Zenless Zone Zero is the latest action-packed offering from HoYoverse, the company famous for Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd, and Honkai Star Rail. Set in New Eridu, this action RPG combines fast-paced combat and a very urban vibe in a pseudo-Japanese style. What makes this game so special and what does it do to stand out? Find out in our Zenless Zone Zero review!
Zenless Zone Zero
Developer: HoYoVerse
Publisher: HoYoVerse
Platforms: Windows PC (reviewed), iOS/Android, PlayStation 5
Release Date: July 4, 2024
Price: Free to Play
Zenless Zone Zero thrusts players into New Eridu, a city constantly threatened by mysterious entities known as Hollows. You take on the role of a Proxy, essentially a contractor navigating the Hollow to protect civilians and uncover the secrets behind anomalies. New Eridu seems peaceful for the most part but is subject to roving gangs of bandits and monsters in the Hollow where commissions you take on are placed.
The story is puddle deep overall but has cute and well animated, well voiced moments that can convey its side stories very well. Outside of main story grinding, character side stories are available during your time through and feature deeper attachments to characters you can pull for. Overall, it’s a somewhat forgetful story but has moments you can recall specifically.
The gameplay is where Zenless Zone Zero truly shines. Combat is fluid and quick, very reminiscent of Senran Kagura games. Simply knowing the mechanics however isn’t enough as you’ll have to invest in your characters like other gacha games.
Evades, Switching, Super attacks, and EX moves all require upgrades to be more effective. More intricate systems such as Bangboos, little rabbit-like companions who assist you in fights, and W-Engines, a weapon and ability enhancing equipable item, all require upgrades as well with different currencies which sounds confusing but is segregated enough to not be overbearing.
The game world is mostly filled with conversations with numerous activities and mini-games that offer breaks from the main story but are still required for full completion and achievements. Different times of day have different event triggers to complete additional content from Officer Mew Mew and Sage in a Barrel coin collection events.
Side content and almost be completed by simply clicking/pressing through instead of informed answers, which may happen from time to time. In certain Exploration events at the HDD, your UI for completing Story and Combat missions, you may be required to do a bit of memorization and puzzle solving.
While these cultivate to bring content to the game, it can be completed rather quickly and can be repetitive so your brain may melt out of your ears sometimes. Leveling up characters and everything else is the hardest task, which leads to a style over substance feeling in the end.
Visually, Zenless Zone Zero is vibrant, stylish, and clean. It’s a different style than HoYoverse’s previous titles, somewhere between Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3rd. Characters during cutscenes are almost rubbery reminiscent of classic stretchy cartoons. The art style compliments this because of the semi-unserious nature of the story. Cityscapes are detailed and immersive with memorable locations full of NPCs.
The sound design is equally impressive. The energetic soundtrack perfectly complements the game’s fast-paced action and urban setting. Voice acting is really good, with each character delivering their lines with personality and no one sounding alike.
Possibly the biggest positive in regards to audio is the soundtrack filled with different genres ranging from rock to trap music beats and even a guest appearance by Tiësto on it as well. Entering into the Hollow to do end game content and hearing the trap music instrumental carried me and my excitement through the tireless grind.
On PC, Zenless Zone Zero runs fairly well but may require somewhat of a beefy rig due to some performance issues. Areas like Lumina Square are taxing on almost every device we tested. The game does support high resolutions and frame rates toggles with some customization to save your battery or performance.
For those wondering, playing via Steam Deck which isn’t optimized for ZZZ, downloading with the help of Heroic and the Epic Games Store, leads to performance issues like dropped frames and even crashing at worse, which I would only recommend in extreme cases.
Testing on the iPad Pro with M4 chip, Apple’s latest chipset, offers the best experience overall (the one thing with power to run a game but not a desktop with 2 monitors) . While there are occasional performance hiccups on PC, these are minor but can hinder some crucial hit strings with stuttering. Your experience should be fairly smooth, but it’s best to know as a general heads up that it may not work the best at its highest settings and would benefit from lowering them a bit more.
Zenless Zone Zero is an excellent addition to HoYoverse’s lineup; some would consider it too close to Honkai Impact 3rd but I believe that the setting and characters are a little more grounded in reality than the latter.
Its simple but precise combat system, detailed world, and stunning presentation make Zenless Zone Zero better than most current generation console games. Despite some minor performance issues, Zenless Zone Zero delivers an experience to as close as others in its class, i.e. Senran Kagura.
Zenless Zone Zero was reviewed on a PlayStation 5. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Zenless Zone Zero is now available for Windows PC (via their website), iOS/Android via the App Store and Google Play respectively, and PlayStation 5.
