In an interview with Famitsu, Zenless Zone Zero producer Li Zhenyu discussed how his team worked on coding the combat. He believes that he and his team have created one of the best battle systems in the current action game scene.
In our preview of the closed beta for Zenless Zone Zero, we commented on how similar the combat is to Honkai Impact 3rd‘s. The Famitsu interviewer asked Li how he and the team differentiated their games. He states that how heavy each hit feels, how smooth the action is, and how good it feels to play are what differs Zenless Zone Zero from Honkai Impact 3rd. The impact and sense of rhythm on-screen in battle give the player a “very exciting” experience.
A strong sense of “feedback” in how players handle the characters is something the team really focused on. They expressed this through the Break and QTE systems, as well as in emergency support. The emergency support system is when the game prompts you to switch characters and use their switch attack after you take damage. This battle style makes it easy for newcomers to control their characters like veteran action game players. By making everyone easier to control, the team lowered the overall difficulty. In turn, this made the fun of action games more accessible to a wider audience.
Incidentally, the Zenless Zone Zero team does not plan on implementing any auto-battle functions. It’s also started developing on endgame content. However, there is no roadmap yet, nor is there a complete vision of what endgame content in the game will look like. Li will keep everyone posted once the team has come up with a concrete idea.
Zenless Zone Zero is in development for the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. It’ll come out in 2024.
