REVIEW | Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore

“Well excuuuuse me Princess”

Arzette is a game that I didn’t realise I wanted until I actually played it, it hit all the right notes in regards to my nostalgia ridden brain. It’s quirky, insane, awful, fun and so much more. When I first began to play I was greeted with the developers name and let out an audible groan as I realised it was referencing the Philips CD-i and when the first cutscene began I immediately thought “Well excuuuuuse me Princess” as I watched what could be the best parody of an awful version of a franchise ever. This game gleefully pokes fun at The Legend of Zelda CD-i games (I didn’t realise there was three of them) and sets the tone of what is to come brilliantly. When it came to playing the game itself it comes across as a standard 2D Platformer yes but the anticipation of what those amazing cutscenes are going to bring keeps you playing and playing some more. When it comes to the actual gameplay I found myself trying to be careful, making sure I went close to edges and avoided monsters hits as much as possible, but you really don’t have to be so wary in this game, eventually I started taking more risks, jumping in and just slashing my way through the levels with wild abandon, it was awesome, I had forgotten just how carefree old style games could be. After I write this review I’m going back to play some more Arzette in a harder difficulty mode and I’m just going to let myself be that teen who adored platformers again.

Things I liked!

• Graphics | This game has it all in terms of graphical delights, awesome sprites and animations for the main platforming sections of the game and for the cutscenes it has a ridiculously badly drawn (on purpose) cartoony animation happening, it’s wonderful just how awful it is, lip sync is out, the characters look nothing like the sprites and there is so many obvious homages to the CD-i Zelda games it borders on the dangerous side of parodying. I say all this like it could be a bad thing but it’s absolutely delightful. I want to see more from this company. I want more old school style graphics, I actually think they could do an extremely compelling point and click adventure game if the mood struck them. So yeah Graphics are amazing.

• Voice Acting and sound | The voice acting in this game is deliberatley bad, that’s not as easy to do as most people would think, it’s difficult to sound bad while maintaining a professional sounding reading of a script. The voice actors did an amazing job on this game and I hope they got paid a hell of a lot of money for it becuase it must have taken them ages to get it right. The music and sound effects in this game are also fantastic, everything screams early nineties but stays just the right side of awful and ridiculous to keep it from just being bad and hitting that area of so bad it’s good. I really enjoyed the sound design in this game and keeping it on the cusp between fantastic and awful could not have been a simple task.

Neither good nor bad

• Gameplay | ok so the platform elements might not be for everyone and I can see how some folk might get frustrated by the way the game has very little in the way of checkpoints, but that is just part of the charm of the game, it’s not there to hold your hand like a lot of more modern games do, you have to work hard to make progress, you will lose a few times before you make the progress you want to, but that is just how games were back in the day. My only complaint is there isn’t a lives system in place and you can just keep going and going till you get it right. but that’s really my only complaint as the gameplay is challenging but not too challenging once you get the hang of it.

• Story | The story isn’t amazing but it isn’t bad either, it’s pretty much what you would expect when you go into the game and see that first cutscene. you want a Shakespearean tale of wo and tragedy? go play Elden Ring or God of War, but if you just want 90’s Saturday morning cartoon trashy nonsense then this could be the game for you. and do you know what? I grew up on that stuff so I love it here. The awful script, the bizarre characters and just well… everything, none of it should work but it just does. There’s even an explanation as to why you can’t hurt anyone other than the bad guys with your weapons, but I’ll leave that bit of info for when you play the game for yourself. Oh and the sheer amount of puns when fighting bosses is hilarious.

Things I disliked!

• repetition | Sometimes you can see a cutscene too many times, I know that the game is trying to stay with the spirit of the time where cutscenes and dialogue were limited due to space constraints, but that is something I think they could have changed for the better, giving characters more lines in case of any accidental button presses, but no you have to sit through whole sections of dialogue again if you click to try and find out more info. That is honestly my only real issue with the game for the moment though.