Zenith

Infinigon Games' RPG, Zenith, is a title that builds its morals around comedic writing and parody, combining elements from other role-playing games and attempting to satirise them, and it wants you to know it.

The premise and set-up of Zenith is very much like an early 3D Japanese role-playing game, something akin to an older Final Fantasy title. Here you play as Argus, a wise-cracking magician who works for the Empire, who themselves are at war with the elves. We're first introduced to Argus as he's captured by a group of elves looking for ancient ruins that Argus might have information about; cue an arrow-to-the-knee joke, a group of choir-like spiders, and nostalgic haircuts. After dealing with the elves and meeting up with his friends from the Empire, they find and excavate these ancient ruins to find a long forgotten magical sceptre that may help them with the war.

It's fair to say things don't quite go as planned and by tampering with the powers of the sceptre the Empire and, more specifically, the magical side of the Empire (called the "Infinigon"), mass destruction of the world in general is caused by unleashing a force of underworld creatures of extreme power. Fast-forward several years, and Argus has left the Infinigon and the Empire far behind. Now he's just a simple potionist living out his days of seclusion in a small village, but again that doesn't last long. A girl named Alana soon turns up out of the blue looking for a sceptre that's been locked away for everyone's own good, and she thinks that Argus knows where it is.

It's pretty standard fare when it comes to RPGs; save the world, get the girl, and so on and so fort. What's different here with Zenith, though, is that it's giving you a wink and a nudge as it tries to tell you that it's in on the joke. What exactly the joke is we're not so sure. The story here isn't great or even original, but it's not terrible. Seeing adventurers that look like popular Final Fantasy characters such as Tidus is ever-so-slightly amusing, although maybe a little too in your face.

We'd suggest that the whole purpose of comedic games that rely on parody is simply to be funny. Unfortunately, a lot of what Zenith has to offer on that front doesn't really hit home (at least not for us). The game seems to think that the funniest gags include the fact that clichéd fantasy character archetypes swear, except it's more cringe-worthy than anything else.

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Gameplay consists of similarly clichéd Diablo and Final Fantasy tropes. You have an extremely basic loot system that hardly affects anything, especially considering your appearance never changes no matter what form of armour you're wearing, and we didn't really feel any difference between the weapons either. As well as armour, you can collect better necklaces, arm-wear, and boots, but it's extremely bare bones, almost to a fault, making you wonder if it was really needed in the first place.

Combat doesn't really fare much better here. In actual fact, combat is maybe the worst aspect in Zenith. What was maybe intended to be a mix between throwback RPG combat mechanics and real-time action turns out to be nothing more than a convoluted mess of mash-the-button-faster-than-your-enemy-can-attack-until-one-of-you-falls-over. It's obvious that the developers meant for the combat system to be better than it is; you have the ability to use a magic shield that guards you from harm while slowly consuming mana, for example. It's good in theory, but in actuality it's useless. We found that upon trying to defend ourselves against enemy attacks all the shield did was impede our movement and make us sitting ducks as we couldn't attack while it was active, which then led us to never use it and just hope our enemies ran out of health before we did.

When it comes to actually using the weapons at your disposal there's a lack of variety as well. Argus, being a magician, has the ability to use spells and magically infused weapons. It's all pretty standard stuff which includes the ability to throw fireballs and slash about with swords imbued with elemental effects such as ice and earth. That in itself doesn't harm the game in anyway, however what does is that the enemies show no form of response to your hits, as they merrily continue to pummel you while you either slash them with your upgraded sword combo or unleash magic. No matter what strategy you conjure up it unfortunately will, more often than not, come down to whether you have enough health potions at your disposal and how fast you can mash the button. We should mention that on the occasions that Alana joins you in battle she doesn't fair any better than the enemy AI. Of course she does attack the enemy, but she does little (if any) damage, all while being completely ignored during combat, meaning she's not even a good distraction.

As previously mentioned, the enemies of Zenith do little to engage you or make you think, as we found that they just run at the player like mindless zombies without any thought or reasoning to their attacks. It's neither hard in the conventional sense nor fun watching various enemy types just stand their ground playing out their animation while you attack them again and again.

When not in combat you have the option to wander around the various towns and inns talking to people, most of which have nothing of interest to say other than trying to be funny, with the odd NPC dishing out information regarding specific ruins out in the over-world that may house a hidden item. That brings us on to another issue with Zenith; there's no map. Traversing areas and the world map becomes a bit of a chore with only a vivid 'go south-west' on the quest log as any kind of indication of where you should go, leading to scenarios where you actually go the way the game tells you and end up hitting the shore line or a lake that you can't cross, leading you to believe that you've missed a certain building or landmark. We got lost several times, as you can imagine.

We feel that we should also mention that during combat, as well as when traversing the over-world, we suffered from quite severe frame-rate inconsistencies, and unfortunately this occurred quite frequently. Frame-rate drops are not the only technical issue in Zenith either, as you have characters' feet disappearing into the floor in-game as well as during cut-scenes, getting stuck in the environment, and other similar graphical hiccups. The list gets longer and eventually combines to make an experience that ends up being a bit frustrating.

We really would like to say that Zenith is at the very least a game of two halves, as it doesn't have the worst story in the world, Argus isn't as unlikable as we thought he would be, and to tell you the truth we did chuckle a few times. We can't, however, wholeheartedly recommend it. The technical problems marred the experience, and along with the stripped down mechanics and useless, uninspired AI, it all adds up to ensure a bland and unpolished experience.