I very much enjoyed Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore even though its gameplay is mediocre at best

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is a joke game. Meant as a riff on the infamous CD-I games Link: The Faces of Evil and more specifically Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon the game only is the way it is in order to reference a misstep so creatively disastrous that it prevented Nintendo from licensing its IP to partner companies for decades. If the games were just bad they would be vaguely remembered sidenotes, but they also feature unforgettable cut-scenes, animated in a weird hand-drawn style with bizarrely aggressive NPCs and weird twisting faces that have to be seen to be believed. Throw in a version of Link who acts more like a bratty, spoiled, teenager than the stoic and adventurous defender of Hyrule who is probably Nintendo’s second most beloved iconic hero, and you have a product that will continue to be memed and remembered for generations to come.

One of the nicest NPCs in the game

It is these cut scenes that Arzette seems most interested in directly copying, with a style that’s drawn directly from them, including a useless bard character who is obviously just Link with fake facial hair, which is pretty funny. In some ways it feels like Arzette was made just to have an excuse to animate these cut scenes, though even they can’t quite match the madness of the original, with too many sedate moments where characters just stay on screen talking to make jokes or advance the plot without twisting and deforming like an LSD hallucination, though there’s also plenty of that. Elsewhere Arzette compromises the “vision” of the original games in pursuit of playability and giving the user a good experience. It’s as if the game were started as a joke and somewhere along the line someone decided “hey we have to try to sell this thing so maybe we shouldn’t make it a miserable experience?” and also started to fall in love with their own joke story and lore to the point where they wanted other people to care about them.

This leaves Arzette as a very weird product. The basic set up is that you play Arzette, the princess of the kingdom of Faramore. 10 years earlier a band of intrepid heroes, including Arzette and the bard Dale (the Link analog) defeated the evil Daimler and trapped him in a book with a magic jewel (which is pretty much how Wand of Gamelon ends). A duplicitous henchmen freed him and he has vowed revenge on the kingdom. Your father, the aging king, sends you out to stop him, while Dale refuses to participate and instead revels in his own uselessness.

What game series could this POSSIBLY be referencing?

As a game Arzette plays like a stage-based action platformer with adventure game and Metroidvania elements. There are 15 stages, unlocked as you progress, with one of them being the castle town where you can talk to NPCs, get quests, and shop for consumable items. The rest of the stages involve platforming and fighting enemies, with things to collect and their own set of quests and NPCs to interact with, as well as secrets in all of them and bosses in six. You will have to revisit areas multiple times because it’s impossible to collect everything the first time through due to magical barriers you will need certain tools to dispel or quests you get from NPCs that may require you to go somewhere else to get what they want. Each area is short on its own, requiring about 5 minutes to traverse from beginning to one of the multiple exits (though you can exit at any time by using up one of your ropes) but the game as a whole is about 3 to 5 hours long your first time through, depending on how much of the side content you want to do.

Behold...the world map. Stage selection is done from the icons on the bottom.

Gameplay in Arzette is strange. Arzette herself controls like a standard 2D action platformer character, able to run, jump, crouch, and slash with her sword. Over time she gains additional abilities like a double jump, ranged attacks and bombs, and an absolutely useless backdash that exists purely as a reference to Symphony of the Night. All of this works well and feels good to control. The levels themselves are where things get strange. I believe they’re built from image file background with the actual geometry of the level invisible and laid over the image. So you might see a tree branch as part of the background as a platform, but my understanding is that your character doesn’t interact directly with that tree branch but rather with an invisible platform that exists on top of it in the game world (since the tree root is just part of the background image.) This is similar to how the old Resident Evil games worked, and, of course, the Faces of Evil/Gamelon games. In general it’s not noticeable but there are some areas where there seem to be invisible barriers or platforms that don’t line up quite where you’d expect them to based on what’s on screen. It’s unclear whether this is an intentional reference or not, like a lot of this game’s issues, but it creates an uncanny feeling when it happens, though it doesn’t really impede gameplay.

That's supposed to be a wall/ceiling. Collision detection can be...spotty.

Also strange is the design of the levels. Essentially they’re built out of a bunch of small screens that scroll horizontally and vertically, with the ability to traverse between screens at certain specific exit points. The original games were made this way because of limited RAM, allowing the CD-I to only hold one area and its relatively large background file in memory at a time, but it’s just not something that’s really done in more modern games, at least not in this way, with most of the areas being small and contained with frequent screen transitions.

Finally there are the enemies. They are extremely simple in their behavior. There are some flying things that swoop at you (though they are not nearly as numerous or irritating as in the original games) and some enemies that march back and forth on the ground, some flinging projectiles, but that’s pretty much it. In a world where even Shovel Knight has more complicated enemy behavior it feels rudimentary. Bosses are a serious lowlight, with most of them posing absolutely no challenge whatsoever.

Enemies just sort of walk back and forth or fly towards you.

