noticed you mentioned choice swapping but yes its possible in a way, on Kbm you can by default press C to cycle to your previous character and space to the next, if you memorise your team layout you can infract switch to whatever character you desire without having to cycle through everyone. this will also active parry's like how space would, (Example, Your team: Soilder11, Anby, lucy - as anby, pressing C= soilder11 space = lucy, from lucy C= Anby space = S-11, so from any character you can cycle forward or back to play exactly who you want on the field
For me it's opposite. I know who Jinshi, Changli, Baizhi, Mortefi are. Grace is... the maid? No, mechanic. Shark girl's name is, shark girl. And Waves has such satisfying and stylish combat mechanics, with higher difficulties bringing more mechanics in enemy movements, while in Zero it's simplified. Mash the button until your wrists fall off, and press evade when enemy sparkles, and higher difficulty is just more health and more damage. Even now, I can't wait to play Wu wa, while in Zero, oh man, I have to play them tv's again, damn.
i’m a F2P player at knot level 38, and honestly, even IF the game didn’t have these crazier mechanics to maximize DPS, ZZZ’s combat still plays like a better Arkham game (simple attack chains into super flashy counter attacks), and on that alone i adore it
Yes, it's just good fun, and the emphasis on animations sells that. The gameplay depth is definitely more in the RPG and team building aspect, but you can't say that the parry sound and animation doesn't feel amazing to land almost every time.
(I originally wrote something longer but this explains it) (original comment mentioned gadgets and flashiness of going from one enemy to another, oposite of ZZZ where you damage more enemies at the same time) It's not better. the amount of control, interactions, options and animations the character has in combat is far more in Arkham. And the movement is more stiff in ZZZ than in Arkham.
@@gaboxl100 my phrasing was bit of a misnomer: i meant more along the lines of “like *one of the* better arkham games”, i.e. in the same ballpark as City or Knight. Aside from that, i think we have very different definitions on flashiness lmao, Arkham is far more grounded and dare i say mundane compared to the shit you can pull off in ZZZ, and while yes gadgets absolutely give Arkham more complexity in some circumstances, to be completely honest even after playing every game in the series i still had the most fun and most consistent results just doing punch>punch>counter>punch>punch etc
@@Rednu oh 1000% lol, and that’s what i was getting at with the comparison: both games have their most flashy and fun to watch moments right when you see that counter symbol
I've been playing gacha games F2P for my entire lifetime, so this experience playing ZZZ has been just a happy pill for me because I miss playing Hi3 but I am too far behind that I dont want to go back there anymore, so this game, although a little tough on free character choices, is still pretty good and sweaty like an action game should.
@@prixivus85 honestly they gave SO many free polychromes by the current “end” of the game that any F2P can have like 5 S rank agents at least: I saw a guy fully grind out all 300 pulls from the stable channel entirely F2P, and that’s the stable channel which isn’t even the best choice to spend polychromes
@@YISTECH they are referring to when you promote all the difficulty for the missions goes up. im ik 40 and now all the quest i had not finished are saying lvl 48 character recommended
I really liked your review. I agree with your takes on the combat, I've been very pleasantly surprised with ZZZ's combat, it's my favorite of all the gacha games i've played so far (Tower of Fantasy, Genshin, Honkai Star Rail and WuWa). The difficulty stuff you mentioned in particular, I agree and it's one of my favorite things about ZZZ. I wish there were more ways to flex in this game (multiplayer, or at least leaderboards) but I'm hoping it comes out later because damn, the combat is just top tier. It feels good to play characters in this game and actually get good at playing them, reminding me when I used to play fighting games and main a character. One thing you didn't touch on in this video is the progression mechanics of this game. This game feels incredibly handheld in terms of progression. What I mean is, I can imagine there is a designer over there that has a spreadsheet where they know exactly how much XP any person can have at any time w/o paying and what range of XP they have based on how much money they've spent. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing.. it's just something I noticed, just how refined or controlled, the actual progression in this game feels. I think.. I like it. I don't actually, because I want to no life a game I play but it's made plain as day that no lifeing is not what they designers wanted and it's such a waste of time, I find myself just logging off after using my energy and spending my weekends doing my no lifeing on the game, when i've pushed enough XP from energy throughout the week to give myself enough content to spend 6+ hours on. Your last point about your F2P experience feeling like a rogue like game, I felt the exact same way. This is the first time I've actually really enjoyed playing a gacha game as F2P. I had the same opinion, the game absolutely felt like a rogue like, where you're given enough resources to do everything and it's up to you on how to manage it. I REALLY wanted the cat girl because fast attacks with reactive dodges is the exact gameplay I love but I never pulled her, however i DID pull her weapon.. So i decided to fuck the event banners and dumped all my F2P poly's on the standard banner to try to pull her and, failed.. I did get soldier 11 out of it however and at level 40 did a two day transition of my main team into a fire team (I had Kodela from earlier) and now I am a few days behind but I have two good teams.. Not exactly what I wanted, but I made do w/ what I was given. I dunno, that part of the game has been very enjoyable to me. Great video, I had no idea there were secret moves that were unlisted like you showcased w/ Nicole lol, that's so cool. I hope you continue to enjoy the game and keep making videos.
Hey thanks, really appreciate it! And yeah, progression in this game is incredibly meticulous in its design. I feel that 100%. I think, while it is kinda frustrating for people like you and me who are used to no-lifeing these type of games, it might have been part of the magic that prevented me from burning out on the game too quickly. WuWa might be a good game, but I burnt out on that super quick, and I think the progression design may have something to do with that.
@@Rednu Yea, maybe it's for the better. It was just very noticeable for me playing ZZZ. I'm happy to keep playing and logging out to play other games in the meantime, maybe it will work and I'll stick with this game for months to come.
