Zenith: The Last City

Zenith: The Last City is a massively multiplayer RPG brought into virtual reality, which arrived on Quest 2 in 2021 from studio Ramen VR. The player creates their own character, explores a fantasy world set amid the ruins of a fallen civilization, and alongside hundreds of other players completes quests, trades at marketplaces, upgrades their gear, and takes part in group boss fights against massive enemies. Combat is controlled purely through hand movement — an archer draws the bowstring with a real gesture, a mage casts spells by waving their palms, and a warrior swings a sword just as they would in reality, giving combat an unusual physicality that a classic flat-screen MMO could never offer. The game also features social spaces where players simply hang out, trade, and plan their next expeditions, similar to hubs in classic MMORPGs.

Technically this was a bold project: maintaining a persistent online world with dozens of simultaneously present avatars on Quest's mobile chip was no easy task, and the launch was plagued by overloaded servers, frame rate drops, and outages, which initially overshadowed an otherwise ambitious concept. Visually the game relies on colorful, stylized fantasy art with open landscapes, ruins, and underground dungeons, complemented by atmospheric orchestral music that underscores the feeling of a vast shared world rather than a solitary adventure.

Despite its rocky start, Zenith gradually earned a reputation as one of the few truly social RPG experiences on the Quest platform, and successive updates have noticeably improved both stability and content. Today it stands as an interesting reminder of how challenging it is to bring the MMORPG genre into mobile VR, and at the same time as one of the few ways to enjoy a long-term shared adventure on the headset with strangers from around the world instead of short arcade matches.

Why play it: For players craving a long-term social VR adventure with strangers from around the world, even though the rocky launch had to be reckoned with, one that subsequent updates have noticeably improved.