I went into Tales of Kenzera: Zau with high expectations. The New York Times called it “a gem of human experience made all the more profound because of its self-assured heart.” Other publications hyped it up as a polished game with a lot to say and an excellent way of saying it. I was ready to be pulled into another world and maybe even shed a few tears at a story about love and loss. I came away from it thinking “well, that was a decent game. What’s next?”

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is, at its heart, a very straightforward exploration platformer (I’d call it a Metroidvania if @Mento wouldn’t ban me for it.) You play the titular Zau (except for brief future segments where you play a very similar character named Zuberi in an afrofuturist framing element where you walk around doing nothing like an Assassin’s Creed game but less annoying). Zau is a young shaman who has inherited the masks, and thus powers, of his father, who has recently died, and wants to use those powers to bargain with death, named Kalunga in this game, for the return of his beloved “Baba” (father), who he thinks was taken unjustly and far too soon.

Kalunga agrees to return Zau’s Baba if Zau can help him bring three powerful spirits across the veil to the land of the dead, as is the role of a shaman, and so you set off on your journey to find and defeat them so they can rest.

I don’t normally start talking about games by focusing on the story, but here the story and aesthetics are obviously the standout elements. This is far from the the first game to draw on African myths and culture for its story and setting but compared to European or Asian traditions it’s a less common source of inspiration. Here, specifically, the game is drawing on Swahili language and culture, though without a lot of specificity, more using it as set dressing than deeply diving into the stories or mythology. It does freshen up what is otherwise a pretty rote game in an overdone genre, and the African setting is both beautiful and a refreshing change, managing to keep the game from feeling like just a copy of a literally hundreds of other games. The music is also influenced by traditional African music, though I wish the soundtrack had gone further in this direction instead of including a lot of more overused tropes in its primarily orchestral score. It’s generally good music, but it’s not very memorable, and I think an entirely traditional African soundtrack would have stood out more.

Unfortunately the story and characters do not elevate the material as much as the world building and locations. This game is supposedly a deeply personal story about loss, and it certainly does explore themes around losing a loved one, but aside from a few moments where some of the cultural inspiration influences character or story it’s all pretty rote. Kalunga is very chill for a god of death, and shines in quieter moments when he shows true empathy towards Zau, but Zau himself is a pretty standard grieving young man trying to take a stand against the inherent injustice of the universe. It’s not bad at all, but it feels competent and satisfactory rather than enthralling, and doesn’t do much to elevate the game.

The gameplay similarly offers mostly competent versions of well-worn concepts. You can run, double jump, air dash, and fight. The “hook” is your ability to switch between sun and moon masks. The sun mask focuses on powerful melee attacks and close in damage while the moon mask has ranged attacks (with an active reload, which is weird in a game where you wield magic). Eventually you’ll get different utility powers for the different masks and they each feature special ultimate attacks but we’ve all seen these gameplay concepts before. Eventually enemies get elemental shields that are only vulnerable to one of the masks, which is really annoying when one particular enemy who has an invulnerable dash gets a sun shield, since the shields regenerate and tracking them down to do enough melee damage before they dash around invincible and recharge is frustrating. But in general it’s all old hat at this point. Enemy variety is also quite limited, with about a dozen foes showing up, and the game has quite a lot of combat, including locking off progression until you finish multi wave combat arenas and also having multiple optional combat arenas you can fight in to get extra goodies like an extended spirit power bar or a slot for your “trinkets,” which are essentially charms that give Zau abilities like gaining more health when he heals or taking less damage from projectiles.

If the combat is just passable the platforming at least feels good most of the time…but has more significant issues in the later game. Zau is very quick and responsive and his jumps and dashes feel good to control. This is important because the game has a lot of negative space; large stretches of map where there aren’t many obstacles or all that much to do. It’s not a problem your first time through when you’re taking in sights and Kalunga may be talking with Zau, but it makes backtracking annoying, especially with the game’s somewhat limited fast travel system that only has a couple spots even in very large areas (and the game’s map is quite big and sparse compared to more tightly designed entries in the genre.) There are plenty of one hit death kills on spikes and other traps but checkpointing is generous and the game is generally pretty easy. The two exceptions are platforming gauntlets that are specially marked and that require you to pass a series of tougher than normal obstacles in order to get rewarded with a trinket, and two boss-related chase sequences that are extremely annoying and frustrating because of…