50 hours in at level 41, when you get to level 35-s40ish, the wall really hits. Less commissions, less to no story objectives other than "Increase your Inter-Knot", battery takes excruciatingly long to recharge which is main source of inter credits when all of the above are no longer an option (you will get two attempts at resource runs). The further you go through the game, the less rewards will be present. Something I will give credit to Mihoyo for is the dailies are a godsend compared to their other titles. I like the game a lot, it's extremely polished in comparison to Genshin (fuck their dailys) and HI3rd but obviously it's a gacha, meaning cashgrab. The goal of these games is to direct or tempt people into spending money without completely shutting off their experience of the game. TLDR: Higher your level the more tedious increasing your interknot becomes. Sign in, do your dailies, complete resource runs, come back the next day tbh (unless you bump into some comissions).
To be completely honest with zzz 1. Clean in animation and gameplay - as someone who has played many gatcha games, I gotta say I really enjoy how this game is actually different. It’s very enjoyable to watch this new jiggly art style. And it doesn’t hurt a lot of the characters in any way shape or form besides being a tiny bit silly, but I still agree that it adds SO much 2. Lovability: emotions and feel/writing - even the NPCs feels great to interact with and the world building is just great. I literally roam the streets looking for North the Bangboo. I also gotta agree with the ties into the real world, it also heavily ties into the connect-ability 3. Combat The NPCs actually attack in patterns to mess you up. Someone once commented it as “ Guerrilla tactics”. A great example is the sword and shield + ranger ethereal mini bosses. One will rush you while the other will teleport OR shoot from a distance. A enemy later in the story for the Victoria Houskeeping section with will ALL split apart and when you turn your back on one the others will do an extremely quick dive attack at you that’s hard to read even when looking at them. It’s just a really nice feel to know that the fights take thinking and the feeling that you get when you don’t get your favorite character hit once in the entire fight (btw I use Anby as my DPS and it’s hilarious) 4. Day cycle Holy cow, it’s never talked about but the way the game uniquely requires a proper time and day to interact and complete quest really adds to the feeling. Idk if it’s just me but it also adds to the connect ability in a way. Besides that I really just agree with your stand points.
Oh and I gotta say, the main criticism I hear is that the TV section is really bad. But I gotta be honest, to me it’s better that then running around the abandoned city complexes the entire time and forcing you too constantly look out for boxes or stuff that you might miss. People say it takes away from the time you fight but it actually SAVES time. Now you aren’t running around throughout the map fighting peons that stall and breaking boxes, they got rid of the possibly and theoretically longest part of the game and simplified it to a simulation through your bangboo and the TVS. And I really do appreciate the approach here. I didn’t come for an open world, nor did I stay for one.
I play this game now like a 5 days or so, and so many are shitting on it and i don't know why really. this is the first video i saw, where someone is really TALKING about it ,and not down right taking it apart. i am not the gacha kind of guy, also not really big on anime games because sometimes the "anime cringe" is just to much for me, but this game is sick imo.
A lot of people are comparing it to WuWa, which definitely delivers on the "hard combat" out of the two. A lot of CCs are also ex Genshin creators, who at one point loved Genshin which is a huge open world game, the antithesis to the TV system. I happen to value ZZZ as a full package and its proactive gameplay, and hate open worlds so... same for me. This game's a banger.
Honestly for a few reasons -People hate Hoyoverse -People dislike the Tvs -People were expecting something different as it was advertised as more of a combat experience but theres a lot of other things in the game that if you happen to not enjoy it (TVs mini games etc) take away from the game As someone who is on the negative side of this game, it just comes down to people who are disappointment are just being more vocal. ZZZ has a lot of good qualities and I think many people enjoy the game, they are just playing the game and not online talking about if the game is good or not so you hear more negativity
The story is trash and I literally cannot play it due to how the writing and characters are so unbelievably cringe. But this is hardly unusual for Hoyo slop. Try gachas with legitimately good stories like PGR, Reverse1999, FGO etc.
@@zealgaming8161 Whenever I see the writing in zenless being compared to FGO and FGO being put in the same category as PGR and reverse1999, I am 100% sure they are an average FGO fan which means they consume the story through summaries on reddit, cause clearly no one sees how the damn game is written.
@@maxchaos44ok, as a dedicated FGO player I gotta agree with you on this one. The story and early events are shit and I ain’t going to defend it. The only reason why 90% of us stay until the story gets good (which is like 600+ hours in) is because there is no other Fate/ type moon related ANYTHINGto stick to while waiting for any other type of content. FGO story does get better and right now FGO end game in NA is EXTREMELY ENJOYABLE, with the cost of the dogshit you gotta swim through, and it’s an entire Olympic swimming pool amount of trash. “Good story” also shouldnt apply to a game that relies on 7 years of forcing yourself to connect to said characters and then FINALLY have it enjoyable at the later parts. And cringe? You are calling FGO NOT CRINGE? My god… we reuse the same shitty jokes every event and the events in 2024 so far have been mid at best. Not to mention the amount of unusable trash servants while everyone here in ZZZ is usable (yes even Billy, Billy is strong as hell.) Long story short, ZZZ is not as shit as people make it out to be, and is extremely enjoyable. Oh and don’t get me started on FGO game play, do you really like farming with Koyon light and Castoria over and over again? Is that really FUN?
