My problem with free to play games isn't necessarily the gacha. It's the grind, the feeling that I need to log in every day to do my dailies even if I don't want to. It starts to feel like work. I stopped playing yugioh master duel recently because of that. I just want to play the game when I want to play it.

Oh no... They got him

I feel like if Mihoyo made a traditional singleplayer $60 RPG they would win over a ton of people that hate gacha games because they are genuinely really good developers and the games are super high quality, i doubt they'd ever do that considering how much the gacha games make but i would love to see them try.

It's so interesting seeing the normal gaming community express their thoughts on gacha games especially Hoyo games. By the way for anyone wondering, if all you care about is experiencing story in a Hoyo game (which Honkai Impact, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and now probably ZZZ all have high highs) all have fantastic stories you can get through without much or any grinding or interacting with the Gacha mechanic. Doing any amount of end game content (basically anything that really forces you to build your characters) or wanting to get limited time characters will need you interacting with the game more, but if you have good self control you can just use what the game gives you for free for gacha. Honkai Impact is probably the hardest for any non-gacha player to start playing, but the gameplay is a precursor to ZZZ and the world and characters are my favorite. Genshin Impact is, as you've heard, anime BOTW which was really impressive at the time, and still fantastic today. I hadn't played in over a year and got back to it and am just focusing story and building the characters that I do have and the more recent areas and story have been really good to experience. Honkai Star Rail is a turn based RPG that's similar to Persona but I think is actually based on the Trails series of games. Its setting is Space Fantasy and it doesn't take itself too seriously so it has some funny dialogue, but also when it does get serious about story, it's really good. All Hoyo games are pretty generous if you want to be F2P. Genshin probably is the biggest time sink due to open world and also grinding mats suck. Honkai Impact is the oldest and most generous. Honkai Star Rail continues that love and is actually really generous too. Genshin gets made fun of a lot because the newer game is more generous than it.

Star Rail is what abducted me on this journey. ZZZ has me continuing to cackle along the ride.

ZZZ is the first Hoyoverse game that’s actually appealed to me in terms of art style and vibe. But I’m not playing a gatcha game. That’s it, that’s the comment.

Is fun, I also didn't like Genshin, but Honkai Star Rail click with me and I play it daily now, and ZZZ is a really different experience from those two, so Hoyoverse is pretty smart in doing different games for different people.

Devil May cry doesn’t have stylish combat… huh?

my dude saw ellen and became a hoyostan for life

Ladies and gentlemen, they got him

I am genuinely surprised by how much I am loving ZZZ so far. I played a bit of Genshin Impact from 2020 to 2022, and while I liked the world-building and characters, the grinding in that game was way too tedious for me.

*The big problem in these games is exactly this: in the first hours, the game is awesome, with lots of things given to you for free and lots of interesting plots in the story... just to hook you on it. After these hours, the game starts to get repetitive and grindy. It happened to me with Genshin Impact. I was so freaking hooked on that game and I wouldn't do anything else as entertainment that was not related to Genshin Impact. After almost two months, the game became extremely hard because I didn't have the characters or materials that would help me continue playing it in the same flow as in the beginning.*

The animation in game looks significantly better than the awful ads for this game.

I can't believe I just heard someone claim that Bayonetta doesn't have visual style

Great video, Steve! Never played a HoyoVerse game but I'm going to have to give it a try on the PS5.

I made it into chapter 2 of the story today and im glad my main team makes sense for it. Koleda, Ben, and R2 Anton.

oh wow I'm surprised

Saying Devil May Cry does not have the visual style to match its gameplay just because it's not anime should be a crime.

Just make sure you hide your pocket wallet from em.

Playing it right now!

CRAZY!

Ah classic Daniel vid- Oh. Oh!

And it gives me an ad for it as I click on this video. First time it’s happened to me with any game ever.

That's what I love about Hoyo games

I played the game for a bit but the gameplay felt WAY too simple for me (just mashing the same button and switching character whenever I got attacked), does it get better?

Glad you guys covered Zenless! I've loved hoyoverse since genshin, and Zenless is top tier for me next to star rail and I put in so many hours.

You got the city area coming :)

I like Genshin Impact, but I skipped on Honkai Star Rail because of the turn-base mechanics. However this seems like a great game. I will have to download it and check it out. Thanks for the video!

Currently one of my favorite games! The style is impeccable and unique. Best part I don’t have to spend anything

It's got one of the best menu screens I've ever seen (the Belle one, at least, I dunno if the male protag one is different)

Did not know Steve plays Dokkan Battle, neat

Goty is a bit much man

Oh no, they got Steve!

