Zenozoik looks more alive now thanks to UE3, but I can't help but miss what Source brought to it. Narratively this is the more impressive game, peeling back layers of this world I hadn't foreseen. My initial pull to Zenozoik was thinking about it's place in time, whether it was of Earth or a distant planet. These secrets are (partially) revealed in a way that makes you question the order of this world. Are the Zenos worthy of existing in a world of order? Can they even respond to order? The Corwid are seen to the inhabitants of Halstedom the same way the Zenos on the whole are likely seen by the world outside, if that world even still exists. They are a people without history or the means to live in a world devoid of chaos.

Anyways, mechanically this is more complex, but I feel a bit like I miss the simplicity of the first. The introduction of combos is welcome, but there are 2 combos taught at the end of the tutorial that will carry you right through without error. The ally system is cool, but also sort of needless. You're pretty capable of taking on most enemies in the game on your own, even in groups, and the healing time on allies can mean you won't even be able to summon them when you most need them. You can level up now, but I wish this was a little more fleshed out and that maybe the XP was tied to enemies encountered rather than tokens found in the world but it does reward exploration and I was all too ready to explore.

This all may sound a tad underwhelming, but I can't speak more highly of the atmosphere these games offer. The design and mystery of Zenozoik make me want to see every corner, better understand the lives of these chimera. The score in this one is evocative of a time and place beyond ours, it's so good. A fantastic game and sequel and I'm looking forward to Clash. I'm late to the ACE party, but I'm eager to play more of their games.

A massive improvement over almost everything from the previous game. Almost.

The story from the 1rst game blooms here, and you can freely explore Zenosoic however you want. The world looks gorgeous, and it's enhanced by the art direction of this game. There is a multiplayer mode, but I haven't gotten the chance to play it with a friend.

However, the voice acting here is as weak as it was in the 1rst Zeno Clash, and often the low voices are overwhelmed by the music and sounds even if you lower the music volume. There's also the occasional glitch here and there, which can be a little annoying.

This game crumbles quite considerably under it's own ambition, failing to surpass the original in everything but concept.
People complained about the length, so it's now an open world which seems like a great fit for such a unique setting. Sadly a small indie team can only go so far with this so it's largely empty and the graphics took a hit since it's harder for them to apply their art-style to the source engine (even if it looked better), so now they've had to re-do it in Unreal.
The gameplay was too easy to abuse before, so now you can barely move while pulling off pretty much every attack. This is due to a new emphasis on combos which never feels truly fluid to pull off thanks to extremely precise window for chaining attacks together. This ironically makes the simpler combo system from ZC1 easier to go back to (helped as well by that game's considerably shorter length stopping it from getting too tiresome). They also seemed too confident in this new system so enemies have extremely inflated health pools and they cannot stop throwing the fuckers at you en masse. Maybe the new co-op mode makes this easier? Who knows if the servers are even still up?
There is plenty to love though, despite the graphical downgrade I still appreciate the chance to walk around this unique world. I LOVED the conversations you had with the weird moth dude. The Golem weapons were unique even if they were quite tricky to use (but essentially became the meta unless you somehow managed to wrangle the combo system). Despite the overabundance of static canned-animation cutscenes, the story has some interesting characters, especially right at the end.
This is a tough game to dislike because you can tell this tiny dev team was really pushing to make all of their mad ideas work - the open world which took so many resources from everything else was something they've been planning since 2002. I have nothing but respect that they managed to pull it off by themselves and it's nothing short of an achievement. They committed to their vision no matter what and I will always set aside some time for their games. I just think they spread themselves way too thin here and the end result is a game I just cannot see myself replaying, unlike the more tight, varied, and compact little gem that the first game was.

It's Zeno Clash, but it's less like a waking fever dream and more like a real, functional video game this time!

It's still really weird!

And the lunging double fist punch looks really dumb!