What i liked about ZZZ was how easy of a pick up it was over most of its own titles. In HSR it feels like you have to be fully commited to your teams strategy like a well played card game, in HI3 everything thats shoves in your face from rhe UI and thw atory gets kiterally shoved at you like a buffet you never wanted, Genshin intimidates you with the exploration of suxh a amassive world to traverse. Wuwa gives you that survive ir be killed vibe which was totally diff grom ZZZ. I can just play, feel like a hero pulling off combos and parrying like a god and the flow is fata and smooth and most of all satisfying enough to make me go at it again (so far)
I spent so much time in Genshin and developed some form of ptsd with gacha open world. So when WuWa dropped I was just so haunted and tired by the fact of world exploration for scrap of gems. The 1.0 world felt extremely bland, bleached out color (post apo settings so maybe thats why) with no real landmark on the map. Everything is just randomly put together and even after half a month of hogging myself through it I couldn't really remember what the regions are or what they are about. Cameback for 1.1 story quest, got Jinhsi but I dropped 1 day later since its just too much for me. ZZZ dropped and its hooked me right from day 1. Yeah the endgame structure is just standard gacha endgame, some TV are hogged out too long and combat mechanics might not be as detailed as WuWa. But for the art and cutscene quality of the game it must be a 10/10 out of every F2P game I had ever played. It felt on par with something that came out a game of AAA budget or at least a paid JRPG like Persona (this part is I'm talking about the art only, just saying this before I got called a Hoyo glazer 😂)
I like open worlds but also love some more focused games, WuWa threw me off by low team-building aspect, what I love of Genshin is how important it is to pair characters in well made teams, WuWa has more skill expression but less team building, but If I want skill expression I might as well just play Dark Souls or For Honor (The only online competitive Hack And Slash game I can think of)
Im a be real this is the first gatcha that really pulled me in parrtially cause it feels lowkey persona ish in ways but also due to a lot of what you have said it doesn’t feel stupid unfair the story and characters a great and memorable just most things about this game feel pretty good and it may be the first gatcha i do pay into even if its only the monthly pass. I played genshin and while it sorta got me i couldnt do it with the open world stuff on top of it being a gatcha with a bajillion systems. The linear aspect of ZZZ makes the extra systems feel less overwhelming and more like its part of a complete package im Just pulled zhu yuan and am hyped haha
I’ll be honest, did not like the fact that there’s a dead spot in between levels 34-36 and 38-40 I hope they’ll fix this by adding more side quests in the later patches or at least make the challenge mode give you exp for the first run you do
Very fair criticism. I was also a little starved for content. It got me really acquainted with the trust system and got me to clear pretty much everything though LOL
Just wanted to say great video. It was interesting to hear someone else talk about how Elden Ring's build variety acts as an ingame difficulty slider which I definitely think makes it more accessible and appealing to a wider audience. That's why I definitely think I'm in the minority of people that prefer a more pure skillbased challenge like a souls level 1 run (or at least using a vanilla melee build and not being overlevelled). This is partly why I really enjoy the hologram fights in WuWa because it comes down to learning the boss fight (assuming you're in the appropriate level range). I also really enjoy the minmaxing speedrun approach of ZZZ. The gameplay actually reminds me of FF14 raiding as opposed to your typical character action game (where it's more about style or difficulty) where it's all about optimizing DPS while managing easy to medium difficulty enemy mechanics. While the current boss mechanics in ZZZ are straightforward, I can see the possibility of ZZZ adding in more difficult boss mechanics in the future akin to soulslike/WuWa bosses because of the built-in parry limit and a focus on positioning against some bosses. Ideally I'd like to see gacha games implement purely skillbased endgame battle content (fixed or scaled levels) but I think that's a pipe dream because I don't think gacha devs want to alienate whales who pay for power (or at least pay to bulldoze all the content).
Finally someone said this. Wuwa's biggest flaw at is the relationships with the characters. It's the same problem Genshin had in it's early patches before character quests. I don't feel character aside from Jihnsi is at all that important. I don't even know what Chixia and YangYang is supposed to do. They appear as tour guides for new players.
Yep, most characters feel tacked on or pushed way to the side. Chixia I know has been nerfed in terms of nuance from CBT, she was supposed to pull a gun on Rover but the testers REALLY didn't like how Chixia wasn't pandering to them and I think this is the source of the gap that is felt between character design and writing.
its kinda totally not true. We did know a bit about few characters like Jianxin, Alto or Encoure. Lingyan is fully fleshed out. However he is the black sheep. Jiyun - fully fleshed in the story and in his charater quest. he was a medic, he paticipated in rafting etc. The last quest of Changli was full focus on her and Jinshi was focus on 1.1. 1 Yunlin whole story is in her quest... In contrast I know a even fewer things for most chars in ZZZ. yeah we know S11 is loyal and loves cats... nice... Anby loves movies... etc I have maxed trust with Ellen/Anby and few others. Its a boring and repetitive process after a while.
@@ixirion Notice that I have not mentioned any playthrough of optional character quests. I am saying this from the main story's perspective. Most are one-and-done and don't leave a strong impression. Jihnsi secretary, Verina, Taoqi. I am unsure how these characters will be relevant later on. Comparably it's more noticeable in wuwa.
@@foomiumperorosaurus8066 I finished the stupid Genshin event. At the end of the event we saw Kaya/Jean/Mona and 20 more charaters. We had few lines with each. Its ridiculus already. it doesnt matter if its main story or not. its there IF you want you can play it. Jinshi will probably be in future stories cos She and Jue are connected. So she is basically Archon level char.
There are some great points in here - I definitely think your take on Elden Ring could be enhanced a bit more if it wasn't phrased around something as nebulous as 'difficulty'. You're essentially comparing Elden Ring to time-gated resource systems. If a boss fight isn't going well for you in Elden Ring, you can just go do something else, grind more, farm/use consumables, or even completely overhaul your build before trying the fight again. There is no external force blocking you from that being a possibility - so the choice ultimately ends up on you. The 'frustration' is yours. I also don't think time-gated resource systems are a bad thing. I just think gachas inherently use the 'frustration' of undertuned resource drips to fuel fiscal returns. And yeah, sure, being f2p or a lower spender can still be fun to min/max your time, but an undertuned gacha is never going to properly 'reward' you for putting /extra/ time into it. That being said, ZZZ definitely has a strong start as a stingy gacha - and its polish is more than enough reason for me to do the 'bare minimum' it asks of me as we wait for 1.1.
Yeah, that's a great point. Having more ownership of the frustration makes it a lot more easier to deal with. I think this fundamentally makes games like WuWa disadvantaged, because the time-gate feels a lot more oppressive given its design. Proactive gameplay like what you find in ZZZ is a lot more tolerable and fun for me.
@@slock5732 not to mention artificial gate you can't get around like say you only have Ellen ice team and get hit with ice resistant stage. No amount of getting better going to get you the clear speed you need and you can't magically pull out different element team until a long time later into the game.
I love wuwa and all, but timegates are kinda the worst thing to have in progression. All they need to do is give the players other things to do than just upgrading characters, and create a proper progression system that there is no need to rush.
