Welcome to ParadiZe is an action roleplaying game by EKO Software where you play as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse out in the wilderness. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your time and money.
Welcome to ParadiZe Review Overview
Welcome to ParadiZe Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Easy to Pick Up Great Crafting Mechanics and Large Skill Tree Zombots are a Fun and Creative Addition |
Boring as Heck Base-Building is Meh Some Assets Just Look Bad |
Welcome to ParadiZe Overall - 62/100
Despite its promise of a zany zombie-mulching experience, Welcome to ParadiZe was anything but. I appreciate the game's expansive skill tree and admittedly convenient fast-travel system, but its base-building and combat mechanics felt half-alive. The Zombot was a creative addition that I haven’t seen any other zombie game utilize to this extent, but the game’s slow pacing and general lack of stakes prevent it from being interesting. I didn’t think ripping through the undead would be this bland.
Welcome to ParadiZe Story - 6/10
Welcome to ParadiZe spins a tale as old as 2009. With wisecracking survivors and guns galore, this game’s story and setting are eerily reminiscent of Zombieland’s, but with half the fun and none of the charm. The plot is convoluted and hard to follow, told almost exclusively through stylized cutscenes and boring missions. It is by no means a smooth experience, which is okay for the apocalypse, but not so good for game design.
Welcome to ParadiZe Gameplay - 7/10
Welcome to ParadiZe’s gameplay is a mixed bag of innovative ideas and lackluster game design. While the Zombots themselves provide a novelty to the game’s progression, the monotony of the game’s missions and base-building prevent it from being the game’s saving grace. Overall, despite there being a lot to do in this game, there’s no charm or urgency to be had, resulting in an overwhelmingly boring experience.
Welcome to ParadiZe Visuals - 6/10
Welcome to ParadiZe’s visuals are decent, although it’s nothing I haven’t already seen from modern zombie media. I like the stylized cutscenes enough to bump up this game’s overall score in this regard, although it’s not as cohesive with the rest of the game’s setting enough to be memorable. Don’t get me wrong, I like the hyper-capitalistic air about it all, it just doesn’t fit with the hard wilderness you’re going to spend most of your time in.
Welcome to ParadiZe Audio - 7/10
Any piece of zombie media is only as good as its audio because no zombie hunt is complete without a sick tune to exemplify the horror. This game’s audio is pretty darn good, consisting of banjo music and rock and roll riffs. The voice acting is rife with boring deliveries and ghoulish voices though, so it’s not the best I’ve seen.
Welcome to ParadiZe Value for Money - 5/10
$40 is a tall ask considering how boring this game gets between missions. You’re better off buying a different zombie game with better mechanics than spending that much money on Welcome to ParadiZe. Granted, fans of the genre wouldn’t be disappointed by this game’s aesthetics and general zombie-ness— it’s just not a very fun game to play apart from that and one trick does not a Zombot make.
Welcome to ParadiZe Review: Yawn of the Dead
Getting into it, I didn’t know what to expect from Welcome to ParadiZe. Would it have the resource management and combat of State of Decay 2? Would it have the gritty realism and punishing difficulty of Project Zomboid? Maybe some of the self-aware comedy and American capitalism from Back 4 Blood? Well, the short and ugly answer is none of that. Literally. There’s nothing.
Well, to cut the game some slack, there is something. All the defining features of other zombie media that I mentioned earlier were present in the game, just not to the degree that it’s actually there. Bits and pieces of everything are strewn about with a pretty weak gameplay loop stringing it together. All of these contribute to a game that has a lot of moving parts but feels like a nothing burger at the end of the day. Let’s dive into this game’s innards and find out what these parts are and why they end up amounting to…not much.
It’s hard to pinpoint what Welcome to ParadiZe’s gameplay loop is exactly since you’re mostly just roaming around and killing zombies. I suppose you can go home and get your gear upgraded, perhaps build a building or two, but if that’s all there is then you can see why it gets tiring real quick. If you’re not out crushing undead skulls with your weapons, you’re out completing quests for NPCs around the map. Quest variety is at an all-time low, comprising of fetch quests, extermination requests, or perhaps the most boring of all, quests that just ask you to go to places.
