I'm reluctant to spoil too much of the plot, but it touches on several RPG cliches. You play as a mysterious child unsure of his identity in an adventure that takes place during a conflict between the Dragon Clan and Holy Knights. Along the way you're able to make choices that change both your alignment and the direction the game takes through the story. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are plentiful, and even insignificant characters often have amusing things to say if you talk to them enough times. Grammar mistakes are abundant in Zenonia's English localization, but more often than not I felt these just added to the humor of the game.
The depth of Zenonia continues as you complete quests in a game world that has both day and night cycles, allowing for quests or quest objectives that only appear at certain times of day. There are ten different slots for your character to equip gear in, a ridiculous amount of potions, power-ups, and a detailed magic item upgrade system that focuses on combining items to create more powerful ones.
Items degrade over time, requiring repairs, and your character even needs to eat regularly. While I suppose these things could aid the immersion of hardcore RPG gamers, it seems like they just serve as a needless time and gold sink. You can pick up five quests at a time, and most quests will generally have you heading to the same area, but more often than not you have to run back to town to eat and repair before you can complete all quest objectives.
Zenonia is controlled using an on-screen D-Pad and buttons, similar to other Gamevil games and I honestly feel this is the game's biggest flaw. Absolutely everything in the game is controlled using the virtual D-Pad, including navigating menus. It's no secret that Zenonia on the iPhone is a port of an extremely popular Korean cell phone game built with cell phone hardware in mind, I just wish Gamevil would have made some attempt to (for lack of a better term) make the iPhone iteration of Zenonia a little more iPhone-y.
It seems extremely archaic to navigate through the various submenus that make up your character's information, inventory, equipment, and skills, especially after seeing how Underworlds [App Store] handled this so well using a touch interface. Saving your game is also done using these same submenus, which seems really unnatural for an iPhone game.
The graphics are excellent, and it's not hard to draw visual comparisons between Zenonia and classic 16-bit RPG's. Combat animations are colorful and often come with screen flashes and other fun-to-watch graphical effects. Since the game weighs in at under 10MB, music and sound effects are fairly limited. The combat sounds get repetitive quick, and while there seemingly is a large variety of music, most of the tracks consists of loops that only last a few seconds.
So do I recommend Zenonia?
At $5.99, it is an unbelievable value for the amount of gameplay you're getting. At over 40 hours per play-through, three classes, along with the good and evil alignment system, Zenonia should provide for at least a second fresh play-through as you choose the opposite alignment of your previous game. There really isn't anything like it on the App Store, and if you're looking for a solid RPG to settle in and sink your teeth in to, look no further than Zenonia.
Gamevil has already submitted Zenonia 1.1 to the App Store, and they've proven in the past that they'll continue improving a game until they get it right. Baseball Superstars [App Store] has gone through an amazing transformation through updates, and I expect Zenonia will do the same. Despite my criticisms, as a fan of more classic RPG's than I can even list, I'm enjoying Zenonia immensely.
REVIEW BY TOUCHARCADE
DOWNLOAD:
ZENONIA™ 2 1.1 (.ipa) - 30.8 MB
ZENONIA™ 2 1.1 (.ipa) - 30.8 MB
ZENONIA™ 2 1.1 (.ipa) - 30.8 MB
ZENONIA™ 2 1.1 (.ipa) - 30.8 MB