I really like this game!!

while the first game was a fun source game that looked more like a half life mod, this one is a high production value, the music, the animations, the cutscenes, it finishes the story of ghat while also giving a lot of lore about the world they inhabit.
i love it, i don't know if it was intentional but in this game many more enemies surround you, so you gotta scrap by and fight less, i was hitting many with the chain, trying to get them to hit themselves, it felt more like surviving than kung-fu ing like the first game, however it did felt a bit more padded out

zeno clash II is a significant advancement from the first game is many ways. the world is larger and less linear, there is more enemy variety, the combat is more interesting and the story (despite having pretty awful voice acting) actually has hooks and feels less meandering.

sadly that isn't enough. the combat is very lacking in dynamism, and its rote and samey nature offsets the weird and alien vibe that they're going for. the design of the world and its inhabitants is far better than anything in the first game, but you can only fight the same enemy ai so many times before it gets boring. a pretty objective improvement over zeno clash, but not by enough

The following is a transcript of a video review, which can be viewed here:
https://youtu.be/WgS7hmxQv9s

Originality is an unfortunately toxic means of measuring a piece of media. When something deeply unique shows up, it tends to be praised for doing something nobody else has ever done before, and then the creators are financially rewarded for coming up with such a cool new idea. That’s great if it’s the only thing the creators will ever have to make, but in our current economic system, most creators can’t just make one thing and live off of it for the rest of their lives. So a sequel is bound to release, and since that sequel will enter a world in which the original exists, the sequel’s uniqueness is already lost. What was once a single, novel idea is now duplicated, weakening the draw of both pieces simultaneously, but also still hoping to recapture the audience that enjoyed the original piece for its innovation. Zeno Clash 2 is everything the first Zeno Clash was and more. The game is longer, there are more interesting places to explore, there are new characters to interact with, and there are a bunch of new enemies to battle while utilising the game’s new combat system. As someone who greatly enjoyed that first game, I can confidently say that the sequel renders it redundant in every way, but it also poisons it. There’s now another game that lets the player fist-fight with wildmen in the woods. Another game where the intricacies of an alien society aren’t too deeply revealed, but that society’s rules are easily intuitive, even to an outside observer. These aspects of the first game are still good in the second, and the sequel greatly benefits from their inclusion, but I can’t shake the feeling that this return to Zenozoik is all about saying things that were better left unsaid.