And go places you will because this game’s map is large enough to get lost in but not quite the size to be an open world. It’s conveniently divided into several biomes with differing temperature mechanics and aesthetics, but that’s pretty much the only difference. Zombies are scattered around this map for you to take out and, for the most part, they’re easy to deal with if you’ve got a ranged weapon. I’m not sure if it’s by design, but melee combat can be a mess because the camera is fixed and cannot be rotated. It’s easy to misjudge the angle of your swing and be overrun by zombies, but dying isn’t really an issue.
Yeah, dying in a zombie game isn’t an issue. You can just respawn back at your base or somewhere nearby. You won’t lose anything but your EXP, but every zombie drops a hundred or so, so you’re not going to be parched for level-ups. This is good for the newbies but horribly unfun for people who usually play survival games for their difficulty. The stakes are low and the pace is slow; that’s why I am not having as much fun as I wanted in the apocalypse.
It’s not just me, though. I swear that the NPCs aren’t having any fun either — at least that’s what I can tell from their dialogue and delivery. Welcome to ParadiZe features full voice acting for its NPCs and cutscenes, though you’re going to wish it didn’t. A bad delivery is at least memorable, but a so-so one won’t even linger in your brain long enough for a zombie to taste it.Sad as it is to say, none of the performances really stood out to me, not even for me to be mad about it.
That’s not to say that this game has no good points, however, as it does have a few that I’m quite fond of. I just wish they weren’t surrounded by such mediocrity, but what’s done is done. The Zombot was a great idea that the game implemented rather well. To the uninitiated, the Zombot is essentially a zombie that you’re controlling through a headset. You can program it to do things in and out of combat, as well as dress it up with all sorts of decorations to customize how it functions on the field.
You can also install pylons in your base to control more Zombots for the purpose of manual labor. They’ll pick up resources for you and even attack their fellow undead as long as that’s what you programmed them to do. I like this a lot because it’s creative. The game puts a lot of emphasis on this mechanic, maybe a bit too much considering how the rest of the game’s just lacking in most respects.
I also enjoy its massive skill tree and crafting system. The skill tree covers your survival, combat, and Zombot controlling aspects, improving your survivor’s capacity as you wade through the corpses. You level up quickly enough in this game and your points can be respecced for free whenever you want, so that’s a plus. As for the crafting system, it’s nothing fancy, though I don’t think it has to be. I like it when games lean into simplicity and make it accessible to everyone.
As for the story, the only thing I can say is — and I want this to be taken as a joke more than anything — this game tries a bit too hard to be Zombieland. Yes, that Zombieland. From the capitalism jokes to the random infographics on the screen, it’s clear to see where the inspiration came from. I can also see some influence from the PvZ franchise and Dead Rising seeping into this game, with the zombie technology being a hodgepodge of real tech and random junk a la Dr. Zomboss. While it’s not a sin to be inspired by other works, not putting that inspiration to good use is, and this game really dropped the ball.
That’s all I have to say about Welcome to ParadiZe. It’s a hodgepodge of good and bad ideas held together with middling execution. It’s not a bad game per se, just not I’d put more hours into it unless I have to.
Pros of Welcome to ParadiZe
| Things Welcome to ParadiZe Got Right |
|---|
|
Easy to Pick Up Great Crafting Mechanics and Large Skill Tree Zombots are a Fun and Creative Addition |
Easy to Pick Up
Although this game’s an RPG set in the zombie apocalypse, it’s about as easy as you can imagine to play. There’s nothing fancy about the crafting system and the skill tree, although massive, isn’t at all complicated. Base-building is a bit basic—pardon the pun—-but that helps newbies get into the game better. The Zombot, despite its creative premise, is extremely easy to operate and just does what it’s supposed to by itself. All in all, the only question you’re going to be asking with this game is what to do next, not how to do it.
Great Crafting Mechanics and Large Skill Tree
This game’s crafting isn’t the most complex in the world and I think that’s a good thing. Too many survival RPGs are bogged down by crafting mechanics nowadays, often losing the essence of the main game or wrecking its pacing entirely. Welcome to ParadiZe adheres to a crafting recipe formula that’s as simple to understand as it is to build. More to its credit, there are also plenty of quality-of-life inclusions in its crafting system like quantity sliders and a multi-junking function that makes it easier to move stuff around.
As for the game’s skill tree, it’s expansive, branching, and easy to understand. Percentage-based stat increases and simply-described passives are about as complex as it gets. More to that, all skill points can be reallocated for free whenever you want, so it’s never too hard a commitment to try a build just for fun. Together, these two make this game a great RPG game, just maybe not a good zombie RPG game.
