At this point, Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail have firmly established the expectation that when developer HoYoverse decides to make a new game, it will be both similar and completely different from what they’ve done before. Fans of the studio’s games will know how acquiring new characters and possibly building them will work (different names, same structure), but the action and tone are quite different. This is true again for Zenless Zone Zero, another HoYoverse project that trades its larger sandbox for stylish streets with even more stylish characters and flashy action fights.
I first played Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) briefly in its second closed beta test, and again for about four hours at a media event hosted by the studio. The long and short of it is that in the short time I’ve played with it, I feel like ZZZ is the most “mobile game” of HoYo’s latest releases. I don’t mean that in a bad way; What I mean by this is that almost anything can be done in a quick meeting – think 15 minutes or less. Whether you’re immersing yourself in the rhythm of the story, searching for a character, or just completing side activities, ZZZ seems to take a bite-sized experiential approach to most things it offers. Not that some don’t last longer (and I didn’t have a chance to play everything, after all), but that seemed about average to me.
What I love about this is that while I can see myself spending hours helping out with missions for people around the city of New Eridu or taking on repeatable combat challenges on PS5 or PC, it will be just as easy to sneak in a few activities on my phone between other duties. And based on how much fun I had playing it, I know I’ll definitely want it when ZZZ comes out soon on the 4th of July.
A colorful apocalypse
In ZZZ, the apocalypse has struck with the appearance of expanding, dangerous bubble realms known as Hollows. Warp Zones are full of dangerous creatures that can infect people with deadly diseases that can kill them, or worse, turn them into monsters. Instead of moving far away from these hollows, the townspeople of New Eridu developed tools to explore them for treasure and resources.
Although I can’t speak to how interesting ZZZ’s story is because I was thrown into the game the moment the chapters were already completed (replaying the campaign missions was something I could have looked into but decided to explore other challenges) , Already I appreciate the tone of ZZZ. It’s incredibly goofy. For example, while wandering around the construction site, I found Bangoo (small helper robots that fill all kinds of roles in New Erid), Catloverboo, lovingly watching over a cat burying its business in a pile of sand. When I asked Bangboo what the hell it was doing, it went on and on about how great cat paws smelled, and sharing his enthusiasm earned me several resource rewards.
It’s amazing that stupidity persisted. From the misunderstood affection that leaves several characters unsettled by the robot lover’s advances to the cheeky text messages from other characters, ZZZ’s cheerful tone creates a welcoming atmosphere. It’s as if the attitudes of the people of New Erid reflect the fun and vibrant design of the city rather than the collapse of society as a whole.
It’s a team effort
The playable characters of Zenless Zone Zero are divided in an interesting way. The siblings of the heroes Belle and Wise are “Proxies”, individuals who have the technology and know-how to guide others as they navigate the winding paths of the Hollows. They do not physically enter themselves and instead guide agents on their dives into dangerous realms. One select sibling is playable during city exploration, while agents are playable in Hollows. The 15 currently playable agents are split between different factions often associated with their work, from groups such as a cleaning company to a construction company.
Whether you dive into combat from the campaign, from a side quest, or choose to go through one of the many different combat challenge modes, three agents and (depending on the situation, though I wasn’t clear when they were or weren’t allowed) Bangoo fighters make up the team . As with other HoYoverse games, team composition is crucial. Each character has a type of combat specialty (such as defense, stun, or attack, among others) and damage affinity (such as physical, fire, or ether) that must be considered when building a team, especially for more difficult encounters such as challenges bosses. Pairing at least one member of the same faction in a team also grants each of these characters an additional ability.
I like that Bangboo, who acts independently of the playable team and attacks on his own, can supplement the damage type if you don’t have a specific character ready to take that role or don’t want to trade one. of your favorite characters. I spent a lot of time using members of Belobog Heavy Industries and lacked a character that could create an ethereal debuff on enemies, so I trained one Bangboo in my arsenal that used ethereal attacks to help out, and it worked remarkably well. . Although ZZZ doesn’t focus on elemental combos like Genshin Impact, Affinities and enemy weaknesses still matter.
The combat itself is a lot of fun, and I appreciate that certain encounters have normal difficulty and hard difficulty for players looking for an extra challenge. Encounters take place in dungeon-like areas that appear to be procedurally generated, and in most situations you can’t revive a character in a team once they fall. Engagements are lavish and fluid; players can slice and dice, but those who take the time to learn attack combos and use dodge tokens and chain attack will see their efforts rewarded. Plus, it’s fun to learn how to optimize your team fight.
