Zenless Zone Zero (PC) – Review

• Title: Zenless Zone Zero
• Platform: Microsoft Windows (via HoyoPlay)
• Also available on PlayStation 5, Android, and iOS
• Developer: MiHoYo
• Publisher: MiHoYo (as Hoyoverse)
• Played: Version 1.0 | Inter-Knot Level 37 | Main Story Ch. 3 | Various Side Commissions | A Bunch of Mewmew Medals | Far too much money spent in real life

It was a little difficult to have an open mind about Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ). The game looks cool but I play enough gachas in my daily life and coming off of MiHoYo’s previous titles such as Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, I’m well familiar with the good, the bad, and the ugly that’s common across their catalog. Having now played the game throughout it’s launch period, I admit that there are some bright spots to it and I can absolutely see why others have gravitated towards it. But for now, I don’t see myself actively playing the game.

I. Wise and Belle’s Totally Not Illegal Activities

Zenless Zone Zero takes place in the retro futuristic city of New Eridu, the last remaining bastion in the world after civilization had been ravaged by Ethereals, monsters who originate from pocket dimensions called Hollows. The game follows Wise (Stephen Fu) and Belle (Courtney Steele), a brother and sister duo who publicly operate a video store called Random Play. In secret however, the siblings illegally operate as Proxies, individuals who guide others through the Hollows, under the alias Phaethon. The main story has Wise and Belle lend their assistance to various factions in New Eridu, while getting caught in various threads related to the city and possibly themselves as well. During their adventures, they receive a mysterious A.I. called Fairy (Allegra Clark), who lends its advanced programming to assist their activities as Phaethon. As of Version 1.0, ZZZ‘s main story is comprised of three chapters as well as a prologue and an interlude.

The main story is frankly a slow burn. Even after five entire arcs, it’s still a bit hard to see where exactly the story is going and how certain elements fit together. In spite of that, the main story still manages to be a good time. Dialogue can get heavy with exposition but compared to other MiHoYo titles, ZZZ‘s lore is straightforward and digestible from the get go. Each major arc offers a whacky dilemma and adventure for the player to experience. Characterizations kind of likes depth but that’s easily forgiven as the cast is an incredibly colorful bunch, elevated further by some quality voice performances and superb and varied character designs by the game’s art team.

By far, the biggest issue with the story is its inconsistent presentation. I don’t mean in terms of graphics and art direction; the game looks perfectly fine and the retro-future aesthetic of the game is really cool to look at. What I mean is that this game simply tells its story in way too many ways. Sometimes, you’ll get a lively pre-rendered cutscene but then other times, you’ll get a comic-book styled cutscene. Sometimes, the devs seemingly couldn’t do either so you’re instead treated with an incredibly bland in-game cutscene with the character models. In some of these, you can even tell straight away that the models are actually standing next to each other, despite there being a dividing line between them and the conversation suggesting otherwise. Bear in mind that this is also in addition to in-game dialogue that happens while you’re playing the game normally. It admittedly would be a tall order to expect every cut scene to be fully animated but even so, the varying presentation can take you out of the story. At the very least, the dev team should work towards making the in-game cutscenes look a little more up to par with the others.

II. Combat and All the Other Stuff You Have to Deal With

Zenless Zone Zero‘s main selling point is its combat system. In various missions, the player takes control of a team comprised of up to three playable Agents while receiving aid from an AI-controlled Bangboo companion. Agents are divided into divided into five Styles: Attack, Stun, Support, Anomaly, and Defense. They also deal one of five DMG attributes: Fire, Electric, Ice, Physical, and Ether. To build any given Agent, the player must raise their level and upgrade their abilities as well as equip them with two types of gear called W-Engines and Drive Discs.

Every Agent fights with a series of Basic Attacks as well as one Special Attack. With enough Energy gained while fighting, an Agent can perform an enhanced version of their Special Attacks. While fighting, the player’s team can also accumulate Decibels. When this value is at maximum, the player can execute one of their Agents’ Ultimates. If certain conditions are met, the player can receive a prompt to switch to the next Agent and have them perform an Assist.

Enemies in the game has a Daze meter that builds up with each attack. When the meter is full, the enemy will get Dazed, allowing you to deal a lot of free hits against them, with a 150% DMG buff no less. Dazing enemies will also trigger a Chain Attack, in which you can quickly alternate between Agents to attack the enemy back to back. A nice quality of life feature to this mechanic is that the game will pause combat for a brief time so that you can decide who you want your active character to switch to. You can simply kill the enemy if your active character is strong enough but in general, you should aim to build up the Daze meter so that you can perform a Chain Attack for extra DMG and passives.

