I’ve made the error of underestimating HoYoverse video games earlier than. When Honkai: Star Rail launched final 12 months, I approached it very a lot with the idea that Genshin Influence had been lightning in a bottle — a one-off banger that I used to be comfortable to make the only real exception to the rule that I had little interest in F2P RPGs aimed toward a mobile-first market — and that I might cowl HSR for just a few weeks round launch after which quietly drop off as soon as the preliminary surge of curiosity died down. Extra idiot me, then, when it ended up turning into one in all my favorite video games of 2023, with round 200 hours on my account so far.
I ought to’ve gone into Zenless Zone Zero with my expectations set fairly excessive. However, I might additionally heard rumblings that ZZZ wasn’t as much as par with HoYo’s different latest output. In consequence, my expectations getting into had been… difficult: I used to be keen to be satisfied, however not anticipating the world.
Even should you’re acquainted to HoYoverse video games, Zenless Zone Zero has just a few surprises up its sleeve for you. Dropped into the preview construct with no prior hands-on expertise, I discovered that untold hours spent taking part in each Genshin Influence and Honkai: Star Rail hadn’t ready me to hit the bottom working in Zenless Zone Zero fairly as effortlessly as I might assumed. Data of HoYo’s different video games got here in useful when navigating menus and calculating gacha change charges, as an illustration, however truly interacting with its world is sort of a unique expertise.
This is not a nasty factor: lots of the components about ZZZ that had been probably the most complicated to me at first ended up being probably the most charming components of the entire package deal in the long run. For instance: perhaps it is simply me being bizarre, however one facet of gacha video games that is all the time bugging me is the truth that you possibly can find yourself seeing little or no of your canonical participant character. As soon as you have stacked your roster with some extra highly effective items, you will doubtlessly be seeing much more of somebody who made a five-minute cameo within the story than the protagonist whose journey you are meant to be compelled to comply with.
However as I felt my manner round ZZZ, it started to daybreak on me that the in-story justification for who you’re and the place and when is way stronger on this recreation than in others of its sort. If you first start, you possibly can select to play as both Belle or Clever: the traditional HoYo sibling protagonist duo who function a gender choice possibility for gamers. However right here, whoever you do not select will nonetheless be a serious presence in your recreation, serving as your co-worker and go-to confidant in your house base, in addition to your actually indispensable sibling-in-arms.
Genshin Influence does a variant on this — the unchosen sibling turns into a big supporting determine within the protagonist’s story, albeit largely off-screen having their very own concurrent journey — however sometimes your poor gender-flipped self simply disappears into the ex-canonical void after making your alternative. So seeing Zenless Zone Zero’s two protagonists each get to be key on-screen presences is already a pleasing shock, and proper off the bat marks ZZZ as a recreation that is not overly beholden to the traditions set both by its style or its dad or mum studio.
Its gacha trappings are principally equivalent, positive, however standardised monetisation appears to be an govt mandate inside HoYo; conversely, on the inventive facet, it seems that the devs are being given a stunning quantity of freedom, on condition that the studio might principally print cash with its tried-and-tested system at this level.
In Zenless Zone Zero’s overworld, you play as your alternative of Belle or Clever. That is it. When exploring the retrofuturistic dystopian cityscape of New Eridu, Belle is my sole avatar in that world, with no possibility to change out her look to that of a random acquaintance on the push of a button. This lets you encounter and work together with each different character on the roster as they go about their day, allowing a way more pure move from world exploration into companion quests and facet actions.
Zenless Zone Zero’s fight feels frantic. The fast tempo is each by cautious design and never supposed as a barrier to entry for much less dexterous gamers: it is meant to make the sport extra enjoyable. And it does! A few of ZZZ’s most satisfying moments occur while you pull off a combo good, and for just a few seconds it is nearly as if the sport’s taking part in itself as your characters flip out and in of the sphere due to your astute strategic enter (or wonderful job mashing buttons).
The distinction to Genshin Influence is very stark right here. Preventing in Genshin, notably within the open world, can really feel unresponsive at occasions — notably should you’re counting on an F2P roster with out the newest meta-optimised group comp — resulting in an expertise that is not as satisfying because it actually needs to be. In Zenless Zone Zero, fights are restricted to designated arenas, however what might really feel like a limitation as an alternative finally ends up making the combination of motion and technique far more thrilling.
On that observe, I really feel obliged to admit that Zenless Zone Zero is probably the primary recreation I’ve ever encountered that made me actively take pleasure in dodge-parrying. As a infamous hater of dodge/parry/block mechanics in all their numerous varieties who would a lot quite simply tank the hit or else run away, ZZZ’s satisfying chime and subsequent drop right into a rewarding black-and-white bullet time invulnerability state after pulling off an ideal dodge has lastly received me over. It is a minor factor, perhaps, however any recreation that may flip me of all individuals right into a starry-eyed convert on this subject deserves a particular nod.