I rather people be honest. The game was absolutely not for me, the story is just as bad as Genshin/HSR and WuWa, combat is worse then both WuWa and PGR by a mile. The quality of the game however is insane. But that just makes it a really well polished turd. Dislike the art style too, prefer a more realistic and mature tone. I'm constantly cringing when playing ZZZ and the TVs are painful.
Also them saying we would get 180 free pulls was an ass move. In WuWa devs gave out multiple 5* selectors and I had 4/6 of the standard nat 5* within a few days of playing.
@@111111hakar Punishing Gray Raven. It's an arena battler like Honkai impact or ZZZ. It's Kuro's previous game they made before Wuthering Waves and back then they where just a small indie studio who dis not know what they where doing. Playing PGR is like stepping into a time machine speeding towards as reach chapter cleared display increasing quality, going from absolute trash to holy shit 10/10 game.
ZZZ’s Character Action like Combat (ie. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta) keeps me hooked as F2P. Though we don’t have aerial combos it’s still fun to counter and dodge. Gear is good but not a deal breaker for making characters fun. Billy, one of the most low tier characters (but my favorite), is still fun without his signature engine. He just gets better when getting his Cinemas and WEngine. I just hope we get more story and character events not only for new characters but for currently available ones as well. I hope we get more Billy story now we’re with the Sons of Calydon. And Anby with Obol Squad.
This breakdown was brilliant! I couldn’t identify why I love this game so much but now it’s been put into words. I actually put Star Rail on maintenance mode for this, it’s so stylish! Subscribing rn!
15:00 You can switch to the previous character in your line up. It's not on the UI or in the tutorial. The default key is C. If you want to maximize the control of who you want onfield, then it's an available option.
haha you really understand this stuff, you are so right about the loop with these gacha games, they are generally more about building up your account than pure skill, yes some skill is needed but it’s fundamentally different than something like dark souls, it’s all about the grind, the skill comes in when account building and those mistakes are much harder to recover from than losing to a boss, there’s much more at stake.
I don’t necessarily think wuwa fights are cheesy by design. However they are plagued with bugs and inconsistency they make them feel that way. Your video make me realize the main difference tho being the player agency in fights. ZZZ is similar so HI3 in that the fights aren’t souls like difficult, but are still challenging enough and at the high end encourage player agency to optimize their own combat. HI3 was my first big gacha game after Brave Frontier back in the day and also my first gacha I spent money on. It sucked me in so much especially with the level of optimization you could do. I hit rank 1 in the very first whale abyss bracket at launch and it was a wrap from there. It being more about optimizing your gameplay than being about reacting to bosses to just barely finish is probably what appealed to me the most. And your explanation shined a big light for me as to why I didn’t enjoy wuwa as much. Great video. Also, if it’s not too much of a pain, seeing your progress as f2p on that account and then having a separate whale account would be interesting. But two accounts is a lot to handle especially if you’re playing other games.
Hey brother, second gen Chinese here. I totally get what you mean about the names. It's just hard to bring up as a knock against WuWa without seeming like a weirdo lol. In its defense, WuWa is Wuxia, so it does make sense that everything is very "Chinese-coded". Clearly not an issue for many American players. Personally, I get tired of it very easily. Watched too much Wuxia with my Dad when he was really into them. And I know it's ironic typing this while playing these games made by companies based in China, but I can't help but feel burned out when it comes to common Wuxia tropes. Definitely one of the reasons I dropped WuWa after 1.1 and checked out during all of HSR's initial Xianzhou arc.
ayyy I'm not alone! lol I feel like a lot of people, especially non-Asian, will feel weird having that criticism for WuWa but it's absolutely fair no matter who you are. The name "Nicole" is always going to be more recognizable and endearing to someone with a Western ear than something like Chixia. Thanks for teaching me about Wuxia, I legit didn't know that genre had a name besides "Chinese Mystical Kung-Fu Shit" lol
the thing i hate about wuwa is they are not even using modern chinese romanization, like Jinhsi... what are we in the 19th century? who spell chinese like that? like is there really a point to use Qing era spelling that the british made up since there is no official chinese romanization yet? just use pinyin, Jinxi alot easier to read... it feel like they are trying too hard to make a referrence that 99% of the people (INCLUDING MOST CHINESE) would not even know. I only recognise it because I am a history buff. it just make no sense to have a referrence no one understand.
21:00 this can be said of every darksouls and most fromsoft games, it can also be said about devil may cry too, it isn't okay to give them a "free pass" also magic builds are perceived as easier but it's a misconception, you still need to study every boss and be damn sure you won't die for casting. The only way to make bosses easier is to summon, the other ways of making the boss easier aren't really true, the boss can and will kill you off a single miss roll in elden ring, ds3 and ds2. An example is Lorian Prince, even alone you miss a roll and then you're on dead percent, his attacks are relentless enough that unless he chooses to let you heal you won't be able to heal, and since he teleports casting magic isn't gonna make it easier at all
A lot of bias comment about ZZZ being better than Wuwa. However, there are few things I strongly agree with you about Wuwa. -World Exploration -> It's just as bland as Genshin, anyone says otherwise is coping hard. All it has is just optional mindless grind for echos that aren't guaranteed to be useable. -Dialogue/Story -> I swear their writing tones sound very immature and just straight up essay, they are just copying the same style as Genshin. The beginning of both story of Wuwa are argony to go through, especially with the whole new mascot as your companion bs. This is my strongest complaining. I just don't get why they are so scared to make story for more grown up, those dialogues aren't anywhere close to normal people speaking to each other. -Character Design -> I like them looking more mature but they are very alike in term of aesthetic beside Changli but even then her clothings look very basic.
for me, the aesthetics and combat reeled me in. Really love the world and the characters (and the characters are more mature-looking than other hoyo games) though, i quit when i got the character that once i saw him on the trailer i was like "NOPE, NOT THE FURRY" -- so i got 2 Lycans, one on the beginner banner and on the Ellen banner, i was so bitter at the time (and also this was the time when Once Human, First Descendant came out) so i lowkey quit afterwards despite me loving the combat, and the design of the game now, i came back.. and im pretty sure after the Ellen loss im guaranteed and mulling over wether i'd pull on Qingyi or Jane Doe's banner later on. I came back because im over FD and the 1st season of Once Human is over, and i just bit off all that bitterness (dumb reason, really) and play my account with what i have -- which is just Rina and an S1 Lycaon with some 4stars. So far im enjoying it and finally in midgame (lvl 31)
Yeah, even as a Kuro fanboy off of PGR, I was super annoyed that we didn't at least have character stories, like Jiyans and Lingyangs, for all the relevant, released characters. Basically, if they made an appearance and you could acquire them, there should have been missions to get to better know the characters.
