Zenith succeeds as a social platform and hangout, but falls short on a lot of the aspects that make a good game.
As a game, I didn’t really love Zenith: The Last City. I’ve played plenty of single player VR games with better story, better combat, better exploration, you name it. As a result of this, I slogged through my first couple of hours with the game, just trying to grind through the story missions. It wasn’t until later, when my boss wanted to give the game a try, that I discovered the true appeal of Zenith. In my playthrough, I made a beeline for the story quests and combat, just looking for action. My boss, however, immediately became fascinated with the groups of people gathered around quest locations and hangout spots. Within minutes of trying out the game, he’d already been invited to a party to clear out a dungeon.
Zenith, being an MMO, offers a new and unique multiplayer experience that has not yet been fully realized in VR. One advantage VR has over flat screen gaming is that, by default, everyone has the ability to use voice chat. Zenith features constant open mic chatting and spatial audio, which lends itself to an environment where conversation and making friends are strongly encouraged. This approach makes Zenith one of the best games for multiplayer in VR, and one of the more unique social experiences I’ve seen in gaming.
Overview
Zenith is a new MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game designed from the ground up for VR. It features an anime and JRPG-inspired art style, and has a focus on action RPG combat, crafting/cooking, and fluid movement, all designed specifically for VR.
One interesting thing to note is that Zenith seems to be overwhelmingly played on the Oculus Quest 2. Steam charts reveal that the average daily user count is around 600, but there are clearly far more players than that online at any given time. Even the game itself seems to favor the Oculus, as the support for Vive controllers are pretty bad.
Story
The story seems to be fairly generic MMO fare. Any story content is told entirely through text boxes. From what I’ve seen, there aren’t any cutscenes at all. I only cleared the first three-ish areas, but given the lack of an intro cutscene, I doubt there are any at all. The story is really only there to guide progression, and the main campaign will take anywhere from 20-40 hours, according to players who have finished it.
Gameplay
The core gameplay loop of Zenith is the exact same as a majority of MMOs. Scout out an NPC for a quest, do the quest (usually a fetch quest or kill X number of monsters) then report back. It’s a pretty tired gameplay loop by this point, and Zenith doesn’t do much to really elevate this to anything special. To be honest, it’s extremely boring. Main quests also don’t give enough XP to be at the level you need to be for the next main quest, so wandering around and finding random world events is pretty much necessary to progress. If you have a party of friends or even strangers, this would likely be more fun, but all the grinding is a mind-numbingly boring experience while playing solo.
There are two classes to choose from currently, and each class has three roles (tank, DPS, and support) which have unique skill trees and abilities. The two existing classes are Blademaster and Essence Mage, which are melee and ranged respectively. A third class, the Cyber Ninja, has been revealed on the developer roadmap. No release date has been revealed yet, but it seems like it will be a stealth and mobility-based class, and probably a mix of ranged and melee.
The quality of the combat isn’t great. I picked a Blademaster as my first character and was absolutely miserable. The melee combat is incredibly lackluster, and the mechanics behind melee combat are set up such that playing in a way that nets optimal damage output is incredibly boring. Do a combo, block, do a combo, block, etc. The only variation is in the occasional skill usage, and slicing horizontally or vertically based on AoE or single target damage. Blocking also felt fairly inconsistent, which is likely due to oddly designed hitboxes on enemy attacks.
The Essence Mage, on the other hand, is way more fun. You get two spellcasting gauntlets which are basically just guns, which have rapid fire or charge shot options. While your guns are coming off cooldown, you can also use gestures to cast spells like a fireball or lightning strike. It’s insane how much more fun and well designed the Essence Mage is compared to the Blademaster. If you decide to pick up Zenith before the Cyber Ninja comes out, pick the Essence Mage, trust me.
The mobility options in the game are actually pretty neat. Aside from walking and running, you can climb pretty much anything with enough of a vertical angle. The controls are very intuitive, and the act of climbing is fun to do. So far it doesn’t really seem that useful overall, outside of climbing a few ladders here and there. Flying, on the other hand, is both cool and useful. There are zip lines which take you up into the air, from which you can fly around areas. Unfortunately, flight is stamina based, but upward columns of wind will restore your stamina. It feels cool to fly, and it’s a great way to get you around areas fast and without being forced into unnecessary combat encounters.
Outside of the main gameplay and exploration, one thing worth mentioning is the cooking mini-game. It’s a neat way to go about a crafting system that isn’t just “collect these materials and then click the combine button.” Instead, the game actually brings up a stovetop and makes you cook the ingredients and throw them into a cauldron. It’s interactive and a lot more interesting than many other MMO crafting systems. That said, cooking is plagued by multiple bugs that make it much harder than it needs to be.
Presentation and Execution
The presentation is alright. It’s competent, but not terribly unique or interesting. Phantasy Star Online came out 20 years ago, and has a similar, better aesthetic. Everything looks just okay, and nothing looks cool enough to really be impressive. That’s fine for generic enemies, but all of the bosses I encountered were just bigger, purple versions of standard enemies, which is a pretty big drawback. I’m personally a huge fan of cool, interesting bosses and Zenith just does not seem to have those. Equally disappointing is the lack of interesting armor and weapons for level capped players. All of the level 40 players I saw looked virtually indistinguishable from level 10s, which is really unfortunate considering a lot of the power fantasy of MMOs comes from looking like a beast.
Execution-wise, Zenith has some issues. As stated before, there are plenty of bugs that detract from the experience. The cooking bugs, for instance, included text overlapping on recipes, making them unreadable, and the frying pan getting stuck inside the stove. I burned one of my recipes because I couldn’t get the pan to stop clipping through the stovetop.
Combat also feels very off, either due to bugs or network instability. Blocking, as stated before, is very inconsistent. Enemies will also teleport around, sometimes ending up behind you mid-attack, making the attack unblockable. Dealing damage also doesn’t register sometimes. I’ll be wailing on an enemy as it is stunned, and the health bar won’t move at all. Sometimes it even looks like the enemies are healing as they’re getting hit. One would assume this is a symptom of network instability, but the fact that other players move and talk without any hint of lag or disruptions makes it really hard to tell if it’s a bug or a network issue.
Final Thoughts
Zenith has a lot of work that needs to be done before it’s truly a great MMO. Quests, bosses, and loot could use some work to make them interesting and unique. The combat needs some love too, particularly with the Blademaster class. On top of that, the game has plenty of bugs that need to get sorted out.
As it stands right now, Zenith is a very cool social experience. Unlike other VR multiplayer games, you don’t have to wait around to join a match or lobby. Just hop into a server and you can immediately chat with other players, party up, and adventure out into dungeons. If you prefer to party up outside the game, the Zenith community discord has a whopping 124,000 members.
Unfortunately, the social aspect is about where the fun stops. Climbing and flying around are cool, but the quests are repetitive and boring, and combat is extremely hit or miss. Social-oriented players will probably have a great time with Zenith. Solo players who prefer to focus on the combat and questing… not so much.
Comments