A charming cast can't hide Zenless Zone Zero's true intentions.
Zenless Zone Zero adopts a zesty Hi-Fi Rush/Jet Set Radio Future style of neon-accented sci-fi urbanism. This is a place where skateboards are a decorative item, born-to-become-merch bunny-robot mascots wander the streets, and lots of dialogue is delivered via DM. It's all a stylishly meaningless pushback on glossy businesses with political power: The graffiti is superficially artistic but has nothing to say, and the gigantic tech company sets up shop and then gives out neat trinkets. Corporate military-like officers might be quite nice and helpful, actually.
Zenless Zone Zero is a reskinned revenue stream designed to target a similar-but-different audience to MiHoYo's other unstoppable gacha-style games Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail. It's been created to capture a gap in the market.
I'm not surprised. Gacha games like this are by design wallet-opening merch machines in disguise. The aim is to get me coming back every day to do a few things that make me feel good enough to consider using the shop, and to like the characters enough to be interested in any TV shows, albums, and action figures that might show up along the way. But because this will be for many of us our second or third experience of this too-familiar hamster wheel of #content from the same company, it rings hollow. Zenless Zone Zero is raw marketing in game form, everything designed around trends, targets, and demographics.
Every character worth talking to runs or frequents a trendy shop, and they're all too cool to conform to the whims of this vague shiny dystopia's towering megacorps trying to grind ordinary people down. The playable cast cover a wide range of appealing (and tropey) personality types and visual preferences, from cold and calculating to loud, impeccably polite to shy. You like shark girls? There's a shark girl. Prefer broad-shouldered furries? Then enjoy the overall-wearing bear-man. Need a younger guy with model-perfect abs? Don't we all.
It's all bright and colourful and very carefully designed to not look like it's trying to do anything other than be a fun new game. The bear is sweet as heck, the Deadpool-like Billy can't go five seconds without quipping, and all of the cool ladies with swords are exactly as cool as ladies with swords should be. Even my own in-game cypher (male or female) is an interesting person to spend time with, their personality fleshed out enough to allow for some light-hearted teasing of their family and friends, without ever feeling like they're out of my control.
And I did have fun for the first few hours. It's hard not to when a game's trying this hard to charm—even though ZZZ spent a lot of it constantly jangling its keys at me and trying to insist another new slight remix of "hitting things" or "talking to people" was a completely new way to play.
There's an endless parade of missions to tackle, usually beginning with some abstracted, almost roguelike, exploration. These segments represent the surrounding "dungeon" area as a lively maze of CRT TV screens where dangerous monsters may give turn-by-turn chase across a grid of monitors, switches need weighing down with heavy boxes pushed in from elsewhere, and mid-mission twists can drastically change the routes available to me. At one point I even had to play a bit of bootleg Bomberman. I always felt like these sections tried their best, and although I was never excited by them, I did want to see what inventive new take on this minimalist sort of gaming they'd come up with next.
This is in sharp contrast with the active combat that often followed. For a few bouts it did a good job of making my chosen team's swinging and shooting within a string of small, flat arenas look exciting and kinetic. I dodged lasers, and whenever I hit something numbers popped out, just like a modern action RPG demands. Every major blow and final victory triggered vivid fighting game style fullscreen effects and dramatic camera angles, as if I was participating in an intense battle.
But it soon became clear that there was no rhythm or timing to it, and before long I got tired of the sound of my own mindless mouse clicking. No matter who I was playing as or what I was up against, fights always ended up playing out the same way. An endless routine of left clicking as rote combos went through the motions, with a quick prod of the switch, assist, or skill buttons whenever I was told to. Fighting something the size of a house shouldn't feel boring, but it did here—another task ticked off a neverending list of virtual chores.
I wouldn't have minded so much if this work hadn't kept dragging me away from the things I actually wanted to do for another round of filler. The mandatory side story I had to play through was effectively little more than advertising another way to spend time on ZZZ's treadmill, neither going anywhere nor directly relevant to the scenario I was actually trying very hard to get back to. Just as the next plot twist came into view I'd abruptly be told no, I must be this level to continue, with no choice but to grind it out or keep logging in long enough for my daily bonuses to add up. Inescapable tutorial were still popping up days after I'd started teaching me how to make a fresh batch of numbers go higher than before.
These "helpful" explanations usually accompanied another new category in the cash shop expertly calibrated to lightly confuse with its mix of multiple imaginary currencies, other imaginary currencies that must be bought with real-world currencies, and plain old straight-from-my-bank-account purchases too.
Of course I don't have to buy anything. I could play the game free, forever. But there's no doubt everything would be much easier, and I'd have a better chance of getting that character I'd seen advertised, if I made a few purchases. Just one. Or perhaps two. The cheaper bundle pack, maybe? How about the £4.99 monthly subscription instead? Or why not unlock the full benefits of the season pass for a currently discounted £19.99 (a £9.99 tier is also available) and get more ability-enhancing materials that way?
Sorry, or? ZZZ means and.
More than anything, it makes me sad. The more I play it, the more obvious it is that not only is this not a good action RPG, but it also has no real interest in being one either. What ZZZ actually wants is to be my new forever game, the only thing I think of when I find the time to do some dailies. It will encourage me to have just one more go, to come back for just one more day, all so it can extract as much money out of me as possible and then smile politely as it asks for more.
It may be free to play, but I can't afford to let ZZZ have its own way.