Solid video! Really liked a lot of your takes! Just a couple of things to clarify in case you ever return to wuwa- If you're looking for a timed challenge with varied rewards based on the time of your clears, Tower of Adversity is what you're looking for, albeit ZZZ's alternative is a bit more robust. Another thing you might enjoy based on some of what you talked about, dodge counters in wuwa have i-frames, so if you're running into instances where you want to punish after a dodge, but an atk is coming at you, any character with a decent length dodge counter animation can do so. Yinlin's is actually insane.
Right, I forgot about the Tower. That one felt way more time-gatey than the Holograms. I'm not sure when I'll hop back into WuWa but you never know, I still have Yinlin whose design I really like after all.
@@Rednu yeah, the new hologram they added for Crownless is a really good fight to help you adjust to the idea of i framing with the counters. Run in there with Yinlin on field and her animation is long enough to where during some of his longer combos, you’re just dealing damage with i frames every other atk. It’ll be like a 6 hit combo and you’ll just face tank 3 of the hits while doing damage for free, similar feeling to ZZZs ex skill i frames, but constant due to it being tied to dodge counters
@@Rednu and Tower does feel a bit more like a dps check than shiyu does, so it definitely is time gatey, but it feels good in it’s own way. I think I find myself preferring Shiyu currently, but that might just be a newness factor, although I personally prefer Wuwa’s combat in the big picture. They’re both great imo
Insightful review. I never got into Wuwa, I quit the first day of launch because the world and characters felt so bland. Performance and server issues didn't help (to be fair I think thats been addressed now) but the immediate vibe I got was that I was not going to immersed into the stories or characters at all. And you have pretty much confirmed this for me with your own experiences of the game. Fully hooked on ZZZ though, at 40 myself and keen to see where this game goes. I don't think you ever addressed the TV system, or did you? What are your thoughts on it? Some of it I thought was great, othertimes I thought it dragged or was just a complete miss imo (e.g. the investigation bangboo series, although the conclusion was REALLY interesting lore wise). I heard from another large CC that apparently in an interview they want to present the story more so through rally point style combat comissions, or tone back the TV in general.
Yeah, this video was getting long and I didn't get to touch on all the points I wanted to. But I much prefer the TV system. It's not perfect, I guess? But it's straight to the point, it expresses thematic concepts about the HDD and how Phaethon works, and I think it's cute. I think there may be just a little too many icons, it's hard to build a glossary in my mind, but that's a really minor gripe. I much prefer it over the open world traversal that is in Genshin and WuWa. I have 0 interest in open world exploration, it only feels like a chore. The only exceptions are if I'm sharing the world in a multiplayer setting like in MMOs, or if the gameplay is SUPER sandboxy like in MGSV and Breath of the Wild, and even then, I dropped BotW towards the end and only stuck with MGSV because of the narrative. All of this is personal taste. I hope whatever they do, they do not ever do open world.
I also try Wuwa on it's first week and yeah the stutter is kind tickle me the wrong way the character design seem to only have 1 theme and from seeing some new character release recently it's still seem to be that way my breaking point is the ENG VA situation to me this signal rush and lack of quality control while the combat is good it wasn't enough to carry other problem for me since i have other good combat focus game on steam other problem for me is at the core this game is just genshin but less tedious i finally quit that horrible addiction and i don't feel like touching it again also the lore pacing that sheep and sheperd section is weird they take 20 minute to tell us that villager is selling each other out and not even tell us who is the culprit it was weird af my last problem that seal this game away from me forever is tencent hold rather large amount of share for this game initial funding that a hell no for me
Yeah that Shepherd Sheep story was ass. It's horribly cliched and predictable here, and then you have the weird plotline where Rover is scavenger hunting for the meaning behind insignificant items for a passcode so that she could trump Scar with a plan she made off screen. That part was really cheesy.
TL;DR everyone gets to pick their preference. A main problem of ZZZ is that it's straight up boring both in gameplay and in lore. Great if the characters have more lore written into them, not great if the only way to explore that is mindlessly smashing buttons to skip the endless yapping on the monitor and hack&slash the occassional oversized punching bag. Performance/Server issues didn't do WuWa any favours on launch, but that doesn't diminish the game's quality, just the player experience on that day. Get over it, happens in other games too. The devs did work on fixing and sincere apology gifts. ZZZ also injected extra pulls into their player base after the conflicting launch feedback with the promised pull bait. WuWa offers a VAST world to explore + combat has freedom of choice in how and when you combat enemies or bail a boring quest and go do something else. ZZZ has what? 1 Room and 1 Street to explore with the amazing freedom of walking slowly... or even slower, lol. Some folks call it a blessing to crop out exploration grind, I'd call it a prison and all "quests" in ZZZ are just a glorified walking simulator. No puzzles or diversity aside from... the snake minigame, amazing. Edit: Both these games are just launching though, let's hope for the best on both ends. WuWa fans enjoy that the game actually offers very generous pulling chances unlike ZZZ. To enjoy a gacha, getting characters one enjoys is the main reason to play. The argument made here was that characters need story bonding to be enjoyed, but getting to play one aka THE GAMEPLAY might matter a lot more... How restrictive and rewarding it is to "beat" the lategame combat sections is kinda the same bullcrap in all of gacha games, since it's ultimately luck + investment-based how "(un)fun" it is.
