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Product summary
Zanzarah attempts to be a PC game that appeals to traditional interests of both male and female players, and it's moderately successful in doing so.
Specifications: ESRB: Teen; Genre: Adventure; Elements: Fantasy Action Adventure; See full specs
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 01/08/2003
- Released on: 12/18/2002
German developer Funatics' game Zanzarah is very similar to Nintendo's popular monster-trading game Pokémon. In that game, and in this one, you collect small creatures and then train them to do battle with other small creatures, but in Zanzarah, you collect fairies instead of monsters, and you fight battles that resemble those in a first-person shooter. However, Zanzarah looks and sounds great, and though the game's somewhat effeminate art direction may seem a bit unusual, it seems somewhat appropriate in contrast to the intensity of the game's battle mode and its traditional role-playing elements. Zanzarah attempts to be a PC game that appeals to traditional interests of both male and female players, and it's moderately successful in doing so.
Zanzarah is easy to summarize: It's Pokémon, except with fairies and first-person shooter battles.
The game puts you in the role of Amy, an 18-year-old London native at home alone. One strange noise and one mysterious unopened box later, she's in the world of Zanzarah, a fantasy land of lush forests, quaint villages, and squat little goblins, dwarves, and elves. Rafi, the swamp goblin who shanghaied Amy, greets her on arrival and explains that the fairies created Zanzarah long ago to protect all the wee folk from rampaging humans, but now the fairies are acting strangely, and they're attacking anyone who passes by their trees and rocks, and there are some shady-looking elves that just showed up too--so could she help because there's a prophecy that says she will? The story may seem just a little too trite, but at least it more or less dissipates into a lot of meandering quests once the game actually starts. Furthermore, all of Amy's conversations are one-sided: She never speaks and instead only listens to other characters talking at her, and as a result, the development of the plot, such as it is, seems thin.
To complete her quests and save Zanzarah, Amy must start a collection of fairies, which will both protect her and use their powers to clear obstacles in her path. This is the focus of the game, and it's more or less identical to Nintendo's Pokémon, right down to using balls to capture wild fairies. The only striking difference is that in a fight with a wild fairy or a rival fairy master, combat takes place in one of 10 or so different arenas, and you control your active fairy from a first-person perspective. The blasts of magic that you use to bring down opposing fairies are charged up by holding down the left mouse button and can even hurt your fairy if you overcharge. In addition to offensive magic, your fairy has a support spell, which can reduce the amount of damage your fairy receives, make your own attacks do more damage, or even make your spell charge to full power faster. Of course, as your fairies gain levels, they'll be able to use more powerful spells and can eventually use a second pair of spells to change tactics in the middle of a fight.
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