First, there was Genshin Impact, which was great, but eventually expanded so much that it felt truly unwieldy. Then, there was Honkai: Star Rail, which was also fine, but coupled with an uninspired story and your typical anime fantasy aesthetic, it quickly lost my attention less than a month after its release.
The good news is that Hoyoverse has clearly amassed insane amounts of money from how well both these games have performed that they’re seemingly able to just create whatever they want now, and the results are tremendous.
Enter Zenless Zone Zero, Hoyoverse’s latest game, and this finally feels like the one I can truly, properly get into.
If the flashy trailers with neon lights and the urban fantasy-punk aesthetic weren’t enough to win you over already, you’ll be glad to know that the actual game is every bit as cool as it looks. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the second closed beta test this past weekend, and I found myself surprised by how small it was. Granted, I did go in with some preconceived notions based on what I knew of Genshin Impact and Star Rail, but consider me pleasantly surprised by the results.
More than anything else, Zenless Zone Zero is a dungeon crawler action RPG, where the core gameplay loop revolves around you exploring the 6th Street of New Eridu to talk to NPCs and interacting with a computer to jump into the virtual world to take on Commissions. All main and side quests revolve around Commissions, which are levels that you explore for currency, key items, and engage in combat.
It’s going to sound a little wacky, but stay with me here. Whenever you start a Commission, you’re transported into a virtual world made up of analogue TV screens. The screens themselves are tiles you can step on, and there are special tiles that can trigger various effects. There are healing tiles, combat tiles, and treasure tiles.
Before too long, though, the game starts throwing fun curve balls at you. You start getting puzzle tiles, where you must move objects over certain tiles to unlock a new route. You also start coming across Fissures, which are basically teleportation tiles that take you to a whole other location with more tiles to check out.
Not everything is based around combat either, as there are some Commissions with levels that are just all puzzles. One early side quest had me jump into the virtual world only to be confronted with a memory test where I had to count the number of colored screens in a few seconds and answer a few questions correctly. Another quest tasked me with hitting switches in order to slow down a virtual train so I could hijack it, and said train was beautifully depicted with greyscale tracks and railcars on analogue screens, making this one of the most visually striking games I’ve played in a while.
The point is, Zenless Zone Zero’s virtual world contains some of the most innovative stuff I’ve ever seen in a Hoyoverse game, and that is genuinely exciting.
It certainly helps that the combat is so fun as well. Like Genshin Impact, this is an action RPG that allows you to switch between multiple characters on the fly. You get a maximum of three characters in your party, and each time you hit the dodge button, you automatically switch out to the next character in line. This might sound annoying on paper, but it actually works quite well in practice thanks to how seamless the transitions feel.
There are also regular and special attacks, which you can chain together to daze an enemy. Once an enemy is dazed, time slows down, allowing you to switch to another character to pull off a powerful combo attack. Finally, there’s your ultimate attack, which does exactly what it says on the box: it deals a crap ton of damage to your surrounding foes most of the time.
Combat feels good, but most importantly, it also looks good. The animations in Zenless Zone Zero are honestly on a whole other level when you compare it to its predecessors. Your characters are always posing in that cool anime aesthetic way no matter what you do, and the game just gives you an incredible sense of satisfaction like no other when you clear a combat encounter. Time stops, the word “SLASHED” just flashes across your screen in giant letters and beautiful neon colors as the camera pans around your character in a cool pose.
Aesthetically, Hoyoverse really knocked it out of the park. The menus are slick and easy to navigate, even the gacha animations (more on that later) look nice. NPCs all come with unique animations when you ask them for something, whether it’s getting a robot aptly named Tin Master to whip up a cup of coffee for you, or watching the newsstand dog scratch its ears adorably while you read the day’s headlines.
Included in this closed beta test is the gacha system itself. If you’re familiar with these sorts of games, you probably already know what to expect. You’ll accrue currency slowly as you play the game, and these can be used to pull on a gacha banner for a chance to get an S-tier character. You’ll get an A-tier character with every 10-pulls, along with Cores, which are basically equipment items.
The good news is that Zenless Zone Zero makes it pretty clear how the pity system works. You’ll hit pity on the special event banner with 90 pulls, which means you’re guaranteed to get an S-tier character on that 90th pull. However, it’s only a 50% chance of getting the featured banner character. The next time you hit pity on that banner, you’re guaranteed to get the featured character, so it’s still a bit of a toss-up for that first pity counter.
Similar to Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, there are three types of gacha currencies: Master Tape, Encrypted Master Type, and Film Tape. Regular Master Tape is used for the game’s regular banners, while the Encrypted version is used for special event banners. Film Tape can be collected and converted into either version. Of course, it remains to be seen just how generous the game will be with its currency, but I imagine players can expect to save for around two or three months before they’re able to guarantee pity on an event banner.
In all that excitement, it’s just occurred to me that I’ve yet to even talk about what the game’s about. Zenless Zone Zero puts you in the shoes of Phaethon, a well-known pair of hacker siblings, and you can choose to play as either Belle or Wise, AKA a female or male character. Working together with fellow Agent Nicole, Belle and Wise soon find themselves faced with a virtual threat who’s threatening to expose and take them down.
You’re then forced to work with Nicole and several other Agents to explore the virtual world and find out who’s coming after you. Along the way, you’ll take on various other Commissions and meet other side characters with their own fun stories to tell.
Story-wise, I’ll be the first to admit that Zenless Zone Zero doesn’t seem particularly inspired. And perhaps I’m biased, but it almost feels like the game’s vibe and atmosphere alone are enough to keep me playing. The mesh of high-tech hacking and the retro aesthetic is incredibly appealing; the juxtaposition between diving into a VR world and having it be depicted with analogue, old-timey television screens is ingenious. The fact that Belle and Wise run a video store with actual video tapes as a front for their hacking business is wonderful.
And New Eridu itself is also beautifully retro, with noodle stores on the side of the street, scratch cards, rundown convenience stores… It all just feels wonderfully nostalgic, with a dash of the futuristic on the side. There aren’t quite enough urban fantasy RPGs on the market, and I suppose Hoyoverse is giving me something I never knew I wanted until I got it. Especially one that doesn’t overwhelm you with giant open-worlds to explore, and is instead focused on the smaller details that it knows you’ll get invested in.
I came away from the closed beta test feeling excited and genuinely hyped for Zenless Zone Zero to finally release next year. It’s a game that I haven’t been away to pull myself away from, and when I did, I found myself thinking about it constantly, and that’s a rare feeling to find in video games these days.