ever played Aether Gazer? that’s my favorite gacha by far. Combat never really gets old in that one for me, they do a really good job on character kits in that game, plus it really respects my time. I can do all the required stuff quickly but if I feel like playing for a few hours there’s enough to keep me busy and outside of the main story and a few events it’s all combat too. Almost no fluff content at all. it’s great. lol writing this is making me want to play
That Game is the fist Gacha that i play as F2P only and it's just perfect (also my permanent banner is blessed by the gacha god ^^'). I will never spend money on this game as a former genshin player because i don't feel like it's worth it, for example the weapon banner with the 75 / 25 is always horrible in hoyoverse game BUT in ZZZ it's just to get the best DPS possible and doesn't really affect the agent appearance that much (ugly glowing hair...) AND IT'S PERFECT BY DESIGN. I feel like i can completely ignore that banner and just stack + focus all my resssources on the limited char banner when i see an agent that i like in term of gameplay / personality or design (currently saving for Qingy after i looked for her gameplay and her appearance in the main story). And BTW when i mean my permanent banner is blessed by the gacha god, i mean i'm at 140 / 300 pull and already i got 4 different S-rank agent and one S-rank W engine for one of them (average S-rank pity : 28), then i lost the 50 50 to Koleda on Ellen banner (i have enough to gurantee her but i prefer waiting for Qingy) but i got Anton M6 and Soukaku M6 and really like the gameplay of Koleda (stun machin) so no regret at all, it's even better this way, now i can guarantee any of the next S-rank agent. So i have every Agent in the game except for Rina and Ellen (can't wait for Rina at 300 / 300 even if it will take a while and if don't get her before that).
@@Rednu Thanks, i'm building some S-rank first and after that i will build him, then when Qingyi will be released i will do a Anton / Qingyi / Grace team with the S-rank Belobog Bangboo. Hope it will be a fun team to play (and a good elec team).
both ZZZ and Wuwa has their strengths and shortcomings and they're both designed to be played for a few minutes or an hour or two everyday so one can easily play both games
I always get all the sales when starting these gachas then never spend again. Ive got 9 teams all maxed out as they can get at lv 40. Im at Internot 39 and justbstalling before 40. No need to rush. I love the game, but after Zhu, I'll never summon for characters in this game again. I normally dont care about endgame, but this'll be the first Hoyo game where Ill max the characters and try beating the endgame stuff. Rip to Genshin and Starrail though.
I totally feel you regarding zzz boss fight does not make me feel the boss mech is ridiculous when I loss. Unlike some other games when I loss I blame the game for designing stupid boss with insane wiping mechs. With zzz I just know that I can success and I just need to lvl up some things. And it shows me when I loss, which part of my character building is lacking works. So I don’t feel frustrated.
I'm MOSTLY F2P myself. I bought the battlepass, the monthly and the 1$ "starter" bundle. I'm C2 Interlude and like, level 32 right now. I'm sitting FAIRLY comfy right now on my Soldier 11, Ben and Anby team
Man, as a former FGO whale, it feels like a breath of fresh air to play this game f2p. Greta job with the video, you touch on pretty much everything a friend of mine wanted to know about this game, so Im going to send it to him. Keep it up!
A good Gacha experience, for me, is when I can get by, reasonably, for free. I will then become a light spender when I feel like my time was not entirely wasted, or the production value, and quality, justifies small purchases. For example; after a week of playing Reverse: 1999 I had put down roughly $15 due to my sentiment of the game being positive, and the same goes for ZZZ and Arknights, and Path to Nowhere. I'm not huge on Gacha games, I hate spending money, but I'm not so far against putting a small amount into something I genuinely enjoy playing.
@@Rednu seriously, you didn’t include any filler irrelevant information and I was engaged throughout the whole vid due to great takes and gameplay tips of yours! Took me 1 video to sub.
In my opinion I think your take when it comes to when you were speaking on the how you view failure in zzz has a flaw and that is the fact that if failure mainly comes from the point of view of not beating the boss fast enough or not being on level makes it feel like that game has no difficulty apart from not being on level when being on level there is virtually no threat in the game so for that reason I believe there needs to be some trail and error and that gameplay to make players learn enemy moves to give them a reason to not build a character to basically fight a punching bag. Btw I’m internot level 36 I am enjoying the game.
If it's a matter of POV, then where's the flaw? The thing is, majority of people who play games like Diablo for instance, do not play for difficulty. They play to have the most braindead overpowered build so they can farm things super efficiently. It isn't about how to beat a boss, it's more about how fast can I clear this dungeon or boss. It's a different side of the same coin and everyone has their preference. I like both sides, and I appreciate Zenless because I think it executes on it flawlessly. I don't like WuWa enough because it tries to have Souls-like difficulty without the Souls-like agency.
I tried to respond but didn’t know how to get my words into text but I don’t believe the game is flawless because the game tries to represent a game with more complexity when it comes to fights when the creators of the game spoke of it and how the beginning of the game is and I’ve never played Wuwa because it’s not on console and I don’t a have a computer but it feels like more like grand blue relink than souls games when it comes to boss fights. And I also feel when it comes to as if the game is made to played like a clear and then what is the purpose of some of the mechanics that are in the game if you can just beat the enemy to death before they can become a real threat idk maybe I just don’t get it because I’m not at endgame.
I feel like once you get towards the endgame you wouldn't be able to say that you can only left click and Dodge. Because you have to clear the bosses within a certain time limit and that requires at least competent usage of the system mechanics. Is there a lot of depth in those mechanics? No. But it's still a lot of fun because the animations are so sharp and there's plenty of death in team and character building.
HOLY CRAP! Finally someone said it! Bravo! Everything resonates with me 100%! I've always thought WuWa's hologram challenges are artificial difficulty, just like some music rhythm game that spam you with a screen full of key strokes. It's not made to be fun, it's made for people to flex. I'm Chinese that moved oversea for 20+ years and I can't stand the names too! 🤣I know it's weird, but I play games in English and all the Chinese phonic sounding names are extremely difficult for me to get into.
Some people find that fun! We all value things differently and I enjoy proactive gameplay a little more than reactive. Also yeah, Chinese names always sound foreign to me lol. The Chinese people I grew up with were named Kevin, Kimberly, and John!
