by
Thomas Froehlicher
, posted 2 hours ago / 222 Views
With a third miHoYo game now released on smartphones and PS5, we’ve come to a point where the Chinese developer could, ironically, start to dominate the JRPG industry. An action RPG like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero comes with a different mood, new characters, more stories, and more grinding. Can miHoYo once again steal RPG players’ time from the competition?
Honkai Star Rail was very different from Genshin Impact, and in turn Zenless Zone Zero is distinct from both of them. If medieval fantasy-inspired Genshin Impact represents the past, and sci-fi-centric Honkai Star Rail the future, that leaves the present to Zenless Zone Zero. Indeed miHoYo’s latest universe, while still set an anime fantasy world, is urban fantasy strongly inspired by the 90s. Wise and Belle, the two protagonists, manage a video rental store, which gave me flashbacks of my past when visiting this long lost profession. You can choose which of the two protagonists you want to control but, unlike in miHoYo’s previous efforts, the protagonist doesn’t fight.
What struck me first is how much smaller Zenless Zone Zero looks in terms of scale compared to Genshin Impact, and even to Honkai Star Rail. The city of New Eridu does have a nice retro feel: accessories are vinyl records bought at the disc shop, there are antique arcade machines at the game center providing similarly old mini-games, and the network is represented by old CRT TVs. There are smartphones, though, so I guess that’s one modern invention they couldn’t do without. While strolling through the city is nice, it consists of no more than three or four cramped districts with just one avenue each. I’ll come back to this when discussing the gameplay below, but I can already say that Zenless Zone Zero is a JRPG with no sense of exploration.
As hinted at above, the protagonists aren’t fighters; they’re proxies. The video rental store is nothing but a cover to hide their real identities and activities. A proxy is a super hacker capable of guiding agents in Hollows, which are massive distortions of time and space that gradually corrupt the body of anyone trapped inside. Hollows thus work as dungeons, which your playable characters enter to clear of monsters known as Etherals. But here, again, the Hollows are tiny and battle missions generally brief. Despite that I must admit I’ve been quite addicted to Zenless Zone Zero since release, partly because it contains quite a compelling narrative.
In its 1.0 version alone, Zenless Zone Zero features 4 factions, 4 corresponding stories, 17 characters, and a number of sub-stories for some of these characters. The narrative is very diverse, with each chapter having a different focus in terms of tone, emotions, and fun – plus the cast is truly rich. miHoYo has a knack to creating unique, charismatic characters you instantly love, and that’s even more so the case in this latest game. The incredible wealth of characters and the more condensed stories keeps the player more invested than ever before in a miHoYo title.
The visual side of the story impresses too, being a mix of conversations between fairly attractive character models, mind-blowing cutscenes, and superb comic-like illustrated sequences that are very reminiscent of Gravity Rush. This latter aspect is remarkable because there are tons of sections like this; I don’t remember a game ever having such a considerable number of illustrations. I’m nearing the end of the story content in version 1.0 and I must say I’ve considerably enjoyed it.
The 3D modeling during gameplay is great (although sometimes less sharp than in Honkai Star Rail), and I like the emphasis made on small details like the outfits – which are extremely pretty – or the character menu, where your party members adopt different funny poses on each growth-type tab. The animations are the most impressive part of all – fighters alternate with each other, defending or attacking in complex and stylish motions that give a splendid sensation to battles. The visual gap compared to four-year-old Genshin Impact is clearly felt here. Even NPCs look better than ever before. There’s not much to appreciate in the surroundings, though, and not just because the districts are cramped; most of them just look very common. Zenless Zone Zero doesn’t come even remotely close to the sceneries of the two previous miHoYo games on PS5.
Combat is one area that’s completely revamped compared to miHoYo’s previous offerings. Fighting in Zenless Zone Zero is much more dynamic, exhilarating, and fast-paced. Guarding and evading at the right time is key to prevailing, and those actions are performed frequently. Characters alternate very swiftly to counter or defend, and once you’ve stunned the enemy, you can initiate a link attack with all three party members, one after another. The sound environment is also crazy, as combat actions come with loud cracking and buzzing noises that play a big role in the overall great impression one gets from the gameplay. Shifting back to Genshin Impact afterwards almost made me feel I was playing that game in slow motion.
