HoYoverse's 2024 action game is the studio's most stylistically confident release and its most mechanically aggressive. New Eridu is a city surrounded by Hollows, dimensional collapses that produce monsters and loot, and you play a Proxy who guides teams through them from a monitor - the between-mission layer is a stylised city hub with a video store, arcade cabinets and a genuinely large amount of incidental character writing. Combat is fast three-character brawling built on parry-and-swap: perfect dodges and defensive assists chain into Quick Assists, so a fight is a sequence of handoffs rather than one character's combo. The comic-panel presentation, animation and soundtrack are the strongest of any HoYoverse game. It was initially criticised for its TV-grid navigation between missions, which the studio removed in a major update in favour of direct exploration. Free-to-play with gacha recruitment, six-week patches, and the shortest session length of the studio's games.
Overall
Metacritic
“Zenless Zone Zero delivers some of the best action combat on mobile with undeniable style, though its gacha systems and uneven pacing hold it back from true greatness.”
Zenless Zone Zero confirms a Steam launch in Q2 2026 and reveals Version 2.8 New: Eridan Sunset with new S-Rank agents Promeia and Starlight Billy, launching May 6.
HoYoverse delivers a major mobile optimization patch for Zenless Zone Zero with 40% faster load times and improved frame rates.