I played the first Zeno Clash game a while ago and then made the video the weekend following, but I hadn’t played it since then so I went back and played the whole game again in order to cement my thoughts. The campaign is only 3 hours long which isn’t a big ask, unlike other things I’ve done for recent videos. I found the game to be just as compelling as it was when I first played it, and I definitely encourage anyone to play it if they haven’t, and especially so if they ever intend to play the second game. Everything about the first game is iterated on or directly continued in the second, so in order to discuss Zeno Clash 2 at all I’m going to have to talk about the first game. Zeno Clash is a first-person beat-em-up style game, sort of like Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. The player moves from level to level, getting into fist-fights with all manner of wacky creatures and quirky humanoid opponents. Single punches are thrown with the left mouse button, repeated clicks cause Ghat to swing out a combination of punches, and holding down left mouse engages a charging mechanic that results in slower, but more forceful attacks. Pressing space allows the player to block incoming attacks, and pressing A or D while blocking will cause Ghat to dodge to the side for a counter opportunity. There are a few projectile weapons like guns, crossbows, and a grenade too, which keeps the whole experience varied. As for the narrative, the game opens with a mystery. Ghat has just killed his own Father-Mother and nobody seems to know why. He refuses to tell Deadra, his partner, and the two resolve to run as far away from Haldestom as possible in order to escape from any retaliation Ghat might expect from his siblings. Their adventure leads the pair north, beyond the Rath-Bird fields, the Corwid Woods, and even beyond the desert from which nobody has ever returned. What lies in the north is a massive stone fortress, guarded by animated statues, and surrounded by a poisonous gas. Ghat manages to break into the fortress and awaken the Golem, a being who seems to know everything while also having incredible physical power. Golem convinces Ghat to reveal the reason he attacked Father-Mother to Deadra, and the trio make their way back to Haldestom to try and have Ghat atone for his crime. I managed to avoid spilling the big secret event of the story in Zeno Clash 1 in my video about that game, but I cannot avoid it now. In order to continue I have to reveal the secret. Seriously, I’m going to say the secret right now. The reason Ghat had to attack Father-Mother was that Father-Mother is not the biological parent of any of their children. Ghat and all of his siblings had been kidnapped by Father-Mother in order to form their family. Ghat never intended to reveal this secret, and even after returning to Haldestorm to accept whatever punishment his family decided he deserved, he still refused to reveal it. It turns out that Father-Mother wasn’t killed by the bomb, much to everyone’s relief, but Father-Mother still chooses to beat Ghat for his actions, at which point Golem reveals the truth. This is where the story of the first game ends, with Golem demanding the people of Haldestom attempt to adhere to some laws and create their own system of dispensing justice. I quite like this twist. It demonstrates that Ghat values his family more than anything else, and he would travel to the literal end of the world to protect it, but it also feeds into the unpredictable nature of the setting. Maybe Father-Mother really was their parent, everybody believes they are, and even the player has no way of knowing for sure. Maybe there really is a phenomenon where people’s children can transform into animals, this dude has feathers and a beak, and that guy has a pig nose and ears. The game isn’t perfect, the camera can be a bit strange at times, there are some technical problems that show up at the end, and I’m not a huge fan of the animated statue enemies, but the narrative is utterly bizarre and the combat is generally executed really well. I love the Corwids, and it’s a shame they weren’t explored further in the second game. Instead, we’re hanging out with the Tiamte which is okay.

Zeno Clash 2 picks up a short while after the ending of the first game. Ghat has spent the last few days avoiding his family as much as possible but the other people in Haldestom aren’t so gracious as to let him wallow in peace. While at his favourite bar, Ghat is harassed by a rival intending to get a rise out of him. Ghat obliges and the player gets hands on with the new combat system. Now, each of Ghat’s arms are controlled independently, left mouse for his left arm, and right mouse for right. Space still blocks, and holding the mouse buttons down still engages a more powerful attack, but this new arrangement allows for more active and varied punching combos. Ghat meets with his sister Rimat upon exiting the bar, and the pair create a plan to try and break Father-Mother out of jail, which is a concept that the pair are clearly disgusted by. In the time between the games, Father-Mother’s children had been asking Golem who and where their real parents were, and most left to go and be with them. Deadra also chose to leave, hoping to establish a new settlement away from Golem’s watch. This left Ghat and Rimat alone. After exiting the bar, the player can complete a side quest for an NPC nearby. In return for completing their task, the NPC awards Ghat a chain to be used as a weapon, which is the first of three new dedicated tools the player will have access to throughout the game. While there were a few group fights in Zeno Clash, as well as the challenge tower that consisted of little else, Zeno Clash 2 has a much heavier focus on groups. Enemies show up in greater numbers than ever, so the game provides the player with some tools for dealing with the increased danger. The chain has a wide arc of effect, and a much longer range than Ghat’s arms, enabling the player to hit multiple targets with a single swing as well as enemies that would typically be out of reach. In addition, before most fights the player is given an option to summon a follower to aid them. There can be up to 2 additional members in the party, although Rimat will always occupy one space. In order to add other members to the crew, Ghat’s Leadership stat needs to match or exceed the ally’s requirement. Oh yeah, there’s a levelling system now, allowing the player to increase their Health, Stamina, and Strength in addition to their Leadership. The player gains skill points from finding totems hidden throughout the world, which is now no longer linear. There are more than 10 zones to travel through, with enemies and upgrades and secrets scattered all throughout. Some zones contain obstacles that can only be passed with upgrades from later areas, encouraging the player to go back through previous locations to see what they might have missed. There are coloured moths and golden cubes hidden alongside the totems throughout the world, and while the mystery of the cubes is fairly interesting, the rewards for collecting the moths is much more desirable. This might make the game seem fairly long, and while it is more substantial than the first game, Zeno Clash 2 took just over 8 hours for me to finish. I am missing 3 Steam achievements, though two of those are for very rare combat occurrences, and the third is for maxing out Ghat’s stats which seems kind of pointless. It isn’t really necessary to care too much about these stats since the game’s controls allow the player to express much more skill than they were previously able to.

