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Zenless Zone Zero Review – IGN

Published

4 months ago

July 4, 2024

Taking part in with nostalgia-laden imagery from the early 2000s, Zenless Zone Zero sees developer HoYoverse pivot gracefully from the fantastical settings of Genshin Affect and Honkai: Star Rail into an attractive city dystopia. It’s a universe the place you’ll duke it out in glitzy real-time fights as a trio of streetwear-clad brokers, fixing easy puzzles as their handler between battles to assist them navigate a labyrinth of encounters – and that’s earlier than you get to the carousel of social facet actions layered on high. A mouthful of tasteful influences mix into one thing effortlessly trendy but additionally a bit inconsistent, sometimes undone by an absence of depth. But Zenless Zone Zero received its hooks into me regardless; its relentless attraction compelled me to maintain preventing, one fight puzzle or bowl of ramen at a time.

Zenless Zone Zero takes place in a world the place monster-filled pocket dimensions referred to as Hollows have devastated civilisation. Whereas a lot of humanity has been worn out, the cyberpunk bastion of New Eridu survives by a fraught codependence with the Hollows and the precious sources discovered inside. You play as both Belle or Clever, a brother-sister hacker duo with a knack for navigating this harmful territory, tackling commissions from a roster of lovable rogues looking for their subsequent massive rating. It’s a novel and gritty setup that, whereas convoluted at occasions, stored me engaged by testing my strategic instinct throughout a smorgasbord of challenges I grew to become hungry to finest.

Your brawling excursions embark from the retro tech-strewn backroom of the siblings’ video rental retailer, the place you’ll choose from a formidable roster of unlockable brokers to make up a three-person get together after which dive into the perilous Hollows, buying and selling success for XP and improve sources. The assessment construct offered by HoYoverse forward of launch gave me entry to the entire at present out there brokers, and I quickly discovered an affinity for those from a faction referred to as Victoria Housekeeping, due to their charming British inflexions and battle maid outfits. My private favorite of the bunch, the shark-tailed Ellen Joe, swipes and slashes with an icy blade, stacking elemental debuffs on enemies and dropping blase quips within the course of. Whereas the make-up of your dream group will largely be within the palms of the Gacha Gods, as characters are unlocked by the style’s normal methodology of randomized pulls, it’s helpful that story missions mean you can check out the solid with out the necessity to pull them first.

Regardless of how intense it could possibly appear in movement, Zenless Zone Zero’s fight is forgiving and approachable. You’ve a primary assault and a dodge for well timed escapes from signposted assaults, in addition to the flexibility to swap to different brokers to keep away from scrapes, parry, or compound their combos. Constructing an enemy’s daze meter results in a persistently satisfying chain assault, a slo-mo quick-time occasion the place your colleague swoops in to put the smackdown. Fundamental and supreme skills spherical out every character’s fight choices, although like every good motion sport, there’s loads of selection out there by the mix of well timed button presses and latent passives.

Districts are stuffed with particulars that make them a pleasure to discover.

Difficult boss encounters surfaced to check my reflexes, although I hardly ever felt overwhelmed so long as I might join the dots of my fight technique and juggle incoming assault patterns to maintain totally different enemy sorts at bay. Intricate build-tinkering techniques, problem choices, and endgame content material assist increase the ability ceiling for challenge-hungry gamers, however Zenless Zone Zero appears content material to remain out of your method if you happen to simply wish to merely choose it up and do some flashy strikes. Elegant animations footnote most of your assaults, all the way down to the best way home demon Van Lycaon gracefully lowers his steel heels after a kick. Finally, the main target is on indulging the fantasy of preventing with certainly one of Zenless Zone Zero’s splendidly designed and passionately voice-acted characters relatively than rivaling the likes of Satan Could Cry with its fight nuance – a tradeoff I’m comfy with, even when it means much less mechanical depth.

