Just how many live service games can a developer support? For Hoyoverse, the now-multi-national company that once brandished themselves under the slogan of “tech otaku saves the world”, the answer to that is the ambiguous “yes”.
Zenless Zone Zero marks the third free-to-play RPG with gacha elements that is available on mobile, PC and on PlayStation by this developer. With a slick new aesthetic theme, urban style, and a new flavour of gameplay, juiced-up character action paired with dungeon crawling, Zenless Zone Zero delivers a fresh new experience that’s different enough from the developer’s current offerings. But more importantly, it’s much more confident on being itself, and that self-actualisation really has produced one impressively juicy gameplay loop. So juicy that it’s likely bad for you if you overconsume.
Presentation
There’s no question about it. ZZZ is stylish as it could ever be. The urban theme gives the devs an opportunity to bring in contemporary design as well as neo-retro aesthetics from the 1990s-2000s with some sprinkles of sci-fi and near-futurism here and there. From the playable characters all having drip to the slick presentation of most of its menus. The background having slow scrolls of text and imagery ala arcade games of the 90s. It’s all good stuff.
That said, the text box is weird. Sometimes the text overflows and you can’t scroll down. Sometimes the text doesn’t match the voice acting (Inter-Knot on text, but “Proxy Network” when voice. Also, there are instances of text saying Internet instead of Inter-Knot which I’m still unsure if it’s a mistake or those two are different). The localisation team might need to do more magic to fit the text in some of those tiny boxes that players might just skim or skip.
ZZZ isn’t an elaborate open world game. Rather, you get to explore small maps that makes up New Eridu. And combat missions are mostly represented as a dungeon crawler map. This doesn’t feel like a missed opportunity, rather it feels deliberate. The dungeon crawling aesthetic of traversing through CRT TV screens with tiles displaying what’s more or less well-animated gifs is actually brilliant. The city feels cosy and intimate rather than sprawling yet sparse. And that neighbourly feeling where you know a specific part of town very well is what the game wants you to feel, and it works.
The combat arena could use more variety. I know the Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 maps are supposed to read as “abandoned metro” and “construction site” respectively, but to me it’s just “abandoned construction site 1” and “abandoned construction site 2 (colour palette change)” to me. It’s too samey. The Chapter 3 map is a nice change of pace, and I hope the upcoming Chapters mix things up like this. It’s very distinct compared to the previous two.
Audio-wise the game’s on point too. The soundtrack is an eclectic mix of hip-hop, EDM, and even some smooth jazz. With some spattering of breakbeat that will make junglists head nod to the beat in approval. The English voice-overs have that anime-ish delivery but nothing that feels overly cringe. It’s enough that I can tolerate the combat barks of these characters. There’s good use of sound cues too. Play enough of this game and you might have a Pavlovian response on hearing the ding of a hi-hat as it’s the prompt to dodge or do the game’s equivalent of a parry.
While the character animations during combat and in the menus are elaborately stylish, their animations during the talky bits is a bit underwhelming. Most of them not being as expressive. It’s fine to have a limited amount and reusing them but the lack of facial expression to match the dialogue being uttered made me look away from the screen when story details are explained. That being said, when the game does splurge the budget with cinematics, and when the game spend a little bit more with bespoke comic strip drawings, that’s where I am locked in and engaged with its storytelling.
It’s clear Hoyoverse knows what they are doing when presenting this game.
Gameplay
In Zenless Zone Zero, the city of New Eridu operates like any regular city. Though it has regularly been hit with this anomaly called the Hollow. This can appear and swallow a particular part of the city, and it’s filled with enemies called Ethereals. Enter the Hallow, and it’s all a maze of repeating-looking areas and if you can’t get out in time, or don’t have the tolerance for the Ether substance which is part of the anomaly, then you’re basically dead. In order to safely navigate the Hollows, you need a Carrot map that can guide your way in and out. And those are only available by government-approved Hollow Investigators. For the more enterprising folks that can afford to skirt the laws, they can hire a Proxy.
That’s where you, the player character comes in. You either take control of the two siblings, Wise and Belle. Together they run a videotape rental store, as a side hustle. But in truth they are legendary Proxies, taking comissions to complete jobs that requires one to be in the Hollow.
The fact that I dedicated two paragraphs for a synopsis of Zenless Zone Zero just shows how much setup the world and story requires, and that’s fascinating. It’s not an alien concept, going in and out of anomaly zone sounds like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. if you ask me- but the layers of worldbuilding here is impressive and intriguing. It helps that the player character isn’t a player avatar, they are truly characters of their own that you just happen to pick one of the dialogue choices they will say. So you’re roleplaying as an existing character in this action-RPG.
