Zenonia (Sniper)
Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Gamevil
Publisher: Gamevil

Graphics
Zenonia borrows its perspective from the pre-3D Zelda titles, its character portrait art style from Disgaea, and its stage and baddie art flavors from the early Final Fantasy entries. Despite its unoriginality and occasionally mundane areas, Zenonia is a colorful and well animated adventure.

Sound
Among Zenonia's handful of songs there are a couple of dramatic and well-orchestrated tunes that are reminiscent of Motoi Sakuraba's work with Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, while the rest of either too short or too cliched to be memorable. Sound effects are crisp and distinctive.

Gameplay
Zenonia heavily borrows gameplay aspects from Square's Brave Fencer Musashi, including the focus on a male child protagonist, the style of sword play, the need to eat food in order to use special abilities, and even the pacing and general stage design philosophies. Zenonia is much more grind-oriented title than "Musashi" however, which will probably sit well with its cellphone-toting audience.

Overall
Games on mobile platforms have such limited budget that sacrifice must be made in some way or another. In the case of Zenonia, everything about the title- from the art to the soundtrack style to the gameplay- was stripped from other games; the time the developers saved from needing to come up with original designs was spent instead polishing these existing formulas into a competent, balanced, albeit derivative action RPG.

Sniper's verdict: