Zenless Zone Zero is a game about the dangers of TVs. Review

PlayStation 5 played

In Zenless Zone Zero (hereinafter referred to as ZZZ), the developers of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail moved away from open worlds and large-scale universes to tell a more intimate story. The world has been struck by a global catastrophe, but our attention is focused on the small town of New Eridu, where the main characters – brother and sister Wise and Belle – work in a video store. In fact, this is not the only type of their activity – secretly from many, they earn extra money as proxies and, remotely controlling a group of mercenaries, clear infected areas (they are called caverns) from monsters.

⇡#Little life

Although sometimes you need to manage a video rental store: select staff, suggest products to customers and put films on the shelves, much more emphasis is placed on cleaning out cavities. Sometimes characters come for help in person, visiting our workshop at the far end of the hall, and sometimes we ourselves insist that a passerby on the street address his problem to the local Internet network, where we will then take the order. In addition to the story missions, there are also enough side missions, so there will be enough reasons to return to the caverns.

At the beginning of the playthrough you choose whether you want to play as a brother or sister, but both are important for the plot in any case

There is only one town here (divided into small areas), but within its boundaries the writers were able to tell an eventful story and gradually introduce the player to the characters. A lot of attention is paid to the plot, and it’s not just the large number of dialogues – you never cease to admire the way the story is presented here. Sometimes we are simply shown several characters talking on one screen, like in visual novels. Sometimes a spectacular and dynamic video is launched, where the heroes are fighting with someone or running somewhere. And sometimes something like an interactive manga begins – a series of luxurious comic pictures, very professionally drawn.

The plot is divided into chapters, each of which tells a different story focusing on specific characters, be it a police duo investigating a crime or a badass girl discovering the truth about her estranged father. You get the feeling that you are watching cool anime short films one after another, in which, despite the sometimes drawn-out dialogues, you don’t want to miss anything. But if you are in a hurry somewhere or want to quickly move on to the action scenes, when you skip a video, the game will briefly write its content – an excellent “trick” that would benefit many other projects. And when free time does appear, all plot points can be reviewed in the video archive.

The story campaign allows you to play as characters you don’t have

There is another problem with the plot, and because of it, the attitude towards ZZZ is different for all players. The fact is that, in addition to dialogues and battles (more on them later), you periodically explore caverns here. And the “exploration” is not about visiting them, but about remotely controlling the banbu rabbit robot on a separate screen. You find yourself on a screen strewn with TVs, and one of them contains your banbu, and the others contain opponents, currency, power-ups, and even characters and events. There is nothing complicated in these episodes, but this is their downside – they never cease to seem like “fillers” in which something interesting does not happen very often. You just move the rabbit in different directions, collect something, sometimes stumble upon battles and that’s it.

Fortunately, this element of the game is only annoying at first – later the developers offer interesting mechanics related to these TVs. For example, you will protect a drilling rig from enemy attacks using guns placed in a row – you run from one TV to another to shoot shells, save up currency for each elimination and buy gun upgrades with it. Or there will be a kind of puzzle where you move within one set of TVs, and in another part of the screen there is a character who repeats your movements and should not be in danger. But even in such moments, the game is a little tiring with animations and dialogues at every turn, which cannot be speeded up in any way.

Will there be fights?

What makes these TVs much more meaningful is the end-game content that gradually becomes available as you progress through the campaign. During expeditions to the “Zero Cavern”, the game resembles a roguelike, where you gradually assemble your squad, encounter minor characters, make decisions (sacrifice health for bonuses, take money instead of a first aid kit, and so on), visit the store and collect resonators. These are passive improvements, between which you most often have to make a choice: you can increase damage within a run, strengthen certain elemental abilities, extend the time of stunning enemies – more than two hundred resonators in total.