What seems to be a typical urban setting actually has its own quirks. This is a world that has advanced in tech to have basically androids living among people in the form of those cute little Bangboos. Yet it’s a world still obsessed with physical media. You run a videotape rental store, a concept that’s now archaic that some of the millions of people playing this game might never been exposed of. It’s also a world where cats and catgirls co-exist, as well as a spectrum furries- called Thiren- that range from human-with-some-animal-features to just an anthropomorphic animal. Shout out to the bear Thirens doing hard labour.
World-building aside, the meat of Zenless Zone Zero is the combat. And its combat is very much character-action-coded with a hint of tag team mechanics out of a tag fighter. Proxies don’t fight directly- rather they lead a team of three Agents to do the dirty work. Each Agent has a basic attack, a special attack (which can be an EX special if you have enough meter), a dodge, the ability to tag out as well as an ultimate attack.
Compared to a proper character action game of course ZZZ feels like it is limited. The game is designed to work on mobile after all. But with such constraints the devs are able to work out the magic that makes character action and tag-team fighting games so hype and cathartic and inject the most concentrated dose of it onto this game’s combat system.
And what’s that magic? First, pressing buttons feel really really good that you want to keep mashing. The attack feedback and the fancy animations you see of the attacks is addicting.
Second, the window of opportunity to dash or pull a tag assist (the game’s parry equivalent) is generous and you feel immensely powerful after doing so. Whether that be the dodge-into-slow-motion or the tag-a-partner-and-parry. both actions make you feel like you’re turning the tide of battle to your side, in style.
Thirdly, the game has enough systems to allow you to make builds, tweaking and min-maxing an Agent’s parameters is greatly rewarded when you see whole chunks of the health bar of boss gets wiped away thanks to your nasty build.
And lastly, the relentless push thanks to the Final Fantasy XIII-esque stagger system where you want to keep hitting enemies over and over to fill up a bar and stagger them only for you to want to hit them over and over again with an increased damage modifier before the bar goes down and reset that modifier to zero.
These systems are not inherently new or unique. But Zenless understood their inspo. And the result is a successful yoink-and-twist, iterating on a formula that works but adding a little of their own zing to them. In this case, the twist of this yoink that it’s made to be accessible for people playing on a touchscreen.
That being said, the ridiculous highs of the combat system does wear down on repeat consumption. There’s only so many ways you can get high when all you do is mashing the same buttons over and over. There is some depth to the combat- some attacks cancel out better if you know when to press the other button and there are combos that integrate pauses during input. But it’s not enough. You’ll figure out how to play a specific Agent really quick- which is something the game is designed around for better or worse.
The ridiculous pace of the combat is perfectly contrasted and paired with the dungeon crawling system. As a Proxy, you navigate the Hallows from the perspective of what’s called a channel array- tiles of tiles of CRT TV that abstractly represents what’s going on in the Hollow. It has some neat exploration gimmicks, from not being able to see far because the lights are out to being able to throw bombs that explodes after a delay like it’s Bomberman. And would you believe me if I tell you that there’s a mission that pays homage to Pokémon? And another that gives a nod to immersive sim’s most recurring reference? The dungeon crawling system is robust and can be creatively used for silly one-off gimmicks which the devs have shown a sliver of its true potential.
There are missions where you are on foot going for one arena fight to another (Rally Commissions) but for the most part, you’ll be exploring the via the channel array and occasionally drop into combat. You know, like a JRPG. Or exploring the overworld in a CRPG. This helps pace out the relentless combat a bit.
And if you need to slow down even more, you can always explore New Eridu. Once the game opens up after 10 hours in, you’re free to explore parts of the city and take on simpler side quests. Some are just fetch quests, but at least the writing has value making them worthwhile if you feel a little bit overdosed on the combat. There’s a lot more of the world that may intrigue you-whether that be small-scale personal drama or more tidbits about the state of the world.
Gameplay-wise, ZZZ is solid. Its foundation being a game accessible for mobile players did not in any way dilute the character-action-esque combat it has. Rather, it pretty much concentrated its dosage even more. Even a regular console or PC gamer can get a huge kick out of it. Pair that with the dungeon crawling system that has the potential to create fascinating new and unexpected experience down the line and that makes this game having solid ground to work with as a live service game.