The first game’s combat system wasn’t so simple that the player could just mash left click, but Ace Team were very cautious with the challenges they included in the game. Spamming the dodge attack was often all the player had to do to succeed in most encounters, so it was refreshing to see all the changes the team made to combat to encourage a more creative style and incentivise using all of the moves available to the player. Assigning punches to each mouse button makes a lot of sense, and Ace Team also made the excellent decision to allow each punch to be charged separately for big damage, or together to form this double-arm slam that does even more. There are specific combo inputs to find too, often ending in this kick flourish that ragdolls enemies and makes them vulnerable to more damage while on the ground. With the camera fixed up too, the fighting system is all around greatly improved over the first game. The annoying stuff crops up when traversing the world. The only movement ability Ghat has is sprinting, which uses stamina that the player has to wait for while it recharges. There’s no jumping, so if there’s a knee-high ledge the player needs to climb up, they have to run all the way around to where it slopes down to the level Ghat’s on and then run all the way back. Adding a jump isn’t as simple as just enabling the ability, though, so I can understand why it isn’t here.

The things that are here are generally great, but that doesn’t mean I have nothing related to the game’s balance to complain about. I started out on Normal difficulty but switched to Hard after a few fights to see what the difference was. In the end, I don’t really think there was any difference. Enemies might be more hesitant to drop their block, or appear in larger numbers, or the loading screen tip about health and damage might be true, but I never noticed anything different. It’s very easy to plough through most areas without much thought, which is a big shame. These enemies have a lot of complex behaviours and elaborate attack animations that the player might miss because once they get a jab to connect with the enemy’s face the fight could end then and there. Not only are the enemies not challenging to fight one on one, but when the groups do show up the player is given the option to invite one or both of their party members to help out, who will then draw enemy aggro and generally make the fights even easier. This even works on the bosses. As the player progresses through the narrative, they’ll be given additional weapons to deal with the groups of enemies, starting with the chain, but then going on to include this really cool celestial bombardment gun-thing, and this entity-linking knuckle armour piece. The chain is handy, though Ghat can only swing it 4 times before he needs a break. There were guns and crossbows in the first game, and while they do occasionally make their appearances in the sequel, they actually have limited ammunition this time around. Because of this, it’s likely the chain will be the player’s best option for getting rid of flying enemies. They aren’t as gracious as they are in The End of Dyeus, flying down in order for the player to get a hit in, they just float up there and spit. The player gains access to the celestial bombardment weapon next, which I am a huge fan of, despite its niche application. In order to fire the weapon, the player must aim the sights at either the sun or the moon, at which point a small line of explosions will trail between the player and their target. It isn’t a particularly useful attack, but just the concept alone sold me on its inclusion. The final weapon the player gains access to is the entity-linker, when 2 enemies are linked, damage dealt to one enemy is also dealt to the other. It’s a neat idea that’s much more applicable than the other weapon, and it has its puzzle applications too. It also makes group fights easier. The reason I’m so hung up on the lack of difficulty is just how dissonant the whole thing is. There’s a huge gulf between the things characters say, and the tasks the player is given, the vast range of upgrades and weapons the player has access to, and how generally non-hostile this colourful world appears.