Switching characters at the right time can lead to a special follow-up attack, and ZZZ helps players learn by running a challenge on the side of the screen. The aforementioned dodge counters grant, as stated in the game, “a brief moment of invulnerability and deal high damage and interrupt the target.” This, too, is well signaled by a flash of color and a specific noise before an enemy attacks, making what could be perceived as complex combat rather teachable to anyone new to more intense action games. Mastering these and performing other combos makes combat delightfully hypnotic.
It’s not just the basic mechanics that need to be learned; each character’s playstyle was also different. For example, the Belobog Heavy Industries crew has a great bear character, Ben, whose dodge is a pitiful sideways lunge and forward shuffle for his sprint, so learning how to switch and replace him at the right time was crucial to the fights. which required faster movement. I’m looking forward to seeing which characters go best with each other, regardless of what group they are from.
Second half of cavity exploration
When I first played ZZZ, I was most surprised by its Hollow Deep Dive system, another part of combat exploration that doesn’t really involve that much combat. Instead of navigating repetitive combat paths, ZZZ pulls the player back a layer into what could be considered an imaginary top-down view of the Hollow represented via the TVs on the board (as shown below). Additional combat encounters can be found here, along with navigational puzzles and hidden path rewards.
This view most clearly represents the Proxy’s perspective on Hollows. Paths that Agents on the ground cannot see, but are easy for those behind to navigate. This board system intertwines with combat in the campaign. For players who don’t prioritize that and just want to get into the action, Hollow Deep Dive has specific “Combat” and “Exploration” divisions that separate missions based on the kind of experience players will have. the Exploration selection filled with the Hollow TV board.
When I played the random puzzle mission listed in the Exploration section, I was disappointed at how easy it was. I actually managed to solve a memory puzzle in one mission. I hope these were one-offs and not representative of the Hollow Deep Dive exploration system as a whole. If there is no challenge to navigate these boards, then what is the point of having them?
Character dialogues are another matter in Hollow Deep Dive exploration. Maybe it’s not so bad on a mobile device or other small screen, but all dialogs in this mode are pushed to the upper right corner of the screen. On a regular PC screen, it was easy to miss the beginning of dialogue and awkward to pay attention to longer conversational points. Since these “exploration” boards are part of the campaign, I’m worried about missing out on lore or good character conversations. Overall, though, I think the board system could add an interesting mix to ZZZ gameplay, but I hope it presents more of a challenge.
Walking the streets of New Eridu
Exploration of New Erid is limited. ZZZ is not an open world game and doesn’t pretend to be. Instead, players can explore several streets connected by the in-game menu. Once I’m at my chosen destination, it doesn’t take long at all to run the entire street and its back roads, although I found plenty of people to chat with and activities to do. Many of the NPC shop owners have stellar designs, and I was pleased to see that playable characters can be freely found throughout the city for conversations and side quests.
An important aspect of ZZZ’s exploration is its in-game hours. The days are divided into four segments; morning, afternoon, evening and late at night. As the time of day changes, so do the streets of the city, making certain individuals unavailable at certain times of the day. As far as I could tell, the most meaningful changes at a particular time of day on a particular street are displayed in an easy-to-access clock menu, so I wasn’t in danger of missing anything too critical. According to the game’s manual, things like completing story and side mission tasks and rests advance time rather than your actual clock. I’m curious to see how this mechanic plays out in the long run, but in my playtime it only mattered to me when scheduling NPC encounters for a side quest and opening a video store.
Aside from digging into combat, there are plenty of other activities, such as running the protagonists’ video store. Rather, it’s a quick optional task that triggers at the start of each day where you’re asked to stock three cartridges based on the customers’ genre preferences. The better the selection, the better the income. Additional videotapes are obtained through exploration, side missions, and running a shop. Once a promoter is chosen to run the shop for the day (new promoters can be hired too) you let them do the work, although you can also interact with customers throughout the day when the shop is open. This is just one of the few fun side activities I’ve found that enrich my time in New Eridu.
Other activities included things like mini-games in the arcade (anyone up for a Snake competition?) and helping Street Officer Mewmew with his list of side missions for street dwellers. There are also functional activities such as a daily coffee (daily in-game, not daily) from a cute cafe for enthusiasts and refilling recharge energy used for specific combat encounters to obtain materials for character upgrades. While New Eridu doesn’t need to grow now, it’s easy to see how HoYoverse can expand the city with new streets, shops, activities, and characters in the future.
Miranda Sanchez is the Executive Editor of Guides at IGN. She is the main Shenhe in Genshin Impact and a big fan of stationery and fountain pens. Sometimes you find it Twitter/X.