Anime-style action RPG Zengeon comes to PS4

It’s been out for a while on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam, but Zengeon, an enjoyable anime-inspired action RPG romp with roguelike elements, has arrived on PlayStation 4 today; a physical release is following from August 26, 2022 via our pals at Funstock.

If you’ve never come across Zengeon before, it’s an isometric perspective action RPG for one to four players with six playable characters on offer — though only two of these are available at the outset. The story involves their attempts to restore a seal that is preventing a Demon King from bursting forth into the world and causing all sorts of shenanigans, but this is not a game where narrative is a particular focus; instead, it’s all about beating up hordes of enemies, collecting delicious loot and becoming more and more powerful.

Zengeon

Zengeon’s mechanics are actually rather interesting in that more than anything, they feel like they’re based on the conventions of MOBAs such as Dota 2 and League of Legends. Don’t run away screaming, though; transplanting these mechanics from a competitive multiplayer game to a single-player or cooperative multiplayer title works extremely well, because it makes each character very distinct from one another, and also helps the combat have some tactical depth without becoming overly complex.

Each character has four skills. One of these is a basic attack that can be used repeatedly, but different characters implement this in different ways; one character, for example, has a melee strike combo as his basic attack, while another fires magic missiles from a moderate range.

Since this basic attack is the most common means through which you will be fighting, the different ways that the characters implement this help them feel immediately distinct, and require you to play them very differently. It also helps players find clearly defined roles when playing in multiplayer; using the two examples above, the melee character will typically find himself “tanking” enemies, while the ranged character will pick them off from afar while their attention is otherwise occupied.

Zengeon

The other three skills all operate on cooldowns of various lengths. Broadly speaking, the second skill tends to allow dodging (and, in some cases, attacking while dodging), the third is an area-effect skill with a relatively short cooldown and the fourth is a powerful attack with a longer cooldown.

The skills don’t consume any sort of resource, so you can use them as often as their cooldowns are up. This might be a bit of an adjustment for those accustomed to action RPGs in the Diablo mould, which involve careful MP management as well as sensible use of skills. But here in Zengeon, every skill has a distinct tactical use — and making good use of combinations of skills is often key to success.

Where things get interesting, though, is in the items you’ll acquire as you progress through the game’s stages. By spending the gold coins you acquire on a run, you can open chests, and these typically provide a choice of two items that you can acquire. These act as permanent upgrades, and have a variety of different effects, many of which take the form of a percentage chance for an additional effect to occur under specific circumstances.

Zengeon

While the early game in Zengeon is defined by you making good use of your skills, as you progress you’ll find that more and more of your damage and mitigation comes from these items that you’ve been collecting. In a recent run, for example, a successful attack had a significant chance of triggering a large fiery AoE around my character, and much more damage would tend to come from that than just hitting the enemies.

You’ll also find various means of healing yourself as you progress through Zengeon; it’s a lot more generous in this regard than many other roguelikes out there. Enemies and scenery items often drop health orbs that replenish a small amount of your health, you start the game with five health potions (and can acquire more relatively easily) and there are even items of equipment that will allow you to self-heal in various ways.

Boss fights are a particular highlight; fans of games like Final Fantasy XIV will get a particular kick out of their heavily mechanics-based nature, with plenty of visible telegraphs to avoid and patterns to learn. They work particularly well in conjunction with the game’s use of “dodge” skills to get yourself out of trouble — Zengeon’s characters are quite agile, so be sure to make the best of this during the major battles along the way!

Zengeon

Zengeon might initially seem to be a relatively simple and straightforward hack-and-slash roguelike, but the real joy comes in building up these powerful decks of abilities over the course of a single run — and working out what the best synergies between items are. Do you go for a broad range of different abilities, or do you focus on trying to upgrade a few as much as possible? There are plenty of options, and each run has the potential to be quite different.

A single run through Zengeon will probably take you an hour to an hour and a half if you make it all the way through, and the game is relatively on the easier side for the genre — you’ll likely clear the game’s easiest difficulty on your first or second attempt without too much difficulty. There’s plenty of replayability, though, with how different the playable characters feel and the inherent variation in the randomised equipment you acquire from the chests on each run.

So if you’ve been jonesing for a fun, accessible and highly replayable action RPG that plays well both solo and in multiplayer, Zengeon is definitely a game worth spending some time with. And now you can do so on PlayStation 4 as well as Nintendo Switch and PC! An Xbox One version is also apparently “coming soon”, though this will be a digital-only release as with most Xbox One titles these days.

Zengeon

So what are you waiting for? Nab yourself a copy of Zengeon for PS4 today from the PlayStation Store, preorder the physical PS4 version from Funstock, grab a digital Nintendo Switch version, snap up a limited-edition Switch physical or pick up the game for PC via Steam.

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Pete Davison
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