Zorro: The Chronicles is a mission-based stealth and action videogame that adapts the swashbuckling adventures of Johnston McCulley’s pulp vigilante hero Zorro, one of the progenitors of the modern superhero. It tells the story of Diego and Ines de la Vega, teenagers living in the 19th century Spanish colony of Nueva California. They live in wealth and comfort in their hacienda but cannot ignore the oppression of poor colonists and indigenous peoples at the hands of the Spanish army led by Captain Monasterio. Donning a black mask, cape, and Cordovan hat, the siblings assume the shared identity of Zorro, a folk hero who disrupts Monasterio’s plots with swashbuckling slapstick and criminal mischief. Choosing to play as either Diego or Ines under Zorro’s mask, I guide them across eighteen missions set in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. The situation grows more dire as the siblings rack up successes against Monasterio, whose efforts to unmask and discredit Zorro grow into a plot that threatens all of Nueva California.
Each stage is selected from a map depicting Nueva California. There isn’t much variety in level scenery. Most take place in warm and friendly cities built in the iconic Spanish Mission style, typified by sun-bleached clay walls and red stucco roofing. A few levels venture into desert towns stereotypical of the Mythic West, with ramshackle wooden shops, taverns, and motels built beside crude plank sidewalks in a red desert, but these are comparatively few.
What does have much more variety is the goals Zorro must accomplish in their chosen mission. Early missions see the vigilante infiltrating Monasterio’s hacienda to steal money back for the overtaxed colonists and rescuing prisoners from makeshift jails. Missions grow in urgency over time, such as when Monasterio frames Zorro for a heist, forcing them to steal the money back in an actual heist to clear their name. The plot culminates in an epic showdown between Zorro and the Spanish army who employ an experimental new weapon to stop their nemesis. The functional differences between these disparate objectives ultimately prove cosmetic. Missions all reduce to running between quest markers and dispatching the soldiers who wait there.
Before they even embark from the map screen, I choose whether it is Diego or Ines who will don Zorro’s disguise and leave for the mission. Once that choice is made, they decide how they will approach the mission: with a Stealth Entry or a Combat Entry. This choice determines where Zorro enters the stage. The Stealth Entry tends to place them in lightly guarded areas where soldiers have their attention focused away from Zorro’s infiltration point, making them easier to creep past. The Combat Entry has Zorro charge in without subtlety, inviting confrontation with Monasterio’s soldiers. Like the differences between mission objectives, these two choices of entry are ultimately cosmetic. Every mission inevitably breaks down into Zorro engaging in mass open combat with the entire local garrison.
Stealth is the more straightforward and uncomplicated of the two approaches to dealing with Monasterio’s soldiers. With the press of a button, Zorro enters a crouching sneak mode that makes them more difficult for patrolling guards to detect. By hiding around corners and behind objects, Zorro can infiltrate most areas with little difficulty. They can also anchor their whip on certain rooftops and lamp posts, pulling themselves up in an instant with tireless strength. Soldiers are surprisingly oblivious to these perches, making them great safe spots to spy upon patrol routes and mission objectives before Zorro makes their next move.
Sometimes the best way to sneak through an area is to dispatch the soldiers guarding it. If Zorro can position themselves directly behind or above a soldier, they can execute a one-hit and silent knockout. Most often, they grab a soldier by the brim of his hat and yank it down their body. It’s a cartoonish action that Zorro seems to be borrowing from the repertoire of a schoolyard bully but it works within the videogame’s slapstick spirit.
Whether because they choose a mission’s Combat Entry or an objective requires them to break stealth and directly confront a group of soldiers, Zorro inevitably gets drawn into direct martial conflict. Though they wield a rapier, they never once cut someone with it. Instead Zorro uses their acrobatic skill and phenomenal swordsmanship to humiliate Monasterio’s soldiers into docility and surrender.
Combat controls are simple. Zorro can swing their rapier at the nearest soldier with rapid presses of the attack button. Using the stun button swings the whip at a soldier, briefly disrupting their actions. The most important button is the counter. When soldiers move in to attack, an empty circle appears above their head whose center rapidly fills. Pressing the counter button just as the circle fills completely causes Zorro to counter their attack.
In many cases, a counter will simply deflect the soldier’s attack. If Zorro is instead positioned between a soldier and an obstacle, the vigilante will use their opponent’s momentum to trip them up and send them tumbling into that obstacle. Nearby walls, lampposts, trees, support columns, fountains, haystacks, barrels, crates, or edges can all be exploited in this way. Their impact is accompanied by exaggerated pratfalls and cartoonish sound effects.