Also of greater importance is the pressure of characters and the associated infections – negative effects that you sometimes get when you hit unexplored TVs. Here you also have to decide whether you want to get rid of them later or whether it’s better to spend your resources on something else. There are many missions in Cavern Zero, and in each of them you encounter new surprises. Some rich man offers to take money from him at the beginning of the passage, which will then need to be returned – should you trust him? A strange man in a suit is standing in one of the TVs – should you approach him or will it ruin the whole race? It is interesting to experiment, try different resonators and approach the study of cavities differently.

In timed tasks in the upper right corner you can immediately see whether it is worth further suffering or whether you will no longer get the S rank

⇡#Dexterous and skillful

But even when the TV episodes are more or less exciting, you want to quickly get to full-fledged battles. Still, for the sake of participating in them, we knock out characters and pump them up. And the battles in ZZZ are one of the most successful parts of the game. In most cases, your squad consists of three members – in story missions they are usually given with the required levels, and outside of them you decide who you want to send and where. With regular hits, you deal damage and accumulate energy, and then you can spend this energy on enhanced attacks. The more hits you make, the sooner the enemy will be stunned – not only will he be unable to move, but he will also begin to receive additional damage.

When you start performing special attacks on a stunned enemy, a chain of attacks is launched – you choose which of your partners to switch to, so that he continues beating the unfortunate man and makes a series of powerful blows. This can last until all three squad members hit the target; Such chains are one of the main sources of decibels necessary to activate the local “ult”, which destroys thousands of health units to any enemy. Needless to say, both special attacks and ults are accompanied by magnificent animations – even for the hundredth time you don’t get tired of looking at them.

Records are important not so much for their own characteristics, but for the bonuses they provide when using several disks of the same type

The battles are very simple at first – even a primitive “click” in most cases is enough to complete any task. But over time, conditions begin to appear: either you need to not miss the specified number of hits, or you need to pass a speed test. More and more attention needs to be paid to other mechanics, especially in the endgame. For example, in the “Regular Clearance” mode, each challenge has special effects – the damage you deal will increase for performing certain actions. And in the “Defense Shiyu” mode, a specific anomaly accumulates faster – this is the name here for elements like electricity, fire and cold, which distinguish the characters. Therefore, it is advisable to upgrade different heroes and carefully select your team, otherwise you will not be able to complete the test in a couple of minutes in order to get the highest score and all the rewards.

It’s also not immediately possible to start spending time and resources on choosing equipment. Firstly, every fighter needs an amplifier – this is a kind of battery that increases the basic attack and gives some other bonus like a critical attack chance. There are six cells around the amplifier – after opening a music store (this is a couple of days of playing), you can insert records there, which give even more bonuses. Moreover, the characteristics become even better if you wear plates of the same type, so it’s worth hunting for similar disks so that the character is as strong as possible. Well, here there is the usual leveling up of skills, thanks to which you will unlock pleasant bonuses in battle – for example, some of your attacks in certain conditions will briefly increase your critical damage. That is, you need to understand the characters’ abilities in order to make them most effective in battle.

The more damage you deal with a specific anomaly, the sooner the enemy will be stunned and begin to receive increased damage – the percentage is indicated next to his health bar

⇡#Without money

Since this is a free-to-play game, it’s difficult to sit and grind for something all day. To level up your characters you need resources, which you can get at the local club, but this wastes energy, and it is restored painfully slowly. And some entertainments are generally available only a few times a week – like “Ruthless Hunt”, where there are a lot of cool rewards, but they are given only three times. Even the battle pass cannot be closed quickly, since the amount of experience gained per day is limited. The only place you can grind is in the “Zero Cavern” – there you get experience sets for Banbu robot rabbits. They are designed somewhat like palicos in Monster Hunter – they run around and help in some way, only here they also take part in chains of attacks. Therefore, they also need to be selected depending on where you are going and with whom – if your squad consists of ice heroes, it is better to place an ice banbu with them.

