UPDATE: Zenonia 2 from Gamevil is out now on the AppStore for $4.99…
Originally posted March 12th: We had the privilege of sitting down the Kyu Lee, the president of Gamevil USA, to get a feel for the upcoming sequel to the excellent RPG, Zenonia.
Let me first say that Gamevil did not change anything drastically as far as the visuals and sound go in Zenonia 2, and I really like this. The original game was the perfect mix of the Link to the Past visual style from the SNES days, and a deep leveling and equipment managing system on par with modern RPG games. There were some complaints that it was a bit too hardcore for newcomers to the genre, and Gamevil has addressed this… kinda.
According to Kyu, there won’t be as much grinding necessary in Zenonia 2. It’s become an American cliche that foreign RPGs tend to focus a lot on grinding out your character to level him up, and Zenonia was no exception. You will be able to choose from 4 different characters this time around, each with their own backstory and branching storyline. This will address the complaint of the lack of replay value to the original game. You will also be able to fully customize the appearance of your character, and different weapons and armor will appear on them as well. While the menu interface has been streamlined, there’s still the wonderful equipment and leveling management you should expect from any RPG, so if you’re not a fan of that, this game probably isn’t for you.
One of the most exciting aspects of Zenonia 2 is the brand new PvP (player vs player) mode, which will feature asynchronous multiplayer against human characters. Essentially, another player’s character will have it’s stats, spells, equipment, and other vital info uploaded to the server. You can then challenge that character, and play them in a live battle. So much like the Aurora Feint, you’re not actually playing the person live, but rather playing a representation of their character live. According to Gamevil, millions of battles have already taken place in Korea, where the game has been out for a couple months. I think this will be a sweet feature to expand the replayability of the game. When I asked how this would effect the leveling of the character, the question was kind of dodged, with Kyu instead stating that he expects most people will beat the game before entering into this mode.
A couple final notes here. All the buttons in the GUI can be arranged however you like, which will be nice when arranging spells for convenience. This also will come in handy for those who want to play this game on the iPad when it launches. There are 3 difficulties in the game, and each one will feature unique item pickups. It definitely shows the Gamevil is putting a lot of work into reasons to play Zenonia 2 more than once, and I for one will be waiting for it’s release. The game looked, sounded, and played just as well as the first, and we already got a sample of the tongue-in-cheek humor of the original. Gamevil has not announced a release date yet, but I would expect to see this title out in the next month or two.
Check out the character intro video below for a tiny bit of gameplay – complete with cheesy voice over!
