Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore Reviews

As someone who has played the two Zelda Philips cd-i games, on a real Philips cd-i, I can say without exaggeration that Arzette is a true spiritual successor to the Wand of Gamelon and The Faces of Evil. Some of the original zelda voice actors have returned to Arzette, and the game also has a few references to Hotel Mario, the other philips cd-i nintendo game. Looking forward to more Arzette as teased in the credits! Plus you can install a mod to replace all the cutscenes with modded cutscenes that change all the cutscenes into YTP style goofiness

Liked: - Fun art, animation, and voice acting - Satisfying core gameplay - Lots of secrets to uncover - Good sense of character progression Disliked: - Writing occasionally feels a bit too self-aware - Game requires a decent bit of backtracking, especially for side quests

A love letter to the CDi. In the most authentic way possible. I hope we see more from this dev. Best played with a controller.

A truly amazing game. Not so long that it overstays it's welcome but not so short that you feel like you missed out. Controls are great and the cutscenes are brilliant. If you love the Shantae games, crave the PS1 Castlevania titles but don't care for the pomp or just like memes, this is a title worth picking up at full price.

Unreasonably fun game for basically an extended joke about the CD-I games. A+ metroidvania, A+ cutscenes, just an extremely solid experience that lasts exactly as long as it needs to imho.

Cute, fun game. Took about 5 hours to get all items and there's still some challenge run achievements left.

A short metroidvania-light, with a Zelda CDI (Seedy Eye, get it?) look and feel. Despite the janky looking graphics and sound, it's actually well made and had no unintended issues. It took me about 4 hours to 100% the map. + Excellently mashed up backgrounds. + Colourful characters with amazing voice actors and animations (comitting to the style!) + Well done gameplay that matches the old style but is implemented well. + Good powerups, progression and map. + Old-fashioned - Some bosses can be hilariously cheesed. - The 'backward dash' is horrible. Definitely worth it on a discount.

As someone who is a big fan of the Faces of Evil (and to a lesser extent the Wand of Gamelon) this game fails to capture what made those games great and ends up being a generally dull affair. In terms of gameplay, it plays fine. Much like it's inspiration it's simple but adequate-it's clear for all 3 games that the gameplay is not supposed to be the focus of the adventure. It plays very slightly better than the CDI Remakes but it's still keeps it's simplicity intact.. for probably the better. The game's flow however is worse than the CDI inspiration. Compared to FoE's tight pacing, backtracking is more frequent and longer (rather than mostly consisting of simple item farming in Faces of Evil's case) due to the game's drawn out levels. Of course the gameplay wasn't the main appeal for the CDI games but more so the audio-visual experience, which is where Arzette really falls short. The backgrounds which were the highlight of the Faces of Evil and although a little weaker in the Wand of Gamelon were still a large part of what gave the game it's sense of adventure and made it exciting. In Arzette the backgrounds are at best decent for some of the more set piece scenes, but largely bland and at times rather bad looking (the ice and lava mountains come to mind). There is a clear disconnect between the ground you can walk on and the background in most of the levels of the game, and it usually looks awful and alongside the more uniform and basic shape of the level design fails to immerse you in the environmental platforming that was a highlight of the CDI games. The lack of landmarks or differentiation between most screens and the flat atmosphere with little creative use of light unlike in its forebear's backgrounds build further to the monotonous feel of the game. It's made even worse with the jarring coloured blocks that are used to quite clearly bar progress, but done so in an ugly and immersion breaking way that FoE and WoG never resorted to. The sprites themselves are fine and are the highlight of the game's presentation, able to capture the CDI game's style effectively. Unsurprisingly, the game copies it's inspiration's most famous/infamous aspect of the cutscenes. I kind of wish the game had avoided doing them in a look-alike style entirely, as the inspirations have more than enough interesting and quality design in its other aspects to rise above the game's meme value brought on by the cutscenes, but if executed right could still prove effective at world building like they had on the CDI. In execution, the cutscenes are mostly dull, with it's attempts at humour falling flat featuring character interactions more likely to annoy than intrigue the way Wand of Gamelon and in particular Faces of Evil did with it's secluded mountain folk being perhaps the most appropriate environment for the bizarre characters and their interactions that occur. When they aren't attempting to be humorous they are instead try to explain to much information in a wordy and boring way that Animation Magic's cutscenes didn't suffer from, as despite the surface level similarities in art style, the CDI cutscenes are a more dynamic and charming lot aesthetically. The audio experience suffers. Not really the songs-they're fine, though weaker than the Link/Zelda game's soundtracks, but rather how they're used. Alongside the large variety of backdrops to adventure through, the CDI games came with an equally large variety of music to listen through that kept the adventure exciting. While each area's song had a general theme, the actual tunes were different per section and it was a touch that feels sadly missing in Arzette, as in keeping with the homogenised environments typically only one song is present per area and it really flattens the game out leading further to the overall bland experience of the game. The game is not terrible, but it's a dull affair that doesn't come close to the adventure found in the Faces of Evil or Wand of Gamelon and fails to hold interest past the factor of being (sadly) the only Legend of Zelda CDI-Like game available.