Most useful of all, these counters are a one-hit knockout. Soldiers are surprisingly resilient to basic strikes from Zorro’s rapier, taking many hits before they fall onto their butt and stop fighting. This matters little when nearly every soldier Zorro fights may be defeated with careful positioning and a well-timed counterattack.
During combat, I must be conscious of Zorro’s two primary attributes. Hearts are the most obvious, representing their remaining health. If Zorro takes too many hits and runs out of hearts, they will run from the mission for their own safety and have to try again from the last checkpoint. Hearts are plentiful in smashable crates strewn across every level. Zorro frequently sends soldiers into these crates during counters, so any lost health is recovered from their wreckage almost without notice.
The more significant and unique attribute is Zorro’s lightning bolts. These meters slowly fill with every action Zorro takes in combat; the more skillfully they fight, the faster the lightning bolts fill. Lightning bolts may be expended at any time to instantly knock out any soldier. When I trigger one of these Super KOs, my control over the player character is briefly taken away and Zorro: The Chronicles indulges in its most spectacular presentation, zooming the camera in to show its hero humiliating soldiers in cinematic detail.
Zorro hurls their rapier like a spear, pulling a soldier’s hat from their head and pinning it to the ground, then pulls the rapier back into their hands with their whip while the soldiers faints from fright. With a two-fingered whistle, they summon their horse Tornado, who kicks a soldier away with his hindlegs. They hurl a chicken into a soldier’s arms who is immediately smothered by a flock of more angry chickens. Zorro even has unique Super KOs depending on whether Diego or Ines wears the mask; Diego makes an elegant bow, inviting a soldier to charge, then sends them flying as he rises, while Ines embraces a soldier in a sensuous dance before hurling them away with a swat across the back. And, of course, there are many special attacks where Zorro etches their iconic Z symbol into a soldier’s shirt or the seat of their pants.
Super KOs are fun and flashy to start and grow in importance as Zorro progresses through the eighteen missions. The ordinary soldiers that mob most maps are joined by more elite ones over time. Soldiers carrying shields can block most of Zorro’s attacks unless they are attacked from behind. Soldiers carrying spears can interrupt all of Zorro’s attack with damaging pokes until their weapons are pulled from their hands by the whip. Late in the campaign, swordmasters enter the fray who are frustratingly immune to almost all forms of attack and, most dangerous of all, their sword swings cannot be countered. The most efficient way to deal with all of these problems is to build up Zorro’s lightning bolt charges on regular soldiers and use them to instantly knock out the elites as soon as they appear.
Hearts and lightning bolts are the main difference between Diego and Ines. Diego, the more skillful fighter, gets an extra lightning bolt, while Ines has her toughness represented by an extra hit point. This is a nice reversal of how videogames often oversimplify the differences between men and women, depicting male player characters as slow and tough and female player characters as fast and fragile.
This balance is undermined by a specific advantage granted only to Diego. Zorro learns an advanced ability that lets him defeat multiple enemies at once in exchange for an equivalent number of lightning bolts. Diego’s unique advantage is he always gets an extra knockout from the bargain; where Ines exchanges two lightning bolts for two soldiers, Diego exchanges two for three. Ines’ extra heart is useful in the early missions. By the campaign’s latter half, Diego has gained enough extra hearts that his constitutional disadvantage is no longer felt. His more efficient use of lightning bolts has no equivalent offset to make Ines a more compelling choice. It’s disappointing to see a videogame offer its female player character a subversion of norms only to make that subversion irrelevant through other mechanics advantaging their counterpart.
Zorro learns new abilities and expands their hearts and lightning bolts in exchange for Zorro Points. Aside from improving their attributes and the efficiency of the lightning bolts, Zorro can also spend points to improve their default fighting abilities. Their repertoire is basic to start. A few upgrades let them pull soldiers in for a hit with their whip, throw sticks of dynamite back to their hurlers, and use their full weight to elbow soldiers into obstacles. Each new ability is specialized, perhaps to such excess that the specialized moments which call for them rarely arise. Countering attacks to instantly defeat soldiers using the environment and build up lightning bolt charges is the main tactic used in Zorro’s first mission and the main tactic used in their last.
