Tales of Kenzera: Zau review: emotional Metroidvania is a spiritual journey

Tales of Kenzera: Zau MSRP $20.00 Score Details Pros

Emotional story
Nuanced hero
Fluid movement and combat
Gorgeous 2.5D environments

Cons

Linear to a fault
Backtracking is a pain
Lacking enemy variety

As I sit down to write about Tales of Kenzera: Zau, I’m immediately at a loss for words. My instinct is to open with some wisdom about the act of grieving, the painful process that’s at the center of Surgent Studios’ debut. The longer I rack my brain for the perfect words to describe it, the more I come to accept that there is no universal truth. Grief is a messy emotion that takes each person wandering down different paths. The only thing that’s consistent about it is that it’s a journey.

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Surgent Studios founder Abubakar Salim adapts that feeling inTales of Kenzera, a deeply personal project created after his father’s passing. Here, Salim reimagines his own grieving process as a richly detailed 2D Metroidvania steeped in Bantu culture, one filled with both physical and mental battles. It’s a fantastical adventure, but there’s honesty in that approach. How else can you express the larger than life emotions that grief can bring?

Tales of Kenzera: Zau tells an emotionally impactful story reinforced by creative design decisions that put a physical feeling to abstract emotions. Its struggles lie in its approach to the Metroidvania genre, as its surprisingly straightforward structure sometimes undercuts the winding tale of acceptance. It’s an imperfect debut, but that’s fitting for a game about something as messy as grief.

The Shaman’s path

Tales of Kenzera: Zau opens with an effective frame tale that grounds its grander story. It begins in a futuristic city, where a man named Zuberi tends to his late father’s apartment. There, he finds a book that tells the tale of a Shaman named Zau, whose story parallels Zuberi’s. He’s also lost his father, but is dealing with it in his own way; he sets