Zorro The Chronicles is based on an animated TV show of the same name. It follows the adventures of Don Diego who takes on the masked persona of Zorro. And who also likes carving the letter Z into anything that presents itself to be a canvas at any given time.
Now I will admit I have never seen the animated show, but I have however seen the film starring Antonio Banderas as the titular character. So the game had me intrigued. It looks interesting enough to warrant a play-through and to grace my Nintendo switch while out on journeys.
So let’s take a look shall we?
Right off the bat Zorro The Chronicles has one glaring issue that sets it apart from other games released in recent years, and that is the lack of any coherent story. I can tell you now that I have played through the game and I can’t for the life of me tell you what the story is apart from causing chaos for a certain Spanish General with increasing anger issues. Yes, it’s fun, nonetheless, but the lack of any story makes you think ‘what is the main point here and ‘why am I raising chaos on this general’. My only guess is to get the general and his troops to withdraw and for peace to be restored. Quote me if I’m wrong as I would really like to know what the actual story is. I’ve tried to make sense of what there actually is and that is my best guess.
Moving onto gameplay.
Zorro The Chronicles Steam description states the game is ‘an exciting and humorous game featuring combat and exploration gameplay inspired by the best action games in its class.’
Now let’s break that down. Firstly that statement is correct on its first account, the game is humorous. From its character animations to its take-down moves., the game injects some slapstick-style humour that would make any child laugh. Note, any child, not adult, any child! The humour feels so overdone in places that it gets tiring after the first five minutes. This leads me to the second point, the claim that it is ‘Inspired by the best action games in its genre’. This again is true. However, it is so painfully obvious that the games it was ‘inspired’ by are Assassin’s Creed, the Batman Arkham series and the Shadow of Mordor games. However Zorro doesn’t feel like it’s inspired by those games, it feels like it’s a straight-up clone and a poor one at that. Whereas the aforementioned game’s combat felt fluid and rewarding, Zorro’s just feels like an unrewarding button mash-a-thon with no fulfilment.
You have the option to choose either stealth or combat approach before you start a mission, but you always (and no matter how hard you try) end up failing at stealth and end up straight into combat. It feels like this is what the game is pushing you towards this style of gameplay and that it was always the intended way that it was ‘meant’ to be played. And yes, you can mark out enemies with your telescope similar to how you do in Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Pain, but actually trying to take them out quietly without being seen rarely ever works, no matter how many times I tried.
Lastly, the steam description mentions exploration. This is half true. While the maps are semi large they end up being very linear in approach. There is always a waypoint that you have to go to in order to progress and the only other thing to do apart from endlessly beating up Spanish soldiers is to graffiti wanted posters which leaves these semi-large maps feeling very empty. There is one upside where certain locations give you specific goals to achieve in combat that will earn you more Z points, like knocking 3 guards into a cactus, for example, however, the reward always tends to be small like 50 Z points, and it often feels pointless even trying to complete these tasks for so little the reward.
There is a skill progression tree which is one of the stronger points of the game. The Z points you accumulate during your mass beat ’em’ up spree allows you to purchase and unlock new skills in order to take down even more guards a lot easier. These range from upgraded health and energy to being able to perform multiple special takedowns one after the other. One final note on the gameplay is the ability to choose to play as either the titular Don Diego or his twin sister Ines. Both have a unique ability that adds to how you play. Choosing to play as Don Diego means you have boosted energy, whereas playing as Ines gives you boosted health. Besides that though there is not much difference between them.
Performance-wise, the game ran really well in handheld mode. The graphics looked crisp and the frame rate ran at a nice and smooth pace making for an overall nice and comfortable experience. It was only when moving to play in docked mode that the issues began. Then they just kept on coming.
While playing in handheld mode I had zero issues apart from a slightly longer load time. Yet when playing in docked mode it was like playing the upside downs version of the game. The frame rate was inconsistent causing the animations to become jittery and at times freeze altogether. I would get stuck in an invisible wall when trying to jump off a building making it look like my character was falling while frozen in place. Fights sequences would glitch when performing final moves making the character models freeze only to then rapidly start moving to the next movement moments later.
However, the biggest issue came after closing the game, returning to the switch home screen and restarting it in an attempt to rid the game of bugs. The game uses an auto-save feature to save your progress. I’ve delved into the menus and settings and can’t find a manual save button anywhere. So, it was to my surprise after performing a reboot of my game find all my progress was lost, apparently vanishing into thin air. I had completed 12 out of the 18 missions at this point when the bugs made the game unplayable. After doing a soft restart and losing my progress I was reverted back to mission 1. I don’t know how this happened, I can only presume it was either another bug or a glitch that corrupted and lost my saved game.
Overall Zorro The Chronicles looks good on paper, and it does fulfil most of its promises from its steam description. Even though fun to start off with, it becomes very repetitive and slightly unenjoyable the more you play. The best way I can describe this game is that it feels like it should have been released back on the Sony PSP. It doesn’t feel like it belongs on this generation’s consoles, especially with game-breaking bugs and glitches like the ones I experienced.
Zorro Chronicles gets a 2 out of 10.
Developers: BKOM Studios, Groupe PVP
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, MORE
Publishers: Nacon, BIGBEN INTERACTIVE
Reviewed on the Nintendo Switch
Enjoy the review? want to read more of our reviews? then click right here to be whisked away to the realm of our opinions.
You must be logged in to post a comment.