This game would be perfect if it wasn't gacha

Published on 07/31/2024, 1684 words, 7 minutes to read

TL;DR: Zenless Zone Zero is a fantastic game that's ruined by its gacha system. It's a shame that it's a gacha game, because it's so good otherwise. 8/10

2024 has been a really bad year to be a gamer. So many games are getting released, but so few of them are worth playing. Not to mention, even when there is a breakout hit like Hi-Fi Rush, the studio behind it gets closed anyways. So many promising games are getting axed and their studios erased along with them.

I can only name 3 new games that I've been excited about this year and they're Palworld, Balatro, and Stellar Blade. It really feels like all the rest of the releases this year are remakes like The Thousand Year Door, Final Fantasy 7 part 2, and Persona 3 Reload. At the same time though, the list of games released just continues to grow longer but none of them are really that compelling.

It feels like there's room for a disruptor, a lot of developers out of the West and Japan have really hit some kind of game design low-entropy state that just makes a lot of things feel same-y.

Zenless Zone Zero

Recently I've started playing Zenless Zone Zero, the latest game from HoYoVerse. HoYoVerse (nee MiHoYo) is well known for making absolute bangers of games. Honkai Star Rail didn't win mobile game of the year for no reason. Genshin Impact doesn't have 50 million monthly active players by accident. They make really good games and have deserved their success.

Their characters have so much character. The game worlds feel alive and even throwaway characters have their own unique vibe to them. Their characters easily pass the outline and color scheme tests, not to mention that lovely art style. God I've always loved the hell out of their cel-shaded pop-art anime characters. Remove the idle animations, add thicker outlines, and lower the framerate, and you probably could have people think it was real-time anime.

One of the things I really like about games is when they induce a sense of flow in their basic gameplay. I really like it when you can stop thinking about what's going on and really just let things flow together and play it by feel. Zenless Zone Zero does that with its combat system. It flows like a hot knife through butter.

Just look at how things flow together in this random bit of video that I added in when editing. Switching between characters is near instant. It's more than just mashing the attack button until you win, there's strategy, combos, and skillful ways to use the basic attacks of every character.

It's the kind of game that I could easily lose an afternoon to. It runs so goddamn well on my PS5, iPhone, iPad, ROG Ally, gaming PC, and even my Steam Deck. It's also available on Android, so if you have a decently modern device, you can play it. It's almost universally accessible, which is fantastic when it comes to having high-quality games in a pinch.

Oh, the English voice acting is good enough that I don't feel the need to instantly change it over to Japanese or Chinese. Seriously it's hard to describe how good the English VA is compared to what I'm used to with anime dubs.

This game could very well be game of the year for me…

Gacha

…if there wasn't one glaring flaw with the game so bad that it almost ruins its chances for that. Zenless Zone Zero is a gacha game. In order to unlock characters, you need to randomly pull them from the pool of lootbox drops in the Signal Search pane.

There's something I left out in my description of HoYoVerse's games. They don't just make absolute bangers of games, they stuff them to the gills with super toxic gacha mechanics that would make an executive blush so hard that they'd turn into a tomato. Maxxing out your character roster in Honkai: Star Rail likely will cost you thousands. They're not just content with making a good game, they want to make a good game that makes them a lot of money off of the backs of people with impulse control issues.

There's no way to just unlock new characters in the story as the relevant factions work their way into and out of the story. That would interfere with the real money making: selling gacha pulls for two snow pesos per shot. This is the gaming version of thinking someone is hot, getting close to them, sleeping with them, and then finding out that they're psycho after it's too late.

The one gacha game I've played, technically

Come to think of it, I have actually played a gacha game before, technically. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is probably one of the best games ever made but has its own set of issues, including both the English voice acting (that was totally saved by Pyra/Mythra's voice actor) and the gacha system.

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2 your party is made up of drivers (the playable characters) and blades (functionally the assistants to the playable characters). Each blade has its own element, weapon, max affinity level, and more. There's a fairly large number of "common" blades that fit into one of four genders (male, female, big, and beast), but the real thing you pull for is the rare blades. I've been trying to get KOS-MOS for literal years but have never been able to get the right RNG generation to make it happen.

This gacha system is the core of the reason why Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a hard game to recommend to people. The intent of that system is to give everyone a slightly different experience similar to how everyone has a slightly different experience with monster taming games like pokemon. People would then be tempted to hit the capture button and share their screenshots on Twitter. I can't deny this has worked, my friends and I have all had vastly different experiences with Xenoblade 2 thanks to this. My speedrunner friends absolutely hate the gacha system because it kills half of their runs.

Still, I can't help but look at the core crystal system in Xenoblade 2 and see what could have been if it was made as a free-to-play mobile game with price tags attached to them. It's so easy to imagine what it would look like.

The gacha system in Zenless Zone Zero

Well, you wouldn't buy gacha pulls directly. That would both be too direct and risk running into lootbox laws. In Zenless Zone Zero, you buy Monochrome. Monochrome can be converted into Polychrome, which you can then turn into the items needed for gacha pulls. You also get Polychrome for every mission you complete (the better you do, the more you get), so realistically unless you're trying to get one particular character really intensely, you probably don't need to buy any Monochrome.

Except when you want to get that one new character they announced that totally finishes your build. The character is a rare character under a two-week banner. Who knows when she'll be available next. You're running out of time and you just can't get that last Polychrome you need to get your next set of pulls. All of the fanart is so good, and when you did the trial you realized how well things synergize. So you spend $20 on Monochrome as a last ditch attempt…and all you get are duplicate agents and support items you have dozens of copies of.

Really, this mechanic should probably be made illegal. China tried to make it illegal (and allow people to buy content directly), but even the announcement that the government was considering such a ban caused game company stocks to fall because their value was propped up on gacha.

Oh yeah, also, want to level up that character you spent hours grinding and pulling for? In order to make her the most powerful she can be, you have to pull her seven times. Seven times.

Look, let's be real, I'm probably one of the worst people to review gacha games because I'm not a big fan of gacha as a mechanic. It was the worst part of Xenoblade 2, and it's a scourge on the industry that really hurts people. I know that it's really predictable money for the companies and that from a game design standpoint it makes it really easy to have a drip-feed of content so that people stick around. One of the most powerful user retention strategies is to hold something enticing in front of a player and then tell them "no, you can't have this yet".

I just don't know how I feel about this, but the game is really fun. It's well worth the price of entry, I just hope I don't end up spending a shitload of money on it like I did with Fortnite skins.

<Cadey>

I've spent $200 US on Fortnite skins. Who am I to tell you what to do with your money?

If this game was a normal "pay once" release, it'd probably be one of the best games of all time. However, doing that wouldn't make HoYoVerse ridiculous amounts of money, so it's probably limited to an 8/10 at best. I wish I could rate it more for the remake of Mr. Driller hidden in the arcade, but it's a gacha game at its heart.

In conclusion, all cops are bastards, even if that cop has a massive dumpy. Have a good day, make sure to stay hydrated, and get those 5000 steps in.

Facts and circumstances may have changed since publication. Please contact me before jumping to conclusions if something seems wrong or unclear.

Tags: zzzero, review