If people like the game that’s great, but there’s something about these games that rub me the wrong way. All of their games are style over substance. I find any type of gacha games predatory, even more so than micro transactions. It’s pretty obvious with Hoyo games too, I see more ads for Hoyo games than I do actual triple A titles. Instead of porting Genshin to Switch like they promised they keep making more games in different genres to cast a wide net, and now they’re talking about porting this game to Switch when Genshin still isn’t there. The gameplay loop of their games is so basic that’s it’s not fun after a couple of hours, and that’s because they’re just mobile games designed to get you hooked on the grind. If they made a dedicated console/pc game with no gatcha mechanics I feel like they could make an amazing game, they clearly have talented devs, but they don’t reach their full potential.

Yeah hoyoverse games are interesting. Absolute scummy gacha monetization, but some of the highest quality gameplay, music, and storytelling. The stories are very generic shounen but the actual directing and cinematography are fantastic. I find that all of your points about "they make a game first" applies to every hoyo game haha Guess when you're making hundreds of millions monthly you can afford to hire the best to work on the actual game.

These games feel like frosting and icing on a fake and hollow cake, whenever I play fells like I am at the mall trying to play those gatcha or claw machines and not an actual videogame. It is just flashy colorful lights to lure and eat the prey.

This looks a lot better than my phone's maxed out setting but still playing gacha in ps5 and pc doesnt make lot of sense

Funnily enough, I have been a big Hoyoverse-Games-Fan since Genshin dropped. And ZZZ was actually the game of them that, from the marketing, appealed to me the least. I was like "Yeah, I'll give it a try, maybe pull some of the neat looking characters and go Back to Genshin and HSR". I never expected it's gameplay to hook me just as hard, if not harder, than those prior two.

Best thing to do is turn off the bloom

I really wish I felt the same way... The game seems amazing, but I just find the actual mechanics of the combat to be lacking.

Yeah this game has me hooked too I got two friends into it

Tried the game just briefly. Most likely not playing it further out of a lack of time (the one Hoyo game I play in Genshin is time consuming enough, I wanna have time for non-live service games, too), but I won't deny, it felt pretty good to play. The tone of the game is a bit much for my liking, but the overall presentation is great (if a bit slow through dialogue at first), the voice acting is solid (I think this in particular deserves acknowledgement, in a market flooded with games that either don't care to have English voicework at all in otherwise-voiced games, or where that voicework is as throwaway bottom-tier crap as you can imagine, often even with high-profile games, so I really appreciate that Hoyo's games don't seem to cut corners here), and the combat is definitely fluid and very stylish, from the little I've played. Didn't really get a good look at the gacha, though. If it's anything like Genshin, it's going to be rather... unforgiving on that end, for those who want to engage with the playable roster diversity more actively. Still, Genshin is plenty playable with minimal Gacha engagement. If you're vulnerable, I'd still absolutely suggest you stay away, but if you know you have the necessary self-control, I'd say it's worth checking out, at least.

I just didn’t enjoy my time with the TV sections during the beta on mobile but maybe I’ll enjoy it more on console since that’s what I prefer

i get that the HOYO game is alright and all, but calling this an actual GOTY contender is either pure clickbait, or just shows how few games you guys actually play.

The animation, the style, the gameplay, the music. This game has a lot going for it.

I'm curious how this game is going to keep engagement after a year's passing. Genshin's world is so big that you may never find every secret it has to offer by then. This game, however, is more repetitive and enclosed gameplay-wise. If Hoyo ever wants to make their own Persona-esque game, this is a pretty good showcase for that potential.

How is this compared to Wuthering Waves? I’m not sure which to play but the huge download and TV sections is a turn off for me from what I’ve seen of ZZZ

I prefer combat in other Hoyoverse games. This game is good but I prefer Genshin over all of them

It reminds me a lot of mobile games like Kritika, except with a AAA budget, so i'm mildly curious about this one!

Don't listen to haters in the comments and just make up your own opinions. Also, people saying the game is easy should post their chapter 3 weekly boss clears because he's gonna btfo all of these people

We will forgive you

It's interesting because I had the complete opposite reaction to ZZZ. Like at first I was super looking forward to it because Honkai Impact 3rd was my favorite mihoyo game and I like action games that are incredibly flashy. However, ZZZ's storytelling and combat were so boring to me that I dropped it after a few days of playing the closed beta. For me the biggest contributor to boring combat was the switch attacks. The combat is fully paused for several seconds every single time they happen (which is very frequently) and just sucks me out of the fast paced combat.

I will only play this if it gets private servers like genshin or honkai star rail

yessir its actually so fun and unlike genshin

I don't have time to play a game I can't easily complete, so it doesn't really matter how good this is. It's going to be a boring, gacha grind and it's not going to be worthwhile. It's sad, but it's true. And it's always going to be, that's how these games get money.

