Zenless Zone Zero (Hoyoverse)

Released the other day. The games aesthetic is REALLY refreshing in that its not some silly chinese flowery anime bullshit like Genshin and how Star Rail is (now). Its the best looking, most polished Hoyoverse game yet (imo), but its not open world like Genshin, and a lot smaller than Star Rail. Combat is superior to other action combat gacha games (better than Wuthering Waves, imo). Very chill music.

But..

It doesn't let the combat take center stage, you have to work your way through story exposition, and an odd exploration system to get to most fights. It does have stamina using combat instances for resources, but.. you can only do those so many times. You can't just run around exploring and engaging in combat like in GI / HSR. Yet, its better than both.

On the plus side, its not afraid of having characters / npcs with big booba. The HIA counter girls are...



Many of the characters shown in that launch trailer are not ingame yet, sadly. Lots of freebies to be had atm.

GuardianX said:

On no, ya it's an action combat, I'd liken it to something like Genshin Impact, FFVII, or Gran blue Fantasy. I'd say really mostly Granblue fantasy but with more fluid combat.

To me it's the aesthetic and holy crap the world quality, it's so crazy to be able to read magazine titles while playing on PC, the HQ textures are impressive.

Click to expand...

Each of the games can be played against other players as well, thought that was fun.

Still feel kinda lost atm as not all the systems have been unlocked yet. I think I'm just about to finish off the Prologue/Ch1, it reminds a bit of Persona games (have only watched other ppl play) with all the characters and general connection to ingame social media.

It suffers a bit from every combat skill having 1-3 conditional versions, all with different name (not as bad as Wuthering Waves though), so trying to get a good understanding of what you can get your team to do in combat is a little confusing. If The First Descendent hadn't been released in the same week, I would be no lifing this 100%, but my attention has been split. ha!

So far I hate the Hollow Zero music, its like Skrillex DnB, so I just turn it off and play something else via Spotify. I also have no idea what I need to do with HZ though atm, I've done the first Assessment (twice, derp) and just unlocked the 2nd Assessment.

I want to have a ranged team since playing Billy is a lot of fun, and I managed to get the big titty Maid Rina, and will eventually get the other big titty character, Grace (who is range). Yet, some of the melee characters are super fun as well, like Lucy, Piper (spin to win!), and Corin.

Have no idea how to build up a team so that they enhance each other, that is confusing part. All I know is that its super fun to fire off like 4-5 character swaps by getting a Daze or Perfect swap.

The annoying thing about the game, to me at least, is the amount of "dead time" between actions. It happens everywhere, you do something (anything) and there is a pause before you can do anything else. Especially noticeable in Hollow sections, lots of unnecessary dialogue that stops you from moving through the TV's.

Combat suffers from what every other "team" combat does, though maybe a bit less. I really dislike swapping to a character to do something benefits yet another character, I vastly prefer playing 1 character. This combat system does offer up a lot of auto-swaps which is really fun, but playing that way isn't efficient at all.

My main team has been Billy, Amby and Nicole, with Billy being on field most of the time (he is just more fun, and ranged). I try to avoid swapping to Nicole as she seems to just kill any momentum I feel, while Amby is alright. I had been trying out a team of Billy, Lucy and Piper.. very fun, but I felt I stayed on Piper too much (spin to win!), and that made having Billy around seem pointless.

I'm thankful that I can skip 99% of quest dialogues, and also thankful that all the cutscenes have been very good.

Springbok I find ZZZ to be far superior to other Hoyo games, its major failing was the inability to make the Hollows into an "open world" type Urban area(s) vs. the "move through TV's until a combat situation occurs". I'm ok with everything else for now, but I've only just got to Chapter 2 / Belobog.