July 2024 – Mailvaltar

25. July 202425. July 2024

I stand corrected – this game is all-around aweZome!

Despite giving an overall positive summary at the end I was pretty critical of Zenless Zone Zero in last week’s post.

Then I had the weekend off, and with the work-related stress falling off my shoulders so did any complaints I’d had about the game, and I’ve just been enjoying the hell out of it since then. It’s funny how stuff works itself out sometimes, isn’t it?

What’s also helping is that the game’s combat has completely ‘clicked’ with me by now. I mean, I really liked it from the start, but I was mostly mashing buttons instead of using my agents’ abilities to their full potential. Lo and behold, as soon as you git gud it doesn’t matter that much anymore whether you have a perfect team full of S-rank units or need to make do with a bunch of free A-ranks.

That being said, I still stand by the points I made last time – it’s just that as soon as I chose not to let myself be bothered by them, they didn’t matter much anymore.

Of course having played a lot means that I’ve progressed quite a bit further too. At the end of the weekend five of my characters were pretty much maxed out for my current account level, and three of them are BFFs with me already (via the trust system). I’ve also finished story chapter three, which was excellent from start to finish.

At the time of writing that’s as far as the main story goes, but fortunately there’s still lots to do. Firstly, many small tasks and quests are scattered all across the city. You help out Eridu’s citizens with their various problems, meet up with your pals and repair malfunctioning Bangboo, which is a neat little minigame they’ve devised just for this purpose.

Then there’s the usual progression-stuff like farming for leveling materials, equipment and such, which you’ll find in any gacha game. If you like ZZZ’s combat as much as I do this is really fun and not a chore at all. I actually wish I could do more of it, but it’s obviously gated by the stamina system.

I’ve also come to enjoy Hollow Zero quite a lot. As I’ve said numerous times I’m usually not a fan of roguelike modes because I don’t fancy having to start over again and again, and I don’t like facing too many RNG elements either. This one isn’t too bad in both respects though, and at about half an hour for a full run it’s also considerably quicker than in most games.

By now the first limited-time events have arrived too. The first one is centered around a group of Bangboo banding together to chase after some mythical creature and its treasures, which is pretty cute. The second takes place in the arcade, and you basically just need to play a bunch of rounds of Snake (yep, the one you remember from late 90’s Nokia phones if you’re old enough).

The third event started only yesterday, and I think it’s the best one yet. It mostly takes place in a special Hollow (aka TV mode) where you can step on each tile only once lest you break through the ice and end up one floor below.

What do you mean, watch your steeeeeeeeeeeeeep?!!

The events are all pretty generous with rewards, so it’s not only fun to do them, it also feels very worthwhile and helps with strengthening your agents.

Speaking of which, the by far biggest leap forward for my account occurred yesterday. As I’d chosen not to spend any resources on the first limited banner I had accumulated quite a bit of gacha currency by now, and I decided that Zhu Yuan, the second limited agent, who is an attacker unit dealing Ether damage, would be the perfect fit for my main team with Anby and Nicole.

I wished for her on the first day of the banner, and was incredibly lucky: I got her in the very first ten-pull.

With that much unspent dough I thought, what the hell, and went for her S-rank weapon too…which I got in the third ten-pull! I still can’t quite believe it, but that’s gacha games for you – sometimes you win the jackpot, other times you go broke with nothing to show for it.

Since I knew that I was going to go for her I’d already pre-farmed some materials, so she caught up to my other agents almost instantly. And boy, she’s a real powerhouse, and so much fun to play too!

What this also means is that I finally have two full teams at my disposal – until now Billy was the only DPS agent I’d built, so I used to pair him up with either Anby and Nicole, or with Koleda and Lucy, depending on which damage types were preferable.

Now I was able to tackle floor seven of Shiyu Defense, ZZZ’s version of Genshin Impact’s Spiral Abyss:

And we earned an S-rank assessment on the first try, naturally

So, yeah, I’m having loads of fun right now.