Zenozoik wasn’t a drab place in the first game, and colours were on Ace Team’s list of things to include more of in the sequel. Some areas in this game would horrify a conservative, and that’s before mentioning the prominent nonbinary character included in a video game from 2013. Shoutout to the Chilean people, you’ve really figured out this whole societal progress thing. Haldestom is now a bustling city. There are oddly shaped buildings all over the place, but they seem to coexist without any issue. Residents of Haldestom mill around in the street while mysterious 2D rendered people watch from a distance. There are also a few shops around, usually manned by an interesting NPC with a task for the player. It’s all very vividly coloured and busy, but it isn’t overwhelming. Out in the wilds, there’s the rocky coastline area with the skeletal remains of the big dead fish from the last game. The breezy Rath-Bird fields are populated by a few bubble-blowing trees, these other large bird creatures, and this mysterious broken egg thing off in the distance. Someone dumped oil in this river, though. Can’t stop frackers, even in an anarchist utopia. Anyway, the desert, as fitting as it would be to leave a desert area flat and brown, has these enormous creatures living in it, the ground is covered in patches of dandelions, and there’s this big stone snail man thing whose head has been opened as he lies above this pit filled with spikes. Who else is doing anything remotely like this? It isn’t totally flawless, though. There’s two options for field of view total, and looking down while using the wider FOV allows the player to see Ghat’s motionless leg sliding along the ground. I don’t much care for the Two-Headed Man’s model either, and I think the lands to the east could’ve done something more with its tremendous scenery. Look at this place. All the player does here is sprint across a bridge. Same with the tunnel under the fog in the north. It’s just a straight path. That being said, every boundary I reached just felt unfair. I wanted to see more, to keep going. What’s farther east than this tower? What’s this pyramid platform thing? Where did it come from? This is really cool, I want to know more. There is a moment where the player gets a glimpse of what’s beyond the bounds of the game, but we’re a little ways away from discussing that.

Ghat and Rimat’s jailbreak attempt goes very well, despite costing Father-Mother a few years of knee use. Golem’s enforcers aren’t too willing to allow Father-Mother their freedom, and apparently they pursue in high enough numbers for Ghat and Rimat to be unable to fight them off. Father-Mother is presumably recaptured, while Ghat and Rimat travel the surrounding regions to try and enlist their former siblings to return to Haldestom and help to keep Father-Mother out of jail permanently. This mission acts as a means to get the player to visit all of the various locations around Zenozoik, as well as increase their pool of potential party members. The first region I visited was the Garbage Canyon, since Rimat knew that Pott was there. Father-Mother manages to make their way to Pott’s cave too, and the 4 try to come up with a plan to end the enforcers’ hunt. In the past, Father-Mother claimed they had sailed from the west coast of Zenozoik in search of another like them. They didn’t find what they were looking for, but did find an island with a facility that kind of matched the Golem’s fortress from the north. Perhaps there was some weapon there Ghat could use to kill Golem and return Zenozoik to its lawless ways. While leaving the Canyon, Ghat and Rimat are caught in a mysterious trap and greeted by a strange voice. The celestial bombardment gun is tossed to Ghat by whoever has trapped them, which can be used to release the trap. The player then travels to the island Father-Mother had mentioned, and discovers that the Golem Ghat met in the north was not the only Golem in Zenozoik. Attempts to communicate with this western Golem fail, as neither Ghat or Rimat can speak to seagulls, and a fight breaks out. Defeating this Golem rewards Ghat with the Golem Hand, and confirms that the northern Golem can be killed. There’s a quick distraction in which Ghat’s former partner, Deadra, as well as one of his siblings had been kidnapped by the Tiamte, which is fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Once that’s taken care of, the player heads north to look for more weapons or other information that could help defeat the Golem. This fortress was built at the northernmost end of the world. There’s nothing but poisonous fog to the north. But, after some investigation of the fortress, the player finds a tunnel.