Although the number of resources is limited, this does not mean that there is nothing to do in the game if they are absent. In addition to story missions, you can complete hero missions – three-stage mini-adventures, which also have luxurious anime videos and an equally interesting narrative. You can wander the streets at different times of the day and carry out small tasks for passersby – sometimes everything happens within the same street, and sometimes you are asked to explore caverns and fight with someone there. You can look for broken banbu and repair them, or collect hidden coins, which you can then exchange for currency. The structure of the city is reminiscent of the Persona series – even relationships with other heroes can be improved. It’s not only a pleasure to spend time here, but you also get all sorts of consumables for every sneeze, and they are needed both for leveling up and for getting new characters.

The music in every region is excellent

It’s quite easy to create a good squad without investing money – it’s still difficult to talk about monetizing ZZZ, because on the occasion of the release, players are bombarded with paid currency and allowed to unlock many valuable prizes. Some characters are simply given for free, and among them there are good heroes like Nicole with a unique ethereal anomaly and Enby, who quickly stuns enemies. With the help of free “twists” you can knock out a couple of other rank S characters and several heroes of rank A from the standard banner, among whom there are almost no frankly weak fighters. Well, you will probably have time to get a temporarily available character before she leaves the corresponding menu at the end of the month. Now this is the shark girl Ellen, one of the most fun characters with powerful ice attacks and crazy combinations of attacks.

The starting set of characters turned out to be very diverse. There are support heroes whose main task is to destroy the opponents’ defenses. There are characters like Anton and Lycaon, whose fighting styles are similar to those you see in fighting games. There’s even Gunslinger Billy, who relies on dual pistols. Although there are not many buttons used, each fighter has unique combinations, knowledge of which allows you to maximize the damage dealt. For example, if you play as Enby and just endlessly press the attack button, you are not using her passive skill, with which after the third hit she has a very high probability of stunning the enemy. Or Ellen – her enhanced special attack becomes many times more devastating if, when activated, there is enough energy for two uses.

A screen after which you are glad that you took a risk and started opening the local loot boxes

***

Zenless Zone Zero is not as big a game as Genshin Impact, but that will be a plus for some. Now there is a feeling that it is too late to join Genshin – there are already so many characters, regions and everything else that it seems impossible to keep up with the old players. Here is a more compact adventure, on which, after the plot, you don’t need to spend so much time so as not to miss anything. The main thing is to survive the first chapter, where dull TVs prevent you from enjoying the spectacular combat system. After this, new entertainment and modes are unlocked, in which the game reveals itself much better.

Advantages:

• Wonderful visual style, excellent anime inserts and comics;
• Pleasant atmosphere of a small town in which it is pleasant to spend time;
• After the first chapter, episodes with TVs become less annoying, thanks to unusual mechanics;
• An interesting combat system that increasingly rewards immersion in its features as you progress;
• A variety of characters with radically different fighting styles.

Disadvantages:

• New players will have a hard time getting used to the fact that it’s not always all action – especially at the beginning, when the TV sequences are boring;
• Dialogues sometimes seem drawn out;
• Until about level 30, the difficulty of battles is very low, and there is no need to understand the intricacies of the combat system.

Graphic arts

The city looks very nice, as do the characters living in it. But the eye is especially pleased in story missions, where the story is presented through chic comics and spectacular dynamic videos.

Sound

The soundtrack is so good that you want to listen to it separately from the game. Well, the characters are voiced great in the English version.

Single player game

Storyline, side quests, additional missions about individual heroes – there is plenty of free content.

Estimated time of completion

Taking into account all the limitations associated with energy and resources, the plot can be completed in 30 hours. But in such games, of course, they linger for a much longer period.

Collective game

Not foreseen.

General impression

An enjoyable action-adventure with an exciting combat system and likable characters. The main thing is not to quit the game immediately because of episodes with TV. After the first chapter, they become better, and the combat system is revealed, and therefore there is a desire to collect a collection of heroes and upgrade them.

Rating: 8.0 / 10

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