Was watching for ZZZ, then suddenly you mention Wuthering Waves character names (I really enjoy WuWa). My god, I despise the Chinese names in WuWa and I'm also Asian American. I remember people complaining on reddit only for others to put down the opinion. Localization is a thing to help foreign audiences... yet there are also several youtube videos of Native Chinese speakers correcting the pronunciation of WuWa names because so many fail to pronounce and grasp these names! WuWa has a okay story, better than Genshin. ZZZ has more soul & personality. Glad to meet a CC that shares the similar opinions~
Hopefully WuWa story will get better. Their previous game. Punishing: Gray Raven is a 10/10 story imo. WuWa on the other hand is somewhere around 6/10, which is around here most of the Hoyo slop is too.
it's a great breakdown of the game. For my take, I think wuwa is too heavily influenced by the Chinese culture and a lot of their conversation are using formal and classical format in conversation (beside chixia, she's informal all the way). Those who understand chinese and their culture do have connection to the story but those who don't will have some difficulty with their current localization effort. If you use the chinese language in the game, you will find that a lot of the terms have multi-layer meaning in them which is hard to captured in other language. So most probably their target audience is catered more towards the chinese community. I do agree that ZZZ game design and build are more complete, the UI/animation/character are more acceptable and polished by huge masses and it's a more casual game. Wuwa audience is probably a very niche audience that is looking for harder boss mechanics. I like those boss fight where you need to learn their pattern coming from playing Monster Hunter for a long time. Both games provide different experiences so it all boils down to what the players are looking for. I like both, but I still feel AAA games gives the best gameplay experience in terms of overall experience as you don't feel gated in any sense after you bought the game. Gotcha on the other hand, you can't really max out your character unless you paid ridiculous amount, you can play for free, but you must accept that you can't get everything in the game unlike AAA(not those that have paywall weird system).
Completely agree with you on the writing. I have been very impressed by how natural the dialogue in ZZZ feels. Maybe the best localization I’ve ever seen in a game. The dialogue in WuWa is laughably bad in comparison.
The writing is so good in this game. I love how they leave breadcrumbs at the start of chapters and tie it all up in the end. People say that there's too much yapping but have they seen WuWa?? That has yapping too, but on top of that, it's boring and predictable.
zzz was nice little surprise. Also a fan of fgs and the snappyness feels nice. I agree saying the difficulty is a bit unfair but I just wish it was a bit more challenging cause you have fun tolls but not a whole lot to use em on. I'll probably spend stuff when Ellen comes back or if the sf collab happens
right now as a f2p im lv 42 and still having a blast. yea it does kinda suck not having tons of missons to do anymore but i have fun tryign to 100% the outpost stuff
I agree that the dubbing as far as vocalizing is good, but honestly the syncing is the stuff of nightmares. I feel that they could have done much better. That said, absolutely in love with the design of combat states/flow APART FROM the excessive resistances that some enemies have. My teams are current Ellen Ice Team, and Soldier 11 Pyro Team. The issue with that is that I physically cannot kill Robots with my pyro team or my ice team efficiently.
I think another reason why Elden Ring and similar games get a pass on their "trial by fire" boss design and combat difficulty because they aren't live service gacha games that have an essential grinding aspect that takes time to make progress through on top of a bunch of fights that feel like a grind by design. You're not going to "fall behind" or burn time on grind-y bosses that you could be using to build your roster in a game that is centered on your one player character and when a lot of your strength has direct or indirect ties to those bosses as opposed to putting in the time and resources to gather materials on the side. On the topic of names, I don't usually have issues with them the way you described in Wuthering Waves. I do often prefer it when names are thematic to the culture of a world, so to briefly mention another Mihoyo game, a lot of names (definitely not all though) in Genshin do feel as though they have relation to the culture that they're in, so a bunch of names feeling "foreign" didn't even cross my mind when I was still playing that game. I also personally find myself remembering names easily when I've gotten invested into a game, so if the game truly has me hooked then keeping track of everyone comes naturally because I at least have some level of attachment to the game and the things it brings to the table. Granted, I also have a very good memory that I've used to make some of my friends concerned for my wellbeing when I list off excessive amounts of information relating to various roguelikes I play.
I'm definitely trying zzz now❤️ especially after that dev note thanks for the review ❤ i got to say tho that i feel like you didn't give wuwa the right description cuz wuwa is not holograms you have the tower of adversity which is the same content as the whole zzz game play and in your video you ignored it like it doesn't exist at all so yeah and it has illusive realm too which you don't need your stats at all and where you can try multiple characters and echos with special abilities that doesn't exist in the normal game the thing about zzz combat is that it's so repetitive and not in the game only but it's kinda the same thing we had in every gatcha game so far that content is the same as tower of adversity in wuwa the same thing as the abyss in genshin same thing as all the game of solo leveling arise same thing as pgr and the stuff that it offers aren't that unique I'm someone who enjoys having different combat systems and different styles in the same game that's why wuwa is perfect for me it has tower of adversity where it's a dps check where you care about your rotations and team synergy and buffs and everything and requires some skills of dodging and counter attacking ....ex and it has the illusive realm which doesn't care about your stats and builds and it has holograms where it's a skill focused game mode so i feel like it's so unfair to ignore everything and represent it with holograms only and you can out level them too so it's not like you have to learn them or you can't do them i personally almost finished them all and I'm at level 80 and i play on mobile so
That's fair, I didn't mention the other modes. But the reason behind that is because I don't really like the combat that much. I feel like Holograms were so beloved by the community and I fell off on them hard. I'm trying to hop back in the game and gather my thoughts on why exactly I stopped, but again, I don't think preferences need to be fair exactly. At the end of the day it really is just preference, vibes, and feel.
@@Rednu 100 % if the game isn't for you then it's not for you so no need to force it just cuz of the community but i really think that you would enjoy wuwa i feel like it's miss represented in way where people think that it's time consuming cuz it's an open world game but you don't really need to invest that much time I'm 100% confident when i say that wuwa requires the least amount of time out of all the other big gatcha games out there
This video really points out something that i haven't considered or fought of. ZZZ is more fleshed out overall, in the character department that is, the story is funny at times and doesn't take it too serious.
That's the key of it all. ZZZ doesn't take itself too seriously, but it conceals depth. WuWa takes itself way too seriously, but to me felt incredibly shallow and tropey. ZZZ has tropes, but it doesn't pretend to be above it.
