Playing with nostalgia-laden imagery from the early 2000s, Zenless Zone Zero sees developer HoYoverse pivot gracefully from the fantastical settings of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail into an attractive city dystopia. It’s a universe the place you’ll duke it out in glitzy real-time fights as a trio of streetwear-clad brokers, fixing easy puzzles as their handler between battles to assist them navigate a labyrinth of encounters – and that’s earlier than you get to the carousel of social aspect actions layered on prime. A mouthful of tasteful influences mix into one thing effortlessly fashionable but in addition a bit inconsistent, often undone by a scarcity of depth. Yet Zenless Zone Zero obtained its hooks into me regardless; its relentless attraction compelled me to maintain preventing, one fight puzzle or bowl of ramen at a time.
Zenless Zone Zero takes place in a world the place monster-filled pocket dimensions known as Hollows have devastated civilisation. While a lot of humanity has been worn out, the cyberpunk bastion of New Eridu survives by way of a fraught codependence with the Hollows and the precious assets discovered inside. You play as both Belle or Wise, a brother-sister hacker duo with a knack for navigating this harmful territory, tackling commissions from a roster of lovable rogues looking for their subsequent huge rating. It’s a singular and gritty setup that, whereas convoluted at occasions, stored me engaged by testing my strategic instinct throughout a smorgasbord of challenges I grew to become hungry to finest.
Your brawling excursions embark from the retro tech-strewn backroom of the siblings’ video rental retailer, the place you’ll decide from a powerful roster of unlockable brokers to make up a three-person celebration after which dive into the perilous Hollows, buying and selling success for XP and improve assets. The assessment construct supplied by HoYoverse forward of launch gave me entry to all the at present accessible brokers, and I quickly discovered an affinity for those from a faction known as Victoria Housekeeping, because of their charming British inflexions and battle maid outfits. My private favorite of the bunch, the shark-tailed Ellen Joe, swipes and slashes with an icy blade, stacking elemental debuffs on enemies and dropping blase quips within the course of. While the make-up of your dream staff will largely be within the arms of the Gacha Gods, as characters are unlocked by way of the style’s common technique of randomized pulls, it’s useful that story missions help you check out the forged with out the necessity to pull them first.
Despite how intense it may well appear in movement, Zenless Zone Zero’s fight is forgiving and approachable. You have a primary assault and a dodge for well timed escapes from signposted assaults, in addition to the flexibility to swap to different brokers to keep away from scrapes, parry, or compound their combos. Building an enemy’s daze meter results in a persistently satisfying chain assault, a slo-mo quick-time occasion the place your colleague swoops in to put the smackdown. Basic and supreme skills spherical out every character’s fight choices, although like several good motion recreation, there’s loads of selection accessible by way of the mixture of well timed button presses and latent passives.
Challenging boss encounters surfaced to check my reflexes, although I hardly ever felt overwhelmed so long as I might join the dots of my fight technique and juggle incoming assault patterns to maintain completely different enemy varieties at bay. Intricate build-tinkering programs, issue choices, and endgame content material assist increase the talent ceiling for challenge-hungry gamers, however Zenless Zone Zero appears content material to remain out of your manner when you simply need to merely decide it up and do some flashy strikes. Elegant animations footnote most of your assaults, right down to the way in which home demon Van Lycaon gracefully lowers his metallic heels after a kick. Ultimately, the main target is on indulging the fantasy of preventing with considered one of Zenless Zone Zero’s splendidly designed and passionately voice-acted characters moderately than rivaling the likes of Devil May Cry with its fight nuance – a tradeoff I’m comfy with, even when it means much less mechanical depth.
Unfortunately, the dazzling fight is undermined by an overabundance of hacker puzzles meant to indicate the hyperlink between your staff of brokers and the proxy guiding them by way of the Hollow from again residence. You’ll be kicked right into a labyrinth of chunky CRT screens between pockets of fight, pushing somewhat avatar round to set off mechanisms that result in your subsequent checkpoint or encounter. The fuzzy aesthetics of this mode are pleasant to take a look at, however the course of feels arbitrary and murders the momentum. After marching by way of partitions of screens, I began in search of out the following encounter as quick as attainable to spice up my morale and return to the frenetic motion sequences that truly make Zenless Zone Zero compelling.
That hefty loop of taking over commissions after which venturing into the Hollow to finish them might simply be all there’s and it wouldn’t really feel scant, but surprisingly, it solely accounts for half of what’s right here. The different half is a life simulator the place you’ll roam cosy suburbs, handle your heroes’ Blockbuster-esque enterprise, and preserve relationships with locals by way of dialogue-driven aspect tales throughout an atmospheric day-to-night cycle. While not strictly an open world, Zenless Zone Zero’s gorgeous districts are thoughtfully dressed with environmental particulars that make it a pleasure to discover. From rusty riverside kiddy rides to messy bedrooms and vandalised backstreets, there’s consideration paid all over the place you look that helps centre you on this fashion-forward science fiction world.
Once the preliminary pleasure of exploring Hollows began to settle, I grew to become drawn to all of the extracurricular actions I had at my fingertips. Stocking my video retailer was the nexus of my each day routines, as every morning, I’d begin by pairing eclectic videotapes from my assortment with the style calls for of the general public. After that, I’d must enterprise outdoors searching for higher merchandise, finishing duties for locals like fixing quirky riddles or taking editorial footage with a purpose to earn my VHS reward. That symbiotic course of labored nicely to funnel my consideration towards the completely different social actions, to not point out the cash supplied by operating my enterprise actually helped fund my story mission exploits.
This aspect of Zenless Zone Zero isn’t fairly as centered as one thing just like the Persona collection it’s so clearly impressed by, so there are some boring spots, but it surely provides a fascinating workload for gamers to log in and sort out every day nonetheless. All of your actions are tied collectively nicely through a useful submenu known as the Inter-Knot, which let me discover my rhythm amid all the choices I used to be handed. This in-game, all the things app shortly grew to become my finest good friend, taking over the position of job finder, social media platform, and, most significantly, scheduling instrument, guaranteeing I wasn’t fully paralysed by the overwhelming prospect of what to do subsequent.
I loved shirking my urgent duties by chasing excessive scores on the Godfinger Arcade, whose moreish snake and spelunking minigames stole an embarrassing quantity of my time. But the humorous and generally profound substories left the most important mark, reminding me of the human stakes on this world. One aspect quest entails a homeless robotic whose ghostly silhouette scares a neighborhood citizen, resulting in a surprisingly shifting crossed-wires state of affairs. Easily forgotten in a sea of cute shopkeepers and in-game currencies, the underlying frailty of Zenless Zone Zero’s post-apocalypse is at all times in body. Overarching themes of displacement and corruption come by way of within the cinematic story and the design of its metropolis wards, which vary from dilapidated to gentrified.
Given the unusually beneficiant nature of HoYoverse’s assessment construct, it was tough to get a transparent image of how Zenless Zone Zero’s development programs will really feel long-term, however nothing I’ve seen appears to be like wildly out of line with the developer’s different gacha video games. Still, it’ll be illuminating to start out once more on a brand new account at launch and get accustomed to the grind in a extra natural reside service setting (and we’ll make sure you replace this assessment if issues are unexpectedly out of line). Regardless, I cast a powerful attachment to this wealthy world and its cosplay-friendly characters by the top of a predominant story that simply takes dozens of hours to finish, and left feeling that this bold pivot actually lives as much as the excessive requirements set by Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.
