Tales of Kenzera: Zau delivers a deeply touching tale, but the gameplay can’t quite support it for the entire duration.
Key Takeaways
- Tales of Kenzera: Zau offers a touching exploration of grief through the lens of Bantu culture.
- The gameplay of the Metroidvania struggles to meet genre criteria, lacking satisfying exploration elements.
- The combat starts strong but becomes repetitive, unable to match the depth of the story.
Grief is a complex emotion to convey in any storytelling but often finds a home in gaming plots, be that The Last Of Us, It Takes Two, or Final Fantasy VII. The way each person internalizes and processes their own individual response to a major loss is as unique as that same relationship lost. Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a beautiful and thoughtful exploration of grief through the lens of Bantu culture — a lens rarely explored in gaming. That unique perspective on a universal theme strengthens its message and keeps its delivery from feeling cliché or rote.
Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a beautiful and thoughtful exploration of grief through the lens of Bantu culture — a lens rarely explored in gaming.
Ideally, games explore emotions and the human experience through narrative and gameplay. Tales of Kenzera: Zau's premise of a young shaman attempting to cope with his father's death through the mechanics of a Metroidvania sounds perfect. Navigating grief can often feel like a maze of challenges and dead ends with no clear direction — exactly the feelings Metroidvanias excels in providing. However, as poignant and touching as the story and messages presented are, the gameplay isn't able to hold up its end of the bargain.
Tales of Kenzera: Zau
A young shaman must learn to process his father’s death in this Bantu-inspired Metroidvania.
Release Date 2024-04-23 Genre Metroidvania Developer Surgent Studios Pros
- Touching exploration of grief
- Excellent introduction to Bantu culture
- Detailed and rich environments
Cons
- Small enemy variety
- Lack of exploration
- Light on Metroidvania elements
$20 at Steam$18 at PlayStation
Life and death explored in plot
The human experience
Tales of Kenzera: Zau frames its gameplay as a secondary narrative layer. The main character is a man named Zuberi who has just lost his father. Speaking with his mother, he is given a story written by his late father but left unfinished, that tells the story of Zau. The character of Zau is who you spend the majority of the game as on his quest to try and revive his own late father with the help of the Kalunga, the God of Death.
Kalunga, who comes from Bantu mythology and is also known as the God of Change, is your constant companion on this quest. Kalunga, and by extension death itself, is not viewed as an evil or malevolent force in this world. It is simply a constant, but that doesn't make accepting or coping with it any easier.
The end result is a complex and messy exploration of grief that feels completely genuine.
Zau's relationship with Kalunga, and the few other characters met along the journey, is ever-changing. Zau begins dead set on his goal to the point of carelessness and treating Kalunga as little more than a guide until their deal is done. What works best, and mirrors the theme of grief's winding path, is how their relationship both grows deeper but also takes steps back. Each leg of Zau's journey asks him to confront new stages and perspectives on grief, and his and Kalunga's perspectives don't always align. Both characters learn and are able to grow only when they begin to trust the other.
Everything from the environments to the enemies and new abilities you get are references to the Bantu culture. It is not only a refreshing change from traditional Metroidvania settings, but also adds a new layer to the themes. Every culture views death through different lenses, and this completely changes the way Zau has to cope with it. The end result is a complex and messy exploration of grief that feels completely genuine.
Follow the path to continue play
No reason to stray
As a Metroidvania, Tales of Kenzera: Zau almost fails to meet the criteria. The aspects people come to that genre for are almost entirely absent here, to the point of it almost feeling like a misnomer. You always have a clear direction to go, and there are almost no opportunities to explore the world out of order.
With few exceptions, you never encounter an obstacle you can't overcome immediately before acquiring it.
You do pick up a handful of new abilities that fit the mold of offering both utility in traversal and combat, but there's never that "ah-ha!" moment of getting a new move you realize can let you access an area you saw earlier. With few exceptions, you never encounter an obstacle you can't overcome immediately before acquiring it.
Near linear storytelling confuses the genre
Each zone you move through is nearly linear to the point where you almost have to intentionally ignore a side path to miss any optional area. There are a handful of small rooms not shown on the map, but every major diversion is clearly laid out on the map. The map itself presents its own problems. Unlike many Metroidvanias, entering a new zone instantly reveals all the rooms and paths in it.
There's no sense of discovery by slowly erasing the fog of war. You always know where you have to go and the single path you have to get there. If you do happen to miss something and want to go back, you're in for a slog of moving through the entire zone looking for that one branch you didn't take since you can't tell at a glance where you have or have not been prior.
Combat holds up for the first half or so of the adventure, but struggles to stretch itself to remain interesting to match the story's length. You have two main methods of combat by swapping between the Sun and Moon masks with the tap of a button. The Sun focuses on fire-y melee combos while the Moon gives you ranged and ice-y abilities. The movesets of each style expand with a few new options via the short skill trees and new abilities you find, but these dry up around halfway through the game.
This would be fine if the game continued to present you with unique combat challenges, but you will see every basic enemy the game has to offer far too soon. It tries to add some challenge by giving enemies shields that can only be broken by one of your two styles but can't keep combat from feeling like a chore.
The verdict: Your next Metroidvania game?
A better lesson than a game
I can't say I came away from my time with Tales of Kenzera: Zau disappointed. There were many moments where I was given some genuinely interesting and touching perspectives on death and grief that will stick with me. Even as someone completely foreign to Bantu culture, and the exact loss that is being explored, there are universal truths and lessons that are delivered in a way only games allow.
Even as someone completely foreign to Bantu culture, and the exact loss that is being explored, there are universal truths and lessons that are delivered in a way only games allow.
On the other side of the coin, I can't say I would ever return to this game. This is a journey you can only experience once, and there isn't much left to gain by revisiting it unless you really want to find every collectible. If it was fully able to leverage the Metroidvania genre to deliver its message, it would be an immediate recommendation. As it stands, your enjoyment will be determined by how engaged you are with the message being delivered.
