Zoria: Age of Shattering Review

Developer Tiny Trinket Games hasjust released its new CRPG, Zoria: Age of Shattering. Having played many CRPGs and, more recently, the phenomenal games released in this genre over the past few years, I was looking forward to dipping into another similar title. Unfortunately, many may have preconceptions similar to mine when initially looking at picking up Zoria: Age of Shattering. This may be setting the expectations for the game at an unfair level. Let’s look at what works, what’s lacking, and what is fun.     

Zoria: Age of Shattering is set in a typical fantasy world. The Izirians are invading and have used necromancy to overwhelm the Elion armies in all encounters. The main character is a former Commander who has lost the last major tower used to defend the kingdom. No one knows how the Izirians are moving their troops and catapults into position so quickly, but it has also contributed to their success on the battlefield. 

It's a standard fantasy storyline, and while I was tossed into a siege right after character creation, which created some initial excitement, the initial storytelling is limited. The opening story sequence was voice-acted decently and had hand-drawn panels. But once in-game, only snippets of text dialogue are voiced, and the quality of voice acting went down a couple of notches, with only a few voice actors being the exception. Most of the lines delivered sound almost monotone. 

World lore is primarily imparted through books found while exploring. While each lore book may have an image included, they are mostly text that provides some interesting world-building. I found that stopping to read each book broke up the flow of exploring, and I could see others not taking the time to read through that much information unless you are specifically a fan of older CRPGs that typically used a lot of text for exposition. Also, before the end of Chapter One, elements of magical technology are introduced. While this element does add something more to the