Taking part in with nostalgia-laden imagery from the early 2000s, Zenless Zone Zero sees developer HoYoverse pivot gracefully from the fantastical settings of Genshin Influence and Honkai: Star Rail into an attractive city dystopia. It’s a universe the place you’ll duke it out in glitzy actual-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 additionally a bit inconsistent, often undone by an absence of depth. But Zenless Zone Zero received its hooks into me regardless; its relentless appeal 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-crammed pocket dimensions referred to as Hollows have devastated civilisation. Whereas a lot of humanity has been worn out, the cyberpunk bastion of New Eridu survives by a fraught codependence with the Hollows and the precious sources discovered inside. You play as both Belle or Sensible, 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 large rating. It’s a singular and gritty setup that, whereas convoluted at instances, stored me engaged by testing my strategic instinct throughout a smorgasbord of challenges I turned hungry to finest.
Your brawling excursions embark from the retro tech-strewn backroom of the siblings’ video rental retailer, the place you’ll choose from a powerful roster of unlockable brokers to make up a 3-particular person occasion after which dive into the perilous Hollows, buying and selling success for XP and improve sources. The evaluate construct supplied by HoYoverse forward of launch gave me entry to all the at the moment out there brokers, and I quickly discovered an affinity for those from a faction referred to 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. Whereas the make-up of your dream crew will largely be within the arms of the Gacha Gods, as characters are unlocked by the style’s typical methodology of randomized pulls, it’s useful that story missions can help you check out the solid with out the necessity to pull them first.
Regardless of how intense it may appear in movement, Zenless Zone Zero’s fight is forgiving and approachable. You could have a fundamental 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. Constructing an enemy’s daze meter results in a persistently satisfying chain assault, a slo-mo fast-time occasion the place your colleague swoops in to put the smackdown. Primary and supreme talents spherical out every character’s fight choices, although like all good motion sport, there’s loads of selection out there by the mix of well timed button presses and latent passives.
Difficult boss encounters surfaced to check my reflexes, although I hardly ever felt overwhelmed so long as I may join the dots of my fight technique and juggle incoming assault patterns to maintain completely different enemy sorts at bay. Intricate construct-tinkering methods, issue choices, and endgame content material assist elevate the talent ceiling for problem-hungry gamers, however Zenless Zone Zero appears content material to remain out of your manner if you happen to simply wish to merely choose 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. In the end, the main focus is on indulging the fantasy of preventing with one in all Zenless Zone Zero’s splendidly designed and passionately voice-acted characters relatively than rivaling the likes of Satan Might Cry with its fight nuance – a tradeoff I’m snug with, even when it means much less mechanical depth.
Sadly, the dazzling fight is undermined by an overabundance of hacker puzzles meant to suggest the hyperlink between your crew of brokers and the proxy guiding them by the Hole from again dwelling. You’ll be kicked right into a labyrinth of chunky CRT screens between pockets of fight, pushing a little bit avatar round to set off mechanisms that result in your subsequent checkpoint or encounter. The fuzzy aesthetics of this mode are pleasant to have a look at, however the course of feels arbitrary and murders the momentum. After marching by partitions of screens, I began in search of out the subsequent encounter as quick as doable 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 Hole to finish them may 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 opposite half is a life simulator the place you’ll roam cosy suburbs, handle your heroes’ Blockbuster-esque enterprise, and preserve relationships with locals by dialogue-pushed aspect tales throughout an atmospheric day-to-evening cycle. Whereas 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 in every single place you look that helps centre you on this trend-ahead science fiction world.
As soon as the preliminary pleasure of exploring Hollows began to settle, I turned drawn to all of the extracurricular actions I had at my fingertips. Stocking my video retailer become the nexus of my every 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 exterior seeking higher merchandise, finishing duties for locals like fixing quirky riddles or taking editorial photos to be able 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 working my enterprise definitely helped fund my story mission exploits.
This aspect of Zenless Zone Zero isn’t fairly as targeted as one thing just like the Persona sequence it’s so clearly impressed by, so there are some uninteresting spots, but it surely provides an enticing workload for gamers to log in and deal with each day nonetheless. Your whole actions are tied collectively nicely by way of a useful submenu referred to as the Inter-Knot, which let me discover my rhythm amid all the choices I used to be handed. This in-sport, every part app rapidly turned my finest buddy, taking over the function of job finder, social media platform, and, most significantly, scheduling software, guaranteeing I wasn’t fully paralysed by the overwhelming prospect of what to do subsequent.
I loved shirking my urgent obligations by chasing excessive scores on the Godfinger Arcade, whose moreish snake and spelunking minigames stole an embarrassing quantity of my time. However 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 transferring crossed-wires state of affairs. Simply forgotten in a sea of lovable shopkeepers and in-sport currencies, the underlying frailty of Zenless Zone Zero’s publish-apocalypse is all the time in body. Overarching themes of displacement and corruption come by 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 evaluate construct, it was troublesome to get a transparent image of how Zenless Zone Zero’s development methods will really feel lengthy-time period, however nothing I’ve seen seems to be wildly out of line with the developer’s different gacha video games. Nonetheless, 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 dwell service setting (and we’ll make sure you replace this evaluate if issues are unexpectedly out of line). Regardless, I solid a robust attachment to this wealthy world and its cosplay-pleasant characters by the tip of a major story that simply takes dozens of hours to finish, and left feeling that this bold pivot definitely lives as much as the excessive requirements set by Genshin Influence and Honkai: Star Rail.