I say this as a huge gacha player, some may call a whale, but I know im in the fairly low spend category compared to some of the others i know. ZZZ and the hoyoverse games are the highest grossing games for a reason. It is because they subtly manipulate you to spend at some point, and that point could be a year from now or two years when you are more financially stable. The pack pricing structure is absurdly high considering what you end up getting in game. If you want to be on the bleeding edge, clearing everything easily with no issue, you need to pull strategically and have a little bit of luck not to get screwed in the gacha. The most powerful characters and teams in the game will be lower or middle tier come 6 months from now, because the game will introduce mechanics that will make newer characters more appealing. This is either through absurd powercreep, or mechanic introduction. HSR literally just did this with its most recent arc by introducing enhanced break damage and super break teams, which make the previous crit focused builds feel obsolete and scale the enemy health up on weekly content while excluding the previous meta elements for several months. While mechanistically deep, it can also be frustrating in a way that doesn't force you to quit the game, but may encourage spending bit by bit. All that said, ZZZ has impeccable style and the writing and character design are really good. The gameplay (combat) is incredibly satisfying in a way that even AAA studios sometimes fail to caputre. I really do encourage people to check it out, it is not impossible to play F2P if you are dead set on staying F2P or monthly/season pass buying as an MMO player would do. But you have to know what you're getting into, because the game designers are incredible at what they do. And what they do is squeeze money from their consumers and monopolize the gacha marketplace.

Eh, yeah...free-to-play games never do it for me, there was only one exception. I've tried others, even great ones, but for me I get bored with it after a few days or a week or so...

Been feeling exactly the same, didn't get hooked with the last two games but really vibing with this one.

I totally agree with u👍

Soukaku squad 🩵

Everyone is free to play whatever they like but I prefer to pay and play a full game like Granblue Fantasy Relink, is better in every aspect, history, combat, world building, gameplay, character variety. I think is convenient to players to say "I didn't spend a dime" whereas others will be trapped eventually.

Nope

Played a bit. Seems neat, but so far it’s just spamming the attack button. Once in a while you have a special, assists, and ultimate, but you mainly have one attack button and it feels too simple. They don’t even use a 4th face button, it’s solely for interacting with objects/NPC’s. hoping it gets more advanced. I only played the first mission.

Gacha? Not even once, tnx!

3:22 - "on his almost defunct youtube channel" - uh, he needs to stop putting out videos for his channel to be defunct. in fact he put out a video talking about manga visuals in games today, the day after this video came out. I know he said he recorded the last video for his channel, so there's a definite endpoint, but we don't know how many videos he has recorded before that one, and since they're all really short and cover a huge range of topics, his channel could still go on for months.

guess you haven't played hi fi rush. it's like this but 10x better

It's a pretty nice game. Wish it was a single purchase game but eh, you can't win 'em all

I thought this was satire 💀

Honkai Impact 3rd crawled so Zenless Zone Zero could run.

same here ;-;

A lot that you’re describing is literally in the other games you passed on, you just didn’t play enough to realize that. I can bet it will get worse with time, try not to get caught hook line and sinker, or you’ll be stuck with a stinker. Actually now that I think about it I think this action gameplay is also from their first game Honkai Impact 3rd, but everyone forgets that game exists. So it’s not even NEW new territory.

An anime styled character action game already exists, its called Hi-Fi Rush.

It's my favorite gacha game, it would be cool if it release on the Switch 2 (or whatever the name for the nintendo successor)

they can legit just remove the gacha aspect and I’ll play

A gacha game being ever considered to GOTY is a disgusting thought.

The game’s pacing is so bad tho. Couldn’t care less about the Persona stuff, just let me fight more.

But still is gatcha, still requires internet when is actually a single player experience and also, sooner or later it will require real money, Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail also had their honey moon in their early first day release, also is like Honkai Impact 3rd with a hub area

No HoYoVerse game is ever a GOTY contender, because they're incomplete games. You play them, get engrossed in the story, and then it suddenly comes to a halt, and you will have to wait months to get a continuation, because these gacha gaas are trying to suck as much money as they can from us, the player, for as long as they can. I personally don't care if it's free, I would prefer to pay $60 for a single player title knowing it will have an ending and my characters will go through development. I'll never forget the disappointment when I played Genshin the first time. I played it in release and did fall in love with the game, but then the story just ended and realized I had to wait god knows how long to keep playing the story, that's when these games lost me. It's been almost 4 years since Genshin released and the story still isn't finished, and there's no end in sight either. They just keep adding shit and shit and after a while it gets tiring. The time I sank into that game wasn't rewarded with anything. It's like a tv show that goes on for 10+ seasons and overextends its welcome. But that's the truth for all of their games, they're gacha gaas, they're made with the intention to keep going for years and years, and that's no fun.

