Playing with nostalgic imagery from the early 2000s, Zenless Zone Zero sees developer Hoyoverse gracefully veering from the fantasy settings of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail into a charming urban dystopia. It’s a universe where you’ll duke it out in spectacular real-time battles as a trio of streetwear-clad agents, solving simple puzzles as their handler between battles to help them navigate the maze of encounters – and that’s when you get into the carousel of social activities layered on top. A mouthful of luscious effects blends into something effortlessly stylish, but also a little inconsistent, sometimes marred by a lack of depth. Yet Zenless Zone Zero managed to draw me in
Zenless Zone Zero takes place in a world where monster-filled pocket dimensions called Hollows have devastated civilization. While much of humanity has perished, the cyberpunk citadel of New Eridu survives through a macabre co-dependence with the Hollows and the valuable resources found within. You play as either Belle or Wise, a brother-sister hacker duo who have the ability to navigate this dangerous zone, taking on commissions from a list of lovable crooks in search of their next big score. It’s a unique and rigorous setup that, while complex at times, kept me engaged by testing my strategic intuition in a set of challenges that I became hungry to best.
Your battle journey begins in the retro tech-filled backroom of the siblings’ video rental store, where you’ll choose from an impressive list of unlockable agents to form a party of three and then dive into dangerous Hollows, trading success for XP and upgrade resources. The review build provided by Hoyoverse ahead of launch gave me access to all of the agents currently available, and I soon found an affinity for those from a faction called Victoria Housekeeping, thanks to their charming British lilt and battle maid outfit. My personal favorite of the bunch, the shark-tailed Ellen Jo, wields an icy blade and stacks elemental debuffs on enemies and drops blaze quips in the process. While the makeup of your dream team will largely be in the hands of the gacha gods, as characters are unlocked in the genre’s usual manner of random pull, it’s handy that story missions allow you to try out the cast without needing to pull them first.
As intense as it may seem in motion, Zenless Zone Zero’s combat is forgiving and accessible. You have a basic attack and a dodge to avoid indicated attacks at the right time, as well as the ability to swap to other agents to avoid scratches, parry or combine their combos. Building up the enemy’s Daze meter leads to a consistently satisfying Chain Attack, a slo-mo quick-time event where your ally swoops in to lay the smackdown. Basic and ultimate abilities round out each character’s combat options, though like any good action game, there’s plenty of variety available through a combination of timed button presses and latent passives.
Challenging boss encounters came out to test my reflexes, though as long as I could connect the dots of my battle strategy and anticipate incoming attack patterns to keep a variety of enemies at bay, I rarely felt overwhelmed. Complex build-tinkering systems, difficulty options, and endgame content help push the skill ceiling for challenge-hungry players, but Zenless Zone Zero seems content to stay out of your way if you just want to pick it up and perform some flashy moves. Elegant animations depict most of your attacks, like the way the household demon Van Lycaon puts his metal heel down after a kick. Ultimately, Zenless Zone Zero’s focus is on fulfilling the fantasy of fighting alongside one of its brilliantly designed and passionately voiced characters, rather than trying to make its combat feel like Devil May Cry’s – a compromise I’m comfortable with, even if it means less mechanical depth.
Unfortunately, the dazzling combat is undermined by an overabundance of hacker puzzles, meant to imply the link between your team of agents and the proxies guiding them through the holo from home. You’ll be thrust into a maze of chunky CRT monitors between pockets of combat, pushing a tiny avatar around to trigger mechanisms that lead to your next checkpoint or encounter. The blurry aesthetics of this mode are pleasant to look at, but the process feels arbitrary and kills the momentum. After marching through walls of screens, I started looking for the next encounter as quickly as possible to boost my morale and return to the frantic action sequences that really make the zany Zone Zero engaging.
