download zenonia 3

The App Store has been open for
business for going on three years
now, and we’re already on the third
installment of Zenonia, a series of
sprawling, quest-filled action RPGs
styled after 16-bit games like The
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

This time around, the graphics look
better than ever and a few
convenient tweaks help streamline
things, but we still can’t shake the
feeling that we’ve played this game
before.

Not that that’s a terrible thing.
There’s a reason we gave Zenonia
and Zenonia 2 Must Have scores.
These games are gorgeous, highly
polished, and full of enough content
that they’ll keep you busy for many,
many hours. The problem with the
third installment is that in 2011,
with competition like Aralon and
Chaos Rings, the gameplay is
starting to feel a little stale.

The storyline in Zenonia 3 centers on
a young man named Chael, the son
of the hero of the original Zenonia.

One day while he’s horsing around
outside, Chael and his fairy friend
Runa get sucked into a magical
portal that transports them into the
middle of a war between the forces
of heaven and hell. Unfortunately,
the plot– told through heavy-handed
and spottily translated dialogue–
fails to engage. For most players it
will quickly get to the point that,
during the many talky sections,
you’ll find yourself anxious to get
back to the action.

Two seconds later, the purple bear
barfed.
And the action has changed very
little from the previous games. When
fighting enemies, you’re mostly just
tapping the attack button over and
over again. This goes double,
because the enemies often respawn
even before you’ve moved to the
next screen. To mix things up the
game has a scattering of puzzles,
but they also lack creativity– most of
them just require you to push bricks
onto switches in order to open
previously inaccessible parts.
But this is a serious RPG as well, so
you’ll level up and upgrade your
character using a fairly dense skill
tree. The special moves you learn
are powerful and cool-looking, but
they take longer to execute than
regular attacks, so we found
ourselves saving them for tougher
enemies.

The customization doesn’t stop with
the skill tree. At the start of the
game, you can choose to play as one
of four character types: a quick
melee one; a slower, more powerful
melee one, a missile-based one, and
a magical one. Additionally, the
game is packed with equipment and
‘titles’� you can use to beef up your
hero. You can even assign attribute-
enhancing items to your fairy friend.
Suffice it to say that you can spend
a lot of time expanding your
inventory and customizing your
character if that’s what toots your
horn.
Ghost in the graveyard.
When you’re not fiddling in menus,
you’ll be running around the world
completing quests for townspeople.

The game is packed with quests,
some of which are required for the
main storyline and others that are
wholly optional side quests.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of
these quests– even the required
ones– are fetch quests that require
you to kill X number of enemies or
collect X number of items. Worse,
many quests require you to
backtrack through places you’ve
already been. The one saving grace
here is that at one point you’re
asked to seek out eight bundles of
ghost mucus, which was a videogame
first for us.

Beyond the main storyline, you’ll
find several extra gameplay modes in
Zenonia 3, from player-versus-player
arena battles to online co-op room-
clearing events. These will keep you
entertained for a few minutes, but
aren’t likely to keep you coming
back.

Although we’ve been hard on the
game, there’s certainly a lot to like
about it. The graphics are colorful
and gorgeous, and the deep menu
system is fairly easy to navigate.
They’ve even done away with the
weight and hunger systems, so you
no longer have to worry about how
much stuff you’re carrying or making
sure you eat well-balanced meals
every so often. Also, with all the
content they’ve packed in, you can
play this game for a long, long time
before you run out of things to do.
Don’t get us wrong: Zeononia 3 is a
very ambitious and polished game.
It’s just that we’ve seen this game
twice before, and many of the major
downsides still haven’t been fixed
(the fetch quests, the translation,
the repetitiveness). If Gamevil was
capable of making Zenonia two years
ago, they’re capable of making a
better game today– a game with
more of a focus on story, puzzle
variety, and combat mechanics.
That’s the game we want to see.
However, if you loved the other two
Zenonias, or you haven’t played one
yet, Zenonia 3 is a solid buy.

download here