The fact that that game isn’t trying to appeal to PC/console players, but are definitely inspired by games on those platforms, makes ZZZ a much better game if you ask me.
Content
The 1.0 launch version of Zenless Zone Zero contains 3 story chapters (with two interlude chapters), and going through those took me over 50 hours of play. If you try to binge it through, it will still require you at least a week of play as some of the content are gated behind increasing your level. And the best way to increase your level quickly is to activities that use up Battery- the game’s mobile game-style stamina system that replenishes over real time. Even the game is trying to limit you from getting overdosed by its combat.
As far as a launch for free-to-play game, it has a good amount of content to start with. But once you’re done with it all, the daily grind becomes… well, a grind. The typical game loop of ZZZ when you don’t have any story content to chase for is log in, open the shop, get a daily scratch card, drink coffee, do training missions to gain items to increase your Agent’s capabilities, and maybe spend time to hang out with Agents (which may or may not be a repeating event). You can do your daily in less than 30 minutes and be off.
If you’re a mobile gamer that’s pretty normal. But if you approach it with the expectations of a normal PC or console game then the content drought will be a major pain. At time of writing, the first game update is arriving in just days away so we’re back to eating good really soon but still, expect some down times where there is nothing to do.
There is Hollow Zero, a more elaborate dungeon crawling mission with a lot of roguelike elements. It’s fun but even that content has a weekly cap so you can’t just farm resources too quickly. There’s a lot of progression blockers like that, designed to stop you from gaining too much power too quick from sheer playtime.
Personal Enjoyment
It’s a known fact that I just don’t vibe with past Hoyoverse games. It’s just not for me. But ZZZ is the exception. The world intrigues me, so I’m hooked on the story. The urban theme is something I dig. And if you’ve been reading this far down without skimming you’ve read how many times I alluded the combat to some addictive substance. And it has so many deep cuts and references to things I like. Cars. 0451. Drum and bass.
There is something I don’t vibe with, however. At the end of the day, ZZZ is still a gacha game. To earn new Agents, you have to do a Signal Search. Most of the time you’re getting blue-coloured B-rank drops which are just the W-Engines, balls you equip as part of making character builds. But what you want is the A-Rank or even S-Rank drops, which are exceedingly rare drops.
I’ve used up almost all my free gacha pulls to try and get that S-Rank Agent that is part of a banner (i.e. limited-time only, won’t be added to the permanent gacha pull), and I pulled enough to get a guaranteed S-Rank, which has a high chance to drop the banner character. And it didn’t. All that pulls wasted when I could just invested in pulling in the permanent pool which when pulled enough, will even allow you to pick from a pool of S-Rank Agents. Over my 100+ pulls, I’ve been blueballed most of the time and only had two S-Rank Agents. It’s the same Agent. It’s the Agent that I vibe with the least. Pain.
Some will scoff this as “skill issue” or “that’s gacha” but that’s the reason I just don’t like this system. It feels like a few steps away from being defined legally as gambling. And on that note, you can pay money for monochromes which then can be converted to polychromes which then can be converted into master tapes or encrypted master tapes used to do signal searches. Which feels a few steps away from being defined as “you can buy loot boxes”.
Look, as long as you know what you’re getting into, ZZZ is fine. If you’re a free-to-play Ojisan, than the Olympian in you can deal with not getting the latest cool Agents the game’s marketing will put attention to. With enough playtime you’ll likely earn enough Agents that at least will not block you from progressing the game. If you’re already a whale, then do whatever. But for the folks who just jumped in and not familiar with monetisation in free-to-play games, navigating the store shop and figuring out how it works will feel slimy, icky, gooey. And you’re right. But the only way everyone gets to play for free is by doing it this way. And it’s working, for better or worse.
Verdict
The launch version of Zenless Zone Zero has established itself in many ways. It nails its combat system. It knows the limits of the combat and paired with something complimentary by way of the abstracted dungeon crawling. And it tops it all off with a new-for-Hoyoverse theme of urban cityscapes.
ZZZ is a fresh new direction that justifies the developer expanding to operate another live service game. Will it be as successful? Who knows. But at the very least, the launch version provided an amazing experience which can easily be follow-up in forthcoming updates.
Just be careful of the gacha system.
Played on PS5.
Zenless Zone Zero (1.0)
Zenless Zone Zero is a fresh new direction that justifies the developer expanding to operate another live service game.
- Presentation 9
- Gameplay 9
- Content 8
- Personal Enjoyment 7.5