Meanwhile the devs have made some announcements for version 1.1, which will probably arrive in tandem with the next limited banner, so in about three weeks. It’s all a bit vague, but they seem to take player feedback to heart and steer in the right direction, which is always good to hear.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the music store and do some shopping – my girl Zhu Yuan has asked for a couple awesome drive discs, and I can’t refuse her anything…

19. July 202421. July 2024

More muZings about Zenless Zone Zero

I’m now two weeks into Zenless Zone Zero and have played roughly 35 hours total. Overall I’m still digging it a lot. Since my first evaluation a couple more aspects of the game’s design have turned out to be a bit problematic though, at least in my opinion.

The biggest gripe I have right now is also a real headscratcher, because I feel it’s something that totally goes against what makes gacha games fun in the first place…

No smiley face for Billy makes Billy real sad

At account level 36 I’m now getting into what I’d call the mid- to late-game, which means that, among other things, combat starts to get harder. This isn’t a bad thing per se, mind you – the game is very easy in the early stages.

However, I’m starting to feel that using strong agents and the “right” team compositions becomes more and more important, especially if you’re, like me, not the most skilled fighting game player. Unfortunately the game’s designers chose to put quite a few dependencies in place which pretty much dictate whether certain comps will work well or not, resulting in not actually having much of a choice.

First of all, each unit belongs to a specific class, if you will, those being Attack, Defense, Anomaly, Stun and Support.

Now, you can assemble your team of three in any combination of classes, and you can try to make characters of any class deal damage. Chances are the result will be far from optimal though. Most ZZZ players will tell you that, as of right now, your best bet is to use one Stun (because it’s so important to fill up those daze bars quickly), one Support (for crucial buffs and debuffs) and either an Attack or an Anomaly unit built to be your main damage dealer.

Even then you shouldn’t just use any character of those classes, because each agent also has a passive ability that’s only enabled if at least one of the other squad members fulfills certain criteria. For example, the game’s first limited S rank unit, Ellen, has a really strong passive that only works if “any other character in your squad shares the same attribute or faction”.

Attribute means damage type, of which there are five, and even at this early stage of the game we already have seven different factions an agent can belong to.

Faction, attribute, class…anything else I should know about you?

What all of this leads to is that, if you go to YouTube and take a look at what various content creators are doing right now, three out of four will tell you that their main team is comprised of Ellen, Lycaon and Soukaku, with nothing else even coming close in terms of combat prowess.

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me collecting cool characters and mixing and matching them the way I like is one of the main draws of gacha games, and I don’t appreciate being so heavily restricted if I also want to clear the more difficult content. I’m actually glad that I didn’t even try to get Ellen, because I now realize that, since I don’t have Lycaon and I don’t like to play Soukaku, she wouldn’t be nearly as good on my account as she can be.

I should want to get her though, shouldn’t I? This being a gacha game and all? I’m sorry, but I really feel this isn’t designed very well.

There may be a chance that they’ve realized their mistake however. The next limited character coming up in a few days from now, Zhu Yuan, was already playable in beta, and at the time her passive had the exact same requirement as Ellen’s above. When we now get the chance to play her during chapter two of the main story and take a look at her stats, that line has actually been changed to “another character in your squad is a Support character or shares the same faction”, which is quite a bit more lenient.

Who knows, maybe they’ll change existing agents in that manner too over time. One can only hope.

Now that I think about it, everything else I could bitch about right now is really not a big deal in comparison.

Certain missions, especially Hollow Zero (the game’s roguelike mode) take too long for my taste – too long meaning about half an hour. Considering that I’ve raided for four hours straight, two to three nights a week, not that many years ago I’m really wondering how much I’ve changed as a gamer since then. I guess those are thoughts for another post though.

The game is still too stingy with upgrade materials, but I have my three main characters pretty much at their current maximum, with two more catching up within the next day or two, so it’s not too bad.

