Let's Talk About Zenless Zone Zero

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No, I’m not being paid by MiHoYo to write about, or stream Zenless Zone Zero (or ZZZ). I felt like I wanted to write about it, because, as an adult who has to work, a lot, and is always out and about with less time at home in front of my PC than I am wandering the world: Mobile games have kind of become a staple in how I find a little enjoyment in the day-to-day usual activities.

Imagine one of those isekia animes, or gacha games, where you’ve got a new life running a store, meeting new people, and sometimes fighting monsters. That’s kind of what this game is. But it’s not. It’s a little bit like Persona kissed a gacha, and then gave birth to an Isekia, but one where you didn’t die and become reincarnated (or did you?).

When you start the game, which you can play across your phone and then also on your PC, it’s the usual fare: Start it up, get a ton of exposition through dialogue, and then embark on your mission in quarantined little zones where you fight monsters. Then you’re introduced to the skill system, and eventually the gacha system.

But then, you’re also introduced to the fact that you own a video store, and you can open it for business. You can visit the coffee shop down the street and have a cup, or go on over to the arcade and play a plethora of arcade games … just for the heck of it!?

And that’s just in the little town you start in???

You have a little van at the back of the video store that you can jump into and then “travel” with in order to reach other areas. So far, I’ve only seen the VR place, but there were, uh … quite a few other locked-out places to visit.

Also, did I mention, you can go to bed? For some reason? Like, you can put your character to sleep until the following day. I’m not sure if this is exclusively part of advancing the story, or if you can just do this whenever you want (I haven’t tried it).

There are other things scattered around the main area you frequent between commissions, too. Such as a gadget store (for increasing your character’s gear level), and a restaurant of some kind where you can eat some food. It’s got all these little details.

You know, when I launched ZZZ, I was expecting kind of a Honkai Impact sort of game. Nothing that would really rival Genshin, since it is their cash-cow, after all, but at least something that could be a neat little distraction.

Little did I know, that there is some kind of huge world built around this, where you don’t even have to kill anyone, or anything.

Oh, and sometimes you can spend money to roll for new characters to collect.

Did you know … MiHoYo is using money they make from these games in order to fund a nuclear fusion reactor? I don’t really spend a lot of money in these types of games, but it is fascinating that, when I choose to, I’m kinda sorta, pretty much funding future clean energy.

Whether that energy is used for good, or for the destruction of creativity through LLMs, is yet to be determined. But … I am under the impression that the devs behind Genshin, ZZZ, and Star Rail, are using actual artists, with skills they employ through use of their hands and tools … even if they are, sometimes, a little bit, uh …

Anyway! It’s also got this cyberpunk vibe, but like, with technology from the present, the apparent future, and also the past. I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re renting out VHS tapes, and checking notifications on an advanced smartphone at the same time. So, it would seem, this is some kind of future where we still romanticize the eighties, but are very much involved in embracing the tech of the future. I’m not sure what that’s called, but I think there’s a name for it.

I don’t really write a whole lot about games. In fact, the last game I wrote about was POOLS, a liminal walking simulator based on the Backrooms, that absolutely terrifies me to my core. But, every once in a while, something interesting and different comes around. Something that isn’t just a copy and paste of Breath of the Wild with anime girls (this is actually a really cool concept, and I’m not ripping on Genshin Impact at all, honestly), or a blatant rehash of Warframe, but really, actually different.

And, I feel like this is kind of just, that.

Anime, and anime games, are enjoyed by all types and walks of life, from teenagers to the oldest heads you know. I first discovered the concept of anime in the nineties when I was just a kid, and turned on Dirty Pair for the first time.

Cheers to continuing the condition of being a weeb, as I grow older, and more bored with triple-a, multi-decade development games that lose my focus and interest in about half a second. I’m looking at you, the game Formerly Known as Dread Wolf.