next week!
Same. Came across as a real nice guy at the TGA’s and I love the setting.
If you can get it now, I think it’s still $2 off and you get a couple of freebies.
He was very personable, down to earth, and enthusiastic on the XboxEra Podcast too.
Cool. I’ll actually start giving these a watch now that I’ve redownloaded Flight Sim after picking up an expansion card. The length of them tends to put me off, but coupled with a flight, won’t be too bad!