What Happened to the Zenonia Series?

Image from Nintendo UK. Zenonia is owned by Gamevil.

I don’t know about anyone else but I remember when the Zenonia Series was huge. It used to be some of the top downloaded apps on the google play store, so what happened? To figure it out let’s give some background. This is only a retrospective, so unlike my previous Mega Man retrospective, this one will not dive into story or characters.

The Zenonia series is an action role-playing game developed by Gamevil. The first game released on May 24, 2009. It released on the Apple Store, Google Play Store, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS. I believe it released on other platforms but these are the most notable ones. From what I remember it was a great game and could be replayed. There were two paths that you could do with their own missions and stories. Unfortunately you can no longer play it on the app store, you can buy it on the Nintendo E-shop. This only applies to the first one because the others only released on the Google Play Store and Apple Store. There were a total of six games, seven if you count the online game they did.

Zenonia 2: The Lost Memories was was released on March 29, 2010. I did not play this one much because it just did not grab my attention, bear in mind I was about ten years old at the time. It deviated from the original by having three new characters to play as each with their own stories. From what I saw the reviews were good so where did things start to go bad? I believe things started to go bad after the release of the third Zenonia game. I blame this on micro-transactions and increased difficulty.

Zenonia 3: The Midgard Story was released on April 28, 2011. This is one I played up until the very end but I couldn’t beat it even at the maximum level. The difficulty was such a huge increase from the previous two and it was strange as to why. I enjoyed it but the difficulty just made me quit. Zenonia 4 was where I completely stopped.

Zenonia 4: Return of the Legend released on December 22, 2011. I tried playing this game and it just got to cumbersome. Once again it was tied down by the excessive need to grind as well as new micro-transactions. There were items that needed to be identified with scrolls. Scrolls were very rare, one way you could easily get them though was through micro-transactions. I gave up maybe half way through due to this. The story was also difficult to follow because it involves a lot of time travel.

Zenonia 5: Wheel of Destiny released on November 29, 2012. I gave it a try because my friends were playing it and it was a nightmare. One again the difficulty was out of this world. An early area had way over leveled enemies. The reason for this was to sell revives, experience boosters, and more. Grinding was so tedious that buying the items seemed enticing but I passed and stopped playing completely. You also had to pay real money if you wanted more inventory space.

Zenonia 6 is a strange one. It was a departure from what they normally do. It was a fully online game. I can’t remember much of it and just like the first three it is no longer available for purchase. Notice a trend here, the micro-transaction filled games are the only ones left while the others are unavailable. What makes things worse is that people paid for these games and lost access out of nowhere.

In conclusion, what I believe ruined this franchise was the desire for money by slowly ramping up difficulty in games where you could conveniently buy experience boosters and other helpful items while neglecting the rest of the game. In my opinion Zenonia 1 was the best out of all of them. It was straight forward, no micro-transactions, and had the best story. As always thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. If you have any suggestions, comments, or corrections be sure to comment below.