Zenless Zone Zero Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail were both games that proved that free-to-play doesn’t mean lightweight and frivolous. While you can question the business model of their ‘gacha’ style setup, miHoYo’s differing gameplay styles across both games have hit home with players. Zenless Zone Zero is the latest title from the developer, and once again gameplay is the star of the show, though at times it doesn’t make enough of the standout parts of it.

Zenless Zone Zero is set in the futuristic city of New Eridu. This world has been beset by Hollows – areas of frozen time that are polluted with Ether, a substance that’s capable of mutating people into terrifying monsters known as Ethereals – but which have also proven to hold substantial wealth, if you have the means to collect it.

You play as a Proxy, choosing between the siblings of Wise and Belle. Proxies can send their consciousness into the Hollows within a Bangboo – a strange combination of Rabbid, Pokémon and a robot – and from there direct teams of Hollow Raiders who can fight off the Ether monsters on their way to whatever target they’ve been set. It’s a suitably sci-fi/anime setting that draws in and builds successfully on ideas we might have seen or heard before, but Zenless Zone Zero does an incredible job of selling them via its stellar presentation.

Put simply, Zenless Zone Zero looks and sounds incredible. I might be a sucker for anime-styled games, but the art style and overarching design of New Eridu and its inhabitants is simply breathtaking. It looks like a comic that’s come to life, and at points, it actually is a comic, with cutscenes and dramatic moments told via pages of a graphic novel. Beyond that, interactions between characters are often fully voiced, and as you spend more and more time with them you’ll come to love them, especially the opening trio made up of the emotionless Anby, street-smart Nicole and the Deadpool-lite Billy. You unlock new team members via the different gacha machine-style