Zenless Zone Zero review: don’t sleep on it

Introduction

The HoyoVerse is expanding. Just four years ago, the Chinese studio’s global smash Genshin Impact showed how open world and free-to-play weren’t mutually exclusive types of games. It then followed that with the equally popular Honkai: Star Rail, this time applied to a more traditional turn-based RPG. Now comes Zenless Zone Zero, which actually goes back to the developer’s more action-focused roots.

By the time you read this ZZZ has already had a successful launch. More than 50 million registered players are diving into the post-apocalyptic retro-futuristic city of New Eribu and meeting its a constantly growing cast of attractive and kick-ass anime characters.

But is this a hat-trick for HoyoVerse and another gacha grand slam – or more like a bout of free-to-play burnout?

Hollowverse

There’s a real pleasing aesthetic to Zenless Zone Zero. It channels noughties nostalgia and puts a focus on analogue technology, as the two lead heroes (Wise and Belle, who you can switch between at any time) run a video rental store as their dayjob. Their main role, however, is as a Proxy: hackers that can enter alternate dimensions called Hollows, to defeat dangerous threats and extract their valuable resources.

Your Proxy doesn’t do much fighting, entering these Hollows as a guide in the form of a bunny bot. Instead, you bring along a team of up to three Agents, each with their own particular fighting styles and elemental strengths. As with HoyoVerse’s other free-to-play games, you’ll need to earn resources (or get your wallet out) to make pulls in the hope of unlocking more agents. The initial ones – the electric melee-based Anby, gun-toting Billy Kid, and ether-launching Nicole – give a good idea of how cool it is to play as each archetype.

Combat really is Zenless Zone Zero’s most exciting aspect. It’s simplified, but the flashy special attacks, encounter-ending ultimate moves and attack chains that rapidly switch between characters are undeniably slick. You can dodge an enemy’s attack, briefly slowing things down (like in Bayonetta) so you can tag in another agent with a delicious counter.

Stun an enemy (easier when using elements they’re vulnerable to) and the action freezes momentarily, while you decide which ally to jump to and land a follow-up blow. At its best, you can find yourself performing multiple chain attacks within a matter of seconds, cycling between your party of three or going back-to-back. It’s a dizzying rhythm that’s hard not to get hooked into, even if the main story missions won’t have you sweating.

ZZZ Top

The city of New Eribu continues opening up as you play, unlocking new shops to visit or facilities to make use of, such as chowing down on a bowl of ramen to give you a buff for your next mission or an arcade where you can relax with novel twists on Snake and Mr Driller. It’s no open world like Genshin Impact, and the fact that you can’t run or jump means fast-travel between places is just more convenient. Once you remember what functions each place has, anyway.

That’s certainly the case with the HIA Club, a place where you can spend your battery energy (which slowly replenishes in real-world time) to take on short combat exercises in exchange for materials. Seals and Drives might not make an awful lot of sense at first; if you’ve played Genshin Impact, it’s basically the same way of obtaining resources to upgrade and promote your agent’s levels, weapons and accessories – just with new confusing names and icons to familiarise yourself with.

Not having a large world to explore isn’t much of a bother to me, as Zenless Zone Zero does work on a smaller scale designed for short bursts of play. The Hollow’s repetitive urban environments, where you’re just moving from one mini arena to another before Ethereals spawn in for you to wipe out, don’t matter so much when the combat looks and feels so good. What does get off-putting when you’re given mission where your bunny navigator is also tasked with exploring labyrinths, which look like you’re moving between tiny TV monitors.

I get that it’s trying to break things up, so that you occasionally get a bit of story and action. Moving into some monitors might also reveal treasure or traps, and some missions introduce one-off mechanics, such as a riff on Bomberman. But this was the least appealing part for me; I’d rather just jump back into the next combat phase. It’s only slightly alleviated by letting you toggle this section to play at a faster game speed.

Story time

Another step up from HoyoVerse’s previous games isn’t just that the roster of characters at launch are of a tasteful variety (you of course also have your cat girls and big bears) but they’re also expressively animated during the game’s frequent, action-packed cutscenes. When it comes to the chattier side of quests, it also doesn’t just defer to dull cuts between dialogue boxes appearing below characters. They’re instead presented with multiple panels, or even like a comic book.

That said, even if I found the cast a likeable enough bunch, it gets offputting how much narrative is crammed in – even though I’m sure lore-inclined players will lap it all up. But unlike Genshin Impact, where I just leave the dialogue running on auto while I do something else, Zenless Zone Zero lets you skip the cutscenes that aren’t fully animated. A quick one or two-sentence summary means don’t get too confused as to what’s going on.

Naturally, as a live service, free-to-play game, more updates will be coming regularly to continue ZZZ’s story (which at launch gets you up to partway of Chapter 3). Depending how much you play daily, it can feel like a bit of an unnecessary grind at some points, as I’ve occasionally found that there’s no more story progression until you reach an arbitrary level. That does however give you time to gather more upgrading resources, and unlock tapes that expand an agent’s backstory. While there’s always going to be that tempting element of spending money to unlock the rarest and highest ranked agents, some story missions at least give you the option to trial some of these agents so you can at least get a taste.

Zenless Zone Zero verdict

As an action game, Zenless Zone Zero is absolutely dripping in style. Making use of your whole team as you chain attacks together makes even the most simple skirmish feel as terrific as a boss fight. Nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing ‘WIPEOUT’ appear on the screen as the freeze-frame cuts between different angles of your agent’s final killing blow.

The plentiful activities to keep you busy in New Eridu are perhaps a little overwhelming at launch, while you try to get used to the jargon and understand which activity will benefit the agents you most want to be part of your dream team. And whether it will reach the same lofty heights as HoyoVerse’s other titles depends on future updates. But even at this early stage, it has clearly nailed the minute-to-minute dopamine hits that’ll keep players regularly coming back for more.

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