Zenless Zone Zero Review: Should You Open a Video Club?

Zenless Zone Zero is a new game developed by miHoYo and if you spend some of your free time on the web, then you are bound to see one of their ads or someone talking about it. After careful consideration, I’ve decided to see what this new game is about. And after investing more than a few hours into the game, I’m ready to report my findings.

Story 

Zenless Zone Zero is set in the post-apocalyptic world where the monsters known as Ethereals have traveled into the human world from portals called Hollows. The Ethereals have caused chaos for most of humanity, wiping most of them out. 

What little of humanity has survived is gathered and created a stronghold named New Eridu. That’s also the place where the protagonist resides. Depending on who you choose, the protagonist’s name can be either Wise or Belle. 

They help other characters explore Hollows. The protagonist’s main base is a video store where citizens of New Eridu can rent films in the form of VHS. 

Gameplay

I would split the Zenless Zone Zero gameplay into two types. 

Outside of Hollows 

This part happens mostly in New Eridu and you’re just hopping around and chatting with people, doing simple quests, etc. You can gather and buy equipment and summon characters (of course, this is a gacha game after all). 

The summoning is pretty standard — you collect tickets and resources in order to summon. There is of course a pity system for the extremely unlucky people like yours truly. It wouldn’t be a miHoYo game if you didn’t have to summon the weapons too. In this case, they are called engines and they also have a pity system. It’s worth noting that you get engines while summoning for characters too. 

Inside the Hollows 

This is where the main action happens. You can make a team of up to 3 of the characters that you acquired. And as Proxy you have a task of guiding them through Hollows and sometimes they’ll have to fight enemies. 

The fighting system is as basic as it comes. You’ve got yourself a basic attack, a rechargeable skill, a rechargeable ultimate, dodge. 

With the ability to swap between 3 characters and those skills I mentioned, your goal is to defeat enemies. So far into the game, there wasn’t a real challenge of beating them, and most of the time I didn’t even have a chance to charge my ultimate before wiping out all of the opponents.

Issues

There were a couple of issues with the game, none of them really being anything major but in the end, it just didn’t help with my enjoyment of it. 

The first was running —  it felt really wonky, especially on the mobile, controlling it was a special task. I definitely feel like they need to work on that. 

One of the other things I gotta mention is, somehow every time I tried to log in to the game, there was either some sort of issue or another patch that needed downloading. I found myself spending more time trying to enter than actually playing it (maybe overreacting but that’s how it felt). 

Graphics & Audio

When it comes to the looks of the Zenless Zone Zero, I’ve gotta admit that something about those 90’s vibes is really relaxing. The character design is done well, although I wish they had made them with more skills in their arsenal. For now, it seems pretty basic. Other animations are also very neat, nothing to write home about but still a good job done. 

Final thoughts

Even though I love the game’s look and the characters’ design, I still didn’t have as much fun as I thought I would but that’s just me. Maybe with future updates, the game will become more suitable for my needs and I might try it then but until then my journey to find a good mobile game continues. 

As for the question of should you play it? If you need a chill game to occasionally log on and play it for a bit and do some summons, then yeah, go for it. Hopefully, you have space for it on your phone.

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