Zenless Zone Zero
I’ve never really gotten into a gacha game. I tried Honkai Star Rail a while back because of the really cool character designs and was interested in what story they could cook up. I ultimately quit the game after just a few play sessions as the constant notifications and lotto mechanics pushed me away. Unfortunately I feel the same way about this game.
Zenless Zone Zero follows you (a proxy) guiding agents through Hollows to accomplish missions and beat up monsters. These missions involve corporate espionage and other such topics that befit the metropolis created by miHoyo. There is no main plot unveiled in the first few missions of the game and most missions center around self-contained plots that are interesting enough, but without an established goal, I was unable to get invested.
The agents you control through combat scenarios have flashy moves and exaggerated designs that are remarkable. Most agents I played as, felt unique and were phenomenal to control. Combat does boil down to mashing attacks and assists, but the fast pace and presentation kept each engagement… engaging. I really enjoyed the combat here, but the road to each scenario is paved with a “puzzle-like” minigame where you have to move through tvs to activate the combat section. This felt like an erroneous waste of time and added nothing of substance to the experience. There is a speed up feature you can use for these sections, but it doesn’t speed them up much at all. This seems to have been added to keep you from focusing on how one dimensional the combat is, but other systems serve as adequate distraction enough.
There are an egregious amount of menus and “rewards” to accumulate in ZZZ. There are upgrade paths for characters, their skills, each of their stats and their W-drive. There are rewards for daily tasks, combat simulations, side quests, leveling up the city pass, leveling up your inter-knot level, leveling up your agents, logging in, completing story quests, scratching a lotto ticket and even taking pictures. The abundance of different systems, currencies and overall notifications was insanely overwhelming. It caused the game to feel more like work. Initially it felt great to be rewarded for everything, but after every mission a new task or reward system was introduced and it soon became a mile-long checklist that I was obligated to log in every day to do. I don’t want my stress reliever to give me more stress. Unfortunately this really ruins my feelings toward the game
I really wanted to like the game because of its style. From characters to environmental design, this game fires on all cylinders. It is beautiful to behold. There are some scenes that are fully animated and they are always so fluid and eye-catching to watch that I couldn’t help but enjoy them. Some segments are drawn in a manga art style that really helps flesh out the world in another aspect. Voice work and dialogue overall is great and I could feel the heart that everyone put into the game… Until I had ten or more notifications in various menus to click through before continuing on.
I really wanted this to be the miHoyo game I got into, but the bombardment of systems, tasks, rewards and constant notifications ruined my immersion into the world of New Eridu. While the combat was engaging, the weight of the upgrade trees bogged down the time between. The art and style of the game goes incredibly hard and I hope the developer goes into animation or decides to make a full-fledged rpg down the line, but until then I think I’m officially out.
