Review: EA’s Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is a challenging, poignant Metroidvania

We are in the midst of a Metroidvania renaissance. Metroid: Dread, Ori, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, and more have kept fans of the genre fully satiated in recent years. 2024 has already seen the launch of one of the genre’s best in Price of Persia: The Lost Crown.

The DNA of all of these games and more can be found in Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. This is the debut project from Surgent Studios, helmed by actor Abubakar Salim. Salim, a veteran of stage and screen, is a lifelong fan of games and with ZAU turns his hand to development.

An incredibly personal project, Tales of Kenzera: ZAU reflects on grief, inspired by the loss of Abubakar’s father, Ali. Ali was a software engineer and introduced Abubakar to gaming. Ali passed away in 2013, and it’s this grief that’s at the core of Tales of Kenzera: ZAU’s narrative.

The game tells the story of Zau, a young man who is attempting to revive his father, a task he and the player secretly knows is fruitless. Zau has to capture the souls of a series of titanic monsters to submit them as an offering to the God of the Dead.

Tales of Kenzera: ZAU’s story is largely told through dialogue married to comic-book-style renditions of the game’s characters. These comic book characters are the game’s strongest visuals, and we’d love to have seen fully animated cutscenes in this art style.

The game’s vocal performances are strong, and the characters never outstay their welcome, even if they’re largely unremarkable. Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is full of interesting lore about the game’s wider world, but this information is often given to the player as a reward for finding a secret in the world.

We’d have preferred some of this information to be slightly less obscured, but having lore as a reward rather than a new skill or skill point is an interesting change.

Tales of Kenzera is full of rock-solid platforming challenges. Striking a balance between tough and controller-breakingly annoying, Kenzera’s platforming evokes Guacamelee, Super Meat Boy, and the