Zorro Points are earned for defeating soldiers and completing objectives in each mission. The primary goal of each mission is good for a handful of points. To really earn enough Zorro Points to buy all of Zorro’s upgrades, they must scour each map for all the bonus challenges. Entering certain areas in each map will reveal localized challenges like knocking soldiers into fountains, knocking out a specific soldier without being detected, or even for using the target marking ability from stealth, an ability which is otherwise of no use whatsoever. Successfully completing these objectives rewards Zorro with a jackpot of Zorro points. Each map also contains a handful of blank posters. Finding and inscribing these posters with a mockery of Monasterio and his allies is also good for a handful of points.
These bonus objectives are the main source of longevity in Zorro: The Chronicles. Challenges are unmarked on the map and interface. The only way to find them is to step into the right area. The zones where they may be completed are quite large so it’s not difficult to find every challenge in a mission by taking the time to wander around. Posters are more difficult. They are often placed in corners Zorro has little reason to visit or require an indirect sequence of whip pulls to reach. It’s nice that there’s a reason to replay some missions if I feel inclined but Zorro earns plenty of points to buy all of their upgrades before they reach the final mission through casual exploration of each map. Completing every challenge and vandalizing every poster is only needed for achievement chasers.
I believe the videogame I have described thus far is a competent one. Its scope is limited but its few components should come together to create a videogame about a playful and admirably bloodlust-free vigilante. Where it has major problems is these many components don’t interlock into a cohesive experience. In terms of performance and “gamefeel,” that nebulous sensation within a player that reacts to how a videogame’s many systems are interacting, Zorro: The Chronicles struggles.
I feel it most in stealth. Sneaking through a level inevitably requires Zorro to whip their way up to the edge of a building or balcony and creep along its railing. Zorro’s feet cling to the railing like claws, which is good for moving without falling, but becomes a problem when I actually need them to get off. Many soldiers turn and spot Zorro before I’m able to persuade them to jump off their perch.
Combat also feels consistently wrong. I never struggle to get Zorro to target specific enemies even in large groups or to execute specific actions. Fighting never feels unfair or unbalanced. If anything, Zorro is overpowered in a delightfully entertaining way. Where it feels wrong is Zorro seems to jerk and flash as they switch from target to target, as though the animations are trying to keep up with the speed of the action and the prompts from my controller. Once Zorro begins their attacks, something in the visuals and audio also feels absent. Their rapier should flash. Their whip should crack. I sense these effects happening, but I don’t truly feel them.
Zorro: The Chronicles is an adaptation of an animated series that aired in the mid 2010s. I had never heard of it prior to writing this review and have not seen any episodes. I believe I may still make a few observations about how it is adapted into a videogame.
Where it is most successful is in its playfulness. The slapstick-heavy combat, where Zorro is never in any true danger and never actually harms anyone, feels authentic to a television show aimed at children and families. I also admire Ines participating as Diego’s full and equal partner in the Zorro masquerade. My impression of the show is she only occasionally dons the costume as a distraction and Diego, as in most other Zorro adaptations, is the main protagonist and true hero behind the mask.
Where fans of the cartoon may be disappointed is how it actually utilizes its source material. This is an eerily silent videogame. Diego and Ines never speak a word. Only Monasterio gets dialog and it is limited to hammily shouting his foe’s name when he habitually enters a building to discover Zorro has dispatched his soldiers and absconded with his riches. I also get the impression that the colonists and indigenous peoples the Spanish army oppresses are large parts of the show. In the videogame, they appear for a brief second in the opening cutscene, which appears to be footage borrowed from the show, then never appear again. One mission objective is to save the sibling’s imprisoned Aunt Tainah, who is dressed in native garb, but the nature of their relationship is never elaborated. Tainah has no lines. The videogame seems to borrow the show’s visual aesthetics and general premise more than its actual plot and characters. Fans of the show, which aired for just one season more than five years before the release of the videogame, may be disappointed.
Zorro: The Chronicles has all the essential elements of a good videogame. Its premise is simple: Guide Zorro through a simple level to complete an objective. Repeat eighteen times to win. There is enough variety in these objectives to keep the campaign interesting and it ends right as its objectives start to become repetitive. The more minute components that enable these objectives, from the stealth to the combat to the discoveries for exploring each mission’s unique sandbox, are creatively assembled. Dispatching large groups of soldiers, sometimes more than a dozen at a time in the most perilous situations, is especially satisfying and, thanks to the slapstick combat, often funny.
It’s in execution where Zorro: The Chronicles falters. Getting Zorro to accurately respond in the most high-stakes situations is often a gamble. The closer they come to the end of the campaign, the more frequently these situations appear. I believe someone with an open mind could have a good time with Zorro: The Chronicles. It’s a good videogame with good ideas let down by execution, not a bad one created by bad ideas.