No please not the hoyo 😭 NO MORE GATCHA

*most generic, cookie cutter anime character designs that you can spot in 100 D-list visual novels* ''yeah this got actual style compared to Devil May Cry'' huh???

Ayy, this games way too repetitive and exploitative to be goty. It is fun in short bursts though.

The great animations aren't enough for me, personally. I went in hoping the gameplay would have a little more depth, both in the actual combat and in the arenas in which you fight. The biggest offense for me though, is the dialogue: it's such a snooze (literally ZZZ). I think I gave the game it's fair shot, but once again I can't be bothered to play these type of games. And maybe that same bias against gacha, free to play games, will always prevent me from enjoying any of these. Overall, I struggle to agree with the design philosophy of this style of game, where it seems to me style is valued more than substance.

I have tried Genshin and Honkai Star Rail. Everything feels so generic. AI created. For instance if you like space exploration in jrpg there is Star Ocean series. With way more interesting content.

That's how I started a few years back. I was bored and saw someone streaming Genshin, and thought it looked fun. Nowadays I play 4 Hoyoverse games and love every single one. Their beautiful stories and incredibly-written and designed characters won me over in all 4. If you're okay with gacha, or can at least tolerate it, Hoyo's games are incredible I'm glad Steve is enjoying the game, but I feel like he has some misconceptions about Hoyo's previous games. I totally understand them not clicking with him, but several things he mentioned in the video as neat things about ZZZ that set it apart from other gacha games are present in Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He said he liked the way duplicate characters work in the game, but they work exactly the same as in Genshin and Star Rail. Same thing with the way shops and the gacha isn't thrown in your face with pop-ups, but just in a menu you have to navigate to yourself while the gameplay takes focus. ZZZ isn't a radical divergence of the Hoyo formula, but a permutation of it

I spent over 1500 hours and at least £500 on Genshin Impact between 2020 and 2022. Playing it was captivating. But quitting the game was liberating. So I passed on Star Rail and I'll pass on this. Never again.

Everyone in the gacha space hates the game.

Again with that ? This better be the only video on a Mihoyo game…

Nothing where you pay money to roll for random characters and by extention game mechanics(as each character brings new mechanics to the table like other Mihoyo games) deserves to come close to GOTY. Let alone the trashy layuers upon layer upon layers of time wasting upgrade mechanics I can't deny it has a visual style and kudos for that, but given how derivative it is of both their own games and other popular mainstream titles design wise it's not that surprising. I mean if you're going to steal a style steal it from Persona. At least in this game they aren't just "Generic Anime Character" like their others titles design ethos.

Goty... Yeah.. With nothing new from hsr and scripted combat

Damn money can make people say anything

As someone who is very much anti-Genshin Impact or any gacha game for that matter, I was very surprised that I couldn't help but like the game, I was fully ready to hate the game when my friend forced me to play it, but I didn't hate my time playing it, it looks very pretty and it plays good unlike a lot of triple AAA games that are releasing nowadays. Now, I haven't done a full 180° on Gacha games especially Hoyoverse, I still don't like this genre of game or the company so I won't spend a single red cent on it, but I'm willing to give this game a chance if the gacha part can be ingnored if you're not into trying to get artificially rare cute anime girls (thank god I don't care for that I know people who spends almost 1K$ on Genshin Impact and I can only imagine the financial horrors).

It has good animations and character designs. But c'mon this is soulless gatcha trash.

Gacha aside, I’m glad Steve enjoyed the game. That said, he does have a tendency to make some hyperbolic statements in his reviews

So, this is is sponsored, right?

bros got no taste

Never expected Steve to be converted, but here we are. Seems ZZZ is actually that good. What's funny to me is a lot of praise Steve had also applies to Genshin and Star Rail. Hoyo put a lot into each game's story, music and such. Also many of the game's mechanics are the same just under a different name. (The currencies for example.) The gameplay and style is unique to ZZZ, though. And that seems to be the major draw for many. As for me, while I do enjoy Genshin and HSR improved significantly with 2.0, ZZZ's combat, style and music is just so good. I got sucked me in so much I haven't touched other games. I was in the middle of trying Wuthering Waves since people say it's Genshin but better yet haven't touched it since ZZZ came out. 😅

I've never even heard of this game, but I'm a minute into the video and this game looks CLEAN

People really hate gacha around here huh

oh gvg ;/

LMFAO