The camera. Even though Tales of Kenzera: Zau is a 2024 2D game it has serious camera issues. Mainly the camera just doesn’t move fast enough to keep up with Zau, which can lead to unearned deaths when you fall into spikes you literally could not see because the camera didn’t pan down until it was too late, or run head on into an obstacle for the same reason. In the chase sequences this is very pronounced because you need to move fast, and while you are being chased from behind hazards will appear from the front. The game also sometimes has readability issues with a lot happening on screen and Zau sometimes being pretty small (this is an issue in combat where I lost track of Zau pretty frequently given that the enemies can look like him and there can be a lot going on) but in the chases it can mean that a slow camera and difficult to read screen elements lead to a lot of frustration. The second chase I finished angrily and mostly out of spite, and it has a pretty low completion rate even on Xbox (that will rise over time because the game is new, but it does seem like a potential chokepoint for some players.) But the camera is generally a problem in a game where it shouldn’t be.

Also a problem, especially in the second chase, is some inconsistency in how moves register. You eventually get an enhanced air dash that can punch you through certain obstacles, but it doesn’t always trigger, at least on PS5, and when it does it doesn’t always break the obstacle, and it’s supremely frustrating. There’s nothing worse than something unresponsive in a generally responsive game. To make matters worse, even when the move does register it sometimes doesn’t break the barriers that it should. And while other moves are more reliable there are things that don’t feel quite right where it seems like a couple additional weeks or months of polish might have really helped things.

Boss battles are another area where some additional polish might have helped. While I didn’t experience any technical issues during them they are extremely unbalanced. Essentially the battles seem to be designed as normal wars of attrition, where you do small bits of damage over time and try to avoid taking too much damage from the boss, but in practice what I found was that it was extremely easy to damage the boss using Zau’s ultra moves, and the only real danger was from moves they have that can push you off the platform and cause a falling death, which forces you to restart the battle. So the battles actually play out as charging up spirit power for an ultra move and learning to read and avoid the moves that push you off the platform, with everything else being pretty irrelevant. They’re not the worst bosses I’ve faced in a game, and none of them are too difficult, but they aren’t very satisfying either.

The last issue I’d like to bring up is the backtracking. It’s weirdly limited. In exploration platformers one of the most common design elements is to include a bunch of goodies that you can see but can’t quite get yet because you don’t have the right ability. This game does have a bunch of collectables such as the aforementioned trinkets as well as various XP boosts and health upgrades etc… but almost all of them are attainable with that area’s movement ability. So in the area where you get the grapple hook there will be XP boosts to grapple hook to, and they may also be in subsequent areas, but none of the prior areas will have them. This is…unusual as a design choice. There are a couple exceptions where you do need to backtrack to get everything, but very limited. I don’t even know that I’m complaining about this, since being able to get everything your first time through if you’re vigilant is nice in a game where the fast travel is bad, but it did surprise me.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is not a bad game, it’s just unambitious and kind of average for a 2D exploration platformer with a significant budget. The African setting does make it interesting enough to be worth playing, and it’s competent enough that I saw it through to the end and even got the platinum (though tracking down those last collectibles really showed me how big and empty the map is.) It’s enjoyable enough to recommend to people who like the genre and dig the game’s look, and it’s on the higher tier of PlayStation Plus so it might not even cost you anything. But while playing it I couldn’t help but think of how many other games in the genre are more ambitious and interesting in so many ways. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night with its absolutely insane powers and systems that you can break in so many ways. Shadow Complex with its foam gun and shooting into the background. The recent and fascinating Ultros with its storytelling and weird gameplay. Even something like Forgotton Anne with its deeper focus on story and elaborate animated cut scenes. I would recommend all those games over Tales of Kenzera: Zau for anyone with any familiarity with the genre, except perhaps Forgotton Anne, which is not that fun to play.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau is not a bad game but it is a victim of its own hype. As a $20 game from a new studio it’s a fine and competent game in an oversaturated genre that does enough aesthetically and is enjoyable enough to play to justify a look. But it’s not particularly special, and I hope that whatever the studio does next tries to focus on at least some aspect to make that project stand out more.