Unlike in Genshin and Star Rail, which provides a number of characters who aid in survivability, healing is rather hard to come by in ZZZ. Certain Bangboo can help keep you alive and some game modes can provide effects that help you survive. Aside from these exceptions, it is imperative that the player gets the hang of ZZZ‘s dodging and blocking mechanics. Dodging at just the right moment will slow down time for the player. Switching Agents right when enemies perform certain attacks distinguished by a goldish glow will cause the next Agent to block the attack and enable them to retaliate.

While combat isn’t necessarily that complex, it is generally quite exhilarating. Getting enough Decibels to perform an ult. Dazing enemies and executing a chain attack. Dodging and blocking at just the right time to avoid taking DMG. It’s all very satisfying to do, more so when you get to the toughest fights the game has to offer. It also helps that combat just looks really darn cool. Even the weakest characters in the meta have some flashy animations to their kit. Blocking attacks has the character to push back against the enemy and cause the camera to zoom in on the action, giving the mechanic a lot of oomph. Winning the fight often gives you a neat freeze frame for the victory screen. Simply put, fighting in this game can be feel very stylish.

About the only major issue I have with the combat is that switching characters can be feel a bit clumsy. Whereas Genshin and Star Rail assigns specific buttons for every party member you want to switch to, this game simply has you rotate through your party with a single button. Characters can also stay on the field for a bit before they go off field, which can then leave them vulnerable to a free hit from an opponent. That all said, the rotation aspect is easy enough to trudge through and the way characters stay on the field before leaving can come handy for a combat rotation.

Unfortunately, combat is not what you mostly do in ZZZ. In most missions, most of your time is spent navigating your squad through a grid of boxes stylized as TV screens. This is essentially the game’s form of dungeon crawling. Certain blocks on the grid have various effects such as healing your squad or providing effects that may or may not augment them for the next fight. Other blocks are puzzle mechanics that you need to solve in order to progress. I can see someone getting into this system but me personally, I freaking hate it. It’s sluggish and as a result, it’s a sharp contrast to the fast paced combat and it removes urgency from certain moments in the story. Some of the puzzles are cool in concept but a lot of the time, they’re pretty easy to solve or cheese. On top of that, the grid is just incredibly boring to look at. I suppose it saves the dev team the trouble of creating multiple environments but then again, they already have to make a lot of maps for the combat so I don’t think that’s good enough excuse.

ZZZ also has you take control of either Wise or Belle to dick around New Eridu in order to access certain modes and accomplish various side missions scattered throughout the game. I don’t mind this aspect of the game too much. It helps the setting feel more alive and Phaethon’s life feel more believable. At the very least, I’m not looking at a stupid bunch of CRTs. One mechanic that can annoying is the in-game day to day system. Depending on what you do, the game will advance through four phases of the day until you have Phaethon hit the hay and advance to the next day in the week. NPC stores are thankfully available 24/7 but aspects of a given quest might not be available depending on the time of day. While mostly manageable, the game can prevent you from changing the time while you’re in the middle of a mission and even when the option is available, you can only do it once per in-game day. This can artificially prolong clearing through missions and thereby get resources for the grind and the gacha. Replaying old missions can circumvent this issue but that’s also a waste of your own time.

IV. The Good Old(?) Grind and Endgame

Zenless Zone Zero pretty much copies and pastes the same daily loop and endgame model as Genshin and Star Rail. Use up stamina, or Battery Charge as it’s called in the game, in certain challenges to claim materials you need to build your Agents. Complete daily tasks to get rewards such as the premium currency you need for the gacha system. If you’ve played Genshin or Star Rail, you’ll know exactly what to expect from a casual daily session of playing ZZZ.

To this game’s credit, it has probably the easiest set of daily tasks found in any of MiHoYo’s live services. You need to finish four tasks to get all the daily rewards and you can easily finish all of them by simply interacting with the game’s idle system and interacting with NPC shops that you should already interact with as they provide you with buffs, extra item drops, or additional Battery Charge. In theory, you could get all the daily rewards in a handful of minutes and before you even use Battery Charge for the grind. It’s extremely handy if you’re strapped for time or you’d rather not do the grind for whatever reason. ZZZ also has weekly tasks and these are extremely easy to finish as well. The game lets you decide which weekly tasks you want to do and a lot of them are simply taking pictures of cats found in New Eridu. It only takes a few seconds, not to mention it’s super wholesome.