Now, this is where Ace Team irreversibly smashed my perception of this world. Zenozoik is this wild, anarchic place where humans live in concert with all these other beings. It’s violent, yes, but even people without the will or physical ability to fight are welcome members of society, and clearly someone is taking care of them. In all the chaos of this world, a city has been built and a culture has emerged. It’s fantastical and bizarre, but it feels like its own reality. At the far side of the tunnel beneath the northern end of the world is a gnarled, rocky mass and the machine that pumps the toxic gas into the valley behind the fortress. Continuing north, the player can find some dilapidated, white objects. A piano. A clock. A bookshelf. Interacting with these transports Ghat into an empty, white room, each object occupying a different space as they’re added to the room. Then, the player comes across an archway that leads to a short passage through a cliff face. Beyond the cliff is a large, circular platform suspended by concrete pillars above an inlet of ocean. Across the inlet is a cityscape. An unusual cityscape, but a city with electric lights, skyscrapers, cranes, roads, and stars quickly travel back and forth over the city, which could either be helicopters or some sort of sci-fi flying cars, I can’t really say for sure. But that’s it. The world doesn’t end at Golem’s fortress in the north. Zenozoik does. Golem shows up and tells Ghat and Rimat that they are not allowed to go to the city. The world has decided that Zenozoik is uncivilised and is better left alone. “You Zenos have no notion of history, of how past events have an effect on the present.” I hate this, I really do. Instead of the world being a swirling cloud of absurdity, brutality, and conviction, it’s just a prison where the weirdos are kept. Ghat travelled to the literal end of the world to escape his family’s vengeance in the first game, but he also ran to protect Father-Mother’s secret. At the end of the world, when he had nowhere else to run, he found a conscience, a sense of responsibility that resulted in Ghat returning to his family to try and make amends. I never thought Zeno Clash was totally literal, it’s quite clearly laden in layers of metaphor coated in this eccentric shell that demands more attention. But then the sequel undoes all of that in favour of this goofy Truman Show reveal. Ghat beats Golem in a fight, but since Golem is linked to everyone in Zenozoik, letting Golem die from his wounds would cause the deaths of Ghat and everyone he’s ever known. So Ghat and Rimat go to the east to try and get help from the Eastern Golem. The journey east is cool, I guess. This quest to rescue Golem ends at a place called The Pink Tower, which is visually incredible. Atop the tower sits the East Golem, or what’s left of them anyway. The decision to isolate Zenozoik was made so long ago that not only did this Golem have time to literally resculpt the world around it for fun, he also had a hand in creating a bunch of two-headed Chimeras, then he got bored of that so he sat in his chair for a while and literally disintegrated. The Southern Golem arrives on possibly the coolest flying vehicle I’ve ever seen. This Golem is only here to remind the audience that he exists. He’s the one who gave the player the celestial gun thing from before, but Ghat and Rimat didn’t meet him before now. Since he has a flying machine, the Southern Golem offers to take the pieces of the East Golem to the North Golem in order to prevent everyone from dying. Ghat agrees, and unsure what to do next, the pair return to Haldestom to see what Father-Mother is up to. Turns out, Father-Mother is gone, captured and ensnared in a rock archway along the southern road. The South Golem is here, after delivering the organs to the North Golem, and so are all of the parents of the children Father-Mother had stolen from. The Golem explains that this lynching will end the story of Father-Mother’s crimes. It also acts as the Southern Golem’s opportunity to explain their motivation, which is to see what Ghat and Rimat will do. “I wanna watch you guys do interesting things. Maybe I should give you this gun, just to see what you do. How about I kill your parent? What’ll you do then?” This sucks. This is really really bad. Such a stupid reason to do anything. After rescuing Father-Mother, the Southern Golem asks Ghat and Rimat to meet him atop the highest point in Haldestom for a conversation. North Golem is there, South Golem says his motivation again, and then everyone attacks each other for the final battle in the game. I like the mechanics of this fight a lot, and the sun setting in the background is a great touch. But, once the Southern Golem’s health is reduced to zero, the North Golem hoists him by the throat, says some stuff about the makers sending replacement Golems and deliberately gets both of them crushed by some nearby clockwork.

