While doing our rounds at last year’s E3, we came across ChangYou and their interesting concepts for free-to-play MMOs. It wasn’t until recently that I actually got to play their third North American release, Zentia. Zentia is basically a more casual World of Warcraft. You can see the similarities in the mini-map, hotkey placement, experience bar, quest format, general look of the interface and combat. Even when your equipment’s durability starts getting low you will see an armor suit indicating what needs repaired. This means that if you have played WoW, you will have no problem starting up a character in Zentia and roaming off on your first round of quests.
There isn’t a character customization process per se, but you can choose from 24 pre-made characters and pick one of the 8 available classes in 4 class genres. While the class names may be unique, their descriptions will specify if you’re choosing a tank, healer or wizard type of character.
This cartoony Asian-inspired world has plenty of things to marvel at. As you leave the initial “tutorial” island, you are transported by air to Mulberry village on a crane. The architecture is inspired by Chinese buildings, villagers wear what seem like traditional outfits, and it’s mostly the mythology that stands out in terms of the monsters and demons that inhabit the land.
The game focuses on questing and you can see that by the massive amounts of exclamation marks you see. Yellow ones mean a one-time only quest, while green ones mean repeatable quests (usually simple gathering tasks). The controls are very simple and you can slightly customize them to your liking, and you can also choose between a static or free-roaming camera. Further customization can be done on your character by showing the usual equipment or an alternative costume.
Unlike other MMOs, Zentia introduces you to mounts and pets very early. I picked a cat (obviously), named it Timbit (after my cat) and got stuck in a loop repeating “So cuuuuute!!!” as I looked at the funny smiley face on this little on-screen feline while it followed me everywhere. The pet doesn’t limit itself to be cool or adorable though, it actually has benefits. Your cat, dog or whatever else you manage to capture and tame (yes, you can do that as one of your life skills) will also level up and grant you stats. Of course, you must feed it and keep it happy for full benefits… And then there’s the auto-path feature, which makes the game nearly play itself.
Say you accept a new quest. Next to the main NPC text window, another window opens up with an image and basically a summary of your task, with some underlined names, quest giver and quest target. Clicking the underlined names opens up an arrow pathway to whatever you clicked on. Use your pet’s auto-path feature and you will be automatically running to your quest destination.
“But won’t things attack me on the way there?” That’s what I thought too. Oddly enough, I didn’t have problems, and actually monster aggro works very differently in this game. At first, I was always reluctant to approach a group of monsters thinking along the lines of EverQuest. If you pull a monster who happens to be next to another (or four), they will all come. In Zentia, while you’re still relatively low level, you can walk up right to whatever enemy camp and pick off one at a time. Sometimes another will aggro on you but won’t attack until you have disposed of the first. Very weird! This does change when your character reaches higher levels.
What’s even weirder is that while on a quest that asked me to kill 20 of a certain group of enemies, I found a mysterious character coming to my aid. I still don’t know why or how it happens, but here comes some guy on a giant panda attacking my stuff… First I got mad because I thought this was your typical MMO douchebag trying to steal my quest mobs, then I realized it was an NPC. But it got even weirder when some other little old Chinese NPC floating on a white cloud came over and said something about a Chance encounter/quest. I don’t know what happened. I guess it was a random encounter of some sort, but in between the killing tons of things while the guy on a giant panda went berserk on everything else, I had no clue what was going on. But it was fun.
And then I looted chicken butts. A bunch of chicken butts. Yeah. You heard me! Truth be told, I haven’t laughed this much when looting something since receiving a Farter while playing Dofus!
Chicken butts aside, there is plenty to do in Zentia. You are able to learn life skills: monster taming, wood working, gathering, hunting, mining and so on. Everyone gets to capture and tame monsters, and then the other two skills you pick from those available. Randomly you find Maze Scrolls that instantly transport you to a maze of flowers where you must find the exit to receive a treasure. When you level (not every level though) you get to open a “present” with a few goodies inside. There are also events you can join, daily quests, group instances and PvP combat after level 20.
There is one thing that I must complain about that had me puzzled and annoyed for my first day of playing. Zentia has a property lock feature, which is a fail safe for being hacked I suppose. Basically, this lock prevents your items to be dropped, destroyed or sold. The lock has a timer of 99 minutes at first, and lets you set up a password to unlock it.
Great in theory but the thing is, even if I entered my password, the timer would still keep on ticking and I was unable to do anything. I logged out at one point with a full inventory, and a few hours later when I got back to sell and resume playing I was frustrated because there wasn’t enough in-game information to tell me how to fix this.
After searching the official forums – meaning logging out and resetting the timer again, because for some reason Alt+Tab doesn’t want to work properly – I found out that I had to sit and wait for the timer to reach zero so that I could set the timer for 0 minutes. But technically, shouldn’t the timer stop ticking once I enter my password and unlock my stuff? Damn, that was annoying!
To sum it up: Zentia is interesting and different because of its origins, not so much because of its mechanics. It is definitely too casual and easy, which might be a bonus for those who aren’t familiar with MMOs or who just have a short time to play with no strings attached. Hell, you can even gain experience while not at your desk. If you go AFK in Serene City, you can join the local dancer and earn some little bits of experience while idle. I wondered for the longest time what was this clump of people running around doing funny moves until I managed to click the NPC and joined the group.
It is this same lack of difficulty that might turn off other gamers from further progression early in the game.
As it stands, Zentia isn’t a bad free-to-play game. It’s simple to play, accessible to players of all skill levels, easy on system requirements and has lots to keep you busy with, particularly the monster taming system. The hardcore gamer, however, might want to look elsewhere for a challenge.
Check out more videos of Zentia in our playlist below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1246A4B6B8055C5E