Don't really know if I have it in me to keep playing this one, especially since FFXIV has me back.

On a purely presentation level this is the nicest looking gacha game out there. That endless reserve of Genshin and Honkai money went into this, it seems. Compared to its superior predecessor and the other two games Mihoyo made it has a relatively distinct artstyle that honestly doesn't look too good when still but is fantastic in motion. There's a lot of influence drawn from contemporary 3D animation - judicious use of squash and stretch especially - and a lot of care is given to ensuring characters have their own distinct motion which I appreciate. On the design side ZZZ calls back to PS2 titles that attempted to be ~punk~ what with its excesive amount of graffiti UI and CRT TVs uh... everywhere? I do appreciate the use of contemporary East Asian street culture in the aesthetics though.

But it also feels overdesigned? I can't think of a better way to articulate it, but the more cutscenes I watch the more it feels like they've tried to transcribe a lot of anime motion quirks to 3D without understanding why they're predominantly used in 2D works. Nothing in ZZZ is subtle or calm outside of the genre-standard "stand around and talk while NPCs do canned emotes" scenes. Everything is BIG and FLASHY and ZESTY, and while I can understand the artistic appeal it is so fantastically exhausting to watch.

That said, my actual umbrage is with the gameplay. I've grown endlessly tired of "action games" being either Soulslikes or a cheap depth-less riff on character action games where you do nothing but spam light attack until bars fill up and you push the corresponding buttons.
ZZZ leans the latter. I will give them some credit for giving each character a gimmick that helps differentiate them, which gives the game a leg up over Genshin, but the core gameplay is so incredibly shallow and repetitive that it doesn't mean much in the end. Really, it's not that much of a step up from Honkai Impact 3rd, and that game has more going for it!

Also the writing is... eugh. I jokingly called this "Zenless Zone Zoomer" when the vtuber song clip leaked and I realize that joke might've had some merits. ZZZ tries a bit too hard to be funny and relatable. Sure, HSR sometimes goes way too hard on the contemporary zoomer memes, but it doesn't get in the way of the character writing. I feel like if Yukong was in ZZZ her companion quest would stop halfway through so she could hit the griddy. To say nothing of how this game goes harder on the nouns than any of Mihoyo's other works.
Not helping matters is that, after a relatively stellar dub in HSR, ZZZ is a game comprised entirely of voice actors using that same obnoxious Youtuber Cadence that makes listening to modern Square Enix games so draining. I'll save the ramble about how modern dub VAs need to stop mimicking anime they liked as a kid for another review, but it's on full display here. If the voice direction was "sound like a mid-range vtuber that gets cancelled for cheating on their husband", mission accomplished.

Ultimately what soured me on ZZZ is how limp this first offering of Content is. HSR has its issues and recently had an absolute shiter of a patch, but its opening swing had so much weight behind it that I'm still playing it 8 months later. ZZZ 1.0 feels like a game you'd find on a PS2 demo disc, daydream about for a decade, emulate on PCSX2 and then get disappointed over. Genshin might be terrible but they've at least come into their own, and while I'm not a HI3 fan I hear lots of good from devout shooters for it.
I, truthfully, cannot fathom the idea of this game getting a fanbase as devoted as the other two. A lot of the games it cribs for are easily available, and while Microsoft killed Tango you can still go and buy Hi-Fi Rush. There just isn't really anything here that sparks the neurons.

Oh and gacha-wise it's the exact same thing they've been doing since HI3rd! At least the pity counter is in game this time, but eesh. Get new material.