I’ve been finding it really hard to come to terms with how Ace Team went from the tremendous levels of restraint and meticulous consideration that went into everything in the first game, but a couple of years later they resort to the least interesting twist a story like this could’ve ever had, and then had the narrative circle back to some dude who was barely developed and whose motivation is the dumbest cliche a teenager embarrassingly left in their Sonic the Hedgehog fan-fiction. Father-Mother wanted a family, so they made one. They had to do some unacceptable things in order to get what they wanted and that’s where the narrative’s conflict comes from. Golem shows up and starts trying to enforce a bunch of rules on a lawless population so they might one day join greater society outside of Zenozoik. As little as I care for the “Zenozoik is a prison for weirdos” plot, Golem’s plans to bring the law to this society is at least a good place to draw conflict. It raises engaging questions. Is it fair for Golem to be imposing rules on a functional society because they don’t conform to whatever’s going on in some other place? Is it right to punish people for crimes they’ve already received some form of punishment for? Why does Golem get to decide that Father-Mother should be imprisoned, and can that imprisonment ever end? What even are crimes? If I were to make some changes, I’d suggest removing any mention of a world outside of Zenozoik and the western island. Golem is this omnipotent robot god already, make it so he needs the world to be in perfect order because that’s the only way he can make sense of it. Ghat still dislikes this, Father-Mother still ends up in jail, but now the responsibility of altering the world is in the hands of someone who actually lives in it and not some amorphous entity that decided what laws were all on its own. Change the South Golem to be the mirror of the North Golem. Instead of his motivation being “I did something extreme just to see what you’ll do” it could be that the world being in chaos is the only way he can understand it. Then the narrative revolves around Ghat’s preferred Zenozoik; should he work with the North Golem to prevent what little logic exists within the world from being destroyed? Or should he work with the South Golem so as not to lose the world he loves? I know it’s kind of Petersonian to talk about law and chaos like this, but it’s at least something.

My thoughts on the narrative are unfortunately very negative, and it’s a shame my video format makes talking about the narrative last clearly the best choice, because I quite like Zeno Clash 2 and I think anyone who enjoys action games should really play it at least once. While it being a sequel does make it less unique, there’s still a lot of things on display that no other game would ever consider trying. First-person melee combat is usually either extremely simple and bland, or barely functional and frustrating, but this indie studio managed to perfect the style back in 2013. The game is similarly progressive in its ideas, and it barely draws attention to those parts. There are hundreds of details all over the place, hidden faces in a net, the huge automatons patrolling in the distance, the muffled yells of the Marauders behind their hoods, or the support arches holding up the tunnel beneath the fog being in the shape of human arms. There was clearly a lot of love and attention poured into Zeno Clash 2’s mechanical systems, presentation, and world and character design. A lot of care to finally realise the world Ace Team had been wanting to build ever since their inception making mods of other games. This sequel was on the precipice of greatness, but it was robbed of that last piece that tied the whole thing together, and the fans were robbed of a sure masterpiece.

Let’s hope James Hetfield doesn’t get wind of this next game.

I really enjoyed the first Zeno Clash when I played it. The gameplay is awful and the production values are super cheap, but it's just weird. Nothing has been compromised in terms of the bizarre the world Ace Team wanted to make, and I love it. In that sense, this sequel is no different.

The graphics are much improved from the original without losing its grotesque aesthetic and the story goes through some very unexpected twists, making it an absolute tragedy that there's pretty much no hope of a Zeno Clash III to close things off.

Combat has been revamped, but not in any way that you'll actually engage with. There's a new system in place where you can juggle enemies as part of a combo, which I don't think I did a single time outside of the game's tutorial.

Unfortunately, it runs a little too long - I spent the last hour or so of the game waiting for it to end - but if you like weird stuff, Zeno Clash 1 & 2 are worth checking out.

❤ Thiloc ❤