In terms of gameplay alone, Tarzan feels nearly identical to Disney's earlier videogame titles. Veteran gamers will immediately recognize the game's play mechanics and style. Tarzan needs to complete multiple levels, and in order to do so he must dash from one end of a level to the other, all while he defeats enemies, swings from vines and jumps over bottomless pits.

As Tarzan runs though the stages, he collects coins, 100 of which earn him a free life. In order to destroy his opponents, Tarzan hurls fruit their way, and ultimately annihilates the evil creatures after several well placed hits. As he explores the jungle, Tarzan collects a few types different colored fruits. The rarer the fruit, the more damage it inflicts on enemies. Besides more traditional side scrolling sequences, a few levels offer primarily 3D control, such as a couple of chase scenes and bonus levels. In addition to fruit, Tarzan wields a knife, which proves useless in many levels but quite valuable in a couple of select ones. To add a little gameplay variety, the player occasionally controls characters other than Tarzan, although the style of play remains similar for each.

Tarzan also can grab bonus items which allow the player to view a movie clip at any time or play a bonus stage. After Tarzan completes a level, the game calculates the percentage of items he discovered in the stage and offers the choice to go back and hunt for more secrets in an earlier level, or continue the adventure. Tarzan allows the player to explore any given area an unlimited number of times, and hence encourages a thorough search of each stage. Overall, the gameplay possesses a solid, 2D platform feel.

While the play mechanics nearly match those of older platform games in every conceivable way, the graphics exhibit a curious paradox. As with most games in their time, Disney's 16-bit games all consisted of hand drawn sprites (and in the case of Disney games, highly detailed ones). Yet, Tarzan's designers utilized the PlayStation's polygon rendering power not to give Tarzan a radically different look, but rather to model the graphics of the 16-bit titles as accurately as possible, only with polygons rather than sprites. The result is a game that looks remarkably 2D from a cursory glance but actually contains a completely 3D world along with a camera that spins, rotates and zooms around Tarzan as he searches levels. While older titles such as Pandemonium and Klonoa employed similar "2D gameplay in a 3D world" techniques, Tarzan's appearance resembles a sprite-based game much more closely than any previous title. It comes across as quite ironic that only now do machines display enough polygons to accurat ely mimic a supposedly arcane style of graphics.

But just because the graphics appear two-dimensional does not mean they exhibit no detail. On the contrary, unlike many polygonal games, the environments and characters appear smooth and natural, rather than rough and robotic. The characters and levels showcase qualities such as smooth animation and plenty of background touches, sometimes even too many. Tons of animals occupy each level, and while the resulting scenes look quite nice, the wide array of onscreen characters makes it difficult to decide which characters truly pose a threat and which simply decorate the background. Thus, the player must learn and memorize the location of each specific enemy, or waste a good deal of time attempting to slaughter benign creatures. Also, the camera sometimes moves at inconvenient moments, such as when Tarzan tries to attack an enemy or clear a long jump. In addition to the background detail, the cut scenes (straight from the movie) that play before Tarzan explores a new level look quite nice with minimal graininess.

For the most part, the sound blends into the background. The generally quiet music consists of drum beats as well as a few other instruments. The characters' in-game voices come across as average, though Tarzan's yelps and screams can irritate after a while. As mentioned, since the cut scenes actually come directly from the movie, they indeed sound identical to the voices in the actual film.

Tarzan does suffer from several problems that prevent the game from achieving the status of a truly great title. The occasionally strange camera angles sometimes disguise the appearance of a path. For example, an item such as a vine will seemingly hang directly in front of Tarzan, yet he cannot reach it. As with the animals, the player can only learn which items Tarzan can actually touch though a good deal of trial and error. While not a huge problem, the initial hunt-and-peck requirement does slow the game's pace to an extent. Tarzan also encounters cheap hits from time to time, especially from creatures such as birds that gang up on him. An experienced player can beat the game in a day or so, though earning a 100% on each level demands a great deal of time and patience and thankfully enhances the replay value. The controls, while solid overall, do feel inconsistent at times. Tarzan will perform a jump with ease one time, and experience incredible difficulty when attempting to make the same jump la ter on, such as when the player re-explores a level.