If you know your gaming history, you remember the Philips CD-i, a commercial failure so big that it is only remembered today because of some bad The Legend of Zelda games. Yes, Nintendo can be too protective with its IPs today, but back in the 90s, they have partnered with Philips to create a never-released CD add-on to the SNES, and rights to use Mario and Zelda characters in original productions were put in the contract too. If you ever have seen a video of Link: The Faces of Evil or Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, you quickly realized why those titles became a joke in the internet.

I think that everyone that knew this story was really surprised (including me) when Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore was announced. They cannot say (for legal reasons), but I can: this game is a spiritual successor of the bad Zelda CD-i games. I love the idea of "spiritual successors", because they are just fans that loved a thing so much that wanted to create their own take on it, but cannot use the original IP. But it's the first time I see someone trying to do more of a thing that everyone hated and mocked for decades.

And even before I start talking about the game itself and why it's not perfect and all of that, I need to be completely honest: they nailed it and I loved it. I don't know how they could create an experience so faithful to its inspirations and, at the same time, being that good and fun to play. Yes, I think it has some flaws, but saying only that Arzette is better than a Zelda CD-i game is being unfair for the work made by the team at Seedy Eye Software. Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, going against everything expected, is really great and I'm grateful it exists.

Back when CDs were cool

In a spiritual successor, getting the right vibe from the original material and build from there is essential. Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore does this perfectly in every part. The plot isn't that far from some 90s games: you get the role of Princess Arzette, a swordfighter heroine that needs to find all the pieces of the Jewel of Faramore to seal an evil wizard. There's a lot of characters to meet during the journey, and most of them would have a small quest to Arzette in exchange for items or information. Magical beacons and candles can also be found to open new areas in the map (or find new paths in the levels).

This loose story is the perfect vessel to bring different characters with different and comic personalities, that are really explored during the game. All interactions in Arzette are done by hand-drawn, fully-voiced animated cutscenes, heavily inspired by the ones found in the Zelda CD-i games, and they are probably the best part of the game for me. The strange perspectives that changes every time, the over-the-top voices and performances, everything has a perfect charm to create a unique atmosphere to the title. Even the voice actors of Zelda and Link from the old games came back as narrators!

To be fair, I think "charming" is a great adjective to describe everything you can see and listen in Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore. The characters and enemies are made in pixel art, but the scenario by itself looks like they were a digital oil painting. All the songs, besides being automatic bangers, uses synthesized instruments to create a specific musical atmosphere, the one that some people in the past would call "CD quality" with no doubt. Even the dialogues are a little cheesy, but they match so well to the rest of the game.

It's so great to see a game being inspired by an infamous art style and being no afraid of embracing it totally. I never had a Philips CD-i in my life, but I played a lot of CD-ROM games in my childhood, so I have a strange nostalgia to this style, I guess? Even the little details — like showing the cutscenes as transparent videos at the top of the game, and stopping the music to play the voices because of the limitations of CDs — were made to be the most faithful possible. I don't know if the CD-i could run a game like this, but you can easily pass a screenshot of Arzette by a 90s CD game. What was once technical limitation, here becomes a strong and well-made design.

Sword swings and secrets

Another inheritance of its inspirations, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore plays as a side-scroller 2D platformer and Arzette's sword is the main way to interact with the world, for killing enemies or just talking to the locals — I love how they explain it on the lore with the concept of a sword that knows who is good or bad. The combat in the game was the weakest mechanic for me: too simple to be interesting, it felt more like obstacles than a fun challenge to overcome.

In the Normal Mode, fighting was just obnoxious and it was too easy to die and restart the screen. But, in Casual Mode, you get so many heart pick-ups that it's virtually impossible to die if you spam the sword button. There's no real "middle" option, with some challenge and some pick-ups, you know? At the end, I just stayed in Casual Mode to not be too much frustrated and focused on the other aspects of the gameplay.

Exploration was the key to fun in Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore. The game is structured like a metroidvania — where you are constantly getting new abilities to reach more parts of the world — but in linear small levels instead of a big, interconnected map. Some levels have boss fights that give you jewel shards, other ones have a light beacon that opens new levels, and some of them have just important items to collect. Every new equipment you get (like the a "color magic" gun that can shoot red or blue things) opens, at least, 2 or 3 new paths in different levels (e.g. red blocks are only destroyed by red magic).

The most strange in this concept is how much you need to repeat the levels to get all the items you need during the adventure. I had to go to Durridin Forest, the first proper level, at least 6 times, each time looking for a specific obstacle that now I could get through. There are some shortcuts, and you start to get really powerful to just ignore (even more) the enemies, but this backtracking of linear levels starts to get boring at the end, even though the stages themselves are not that large.

All that said, getting more powerful is more organic than I expected. Instead of a experience bar or a generic skill tree, every upgrade or weapon is hidden somewhere, or offered by an NPC if you help them. It's fun to remember who needed an oil, or where I can use this special key, and then get rewarded for that. It makes this charismatic world even more alive and creates an interesting narrative that gives you more purpose to revisit a level than just finding another collectable.

And just as a side note, each stage also has a bonus level that gives you more Rubies (yes, it's the same currency as the Zelda CD-i games), and they are just really fun! You have some that are more common like breaking targets or solving a maze, but nothing has prepared me for a HOTEL MARIO MINIGAME! Yes, the only Mario game released for the CD-i had Mario and Luigi closing doors on "Bowser's hotel chain", and they just made it as a bonus level on Arzette. Who knew Hotel Mario would get fan service one day, right?

Fans does what companies don't want to do. ROM hacks, ports, fan games, spiritual successors: doesn't matter if it's a famous oldie or a cult classic, people will remember those stories forever. But Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore isn't about remembering what was good, but imagining a future where the bad things never happened. They not only understood what the Zelda CD-i games had to offer, but used it as a foundation to build an original and impressive adventure. If this is what we can get by giving the bad games of the past a second chance, I'm totally on board for more redeeming in the future.