Farming drive discs is still almost as painful as it is in Genshin. It is better here, in that you can earn a currency with which to buy discs from a specific set for a specific slot. Their main stat as well as substats will still be random though. The item needed to actually choose a desired main stat is very rare, so kitting out multiple characters that way isn’t a realistic proposition.

Last but not least, the more I get to see of this world, the more I’m missing the ability to explore freely. Of course that one’s on me though – if I want to have an open world to lose myself in I need to play a game that actually has one.

I’d love to explore every nook and cranny here though

To end the post on a positive note, as I’m progressing the game also keeps opening up some more stuff that I really like.

I can now call and meet up with up to three of my agents per day, to have fun little conversations. This leads to leveling up my friendship level with them, netting me some rewards like being able to employ them as promoters for my video store.

Speaking of which, that store is basically the expeditions from Genshin and the base feature from Arknights rolled into one (compared to the latter it’s very basic though). Choosing a promoter and video tapes to meet certain criteria every day, earning rewards and raising the store’s reputation in the process, is quite fun. Again, it’s pretty basic, but as a big movie buff I still appreciate it.

The third story chapter takes place in a new environment that looks very cool, and the new group (i.e. faction) of characters we meet is interesting and quirky in its own way. It’s a welcome breeze of fresh air after chapters one and two not feeling very different from one another.

No, sorry, **“Mission Unthinkable”** is not in stock right now

And there you have it. For now the positives still outweigh the negatives, at least from where I’m standing. I can absolutely recommend playing the game, if only to try it out for a bit, but I’d strongly advise not to spend any money to pull for characters, at least not for the time being.

12. July 202420. July 2024

Zenless Zone Zero – First ImpressionZ

I’ve had my eye on ZZZ ever since I first saw a trailer for it, which must have been about a year ago. I really liked the style and fast pace, as well as the somewhat futuristic setting. I’ll take something like that over high fantasy any day.

The game was finally released on July 4th, and since I didn’t have anything else firmly holding my interest at the time I jumped right in, despite it being made by HoYoverse, the makers of Genshin Impact.

Wait, why is that a problem? I hear you ask. Didn’t you enjoy Genshin a lot?

Yes, I did indeed. Doesn’t mean I don’t have quite a few gripes with it though. Fortunately it turns out that they have amended at least some of the less player-friendly design elements.

But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

In a nutshell, ZZZ is a third person action RPG with a gacha system to acquire additional characters and weapons. It’s set in the not too distant future, where dimensional rifts called Hollows have opened pretty much everywhere, spewing out Ethereals, baddies who have wiped out most of humanity by now. We’re operating from New Eridu, a mostly safe haven, to keep the Ethereals in check, and also to uncover conspiracies and thwart the plans of corrupt human beings (of course).

If I understand correctly any kind of complex technology is particularly vulnerable to the Ethereals’ corruption, which is why, despite this being the future, the setting has lots of 90’s vibes. Old phones, video tapes and mini discs galore. I quite like it.

What the game doesn’t sport is a huge open world, so for explorer-types there’s less on offer here than, say, in Genshin. The gameplay loop mainly consists of three things: interacting with NPCs in New Eridu (which is freely explorable with more districts opening up over time, but still not that large), pretty frantic combat and the TV system.

The what now?

I certainly didn’t expect ZZZ to have a puzzle game mode, but that’s basically what this is.

Even more so than “assisting” during combat your main character’s job is to hack into the Hollows and do various things like finding clues, operating mechanisms and generally supporting your agents (which is what gacha characters are called here) in every way necessary.

Every mission that’s not strictly flagged as “combat” includes at least one of these, and so far I’ve had some that were really fun, others pretty annoying, and most are…just kinda there.

Don’t get me wrong, overall I’m totally fine with the mode. It’s just that the balancing in terms of playtime seems a bit off to me. I’d rather spend a little less time doing this, and more time beating the crap out of Ethereals. Because that’s really a blast!