However, I’m less convinced of the depth of this new battle system. Zenless Zone Zero characters, like any in the Hoyoverse, have an elemental type (Fire, Ice, Thunder, Physical, or Ether), as well as a role. Stun-type characters can stun opponents more quickly, Defense characters can endure hits longer, Anomaly characters increase the chance of debuffs, Support character deal damage over time, and Attack characters deal the biggest blows. That sounds really great on paper, but in actual gameplay I failed to perceive the leverage of those tactics. The display of strengths and weakness isn’t clear at all to begin with, while it is in Honkai Star Rail.
Hitting the enemy with everything you’ve got, regardless of roles or element, is always a good enough recipe to win. That would be straight up suicide in Honkai Star Rail, where role distribution must be carefully thought-out all of the time. Maybe Zenless Zone Zero‘s overall difficulty isn’t adjusted high enough (I’ve been playing in challenge mode). There’s even a casual mode, which could be a plus for beginners who aren’t action RPG experts, especially compared to the high level required in Honkai Star Rail, so perhaps that’s the target audience. So while the visual aspect is exciting, combat in Zenless Zone Zero lacks a distinct gameplay novelty in order to stand out, like the elemental reactions introduced in Genshin Impact.
The progression system outside of combat is utterly bizarre. You have to navigate within a network represented by a large grid of squares. Your mission is usually to advance square by square in order to reach the goal, solving puzzles and entering battle squares from time to time. The puzzles can be stimulating, but it’s like the main progression system is a never-ending mini-game on a dark grid. That’s definitely not what I’d call amazing, especially compared to Genshin Impact‘s gigantic open world. As always with miHoYo, Zenless Zone Zero offers various types of additional combat challenges, notably fighting story bosses again or defending a set area. Most of these are all but compulsory, since they drop essential level up materials (it’s worth reminding readers that in most free-to-play games the party doesn’t gain experience in battle).
Zenless Zone Zero is free, but in-game credit (known as Polychrome) is used to pull characters from the now commonplace random draws. You can buy Polychrome with real money, but the publisher has given enough at launch to grant you 100 free pulls. Six rank A characters (equivalent to a 4-star character) are given during the story and challenges, and one random S rank (5-star) character is guaranteed early on. This is respectably generous, but miHoYo hasn’t keep up with Wuthering Waves from a few weeks ago, which directly gave away and discounted 5-star heroes after launch. On the plus side, Zenless Zone Zero lets you earn daily Polychrome very quickly, often in four or five minutes.
One last pleasant surprise Zenless Zone Zero has for players is the possibility to rewatch any story cutscene. I’ve wanted this feature to be introduced in Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail for years, so I was quite delighted to find it included here right from the start, not to mention I have tons of favorite story parts to rewatch. It’s unfortunate that there’s no option to hide text, especially since Honkai Star Rail had that at launch. Finally it’s worth mentioning that the iPhone version supports controllers – and the PlayStation Backbone One works wonderfully – so you can comfortably resume your game away from home.
While I can’t shake off the feeling that Zenless Zone Zero suffers from a certain lack of investment, I can’t see myself dropping the game either, if this initial version is representative of what awaits in future updates. I didn’t expect the story to shine, yet it vastly exceeded my expectations. I did have faith in miHoYo’s ability to create a great new gameplay experience, but on this front it’s only partially successful, being genuinely fun but not particularly deep. Still, boasting some crazily great characters, superb design, graphics, and animations, I see Zenless Zone Zero as a very cool and delightful action RPG that I’ll come back to with pleasure as future versions are released.
After graduating from a French business school, Thomas felt an irresistible force drawing him to study Japanese, which eventually led him to Japanese Profeciency Test level 1 in 2012. During the day, Thomas is a normal account manager. But at night he becomes Ryuzaki57, an extreme otaku gamer hungry for Japanese games (preferably with pretty girls in the main role). His knowledge now allows him to import games at Japanese release for unthinkable prices, and then tell everyone about them. Feel free to contact on twitter at @Ryuz4ki57
This review is based on a digital copy of Zenless Zone Zero for the PS5