Zenless Zone Zero is a stylish, high-engagement romp that feels bad to play lazily

A quick disclaimer: When it comes to live service games, I am the laziest player I know. With a few exceptions, I'm a pathological dilettante when it comes to games, rarely doing more than the bare minimum, flicking between games like tabs in a browser window. I'm quick to look up the most "casual-friendly" strategy, and in shooters I gravitate to the "dad loadouts" that are easy to acquire and do the job with a minimum of required investment, finesse, and practice. I rarely, if ever, master a game unless I'm professionally obligated to by guide or review needs, and I almost never feel guilty about it. I do feel guilty, though, about not trying particularly hard with Zenless Zone Zero, and I owe all that to a meeting with a cop.

Said cop is Zhu Yuan, the top rookie on the New Eridu Police force and the current banner character for the in-game gacha system. Like other games in HoYoVerse's repertoire, Zenless Zone Zero is a free-to-play game supported by the regular addition of new characters to gacha banners. Though the game has changed somewhat since I last played it in closed beta form, it's still broadly recognizable from my initial impressions from those initial impressions. It's still a clear successor to the character action-focused miHoYo's now-venerable Honkai Impact 3rd, built in the same character action-focused mold but tuned at its roots to take advantage of current consoles, new smart devices, and the progression/monetization model pioneered by Genshin Impact and refined by Honkai: Star Rail. You could take any given element of Zenless Zone Zero's progression model and swap the terms out with a rough equivalent from those two games to speed your understanding of it.

There have been a few tweaks to Zenless' UI, making some key stats easier to read in the heat of combat, as well as implementing a fast travel menu and speeding the daily reward grind to the point that it takes less time for me to knock out Zenless Zone Zero's daily tasks than it does to actually load the game from the hard drive. That's a welcome step, considering that in most other respects it's a much more "active" title than any other in HoYoVerse's repertoire.

The general speed of Zenless Zone Zero's combat matches that of a contemporary character action game, and as before, you, as a pair of siblings playing as a "Proxy" (a guide through the dangerous Hollow areas of New Eridu), must pilot a team of three playable "Agents" through various combat gauntlets. Much more than Genshin Impact or even Honkai Impact 3rd, Zenless' combat relies on quick reactions and a cool head. The core combat mechanics remain similar, with each character spamming out a basic attack and following up with a Special that's enhanced by an EX gauge built up in combat. The signature combat mechanic is based on assists, with characters able to step in at the push of a button, intercepting enemy hits or swapping in to deal damage.

Zenless places particular emphasis on a basic "role" system, where certain characters specialize in certain tasks. Green-clad Anby is a quick standout from the initial roster, being one of the most accessible "Stun" units that can quickly stagger an enemy and multiply the damage it takes. Meanwhile more esoteric fighters like girlboss Nicole and puppeteer maid Rina specialize in applying debuffs on enemies, setting them up for stronger combos from damage dealers like gunner Billy or the shark-tailed goth girl Ellen Joe. There's even a slightly more offbeat category of fighter like the mecha-obsessed Grace Howard, who specializes in applying "Anomaly" effects, a Zenless-inflected version of Genshin Impact's elemental reactions. Finally, there's the Defense type, which, at least at the moment, stars just a single character: Bear guy Ben Bigger, who trundles around and absorbs hits to unleash powerful counterattacks.

Every character in the game plays quite differently. Even with a set of uniform controls, Zenless Zone Zero still revels in having distinctive playstyles and bespoke mechanics for characters, even within outwardly similar roles. That impression was particularly driven home when I lucked into drawing the aforementioned rookie cop Zhu Yuan.

As the game's first Ether-element Attacker character, she can work both standing off and up close, unleashing volleys from her service pistol and powerful kicking combos. But Zhu Yuan's combo strings are highly variable, often adding dodges and jukes based on your directional inputs, and having whole attack strings dedicated to unleashing barrages from her different weapons, which bolt onto her pistol like toy attachments to a Nerf blaster. Trying to learn the ins and outs of Zhu Yuan's combos, as well as her interactions with different team members, felt like a genuine thrill. Less thrilling was the process of mastering Nicole, another ether-element character, and currently, one of the better available teammates for Zhu Yuan. Despite recognizing her utility, I was less enamored of Nicole's combat style, which uses a customized luxury handbag filled with gun barrels as a weapon. Though entirely down to my personal preference, the contrast outlined how dependent Zenless Zone Zero's combat is on finding a character you, personally, like to play as, irrespective of objective calculations of their utility or their positioning on some meta tier list.

That said, the game does force you to at least try out different characters from time to time, unlocking them briefly for specific story missions and conveniently allowing free access to demo stages where they can strut their stuff. Zenless' endgame gauntlets also demand that players develop and level up at least two teams' worth of characters and gear, making some amount of plumbing the roster for faves an eventual necessity.

Beyond the combat, HoYoVerse has also succeeded in making Zenless Zone Zero exude a wholly distinct aura from its stablemates. Where Honkai and Genshin thrive on the epic sweep of their game worlds, impractically busy character designs, and an almost stifling amount of lore, Zenless is comparatively grounded, centering most of its stories around the travails of the two protagonist siblings and their friends and clients. It's all quite "episodic," coming across like a cheeky mid-2000s anime series in terms of vibe. Zenless also has a distinct artistic style, with an aesthetic that has more in common with the street fashion stylings of a Splatoon game than its high-concept fantasy peers.

Even the daily missions carry that sensibility, as they mostly consist of grabbing a bowl of noodles at the local joint, taking in a cup of coffee, scratching off a lottery ticket, and opening the siblings' video store for the day. Combine that with the chance of seeing party members just hanging out, the comic book-style presentation on many cutscenes, and a surprisingly large number of distinctive incidental NPC designs, and Zenless Zone Zero has an appealing "lived in" atmosphere, as if you really were residents of a particularly fun city neighborhood.

If there's a wrinkle to Zenless Zone Zero's prospects as a third HoYoVerse obsession, it's that the game itself isn't as much fun to play if you're not really trying. A combination of luck and daily effort have allowed me to play Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact more or less on autopilot, only truly engaging with the game's systems at my leisure. Zenless' highly active combat means I generally can't do that, even with a maxed-out team of ringers in hand. HoYoVerse has wisely made the systems surrounding the combat leave a lighter footprint on one's time and mental overhead, but if the pace of narrative additions or other interesting side activities ever slows, the game's appeal will hinge on how fresh it'll be to go in and "lab out" new character combos and team compositions.

Zenless Zone Zero is available on iOS, Android, PS5, and PC.