In a metaphorical sense, but also quite literally

Your squad consists of three agents plus a little, mostly autonomous helper called Bangboo. As per usual for the genre you can swap between agents at any time, and each one has their own basic attacks, a special attack and an ultimate (the energy pool for the latter is shared however).

Just using these whenever won’t cut it though, as there are some very important mechanics in place that pretty much define ZZZ’s combat.

Enemies, even the smaller ones (basically the game’s trash mobs), regularly launch special attacks that are telegraphed by a red or yellow flash. The former can be dodged, the latter blocked. If you time it just right you take no damage, and the agent can execute a counter attack right after. These make up a considerable amount of your overall DPS and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Also, every enemy has a daze meter. Once that’s filled up the mob is stunned and your next attack launches a fricking huge combo including at least two agents; against bosses all three and even the Bangboo get in on the action. During this phase each agent launches their ultimate without using up any energy, which is obviously super strong. If that’s still not enough to bring the opponent down, everything you do deals more damage as long as the stun lasts.

Talking about every intricacy the system has to offer as well as teambuilding etc. would be a post of its own, so for now suffice it so say that it feels really good to me. It’s fast paced, flashy and has a whole lot of weight to it. Landing a perfect block on a big boss attack and my subsequent countermove make my subwoofer shake every time. It’s so satisfying.

Since this is just meant to be a first impressions piece let’s now talk about what they did and didn’t improve when compared to Genshin real quick. In my opinion, obviously.

When you completely spend your Stamina, called battery charge here, it takes a full 24 hours to reach the cap again. This is great because it means that you don’t have to log in and spend some at least twice a day lest you waste any. Also, once per real life day you can buy a coffee for (ingame) chump change to get another six hours’ worth of battery and a buff doubling the spoils for one specific farming stage that day. Lastly, if you’re strapped for time you can basically bundle farming stages together to spend up to 100 battery in one go, while making the fights only marginally harder and/or longer.

Up to three times per week you can farm special rewards by defeating weekly bosses. It always felt crappy to be time-gated like that and having to spend valuable stamina on them, so I’m happy to report that they don’t cost battery in ZZZ.

I’ve not yet progressed far enough to have experienced this myself, but as I understand it there’s a way to ensure getting a desired main stat on drive discs, which are the equivalent to Genshin’s artifacts. If true this is a huge game changer for me, as farming artifacts was the most frustrating part of that game’s progression due to the extreme degree of RNG.

I usually read or listen to the story (the voice acting is top notch by the way, and the story’s ok), but you can skip it all if you want to, and you’ll even get a little summary of what you’re about to skip when you do. I haven’t seen something like this before, and I think it’s pretty neat.

Not the one I wanted of course, but the gal packs a punch!

Unfortunately some things have remained pretty much the same, most notably the gacha system.

Once your “free” currency is depleted getting more, if you really want it, is expensive, pull rates for A and especially S ranks are atrocious, and whenever you don’t get one or the other you get almost nothing, which is the case for about eight and a half of every ten pulls. Feels bad, man!

The fact that the Bangboo banner has better rates and the currency for it is exclusively earned via gameplay doesn’t count, because this one comes on top of the usual limited, weapon and standard banners.

As for progression, I’m at account level 31 right now, and I’m already starting to feel what I felt in Genshin too – the game wants me to have lots of agents and get them all up to snuff, but it doesn’t give me enough resources to actually do so. Which is a shame, and I still don’t understand why they’re hellbent on being so stingy. After all I’d be much more inclined to pull for more characters and weapons, maybe even swiping my credit card, if I had the means to, you know, use them.

With all that being said, about 20 hours in I’m having quite a lot of fun. I’m still looking forward to play every day and don’t see myself call it quits for at least a couple more weeks.

If flashy, meaty combat and solving puzzles both are your thing there’s no reason to not try it out for free.