Zombots are a Fun and Creative Addition
I really like how they implemented the Zombot because it feels like your very own customizable servant is running errands while you dispatch the living dead. They can be programmed to do a whole plethora of functions and can fill in any role as long as you have the right equipment to give them. For example, the so-called "Social Distancing Zombot" wears spikey armor, wields a bat, and is programmed to taunt enemy zombies away from you. The "Emotional Support" Zombot has a saddle to carry you with, as well as an order to heal you while in combat.
I’m not sure if it’s been done before, but this is a neat addition to an otherwise unimpressive game.
Cons of Welcome to ParadiZe
| Things That Welcome to ParadiZe Can Improve |
|---|
|
Boring as Heck Base-Building is Meh Some Assets Just Look Bad |
Boring as Heck
It just is. None of its moving parts fit together very well, although they are, individually, acceptable. The game’s pacing is in your hands, but the tedium will force you out of a gaming session before long. The quests are monotonous, the NPCs don’t sound like they’re having fun, and the base-building isn’t interesting enough to warrant a spotlight. If not for its RPG elements, this would make for a pretty abysmal game in terms of entertainment value.
Base-building is Meh
To elaborate more on the game’s poor base-building, we can talk about how easy everything is to set up. You can make a base pretty much anywhere in the wilderness which is great, but this also forces you to contour any setup to the lay of the land—which is, as may expect, not very organized at all. Furthermore, the game’s power system isn’t a hurdle or challenge that you have to worry about because all you need is a pylon, a wooded area, and a wood burner. You’re golden after that. Apart from storage and upgrades, there really isn’t a reason to build a base in this game.
Some Assets Just Look Bad
Oh, it’s atrocious! I was thrilled to see that I can craft weapons and armor out of scraps in this game but they look absolutely horrendous. In particular, I want to talk about the Forest Armor, which is made out of rope, wood, and leaves. I was expecting something more substantial than tied-on bark, a headdress, and a loincloth, but that’s all this armor set has and it looks downright laughable.
The weapons themselves look fine, although their upgraded variants don’t look much different from their base forms. Finally, the buildings—oh, the buildings—they’re just not what I expected from a zombie RPG. This isn’t a matter of expectations not being met, they just look unreal and out-of-place for the setting. Ivy-covered wood over tall stilts and wooden structures? Where’s my scrapheap of metal? Where are all the OSHA violations?
Is Welcome to ParadiZe Worth It?
Yes, But Only if You’re a Fan of Zombie Media
I can’t recommend this game to someone who’s looking to play it for its RPG elements. Although they are great and are the stars of the show, the game’s poorly executed zombie elements will drag them down into the muck. Even if you end up buying this game against your better judgment, it’s only $40, so you won’t be breaking the bank for it. That being said, I suggest finding better zombie games to fill your time.
| Platforms | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 Xbox |
 PlayStation |
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| $39.99 | ||||||
Welcome to ParadiZe Overview & Premise
Welcome to ParadiZe tells the tale of yet another survivor of the zombie apocalypse, this time set in a world where the undead can be subjugated through technology and put to good use. ParadiZe is a community of survivors that ended up doing exactly that, although your survivor might be a bit to the party because there’s naught but wilderness left ParadiZe.
Welcome to ParadiZe FAQ
Which Skill Should I Level-Up First in Welcome to ParadiZe?
Your first few skill points should be used to increase your overall health and stamina to allow easier traversal across the map. Early game zombies are easy enough to kill that it isn't necessary to allocate skill points for additional weapon damage. Both the skills necessary to increase health and stamina are available in the Survival tab of your skill tree.
Which Zombot Configuration is the Best in Welcome to ParadiZe?
The best Zombot configuration depends on what you want to accomplish. For a more combat-focused Zombot, the Social Distancing Zombot would be the best setup. The instructions for this setup can be found before the bridge crossing over to the Wild Forest, next to a pylon of zombots.
For a more support-oriented role, the Emotional Support Zombot is a good early setup. The instructions for this setup can be found in the south-easter side of the forest, next to the ruins of a bus crash.
Game8 Reviews
Welcome to ParadiZe Product Information
 |
|
| Title | WELCOME TO PARADIZE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 29, 2024 |
| Developer | Eko Software |
| Publisher | Nacon |
| Supported Platforms | PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, Survival, RPG |
| Number of Players | 1-4 |
| ESRB Rating | T |
| Official Website | Welcome to ParadiZe Website |
