Zenonia post game thoughts

I'm going to stop planning to record the Saturn videos on a Monday, it's a hard day and I just don't feel like being all chirpy down a microphone after having to deal with that.

So now I've got that out the way, let's talk about a game I beat today! Zenonia!......and it can go fuck itself!

If you remember a long long time ago, back when this blog was still fairly new, I did a Free Game Friday feature on this little iPhone RPG, and I think I said some good things about it.  Well after getting through the last section of this game, I can say that most of what I said was complete and utter bullshit.  There are good points to this game, it is fun, but the last two dungeons suck so much fun out of everything that the whole thing feels like a slog. 

The second to last dungeon is this stupid fog of war cave where you can't see shit and getting blindsided by some asshole monster is fairly commonplace.  It was at this point that no matter how long, boring or delayed my trips to work became, I didn't want to touch this damn thing.  So today I just thought "fuck it" and blasted my way through the final part of the game.  I would die constantly getting to the end, but for a mere 3000 gold you can revive with no penalty, and when you do get to the boss, it can't even fucking touch you.

The final dungeon and the build up to the final battle is even worse.  It's a huge fire cave filled with crap, copy pasted enemies and hard to spot floor traps.  It's not a difficult dungeon but good lord is it dull.  After slogging your way though the mobs, you get some piss easy block pushing puzzles, and then you fight the final boss, who I killed using nothing but my overpowered AoE and simply mashing the "hit it with my sword" button.

The sad part of the whole thing is, everything BEFORE these two areas was actually pretty good, I was having a blast with this thing until then.  It just dropped the ball so hard right at the end that even for a free iPod game it's difficult not to be a little bit pissed off.  Oh, and I won't spoil it but the ending sucks too.

So you know what? Even though I told you a long time ago to give Zenonia a go, don't fucking do it.  Despite having not played them, I'm sure Zenonia 2-4 are better games, so don't make the mistake I did and try to play through the series in order unless your some kind of masochist for video game bullshit.

Free Game Friday......On Saturday! Zenonia

First of all, apologies for free game friday being a day late, I ended up in a karaoke booth all night and by the time I got home I was too drunk and tired to even consider making a blog post, anyway, I'm now well rested and ready to bring you more free entertainment!

So, break out your smart phones and iPods because this weeks free game is a mobile game called Zenonia.  I find it strange that I'm finding games like this on the app store for my iPod Touch, usually I associate the mobile games market with casual stuff, you know, stuff for people to kill 20 minutes on a subway train, not proper gamers stuff.

Anyway, Zenonia is a Hack n' Slash RPG where you play as a young lad called Regret (Fucking stupid name by the way) as he is on a quest to avenge his dead father.  On the way you have to deal with the ongoing war between some holy knights and some clan of evil dragon people.  Basically the story is kind of dumb and the names of all the characters are pretty shitty too.

While I'm thinking about it the combat is a little bit shitty too.  It's basically one button combat and you just wail on an enemy until his life bar dissapears in most cases, that said though I still enjoy playing this game quite a bit.

First of all, you can pick one of three classes at the beginning, a Paladin (magic user), a Assassin (sneaky man for the dirty player) or a Barbarian (2 handed tough guy).  There is a chance that one of the reasons I find the combat so dull is I chose the Barbarian class so my guys whole deal is just wailing on enemys with a 2 hander anyway.  I'm still part way through my first playthrough so there is a chance that the other classes may make the combat a bit more compelling.

While I'm at it there is A LOT to this game, and I do mean A LOT.  The gameplay basically boils down to a single player MMO which would usually turn me off in most cases but as a time killer for the subway? yeah it's pretty good to grind out a few quests on my way to work.  Anyway, the world is pretty big, filled with dungeons and plains, snowfields and the like.  It does limit you to where you can go for each bit of the story, but it's OK because leaving the designated quest areas would mean getting your ass kicked anyway.

There is also shittons of items and stuff to pick up and collect and you have to keep all your junk in good shape if you want to stand a chance against what lies ahead.  Also there are skill trees, because every fucking game has to have a skill tree now and whenever you level up you get points to put into your stats and skills so you can really customise your guy to suit your own play style.

There is in fact quite a lot of depth here in preparing for combat and managing your quests and abilities, more depth that I would ever expect out of a goddamn iPod game.

So put that Angry Birds down and play a real game!  Maybe for those of you who class yourselves as "casual" gamers, you'll find that "core" gaming isn't as scary as it's all made out to be.