ZENONIA®

Summary

Imagine your father was the brave leader of the “holy warriors” in battle against the power of evil. He defended his land from the infamous Dragon Clan and kept peace for 15 years. Yet he could not escape his destiny – an dangerous demon sent by his archenemy brought his life to an end. Now it’s up to you and no one else to avenge your father’s death and bring justice to the land…

Are you ready to give those evil bastards one last fight on the land of ZENONIA®?

Test report comes from Paulina Gegenheimer

As the son of a fallen hero, your goal in the game is to save the world from evil powers by fighting against demons and other dangerous enemies.

Generally speaking, the game is made of small assignments and tasks that need to be accomplished for different people (think Pokemon meets Zelda – and you get the basic picture). The format of ZENONIA® is bound to look familiar for fans of old-school RPG games for Nintendo and Sega.

There is a single action button located at the bottom right that can be used for all actions such as: punching, swinging a sword, picking up objects or talking to people.

The game really begins once you’ve talked to a person and figured what they want you to do. Tasks may be, for example: collecting wood, transporting objects, getting rid of pesky insects or disturbing the inhabitants of a village.

Once you’ve completed your task, you must go back to the person that gave you the order to receive money, experience points, food or important information in return. It’s sort of like earning merit badges when you were back in Boy Scouts (if people still do that kind of thing).

I really like the way Zenonia teaches you how to play the game step by step by showing you useful hints and tips along the way.

Completing all the tasks in a specific location moves you up to the next level. The transition from one level to the next is really smooth and hardly noticeable.

What I didn’t enjoy so much was the fact that you have to constantly read through a lot of text in order to know what to do in the game. The characters in the game spend what seems like hours chatting to each other. This shouldn’t be a surprise to Zelda fans, however.

Nevertheless, I really enjoy Zenonia because of its detailed landscape and cute design. Judging by the fact that Zelda is still one of the most popular games of all time, Zenonia has done a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of the original game.
 

The controls in ZENONIA® are really simple and practical based on my own experiences. There’s a virtual d-pad in the left corner that moves your character in all directions. The d-pad is very responsive meaning that you can direct your character with control and precision.

The action button in the right button makes things simple by letting complete all actions with one button.

The screen layout is also very well done. By looking at two bars you can tell whether your character is hungry or tired. In the top right corner, your location on the map is marked by a red cross.

The “backpack feature”, however, wasn’t as impressive. Your backpack is supposed to include all your items and acts as a kind of inventory. It also shows you information about collected points and skills. In my opinion, too much information is being thrown at you, which may be confusing and disorienting.

Despite some of these minor grievances, I fully understand why Zenonia was recognized as the best adventure game by the Pocket Gamer Awards 2010 and selected as Best RPG Game of 2009.

Detailed, clear, exciting and entertaining – that’s how I would sum up this great game.

No issues with speed and stability during my test. ZENONIA® loaded quickly without any delays. Very satisfactory performance on a range of Android devices. 

Zenonia (free) can be downloaded for free from the Android Market. 

The full versions of ZENONIA® and Zenonia 2 cost $4.99 a pop.