If there’s one thing you can rely on with Chinese publisher/developer HoYoverse, it’s taking cherished ideas and putting a free-to-play spin to it that works. Genshin Impact is what happens when you take a new open-world Zelda ideology and turn it into a long-lasting F2P gacha title. Honkai Star Rail is taking turn-based Japanese role-playing games like your Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei Persona spinoff titles, and putting an F2P gacha spin onto it.

Both seem to work great commercially, critically, and financially, so why stop there? That’s what HoYoverse is trying out with its take on character action games: Zenless Zone Zero. We’ve tried out a good amount of hours of the game’s closed beta, and suffice to say, we might end up as believers.

Highway To The Danger Zone

The early trailers of HoYoverse’s upcoming sci-fi game, Zen Zoneless Zero (or ZZZ for brevity’s sake) show off a stylized action title made for PC and mobile featuring partner-switching, dodging with some slight time-slowing effects, and multihit combos using your trio of agents. Each of them have their own fighting style and combos, be it Billy Kid’s Dante-style handgun blasting to Nicole’s melee-slash-mid-ranged gravity cannon that pulls enemies in, ripe for Anby’s sword slashes and slash uppercuts. It seems to echo HoYoverse’s early venture Honkai Impact 3rd but less obvious with its anime fan titillation, and with more tag-team combos of anime action proportion.

I’m all well and good with this portion of the game, as it’s pretty easy to grasp, thanks to its lenient inputs and massive invincibility frames for the majority of your character’s moves. You can perfect dodge and then counter moves with big damage, or tag them in for follow-up chain attacks for even more bonus hits. The fact that you can press your tag button just before a yellow flash telegraphed attack for a counter is proof that teamwork matters. But I was caught off guard as to how your teams get to these fights; the game’s overworld sections that’s common in a typical RPG experience if you will take a unique-yet-familiar approach here.

See, the world of ZZZ involves Proxies and Agents going into mutant-filled and dangerous zones called Hollows. Proxies are given a map represented with TV screens-slash-grids to navigate onto (represented by a bunny mascot bot called Bangboos) leading Agents to go from point A to B, though it depends on the objectives. The easier missions require you to fight a bunch of monsters and get to the exit grid by grid, while other setpieces involve you pushing blocks or objects into transports, or flipping switches correctly, or finding lost souls in the Hollow.

Screens that are red are usually enemy encounters -involving your agents getting into character action glory for a short bit- or hazards, while gold ones house treasure. Once you get the hang of the TV screens interface and movement, it’s all visually appealing and easy-peasy to sort out from there. So far, I’m having a blast with some of the quests that use the grid system.

My favourite quests is essentially playing a round of player-vs-enemy Bomberman, where you lay down explosives that blow up into a horizontal and vertical line which you have to avoid since there’s friendly fire. In one instance, I was the bomb itself as I exploded every three steps I took, killing off enemies and taking their gold to pay the toll for the quest’s objective. I’m only 8 hours or so into this, and already I’m finding both the combat and grid-based exploration sections very fun and creative.

Videodrome

Speaking of which, don’t expect combat to be tough-as-nails as your Devil May Cry titles bumped up to the highest difficulty. ZZZ is a F2P gacha game, so some parts might have been toned down so that combat is played out free and easy, with little to no restriction. True, I did lose a bit of life fighting the tougher bosses in the story missions, but for the most parts, I’m just perfect dodging and tag-team assisting my way through the game like butter. Hopefully, the final game and its post-content parts will give me more of a challenge makes use of all my character’s toolsets and the game’s mechanics.

And for those who want to power up their characters to the nnth level, there’s the VR Simulation that lets you customize your farming. You pick the enemies you want in your simulation, then reap the rewards after these battles. Rather than just going to different locations for grinding, you can just do it all in one convenient area. I do hope more games borrow this method of farming because going through loading screens to multiple spots just to farm can really get tedious in the long run.

Perhaps my only gripe with this F2P action game is the grinding periods in between story quests, so you really can’t rush through the game like you would a paid title. But still, what I’ve tried out in the closed beta is promising, and full of colour, pizazz, and fast-paced action.

No release date has been announced for Zenless Zone Zero, though we suspect the game will be out a few months after the closed beta period ends.