Is ZZZ A Good Game For You? | First Impressions of Zenless Zone Zero

Hoyoverse has released a new game with Zenless Zone Zero. The action focused gacha game has you playing as a ‘proxy’ that helps lead clients through hallows (areas of the city that have been corrupter). With so many games under Hoyoverse’s belt, it might be easy to brush this game off as another half baked gacha game due to the short released window between Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero’s launch. But, you might be happy to hear that this game is a well crafted experience. Due to the closeness to the release date and the fact that this is a First Impressions, this article will only cover the first chapter of content, but will include some spoilers.

To start off, the premise of the game is lightyears away from Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. Instead of being a powerful being with memory loss, you are a pair of siblings (you pick one but both are involved in the story) who guide criminals through a zone of warped time and space. All your memories are intact, you already have confident relationships with others, you are established in the little community. This game has the most natural starting/reset point, a hacker steals the siblings proxy account (how they get clients and grow their reputation to earn money), after destroying the account, you have to start from zero with a fresh account. This feels reasonable, this is something that could actually happen in this setting and blends with the rest of the story. Nothing feels forced about this which makes the beginning more digestible.

Some of the simple things that make this a good quality game is the high quality animations. Like most games, there are three levels of dialog scenes. The first level are the moments when nothing is voice acted and you have to read everything, this is used far less in the early hours than a lot of other games I’ve played. The second level is voice acted scenes with the active characters on screen in almost a video call fashion. And the final level are fully animated cutscenes, these are beautifully done and reminded me of Persona 5 with the level of smoothness. What makes this so impressive is the amazing voice acting performance, all of the characters have a personality and that causes unique dynamics between different characters. It is so much more engaging when all of the main cast have a specific architype they fall under much like an anime (or real life if you have friends). There is one bonus type that I love the most and that is the comic book style storyboard that pops out when major story events happen. I adore the art style with this and with the hilarious dialog and great voice acting, these are some of my favorite scenes in the whole game.

Put on top of that, you get to hear the MC speak and even voice the lines you select, it might be small for some players, but I think this is a great extra touch. The MC’s are some of my favorites so far in the Hoyoverse line of games. Each having their own names, voice actors, personality, and backstory make them a lot more enjoyable for me to play. I understand that some people enjoy the more personable effect you get from naming the silent protagonist and being able to shape their personality in their mind, but since these siblings are so flushed out, I love the extra effort of crafting them.

I know a lot of people love a fantasy setting, and with this game leaning to more of a light cyberpunk style with the bright, colorful setting and the focus on technology, it is very different if you are coming from other Hoyoverse games. But I love the step in a different direction. Zenless Zone Zero’s story split into multiple pieces that has you jumping through different viewpoints to get the full picture. This is great for those who lack the ability to focus for long periods of time (read: me). Jumping around different characters to puzzle piece your way through a coherent story is an amazing way to not only keep attention, but to showcase other characters.

The fighting a is fun hack and slash style where you just wail on enemies and then chain attacks to destroy the health bar. This is such fun mindless fighting for me and that’s part of why I’m enjoying this game so much thus far. All of the movements and actions are smooth and responsive. Everything seems simple enough with a basic attack, a charged attack, each character builds up a bar to unleash a special attack, and the complete team works together to build up a shared ultimate that only one character can use. You can even gain a bonus if you group up characters of the same elemental type or from the same company. With the game being in spired by classic fighting game Street Fighter, I expected a bit more in the fighting category, but overall, my experience is it’s pretty simple. This obviously does not mean it will stay simple, it can always get more complex in the future and this is also a look at only the first chapter of the game’s content so it would make perfect sense for this content to be more simplified. I just hope they add a little bit more in the future to make a bit more challenging because I found myself just clicking to build up bars a lot of the times. One thing that I loved was the inclusion of the Bangboos in the fighting. Getting to have your own adorable Bangboo that can give buffs and jumps in with butcher knifes was not something I expected to see and had to just watch when it first happened. Being able to chain the Bangboo with your characters and them going wild with the knifes or just sitting on the side lines and pulling out a little machine gun to do chip damage is just such a good inclusion that shows off the humorous atmosphere.

Zenless Zone Zero separates their commissions into three categories: story, exploration, and combat. Once you select your commission, you jump into the TV screens. I have seen a lot of people complain that they don’t enjoy the TV mechanics because either they want to get to the fights, the TV section is too slow, they don’t like the puzzles. I find this section really fun (but I heavily agree the forced dialog makes these section feel like a slog), I love little puzzles and feel like it separates the fight sections so they never feel boring. This is where you choose your team. Select up to three characters and a Bangboo. For certain story commissions, you can choose to only use trial characters that appear in the plot. This is used in many other games and it a great way to test out the play style of a new character.

Something that can be overlooked is UI. The UI doesn’t necessarily make or break a game, but good UI can enhance the game experience. Zenless Zone Zero’s UI is clean and even though it might be confusing at the beginning, but once you learn all the icons, it’s so simple. One of the simple things that can be forgotten is the dynamic background for the main menu. Being able to select which character appears is such a small detail but I love that you have the option. In the main menu, having all of the commonly used apps on screen while putting all the rarely used ones in a folder to keep things from feeling cluttered.

Something that comes up with a lot of story based games is the divide between people who want to play casually and don’t follow the story closely, and those who want to learn everything they can get their hands on. One of the great things in Zenless Zone Zero is the Inter-knot, a forum page that includes lore and daily commissions. These posts are how I figured out what a Carrot was because it was never mentioned in the story dialog. Instead of taking time to explain all the details of a world the MC is already familiar with, they naturally weave it into these posts, so the lore hunters are free to search through all of the posts to learn more about the world and hidden bits of information.

So far, this is a game that I have been enjoying. I feel like the world feels alive, I like the animations and effects for the ramen and coffee shops, and having an arcade to play little minigames is fun. The story is pretty decent and I hope it continues to improve with time. The fighting is simply fun to do. This is all I need to enjoy a game for a while, and right now, Zenless Zone Zero is checking enough boxes to keep me hooked for a bit.