It happens to me, although, that this sharp divide between fight characters and exploration characters might doubtlessly have an unintended affect on the banner gross sales that these video games depend on to make their financial institution. Character builders will presumably keep on as ordinary, however will character collectors be as invested in the event that they by no means see their faves outdoors of fight arenas — or else encounter them commonly on the earth no matter whether or not they’ve pulled for them or not?
As somebody who falls extra into the collector camp and solely tends to correctly construct a choose handful of items, I’ve discovered myself questioning if I will trouble with ZZZ’s gacha as a lot as I do in Genshin and Star Rail. Though, to be truthful, I am additionally already fairly invested in gathering everybody from the golden age horror-themed Victoria Housekeeping faction, so perhaps I am fretting over nothing on HoYo’s behalf right here (and, sure, I might be maining Rina the ghostly French maid, and no, I can’t be taking additional questions right now.)
Zenless Zone Zero looks as if extra of a budding crowd-pleaser due to its additional time within the oven. The query for me now could be much less whether or not ZZZ is an efficient recreation or not, and extra about who this decidedly enjoyable recreation is supposed to be for. In any case, HoYoverse already have a broad providing set out with their present 4 stay service titles: Honkai Influence third for old-school waifu collectors who’re properly into Nier; Genshin Influence for followers of formidable open worlds and excessive fantasy, à la an much more limitless Zelda; Honkai: Star Rail for many who want turn-based JRPGs and/or house opera storytelling; Tears of Themis for the various advantageous of us who want Ace Lawyer was a relationship sim.
We’re reaching essential mass on the purpose the place it is even doable to maintain updated with all of those video games, not to mention pleasant to take action. Zenless Zone Zero feels prefer it’ll be the one to tip a number of gamers over the sting into having to choose and select which HoYo titles actually enchantment to them. Who, precisely, does ZZZ communicate to who is not already being well-served by these similar builders?
The reply, I feel, is the nostalgia crowd. Zenless Zone Zero is quietly aiming at what appears to be a barely older common viewers than the remainder of HoYo’s output. The sport was even initially deliberate to have a mature age ranking, though a number of the extra kid-unfriendly themes have been pared again — resulting in accusations of censorship from some quarters, because the jiggle physics are one factor that is been toned down (though severely, having seen the newest construct I can not think about what they had been like earlier than — can the complainers solely get off if a lady’s t*ts hit her within the face when she turns round too rapidly?). Nonetheless, the enchantment to the youngsters of the late ’90s and early ’00s stays obvious in nearly each facet.
Lead producer Zhenyu Li is an unabashed fan of Digimon, Avenue Fighter, and DJMax — franchises that, regardless of persevering with into the fashionable day, have a particular whiff of millennial nostalgia for many who had been there. The city fantasy setting additionally displays the distinctively early-2000s-era cartoony romanticisation of inner-city life (this millennial, for what it is price, instantly began having flashbacks to Urbz: Sims within the Metropolis and MySims Brokers whereas wandering round New Eridu).
The protagonists of Zenless Zone Zero work in a video rental retailer; stat-enhancing equippables are stylised as discs inserted into private CD gamers. I can keep in mind when retrofuturism seemed just like the house aged desires of the Sixties, but it surely appears the early 2000s’ sanitised tackle cyberpunk (“high-tech lowlives”, besides the tech is not a lot increased than in actuality and the respectably-employed lives actually aren’t too low) are the place it is at today.
You do not have to grasp ZZZ’s retro enchantment to understand it, in fact. I’ve heard the manufacturing group gently right just a few of us who mistakenly attributed the majority of the inspiration to Persona 5. Regardless of its dystopian lore, moment-to-moment ZZZ is possessed of a distinctively vivid turn-of-the-millennium hopefulness, reflecting a virtually teleological perception that though issues nonetheless suck a bit proper now they will certainly solely get higher — an assumption in regards to the world that is most likely fairly alien to anybody whose childhood prolonged a lot previous the 2008 monetary crash and every part that got here after.
To me, that is the place ZZZ’s deeper retro enchantment actually lies; however with Western millennials typically hesitant to have interaction with gacha video games, this intelligent undercurrent might properly go unnoticed by the Gen Z viewers, for whom the distinction between the visually cheery metropolis and the narrative’s declare that its denizens are oppressed and depressing may simply find yourself baffling. I feel you perhaps needed to be there, man.
Regardless of being marketed as an ARPG, exploring New Eridu appears like the principle exercise in ZZZ, with fight as a secondary concern that is largely tucked out of the way in which and due to this fact ignorable till you are prepared to have interaction with it. In contrast to in Genshin or HSR, you will by no means end up dragged right into a fight encounter with out explicitly looking for it out, and even the main target of each day log-in actions is extra on simulating metropolis life, quite than racking up harm towards enemies.
If you happen to’re inclined to get a bit wistful over recollections (actual or imagined) of the flip of the millennium, however have accepted present tendencies like always-online and live-service video games as the fashionable face of the trade — and, in fact, are snug managing your spending limits when confronted with a gacha — then my expertise suggests that there is lots in what Zenless Zone Zero’s providing to intrigue you.