Character action games have become one of the most popular genres in gaming and HoYoverse has put together one of the strongest in recent years with Zenless Zone Zero. Unfortunately, the company’s signature gacha game mechanics hold it back in a big way.
HoYoverse exploded into the Western gaming world with Genshin Impact in 2020. The open-world RPG was an instant hit but it hasn’t held up all that well over time for many players. The horrible UI on consoles was never improved, and the rudimentary movesets of free-to-play characters means that players have to basically pay their way into having fun.
The studio, to its credit, has seemingly learned from all of those issues. Zenless Zone Zero is proof of that but, for whatever reason, it often chooses to hide its greatest strengths.
The Good:
- Satisfying and hard-hitting combat, even at the free-to-play level
- Does an admirable job imitating Atlus’ look and feel
The Bad:
- Unwieldy, menu-heavy UI
- Brutally boring “explore” commissions
Review Details:
- What Platform Did the Reviewer Play On?: PlayStation 5
- Platforms Available: PlayStation 5, Mobile, PC
- Official Release Date: July 4, 2024
Zenless Zone Zero can bring the boom
While Genshin Impact is an undeniably successful game, players who pick it up in 2024 and don’t immediately max out their credit card aren’t going to have fun. The game’s menus are indecipherable without hours of playing. Much worse, the free-to-play characters just aren’t very fun to play with.
The cynical read on this would be that HoYoverse actively tried to keep the fun behind a paywall. The more generous appraisal is that the studio has simply gotten better over time. The state of Zenless Zone Zero at launch certainly suggests that there’s something to that latter possibility.
Though it’s still definitively a gacha game, Zenless Zone Zero offers some of the most satisfying action RPG combat in a long while.
The mechanics aren’t unique. Players put together a party of three characters, with each one having a defined role and moveset. There are light attacks, heavy attacks, and an ultimate with two general strategies to combat. Teams can focus on stunning enemies to deliver amplified damage or on applying element-based status effects for repeated bursts of damage. There are also parry and dodge mechanics that add a Soulslike feel, but the lack of a stamina bar keeps things casual-friendly.
Capping all this is a high degree of polish. Special attacks feel impactful, weighty, and satisfying. This is especially the case with big counterattacks, with parries and ripostes looking and sounding devastating.
Where the game really shines is with its characters. All characters, even the free-to-play ones, have their own look and feel. In a marked separation from Genshin Impact, there isn’t really any distinction between the common A-rank characters and the rarer S-rank ones.
Every character has striking animations and a distinctive look, even if they’re not attached to a limited banner. In fact the base free-to-play DPS, Billy, is possibly more fun than S-rank alternatives like Nekomata and Ellen. This makes for a roundly strong experience on the battlefield, but players don’t actually spend much time there.
ZZZ’s strength is its combat, but there’s strangely little of it
Zenless Zone Zero has three general styles of gameplay. Combat is the game’s strength, while the game also has a Persona-like “life sim” component where the player character can hang out with party members and improve relations with them for rewards. This can be enjoyable and helps develop the game’s lore, but it’s short-lived at launch due to the limited number of characters.
Then there are explore and story missions, which singlehandedly derail much of the game.
HoYoverse was clearly concerned regarding the lack of a true environment in Zenless Zone Zero. In reality, there are a few maps for combat and a handful of small levels where the life sim part of the game plays out. When story moments call for the player to take their squad into a construction area destroyed by a rampaging robot or a haunted manor, there’s the “exploration” gameplay.
Exploration gameplay shows literal profile pictures for the characters involved moving across a grid, with each square appearing as a television. Players have to move around and complete certain objectives but there’s no real challenge or intrigue to this. There are switches to flip and squares to avoid, but that’s it. Much worse is that HoYoverse fell into the classic RPG pitfall of replacing actual challenges with simply making things take a long time.
This isn’t just a small, avoidable part of the game, either. The game’s entire story plays out in this way and ends up as a brutal slog as a result. It’s also a major component in the grind to acquire resources for building characters.
Though Zenless Zone Zero’s combat is very good, the exploration gameplay takes up a significant amount of time, and the game suffers badly as a result. This might be improved over time but at launch, it drags down the experience in a profound way.
The Bottom Line: Zenless Zone Zero’s combat is excellent but attaching story and progression to the agonizingly boring “explore” gameplay bogs down the entire experience.
Score: 6/10
