Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
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 Squadala! We're off to the game that CD-i Zelda should've been!
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Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is an adventure video game published by Limited Run Games and developed by Seedee Eye Software and was released on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 4 and 5 on February 14th, 2024.
It is also a spiritual successor to Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Link: The Faces of Evil, both of which were initially released on the Phillips CD-i in 1993.
Premise
Ten years have passed since the defeat of Daimur, the evil demon king, at the hands of Dail, King Rahkin, and Princess Arzette, and peace had been reigning over Faramore ever since then.
However, the traitorous Duke Nodelki, who was sentenced to cleaning up floors in Faramore for his betrayal, freed Daimur from the Book of Faramore, the latter had scattered the Book's Jewel into 5 pieces and entrusted them to his minions, including Nodelki, who traded his soul for his loyalty to the demon king.
Daimur used the pieces of the Jewel to seize control of all of Faramore, and Princess Arzette sets out on an adventure to retrieve the Jewel pieces, defeat Daimur and his minions, and free Faramore from his malice once again.
Why It's Not Boring
- This game is a love letter to the aforementioned CD-i Zelda games as the cutscenes are intentionally poorly animated (in a good way) and there are many nods to not only those games, but also other common sources in YouTube Poop in general.
- Unlike the Zelda games on CD-i, the gameplay is vastly improved as the controls are now far more fluid, what you can or can't jump onto is much easier to tell, and the combat is a lot more balanced in terms of difficulty.
- The voice acting is intentionally cheesy, and yet, many of the voice actors delivered their lines extremely well, and the cast consists not only of Jeffry Rath and Bonnie Jean Wilbur, respective voices of Link and Zelda in the CD-i games, but also various actors who took part in other games and/or anime.
- The background in levels is beautifully hand-painted and most of the platforms don't confusingly blend with it.
- The soundtrack is an absolute banger, and is composed by Button Masher, who is a YouTuber mostly known for doing 8 bit or 16 bit covers of various video games.
- Unlike the CD-i Zelda games, the plot in this game is a lot deeper and has more context rather than having exposition after exposition.
- The cast of characters is very memorable as it includes the main cast such as Arzette, the princess of Faramore, Dail, a retired hero, Wogram, the king's advisor, and King Rahkin, ruler of Faramore, as well as various NPCs you stumble upon as you progress, including Mortar, a shopkeeper inspired by Morshu from Link: The Faces Of Evil.
- The minigames are very fun to go through and they're a direct reference to Hotel Mario, another Nintendo-based game on the Phillips CD-i.
- This game has a good quantity of bosses and most of them are far more structured and challenging than the ones in the CD-i games were.
- The variety of upgrades is very well-done as you can gain abilities that you couldn't even do in the CD-i games such as dodge, hover, double jump, etc., and you get to rely more than just your sword such as a fairy gun which you can use to destroy different-colored walls and different-colored enemies.
- The game is reasonable priced as the digital version costs $20 and the physical version (while supplies last) costs $34.
Bad Qualities
- Some of the backtracking can be rather tedious when giving certain items to certain NPCs.
- There isn't much challenge in this game, especially if you play it on casual mode.
- The final boss is anti-climatic as you have to go through platforms, dodge fireballs, and defeat Daimur with one hit.
- While hitting the final boss with one hit is understandable due to being a reference to how Ganon dies with one hit in the CD-i games, it's still arbitrary and could've been an improvement over those games.
- The game is rather short as it takes 2 hours to beat the main story or 4 hours if you want to complete all the side quests and get all the upgrades.
Trivia
- When this game was announced at the Limited Run Games Showcase on July 12th, 2023, it exploded in popularity on YouTube as it spawned a vast quantity of YouTube Poops for a while until its YTP hyped died down a month or two later.
- Some popular YTPers such as Geibuchan (known for making The King's Epic Adventure YTP series), Walrusguy, and Jimmy Davis worked on the art and animation for the game.
Reception
The game got received a positive reception for the critics and users. Many reviews are considered the massive improvement over 2 Zelda CD-I games with praise for improving controls, stable difficulty, humor, and the graphics. The Metacritic got a score 77/100