Zenless Zone Zero Review

ign.com:

Playing with nostalgia-laden imagery from the early 2000s, Zenless Zone Zero sees developer HoYoverse pivot gracefully from the fantastical settings of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail into an enticing urban dystopia. It’s a universe where you’ll duke it out in glitzy real-time fights as a trio of streetwear-clad agents, solving simple puzzles as their handler between battles to help them navigate a labyrinth of encounters – and that’s before you get to the carousel of social side activities layered on top. A mouthful of tasteful influences combine into something effortlessly stylish but also a bit inconsistent, occasionally undone by a lack of depth. Yet Zenless Zone Zero got its hooks into me regardless; its relentless charm compelled me to keep fighting, one combat puzzle or bowl of ramen at a time.

Zenless Zone Zero takes place in a world where monster-filled pocket dimensions called Hollows have devastated civilisation. While much of humanity has been wiped out, the cyberpunk bastion of New Eridu survives through a fraught codependence with the Hollows and the valuable resources found within. You play as either Belle or Wise, a brother-sister hacker duo with a knack for navigating this dangerous territory, tackling commissions from a roster of lovable rogues searching for their next big score. It’s a unique and gritty setup that, while convoluted at times, kept me engaged by testing my strategic intuition across a smorgasbord of challenges I became hungry to best.

Your brawling excursions embark from the retro tech-strewn backroom of the siblings’ video rental store, where you’ll pick from an impressive roster of unlockable agents to make up a three-person party and then dive into the perilous Hollows, trading success for XP and upgrade resources. The review build provided by HoYoverse ahead of launch gave me access to all of the currently available agents, and I soon found an affinity for the ones from a faction called Victoria Housekeeping, thanks to their