What is Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ)?

Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) easily catches a gamer’s eye with its colorful aesthetics and splashy combat. The game is huge and has all sorts of activities: from wandering around a city and talking to extraordinary NPCs to traveling to other dimensions for item farming and intense boss fights. What is Zenless Zone Zero? We answer this question here, explaining the action RPG layer by layer.

According to the game developers, this name was chosen out of many other variants. Zenless is combined by zen and less: no zen, no calm, or no rest. Zero means nothing and the start of everything. So, Zenless Zone Zero can be explained as a restless zone from where everything begins. 

The name and its meaning doesn’t affect the actual gameplay of ZZZ.

ZZZ takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Most of humanity fell victim to terrible monsters known as the Ethereal. They found their way to the human world through interdimensional portals. Then, their regular raids created an awful disaster.

That was quite a while ago. Brave survivors managed to adopt some of the Ethereal’s technology and use it against the monsters. They created a safe zone for the remnants of the society — a city named New Eridu.

Yes, Zenless Zone Zero features a post-apocalyptic world. But New Eridu is far from being destroyed. The city’s streets are full of life and interesting activities. It's the place for the main hero, the Proxy, to explore and a starting point for their missions to Hollows, the monsters’ home dimensions. ZZZ New Eridu is not an open world, though. Moving between streets requires using the game menu.

The main city in the game Zenless Zone Zero is full of secrets to explore and personalities to meet. The protagonist, the Proxy, walks around, visits stores, makes acquaintances, recruits new members of their battle party, performs various missions, and… simply has fun.

The developers unleashed their creative approach with the city of New Eridu. You’ll find here futuristic technology and some almost antique objects — combined, they form a unique game atmosphere.

The game has various attributes of the modern world, like computers to text friends and take missions. Through that menu, players get access to various in-game options like tracking their progress, managing the playable characters, and taking a look at the inventory.

There are lots of various items in Zenless Zone Zero. The primary reason for collecting them is to progress through the main story and to level up characters. It is possible to obtain items via missions inside New Eridu, like repairing mechanisms by solving puzzles. But the main source of items is battles in other dimensions.

In this game, you have real-time battles against monsters, which is similar to the other popular creation of the same studio, Genshin Impact. The developers from HoYoverse experimented with turn-based combat in Honkai: Star Rail, but decided not to follow this path in ZZZ.

The combat is spectacular and engaging. The Proxy sends the party members to the alternative dimensions where they fight monsters and farm items.

The combat itself is greatly based on dodges. Players should follow the actions of their opponents to see when a massive attack is coming, avoid it, and punish it with great hits. In a way, this principle is similar to fighting games, including even landing combos and doing follow-up attacks. But Zenless Zone Zero is easier to master — you can enjoy the fights from the very beginning without thorough training.

This doesn’t mean the game’s combat is oversimplified. When you progress in Zenless Zone Zero, you eventually encounter powerful bosses. Special techniques are needed to defeat them — like forming proper teams.

In addition to the Proxy and party members, the ZZZ players have special assistants, Bangboos. They are small robots that help with all sorts of tasks.

The Proxy cannot participate in combat. In Zenless Zone Zero, the protagonist helps party members and Bangboos enter Hollows where they battle monsters and gather resources.

Collecting characters and forming teams are essential activities to successfully complete dungeon-like Hollows. The party members should have good synergy in terms of their damage type (fire, ice, physics, etc.) and specialty (attack, defense, stun, etc.) Players can switch between characters for cool followups and greater damage. Bangboos attack automatically, and these robots open even more opportunities for creating strong teams.

So, where do you get ZZZ characters and Bangboos? It’s where the gacha mechanic comes into play. You need to spend in-game resources to activate an Agent or Bangaboo drop. Thanks to special time-limited banners, you have better chances to obtain high-level Agents. Most characters are available from the standard banners. Due to gacha, you should prepare for notorious farming or spending some money on new drops.

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