Zenless Zone Zero is the latest release from miHoYo, who have had hit after hit following the mega-success of Genshin Impact. With their latest, they’ve gone from open-world exploration and RPG, to a brawler, and while the game has plenty of style, it is noticeably lacking in substance and shows just how far action design is stretched on mobile.
Flashy Fighting
Our story takes place in a world that looks like an anime mixed with the comic art of Persona 5. In this world, dimensional pockets known as hollows show up and it’s up to unique groups of hunters to go in and deal with the monsters in it. You play as a brother/sister team who after a job goes wrong teams up with an AI to rebuild their organization and I’m sure solve some major crises along the way.
The style of this game is fantastic, with every screen, menu, and of course, shop interface, looking amazing. Combat, as with other games of this kind, focuses on you bringing a party of three into a mission. Every character is ranked either 4 or 5 stars, and comes with different properties and roles. The character design looks straight out of the over-the-top designs of Guilty Gear, with characters large and small who can deliver massive pain.
For the combat itself, every character has a normal, special, and ultimate ability. As you’re fighting, you can swap between the other two characters with a push of a button. Swapping while an enemy is about to attack can trigger a counter and set the enemy up for more damage. You can also do character link combos allowing you to swap between the other two for more damage.
Progression is tied to leveling up characters, upgrading their different attacks, and equipping W-Engines which are ZZZ’s version of equipment. Just like their previous games, W-Engines come in different rarities and there is a double gacha system to get them along with characters.
Not So Shiny
Speaking of the gacha, if you’re hoping for an evolution of the gacha to go with the style, you’re not going to find it here. Drop rates for 5-star characters is .6%, which I believe is .1% lower than their previous games. And remember, just getting a character is not enough, as you’ll need a corresponding W-Engine to get the most power out of them. I didn’t get a chance to see ZZZ’s version of the accessories from Genshin, but I’m assuming it’s also going to be grindy and annoying to get, and there is no way in heck I will ever be able to make use of the dup system.
PGR is held by mobile fans as the gold standard of mobile action, but it doesn’t measure at all to console and PC action design (souirce: game page)
While the gacha system is to be expected, the most unexpected part of the game for me was just how bland the combat was compared to the style of the art.
ZZZ following in a similar style of combat seen in games like Punishing Grey Raven, which has been considered by fans to be the top of the market. However, PGR is also bad by action game standards, and it’s time to address the action-sized elephant in the room.
Mobile != Action
While ZZZ and PGR are not bad games because of their action design, they are still very underwhelming if held to any standard of action set by console or PC games released in the past 24 years, even the original Devil May Cry is lightyears ahead of these games. The problem is one that no matter how advanced phones get, no matter how high the budgets are for these games, you can’t do advanced action mechanics with a touch-screen UI. There is only so much you can do when the player’s only way of interacting is either to tap or hold parts of the screen.
Having different attack types, combos, and means of playing, can’t work at the same level of other platforms. You can’t have multiple types of attacks and unique combos in a game that has at most three attacks and a dodge. So instead, the complexity gets placed on the RPG mechanics and non-action elements. In PGR, you can match different colors of attacks on the skill bar in order to boost them up while you are running around fighting. And in ZZZ’s case, this is where all the gear comes in.
With these action games, it is an interesting contrast with Honkai: Star Rail that I tried going back to after playing ZZZ, which has very challenging RPG systems and mechanics, but that makes the gacha all the more punishing. In the action-heavy mobile games, getting good at whatever advanced element is featured — dodging, blocking, etc., you can circumvent the need for higher-quality characters to some extent.
Earlier in 2023, a mobile game based off Devil May Cry came and went after months of redesigns and streamlining its combat down to the same level as these other games. The problem with all three is that they are flashy, but that’s about it. There’s no greater depth to the combat mechanics in the same way as the greats of the genre. Even going to something like Ultrakill that has elements from action design, there is more to the game than just shooting a gun.
I do think a hero-collector action game easily sells itself, but not with the action design that is limited to mobile.
Action-less
There will be a market for ZZZ just as there are for the other action games on mobile, but with this one, it seems like miHoYo is stretching the limits of that formula. Unlike Star Rail which had some legitimate challenging RPG mechanics and design, I’m just not seeing much here other than the style. Give me the budget and the team, and I could design an action-game hero collector that would bankrupt a few countries.
As the mobile market is beginning to extend itself further into PC and console audiences, it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not there will be another evolution of the design in the coming years, as shiny loot and banners can only hold someone’s interest for so long.
For more about F2P design, be sure to read my book examining the genre.
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