OhOne of the biggest revolutions in the modern video game industry has taken place almost out of sight of the average console gamer. The rise of free-to-play gacha games — where you pay real or in-game money for random bundles of characters and weapons — has been meteoric in the Chinese market, dominated by publishers like miHoYo, NetEase, and Yostar. The most successful games of this type, including Genshin Impact, Arknights, and Another Eden, have tens of millions of players, mostly on smartphones, and rake in huge revenues from those willing to pay to complete their collections of in-game items.
Recently, the genre has expanded beyond mobile devices, and Zenless Zone Zero is the latest example. Created by HoYoverse, it’s a sprawling, anime-style action-RPG adventure set in a chaotic sci-fi dystopia. Earth has been invaded by interdimensional aliens, and atop the ruins of the ancient civilization lives a community of human survivors in a neo-city called New Eridu. You play as Wise or Belle, a sibling hacker duo who own a video rental store but also work as proxy agents, sending out teams of warriors to complete missions for clients.
Much like the popular Persona series of role-playing games, the game is part story, part fighting game, and part life simulator. Through a bewildering array of menus, schedules, and bulletin boards, players live each day, balancing alien battles with restocking video shelves, doing odd jobs for neighbors, playing arcade games, and taking photos of the local cats. Everything you do earns you a kind of currency, which you then use to buy upgrades for your weapons and new characters for your raids. When Wise and Belle accept a contract, you play a block-pushing puzzle game in the battle arena before your agents enter and fight the aliens, after which you are rewarded with more lucrative contracts, and so on.
Combat is intuitive and deceptively simple: one button to attack, one to dodge. Characters’ signature abilities and weapons add variety. Deadpool-like Billy Kid twirls two pistols and cracks silly quips, while maid Ellen Joe swats enemies with her shark tail and docile Corin Wickes apologetically wields a giant buzzsaw. They all have special and ultimate moves that unleash an orgy of laser beams, bullets and blades. Switching characters mid-battle makes it all extremely engaging, augmented by flashy graphical effects and plenty of sonic booms.
Visually, it’s pure cyberpunk anime. New Eridu is a rundown ghetto of noodle bars, arcades, and multi-story gated parking garages, but beyond the crumbling architecture there’s advanced technology everywhere. Gangs of marauders fight over hard drives and safes, advanced AI raid computer systems, and adorable sentient robots run supermarkets and accompany agents on raids. It’s a mix of Ghost in the Shell and Studio Ghibli, the dystopian undertone enlivened by adorable little moments and conversations. When not slaughtering aliens, your character wanders the streets, helping locals find love, or work, or just interesting videos to watch. The relationships between your expanding team of agents can be examined and guided, Persona-style, and while it’s light, this element is packed with good humor.
As this is a gacha game – named after the Japanese vending machines that dispense toys in capsules – you’re constantly being pushed towards rare and exotic goods and characters that are only available for a limited time. These can be earned in a very similar way to the infamous loot boxes in games like Fifa Ultimate Team – you buy the chance to get something good. In-game currency can be earned, fairly slowly, but you can pay real money for more dice rolls, which is of course how these free-to-play games generate revenue.
How invasive this system is depends on how determined you are to get those rare characters and items. To be honest, in my 30 hours of play, there were so many systems, opportunities, quests and characters on offer that I couldn’t even think about coveting more stuff. As a casual player, it’s easy to get absorbed, fighting aliens, playing Snake at the local slot machine palace or helping out the townspeople at your own pace. At times, Zenless Zone Zero reminded me of Shenmue, with its quiet urban environments and silly little side quests, and much like Yu Suzuki’s captivating epic, I was happy to take my time traversing it.
The gacha genre is a controversial one, exploiting human psychological quirks with unerring effectiveness. Hours disappeared like minutes as I played, so enchanted was I with my scrawny band of low-level agents, fighting, being weird, and getting to almost nowhere spectacularly quickly. Zenless Zone Zero is stylish, silly, and exciting, promising years of new stories and an endless string of shiny toys to entice you. You pay for it in some ways, either with your time or your money, but to me at least, it feels like a fair exchange.