The game is generally extremely easy on normal mode. You don’t start out with a lot of life and on normal mode there are no health drops. It’s easy to die from annoying flying enemies or projectile spam early on, and lots of the levels have poorly signposted instant death pits, but death just results in a “try again” screen and a respawn at the start of the area you’re in (with some of the larger levels having checkpoint flags.) If you play carefully you will not die outside of purely communicated pits, but I just played fast and sloppy and never struggled. It’s…kind of fun at first I guess, but by the end when you’re fully powered up and just searching the levels for whatever you haven’t collected yet it becomes very boring.

What never really gets boring is the charming insanity of the cut scenes. Again, these seem like the actual inspiration behind the game and why it was made. They’re not quite as poorly animated or insane as those in the original games but they’re delightfully unhinged, with charmingly and intentionally amateurish voice acting and all kinds of weirdness. I completed every side quest because I wanted to see them all. In many ways this is more like an adventure game with platforming and combat than anything else, with some quests requiring you to trade multiple items with multiple characters in multiple areas before finally getting your reward.

Behold. The PS5.

Yet despite the game being almost insultingly easy and kind of a joke I have to say that I really enjoyed it. The novelty of how it plays means that even when it isn’t good it is at least interesting. The basic structure of exploring platforming levels looking for secrets and bombing walls or breaking down barriers with newly acquired items is a time-honored design trope for a reason, and is fundamentally fun, but this is a different spin on it. Most of the strange little quirks are amusing and the game is short enough that it doesn’t really wear out its welcome.

I also must specifically shout out the music, which is incredible. I think that if Jake “Button Masher” Silverman had not nailed the music the game could have been a chore, but he did with a series of tracks that is period appropriate for the 90s but also stacked with absolute bangers. It manages to evoke the feeling of game music during that experimental period when games on CDs were new in a way that even very good soundtracks for retro-style games rarely do. It also sticks in your head and reverberates there for days, but not in a bad way. Just an astonishing achievement.

Playing through Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore I knew I was playing a very easy game that was objectively bad by most design standards but I…didn’t care. I was having a great time, at first, and then a good time in the final third once I’d opened everything up and it was getting more repetitive. I never played the CD-I Zeldas so there was no specific nostalgia here, though I was aware of the games and saw some demos running in electronics stores. Instead what I was just vibing on the exploration, the weirdness, and the fantastic music. It wasn’t a great experience in terms of design or balance but it was a novel experience, and it was funny and strange and that was enough, at least for an adventure that took less than 5 hours to finish.

A lot of games discourse focuses on gameplay being king and challenge and engagement driving a game’s quality. Arzette’s gameplay is serviceable but nothing special. It papers over its mediocre level design and intentional throwback flaws by just not being very demanding or punishing. I’ve often said that if a game is going to have bad or mediocre gameplay it should at least be easy so you’re not repeating annoying sections over, and Arzette follows that path. It’s very standard platforming with the unusual mechanics mostly being an annoyance at most, like a lot of screens that are pitch black when you enter and must be illuminated by a lantern with consumable oil. It also has a lot of useless upgrades like carrying pouches that expand your already quite generous upper limits for consumables (never an issue because you can always return to the shop) or boots that let you glide after jumping, which is a move that is never actually needed with the already quite easy platforming. Then there are the aforementioned boss fights, universally disappointing with no real challenge or interesting mechanics.

Breaking the 4th wall for a Bubsy reference is very on brand.

But while Arzette plays acceptably the unusual visuals, fantastic music, and fun cut scenes are enough to make the experience fun. Sometimes it’s great to follow a low stress journey in a virtual world. Jump on a few platforms, whack a few flying hornets with your sword, and talk to some oddly aggressive weirdo who wants you to find a random item for arbitrary reasons. In many ways Arzette is more of an adventure game than an action platformer, and adventure games have often focused on story and presentation, with gameplay being the weakest part of the package. In Arzette’s case if it had dynamic action and brilliant level design it would undercut the joke at the heart of the project.

If you're making a Zelda CD-I tribute game you need to have the Hotel Mario bonus stage!

I like a lot of games that are gameplay first. Balatro is currently my game of the year, and I adored chasing medals in Neon White and was able to have fun with Gran Turismo 7 despite hating the café presentation and the awful progression systems. But a lot of the games I like are not gameplay first, and that’s okay. Norco was a favorite in 2022 because of its lyrical texts and haunting visuals. In Stars and Time captivated me last year despite an annoying exploration system and combat that was downright boring in the back half of the game. Paradise Killer is fantastic even though it barely gives you anything to do except wander around and talk to people. Gameplay is just part of what makes games good or bad, and it’s okay if passable gameplay serves as a platform for great music, funny jokes, and weird animation that leaves you eager to see what strangeness the next NPC will get up to.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore was the right game for me at a time when I needed something chill and pleasant to play. It held my attention, made me smile, impressed the heck out of me with its soundtrack, and made me eager to see what was on the next screen and how the NPCs would react when I brought them the things they were looking for. Boring level design, stupid enemies, and disappointing bosses don’t take any of those things away. It’s okay for a game to be good enough in some areas if it’s great in others, and Arzette is not only great in some areas but weird and different enough to make a real impression.

At least it makes an impression!