There are some neat quality of life features to the grind. In some modes, you can dictate how much Battery Charge you want to expend for a challenge and the game will adjust the item drops accordingly, potentially saving you the need to the fight the same enemies over and over again. The fact that the game lets you get extra Battery Charge every day is nice and it can come in clutch when trying to get enough materials for your Agents. There are weekly bosses that you can need to fight for some of the rarest materials you need for your builds and while you’re limited to only three completed fights per week, these fortunately don’t require Battery Charge.

That said, a lot of farming is required for your account, especially as you enter the endgame. Even with stamina refills that you can obtain (either for free or with real money), it’ll take a while before you min-max your builds so be prepare to monotonously go through the same content on a daily basis. By far, the most egregious grind are the Drive Discs. These are ZZZ‘s equivalent to Genshin‘s Artifacts and Star Rail‘s relics and they are just as annoying to farm as those sets of gears. There are a lot of stats that dictate an Agent’s builds and certain Agents want certain stats. Drive Discs also have set bonuses that may pertain to your builds. Annoyingly then, stat allocation is complete RNG and the game often skews towards giving you Drive Discs with stats that are completely worthless for a given build. You can obtain Drive Discs outside of Battery Charge related challenges but you will nevertheless have to replay those battles until you get a viable disc, let alone a full set of six.

ZZZ has two endgame modes that are fundamentally very similar to those seen in Genshin and Star Rail. The first is Shiyu Defense, where you have to fight an evolving lineup of enemies in a series of levels and within a time limit per level. This can be fun, especially given the combat system in ZZZ, but it’s worth mentioning that MiHoYo has a bad habit of putting in stingy win conditions and hyperaggressive enemies into this type of mode. The second is Hollow Zero, which turns the TV grid dungeon crawling into a roguelike mode. This is akin to Star Rail‘s Simulated Universe mode. Thankfully, this is not required for getting gear for characters like with Simulated Universe (something which I grew to detest as I played Star Rail). I can see this being a ton of fun for roguelike fans but me personally, I’d rather spend less time with the stupid TV grid. It also doesn’t help that you’re required to play Hollow Zero five times per week to get all the weekly rewards, which is very time consuming.

V. My Budget for This Game is About the Salary of a Video Store Employee

Since MiHoYo loves taking people’s money and this has yet to fail them, they of course utilize a gacha system into Zenless Zone Zero. This should come to no surprise for anyone familiar with the company. In the so-called Signal Search system, you can pull for Agents and W-Engines. Both types of drops vary in rarity, with S-Rank being the highest one. Agent dupes lets you unlock nodes in a system called the Mindscape Cinema, granting you new passives and significant boosts to an Agent’s build. W-Engines can merged into a singular but stronger version of itself. In addition to a standard banner, ZZZ has two types of limited banners, one for Agents and one for W-Engines. To pull, you’ll need either a premium currency called Polychrome or a special film-reel looking items called Tapes (Master Tapes are what you want for the limited banners). While pulling, you can other currencies which you can tell use in ZZZ‘s in-game store to redeem and get stuff for free, the most worthwhile being the standard S-Rank W-Engines.

The mechanics are the exact same from Star Rail. It takes a maximum of 90 pulls to get a S-Rank Agent (80 for a W-Engine). You have a 50/50 chance to get the featured Agent you want (or 75/25 for the featured W-Engine). If you fail either chance, you’re guaranteed that featured drop in the next round of pulls. The drop rates are likewise the same. Even though this is faint praise, I am relieved to see that the Star Rail gacha system is seemingly now the norm for MiHoYo’s monetization and they didn’t dare to make ZZZ‘s gacha any different to maximize the game’s profits.

One copy of a character and one copy of their signature W-Engine is generally all you need to significant improve your account. That said, just one copy of a character takes a lot of grinding, luck, and/or money. And if you really want dupes, you’re looking at a potential price tag of hundreds to thousands of dollars. It is up to the player as to whether or not they burn that money on a free to play game but it’s still fair to say that this gacha is a very greedy monetization system on MiHoYo’s part.

Conclusion

Zenless Zone Zero can be a lot of fun. It has a charming cast of characters and the combat can be quite exhilarating. That said, it has some very glaring flaws that prevent me from picking it over other free to play services, the most damaging of which is the incredibly dull dungeon crawling element. It’s possible that the devs might be able to iron these things out but that’s wishful thinking until proven otherwise. I can see how someone would really enjoy this game but personally, I don’t see myself actively playing it for the time being.

Score: 6/10