Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore

Apollo Chungus

1 month ago

(Disclosure: two members of this game’s development team, Audun Sørlie and John Linneman, have contributed articles to HG101 in the past. This did not factor into the author’s decision to cover the game, which was bought with their own money. This is an independent review.)

It’s sometimes redundant to talk about the reputation of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Developed by American/Russian studio Animation Magic for the Philips CD-i, they’re equally infamous for being the least appreciated Legend of Zelda games and for their abundant appearances in the early days of the YouTube Poop video genre.

However, they’ve also had their defenders (including an old article from this very website), claiming that they’re genuinely good action-RPGs considering the constraints they were made under. This has become more widely spread in recent years thanks to the unofficial remakes released in late 2020, using the original assets and adding quality-of-life improvements. These remakes were developed by Seth “Dopply” Fulkerson, who gained an appreciation for what those original games were trying to do and wanted to create something new in that same style.

Which brings us to Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, a game that emulates a lot of what makes those CD-i Zelda games tick. If you’re here to find goofily animated cutscenes full of strange characters, you’ll get that in spades. But if you’re in the mood for a brisk open-ended adventure packed with charm and secrets for days, you’re getting that too. This isn’t an ironic pastiche, but a sincere tribute that succeeds on its own merits and makes for a great little romp.

The peaceful land of Faramore was once under attack by the evil forces of Daimur the demon king. A long and terrible war was waged, until Daimur was defeated and sealed away by the kingdom’s skilled swordfighter Princess Arzette. The Jewel of Faramore was used to seal Daimur away, and then split into five pieces and scattered across the land to prevent his return.

Ten years have passed, and while peace had returned and Arzette continued to train, complacency eventually set in. Daimur’s minions have gathered the Jewel of Faramore and brought him back. The land has been covered in a veil of darkness, and the kingdom’s forces are weak. It’s up to Arzette to travel Faramore, collect the Jewel pieces from five of Daimur’s most powerful minions, and defeat the demon king once and for all!

Arzette is a side-scrolling action RPG where your goal is to explore each area, fighting enemies and finding items along the way. You start off with the usual running, jumping and slashing, as well as throwable bombs and crouch walking, but you can upgrade your skills and arsenal over the course of the game. These include a magic gun that shoots colored beams, a lantern to light up dark rooms, a double jump, and plenty more. You can replenish your stock at the shop in Faramore Town, using Rubies you collect from vanquished enemies and magic bags.

Some upgrades are acquired by helping people out, usually getting them a special item (either found in the wild or obtained from another character). Others are hidden away behind bombable walls, colored barriers, or cursed tapestries. These tapestries can only be burnt with Sacred Candles, which can also be used to reach extra hearts that increase your health and the five bosses who each guard one of the Jewel of Faramore’s shards.

A handful of areas have a Sacred Beacon at the end, and lighting them up dispels some of the darkness in the overworld map and gives you more places to explore. Exploration’s a big part of Arzette, with many locations full of secrets to discover. It’s very rewarding to poke around and find something that lets you reach previously inaccessible areas, or to make combat a bit easier. The structure is open-ended enough that you can make your way through the game in many ways, especially if you exploit a couple of easy sequence breaks to get certain abilities much earlier than you’re supposed to.

That’s not even getting into the purely optional extras. Dotted throughout are bonus stages where you can play minigames for Rubies (including one based on the door slamming antics of fellow CD-i Nintendo game Hotel Mario), and special coins that let you access time trials for special rewards. Throw in some sidequests and unlockable bonuses such as higher difficulty modes that’ll really test your skill, and Arzette is bursting with things to do.

It helps that the adventure is quite compact. Each area takes roughly 5-10 minutes to explore, movement and combat are straightforward enough that it’s easy to get just about anywhere, and if you’re looking to find everything, you’ll find enough powers and upgrades to become unstoppable before too long. There is a thrill to be had from dominating everything in your path, and it helps less skilled players, but it makes the game a cakewalk. This is doubly true for the bosses, who are easily defeated with or without a massive arsenal.

However, your only requirement to reach Daimur is to restore the Jewel of Faramore, and most upgrades aren’t required to do that. So you can comfortably ignore anything that might tip the balance too far the other way and keep things at a suitable level of challenge, which reinforces how willing Arzette is to let you experience the game your way. There’s a couple of extra touches to help you out, such as an inventory screen that lets you know which items might help certain people and exclamation marks above locations you can revisit and characters you can talk to.

If you’re stuck, talking to people is the best way to figure out an extra way forward, through their requests or advice about certain mechanics. It’s just as well, because these play out as often charming animated cutscenes. This is perhaps the clearest nod to the Animation Magic Zelda games, featuring a lot of those games’ quirks such as a host of weird characters, the digital linework and coloring, and awkward pauses that cap off each conversation. However, they’re also earnestly written and performed, both in the animation and the voice acting. Every encounter is memorable, and manages to be convincingly cute, funny, off-putting and even dramatic when the mood calls for it.

This is also where most of the game’s collaborative development shines. Among the game’s voice cast, the original actors for Zelda and Link from the CD-i titles (Bonnie Jean Wilbur and Jeffrey Rath respectively) appear to do a handful of voices. Plenty of people were involved in the cutscene animation, including people best known for creating YouTube Poops that often involved the CD-i games such as Gabriel “Geibuchan” Luis Fernandez, Jimmy Davis (both of whom also were involved in designing the characters) and Nicholas “Walrusguy” Walstrom.

Elsewhere visually, the graphics are quite attractive with sprite-animated characters on top of painted backgrounds (some of which were done by Rob Dunlavey, who did the background artwork for Link: The Faces of Evil). There’s a variety of distinct locations, you can quickly see what you can jump onto and interact with, the character sprites are well animated, and it all runs at a fast and smooth framerate that compliments the breeziness of the gameplay.

The sound design is solid, often utilizing many of the sounds from the CD-i titles to maintain a subtle sonic connection, but where things really shine is in the music. Composed by Jake “Button Masher” Silverman, the soundtrack provides a collection of short but excellent tunes that drive the action with superb instrumentation in the tradition of late-90s action-RPGs, catchy and well-developed melodies, and a variety of styles that greatly complement each area.