Look, no disrespect to one of the biggest gacha games of the past 5 years, but Genshin Impact is far from perfect. Like Honkai Impact 3rd before it, a lot of its success comes from being the first game to do it as big as it does. It’s a triple-A scale open world run on the same device you use to get ghosted on Tinder, and that’s worth commending.
Having spent the past few days powering through Zenless Zone Zero, it’s interesting seeing the two games contrast against each other. HoYoverse, to its credit rarely rests on its laurels with a pretty diverse catalogue of games spanning genres. You just wouldn’t notice it at first if all you see is “third-person camera plus anime girl”.
More Action Than RPG
As a fan of character action games one of the things that’s always bugged me about Genshin Impact was its combat. It’s flashy, yes, but compared to its predecessor Honkai Impact 3rd it’s always felt, well, shallow. At all times, Genshin Impact feels more like an MMO with action injected into it, as characters generate stacks and put up shields in the face of monstrous plantlife. A lot of it has to do with the game’s Elemental Reaction system- simply put, your characters are about applying their elemental buffs to get the reactions you want, and any other mechanics they happen to come with tend to be about playing with stats and numbers.
Zenelss Zone Zero instead opts for a way more aggressive combat style. Yes, there’s still RPG stats and elemental types, but characters feel way more designed around how they play. Anby, one of the starter roster, has delay combos- something missing from HoYoverse titles up until now. Soldier 11 has just-inputs- letting her do explosive fire combos if you time her hits to the right rhythm.
Admittedly, at their core a lot of them have the same resource-management gameplay you’d see in other titles. But Zenless Zone Zero does a much better job of making every part of a character’s kit feels useful.
On paper, Ellen, the shark maid, has a pretty similar moveset to a Genshin character- some of her attacks build stacks that her other attacks cash out for big ice damage. But there’s a catch, you see: Rather than have it be split between Normal attack for building stacks and Heavy for cashing out, she instead has a Tekken-esque stance mechanic- any attack (light or heavy) made in her running stance builds stacks, which cash out in her default stance instead.
The fun instead comes from controlling these characters. How do they interact with Zenless’ own ruleset? How can they break it? Rina, my personal favorite, has a moveset built entirely out of the game’s free-form canceling- she drops long projectiles and lets you cancel out of her recovery to send someone else to do damage alongside it. She’s a support in the same way your homie going for the gut while you swing at a guy’s head is.
While a Genshin character is defined by their ability effects, Zenless Zone Zero characters are instead defined by how they attack. From delay combos to just-inputs to animation canceling, every character plays with these concepts in unique ways that makes them stand out as so much more than “Fire DPS” or “Electric support”.
So if individual characters are so fun, why bother having a party? Because it’s multiplicative, obviously. Zenless Zone Zero feels most like a spiritual successor to Honkai Impact 3rd because of its tag system, that sees you using your party members like disparate parts of one incredibly flashy moveset. Want to launch your enemy in the air then juggle them, Devil May Cry style? just cancel Anby’s uppercut after the first hit into Rina or Billy. and start doing your best Style Announcer voice.
Heck, even the Chain Attack system feels like someone set Persona’s All Out Attacks to manual control. Finally staggering bosses lets you tag in each of your characters, feeling like a grand onslaught you get to be a part of instead of just watching a cinematic.
A lot of all these are enabled by Zenless Zone Zero’ biggest break from the HoYoverse formula- a lack of cooldowns. Even in Honkai Impact 3rd, skills like perfect dodge were bound by a timer after you performed it. In Genshin, even the character switching is locked behind time. For Zenless Zone Zero to do away with it the game’s basically as fast as you want it to be. Special attacks are just parts of your moveset, not precious one-off skills that you need to build around the cooldowns for. Even dodges and counters are just skill issues- you could be playing entire rounds in slow motion if you dodged attacks like child support.
It’s genuinely impressive to see HoYoverse step up their combat system so dramatically. I mean, it makes sense business-wise: the mobile action RPG genre is getting more crowded, so their new games need to feel just as fresh as their previous ones did at launch. The trick is always still keeping the game playable on mobile- hence the reduced movesets.
Trim The Elemental Fat
Combat aside, one way that Zenless Zone Zero tries to steal your attention is with an overall streamlined gaming experience. By not having the big open worlds of Teyvat, experiences are incredibly lean. Heck, even the dungeon crawling is stripped barebones- instead of seeing your characters explore big spaces, the game shifts to TV mode where the maps are presented top down.
Admittedly, this is one of the more controversial decisions Zenless has made. But as someone who’s seen the more jank dungeon crawling experiences these games offer, doing away with the visual aspect is much appreciated. Yeah, you’re still doing things like moving tracks and the like, but at least with the TV mode you never have to watch your characters just flop around empty stages. If you’re going to the usual action camera, it’s only because something dramatic’s about to happen.
Aside from just being more fun, it also plays to Zenless Zone Zero’s biggest strength- its visuals. It’s a game with loud, expressive animations, and it maintains this by keeping as little downtime as possible. The way the TV screens oscillate as you move through them feels way more on-brand than any kind of actual map exploration would be, and the game’s all the better for it.
At The End Of The Day
At the end of the day, it’s not like Genshin Impact’s systems are particularly bad. I think it’s a system that definitely has an audience- otherwise HoYoverse wouldn’t be the juggernauts they are now. It’s not like the action combat is entirely without sauce either- I’ve seen those Ayato Jump Cancel combos and they are delicious.
Every game has its limitations, and its interesting to see which ones from Genshin Impact you see being compensated for in Zenless Zone Zero. The game’s been a delight every time I’ve played it, bringing the same kind of awe playing it as I’d had when I first played Honkai Impact 3rd.
Naturally, nothing’s perfect- but its this willingness to experiment and try something new that makes HoYoverse a unique entity in the mobile games market. With the game open for pre-registration now, it’s definitely a title I’m looking forward to with bated breath.
