Zenless Zone Zero (2024)

ZZZ is starting to get tedious. It’s really not a lot of fun when the story is done and all you have left to do is repeatedly run the same handful of combat encounters just to level up your inter-knot.

I find it hard to envision playing this for the long-haul. It would be much better if these mechanics were pulled from this and inserted into a better, more complete non-F2P game.

This is the closest I think miHoYo has come to convincing me that they have something worthwhile to contribute to gaming. But when other former gacha game designers like Cygames have been putting out traditional games sans gacha that still have all the fun of a roster of characters with different and dynamic combat styles, it’s hard to see this F2P mode as net positive for anyone but the people at miHoYo pocketing the money.

In the beginning I thought the combat was kinda simple and straightforward but the more I learn about it the more I realize it's pretty deep. Definitely a lot more than I would've expected from a so called "mobile game".

I'm really loving the retro and yet futuristic vibes. A lot of references to the 90s like CRT TVs, VHS, video rental shops, CDs, gamboy, and the old phone game "snake". The story is often told through comic book panels but also has voice acting and sound effects so it's like some kind of dynamic web comic. The whole game feels like a work of love for anyone with fond memories of the 90s and early 2000s.

Also, I love the shark girl Ellen! Who knew sharks could be so cool and cute and hot.

The drop rate for high level upgrade mats is abysmal. Once you hit inter-knot level 40, the unit promotion mats have a chance to drop 0-4 in any given HIA VR run. Couple that with the fact that you can only run the HIA VR a limited times per day means it will take multiple days just to raise a character from level 40 to 50. Repeat that for all your high level characters and it will take weeks and weeks just to bring everyone up to 50. I dread how long it will take to reach 60.

Fucking F2P bullshit.

I'm about 30 hours in right now so I think I have a general idea of how I feel. I'm up to chapter 2 and just met Belabog group and so far the story has been quite good with an interesting setting. With highly animated characters that ooze personality (so far at least)

The gameplay loop I find incredibly satisfying more so then genshin and Star rail. It also feels like the actual gacha element is fair as you can always be upgrading your character.

The only thing I'm kind of on the fence about is the amount of currencies implemented. Which can definitely become confusing at times.

Those are my very rough thoughts I will see if the game can keep up the pace.

It’s wild that the three highest tier characters are all on one team (Victoria Housekeeping) and that miHoYo simply didn’t balance the rest of the playable characters to match.

Cunning Hares feels fine when you first start out and don’t really have a grasp on the mechanics, but by the time you reach the Belobog chapter and have grasped the gameplay and realized that some unit rotations are vastly superior to others, playing members from Belobog feels like trudging through pea soup.

Then you reach chapter three, and if you haven’t already pulled some/all the members of Victoria Housekeeping you get a demo taste of their vastly unmatched potential. How do you go back to D-tier characters like Billy when you’ve had a taste of the finer things?

It’s a sneaky way to signal to players that they better start spending some money if they want to pull the top characters and continue having the best time this game has to offer when in combat.