Zenith

Zenith takes in a world which mixes fantasy with sci-fi and is quite unique. After all, where else can you see Orcish mafia or huge floating mage's laboratory, where the mages tests a laser cannon? Or what about tenor singing spiders? The story is both good and funny(I will avoid spoilers). In addition to many references to various books, games and films, the game contains humour which reminds me of comedies with Leslie Nielsen. Though the idea at the end of Zenith's story is more serious(and truthful, if you ask me). Zenith’s soundtrack varies widely. Apart from fantasy music, you will hear some steampunk, metal and even a bit of western music as well. The music was made by Murray Atkinson, the guitarist of the Canadian band The Odds, There is no voice-over in Zenith. Instead, you will have to read all the dialogues yourself if you want to know what’s happening. The text boxes reminds of old Pokemon games, which I find nice, to be honest. Apart from the overworld map, the camera can not be rotated. In most cases, that is okay, since the camera repositions itself automatically whenever needed. However, there were certain situations where I think the camera could position itself better. Sometimes, I had problems to enter narrower places like doors or bridges. Zenith provides almost no options for graphics. The ones that it does provide come from the default Unity launcher, It also provides options to rebind keys. Unfortunately, Zenith doesn’t have any sound settings. The game crashed only once in my case, after saving 6 times in a row. Speaking of saving, you can only do that at certain places, just like in Titan Quest or Lichdom: Battlemage. Personally, I am not very fond of this solution. Combat can be imprecise at times, mainly when casting spells at a distance. Interactive object are highlighted only when you get close to them. Zenith could use some more polish, but for a debut, it is not a bad game. Not bad at all.

I've had it in Steam years ago, it was already abandoned in 2016 (that was the last time the developer answered a question in the forums). Just some bugs I encountered there: - When there are multiple answer possibilities, the active hover area of the mouse is not over the text but higher, above the box for that text, have to find it all the time by moving around the mouse. Also this active area is very small. (This problem in fullscreen only.) - With the fixed camera setting, sometimes it's hard to see where you and other stuff are (because of the 3d objects, buildings obscuring it). - Sometime some purple oversized text is on the screen, not wanting to disappear. - In game save menu, you can move around with cursor (A-D actually) but not with mouse (mouse click activates the menu you are on with the keyboard cursor, not where your mouse cursor is...) - After dying and reloading, it sometimes reloads not the last, but an earlier save. - When saving to a slot (eg. Slot III) it actually saves to the one before it (eg II). - No options menu. No re-mapping keys. No video, audio settings. - No skipping intro. - No hotkey for inventory.

I had tagged it as 'junk', but did not remmeber why, so I went to give it another chance. Very quickly found why: there are NO USER Settings: no sound settings, no control settings. Add to this a very annoying music and a terrible set of controls for me, as well as having to GUESS the existing controls, and I removed it again, as well as moved it to hidden games so that I will not waste time wit it again.

I bought this game on a whim, thought it looked interesting, and it really sucked me in. It's the first game in a while that made me laugh out loud at the way they poke fun at other games across multiple genres. I also found the story to be really engaging and interesting, I know it's nothing super in depth, but it was enjoyable and fit in was integrated well with the humor. I did not encounter the bugs or problems other people had, except one instance of it crashing when I closed the game, I'm running Windows 7 x64. I also had no stuttering. It's a shame that the top rated review for this game is about one person's bugs, which could be caused by a lot of different factors. As for the complaint about no camera angle adjustment, it's accurate, but I don't think the game needs it or was built around it. The camera auto-adjusts based on your location and I found that to work well. The gameplay is a little rough around the edges, you can tell it was meant around a controller. I played with mouse and keyboard, which worked ok, but is not ideal. In particular, combat can be challenging when you are trying to target an enemy, you'll end up swiping around in mid air until you get re-oriented. The other gripe I have is the save system, it uses well designed save crystals, which can be a nuisance, but there were only 2 times in the game that they were a problem. There are enough of them and they are in the right places, although I would have preferred to just save from the menu. The skill tree is fairly simple, but again it fits in with the game well. I thought the simplicity in the character progression was enough to keep things interesting, but not overcomplicate the game. The best part of the game is the story. The characters are funny, well written, and they all fit their roles well. They poke fun at RPG tropes, each other, and the game world with both obvious and subtle jabs. The underlying story I found very interesting and it was worth the few thorns in gameplay

The game requires further and deeper development. Controls are bad, camera works atrocious, story almost boiled down. Trade system... strange: first time I see how sellers went out of stock on health potions and there is no other way to get bigger health potions than thoroughly scavenge through map. Strange choice of locations to place save points.