Sadly, the dazzling fight is undermined by an overabundance of hacker puzzles meant to suggest the hyperlink between your group of brokers and the proxy guiding them by the Hole from again dwelling. You’ll be kicked right into a labyrinth of chunky CRT displays between pockets of fight, pushing a bit of avatar round to set off mechanisms that result in your subsequent checkpoint or encounter. The fuzzy aesthetics of this mode are pleasant to have a look at, however the course of feels arbitrary and murders the momentum. After marching by partitions of screens, I began in search of out the following encounter as quick as potential to spice up my morale and return to the frenetic motion sequences that truly make Zenless Zone Zero compelling.

That hefty loop of taking up commissions after which venturing into the Hole to finish them might simply be all there’s and it wouldn’t really feel scant, but surprisingly, it solely accounts for half of what’s right here. The opposite half is a life simulator the place you’ll roam cosy suburbs, handle your heroes’ Blockbuster-esque enterprise, and preserve relationships with locals by dialogue-driven facet tales throughout an atmospheric day-to-night cycle. Whereas not strictly an open world, Zenless Zone Zero’s beautiful districts are thoughtfully dressed with environmental particulars that make it a pleasure to discover. From rusty riverside kiddy rides to messy bedrooms and vandalised backstreets, there’s consideration paid all over the place you look that helps centre you on this fashion-forward science fiction world.

As soon as the preliminary pleasure of exploring Hollows began to settle, I grew to become drawn to all of the extracurricular actions I had at my fingertips. Stocking my video retailer become the nexus of my each day routines, as every morning, I’d begin by pairing eclectic videotapes from my assortment with the style calls for of the general public. After that, I’d must enterprise outdoors looking for higher merchandise, finishing duties for locals like fixing quirky riddles or taking editorial photos to be able to earn my VHS reward. That symbiotic course of labored nicely to funnel my consideration towards the totally different social actions, to not point out the cash offered by working my enterprise actually helped fund my story mission exploits.

This facet of Zenless Zone Zero isn’t fairly as centered as one thing just like the Persona collection it’s so clearly impressed by, so there are some boring spots, but it surely affords a fascinating workload for gamers to log in and deal with every day nonetheless. All your actions are tied collectively nicely by way of a useful submenu referred to as the Inter-Knot, which let me discover my rhythm amid the entire choices I used to be handed. This in-game, every part app rapidly grew to become my finest good friend, taking up the position of job finder, social media platform, and, most significantly, scheduling device, making certain I wasn’t fully paralysed by the overwhelming prospect of what to do subsequent.

I loved shirking my urgent tasks by chasing excessive scores on the Godfinger Arcade, whose moreish snake and spelunking minigames stole an embarrassing quantity of my time. However the humorous and typically profound substories left the most important mark, reminding me of the human stakes on this world. One facet quest includes a homeless robotic whose ghostly silhouette scares an area citizen, resulting in a surprisingly transferring crossed-wires scenario. Simply forgotten in a sea of lovely shopkeepers and in-game currencies, the underlying frailty of Zenless Zone Zero’s post-apocalypse is at all times in body. Overarching themes of displacement and corruption come by within the cinematic story and the design of its metropolis wards, which vary from dilapidated to gentrified.

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Given the unusually beneficiant nature of HoYoverse’s assessment construct, it was troublesome to get a transparent image of how Zenless Zone Zero’s development techniques will really feel long-term, however nothing I’ve seen appears wildly out of line with the developer’s different gacha video games. Nonetheless, it’ll be illuminating to begin once more on a brand new account at launch and get accustomed to the grind in a extra natural dwell service setting (and we’ll make sure you replace this assessment if issues are unexpectedly out of line). Regardless, I solid a powerful attachment to this wealthy world and its cosplay-friendly characters by the top of a major story that simply takes dozens of hours to finish, and left feeling that this formidable pivot actually lives as much as the excessive requirements set by Genshin Affect and Honkai: Star Rail.