I have the opposite problem - its soo goofy that feels like toddler anime my littl pony or whatever XDD. Is Hoyo becoming a goofy company? the new event in Genshin is with Lego figurines.
@@ixirion you are overblowing it my guy, the game definitely has a goofy story and vibe to it, but it's more comedic than childish, and there are still serious and heartfelt moments that are genuinely aimed at adult audience, or at least 16+
@@comrad3892 yeah but the setting are what I am pointing. Everything is perfect if you are 5. colorful, flashy, there are goofy bangolos , goofy dog selling lottery, cats everywhere. The girls look around 12. We have teddy bear. And then we have a story/combat that is mostly for adults in a sharp contrast. HSR manages much better balance being occasionally goofy. for me end result is just cringe. Genshin new event was a horrible experience that made me question my life choices and why am I playng toy story. At the end I will stick till 1.1 story and then delete. goofy dont mean funny. If I want I can watch goofy memes 24/7 The sad thing is that I like so much things they added like city full of life, competent and voiced protagonists, no Paimon, QoL, combat is ok etc.
@@ixirion idk man I guess I just like goofy stuff, and you like more grounded things, but calling it a game for children is in my opinion unfair. You can be older than 5 and still earnestly enjoy colorful settings with goofy characters and cute mascots running around, and by comparison I've felt treated like a child way more in Genshin than in the entire game of ZZZ, and I think it has a lot to do with us assuming the perspective of pheathon twins, that are very grounded adult characters in a goofy colorful world, and with other characters feeling way more real and lively
Love the thoughts and how you communicated it so eloquently esp the ones wrt what difficulty entails in the games subbed looking forward to your new videos man
team order doesnt matter when playing controller because L1 and R1 change character depending on his picture in the hp bar (the order) so i put my dps in the middle my stun on left And sup on right when im using dps i press L1 to swap left and do some stuns them switch back to dps during quick assist using R1 to dodge
@@ABDELWAHABx team position matter support ex special can be follow up with quick assist by "Next" character Soukaku for example when use her exspecial she gain a damage buff that damage buff can only be transfer to other character via chain attack or quick assist and quick assist only call for "next" character
Yes you can press L1 but you missed the fact that for quick assist (the one that is triggered by certain attacks and causes a character's portrait to appear in the corner) it will call in the R1 character no matter which button you press.
my only problem in this game is the amount of tvs you have to jump through to get action, other then that I love how the combat feels, the characters look cool, kind of a grown up version of genshins cartoony Anime style. What i am suprised about is the lack of free stuff. Maybe i am wrong here but i played Genshin when it came out and I played HSR when it came out and it feels like especially HSR showered you with free stuff and pulls and materials, zzz feels a bit light on that note. And if all the starting gifts are gone we will be back to 2 pulls every 3 days, that is prob where I am going to stop playing after a maxed out 1 or two teams. These type of games are not designed to be extremly enjoyable as f2p, never will be unless you devote half your life to the game farming it religiously for years and even then, lategame content in hoyo games is gatcha, because there usually is not too much to do besides that.
you can actually press c to swap the other way instead of space to swap the normal direction not sure why sometimes it doesnt work sometimes in fact you can even use c instead of space for counter instead so you can actually chose who you swap between. actually using this i have swaped between two of my characters countering cuz one of my characters dodges instead of counter.
just cleared floor 17 with a 1+1 ellen on team 1 and soukaku on team 2... I'll say the fun starts at around floor 14 and 16 where the difficulty spikes, enemies are attacking from all around you, they also hit really hard, with attack speed and frequency increased compared to previous stages. my 6k hp character got 1 shotted in floor 17. I died non stop for an hour until I finally memorized & mastered the bosses attack pattern and also my own character's skill moves... One thing I hope the dev do is to make this level of difficulty accessable way earlier in the game, don't just lock them behind the last few floors in abyss. This would make the game so much more engaging and they could have avoided so much negative reviews of the game being so brain dead boring in the earlier stages of the game.
The problem with WuWa's names... is actually not the names. Because Genshin and Star Rail and in the future probably ZZZ as well, have MANY Chinese names because they have characters from a Chinese-inspired region. WuWa just happens to have said region as their starting region, so most names of the starting roster are Chinese, and only Encore, Aalto, Verina, Scar, Camellya, characters who are NOT originally from Huanglong have a different style of names which will become the norm once we enter new regions.
I love this game a lot even with the stuff I absolutely hate about it like the progression currencies and it being gacha and the energy thing. But I do agree a lot with the fighting game background crossover. I've played Guilty Gear since Accent Core and yeah it is extremely fun and engaging to build your team and whatnot. What does make me upset is the FOMO stuff they do because I really wanted Ellen to make a team with Soukaku (My favorite character) but I literally have no one else to run her with and now she's out of the prize pool for gods know how long so I lost the incentive to even spend polychromes on rolls and am just saving them now. I just hit knot level 30 in like 4 days without spending any money as well so I do like the game.
You are very thorough in your review of this game, whilst also keeping it fair with WuWa and stating several times that a lot of this boils down to personal opinion. I'm so tired of seeing people criticize the first few hours of ZZZ as slow-paced, easy and boring, when Wuthering Waves has had the worst early experience ive had in a gacha, with extreme exposition dumping as early as 10 minutes into it and extremely easy enemies. If you're gonna give WuWa a shot and be lenient with its first few hours, why tf is ZZZ not getting that chance? Sounds like an inherent bias against Hoyoverse to me. On a side note, i respect how much time you're putting into responding to so many of these comments, as an early CC myself, that's a lot of effort, congrats bro.
Yo thanks a lot! Yeah I try to be fair and balanced as much as I can, but I'm always gonna have my preferences and biases. I think it's important to lay that out on the table because no review is objective.
I have been playing for 16 days maybe 3 to 5 hours a day and even 3 of those days i didnt play but im at internot level 36. I dont think it is hard to level or am i wrong ?
Sorry for the following text dump, but I'll give my experience so far as a F2P player that has close to no experience with gacha games. I heard mostly negative criticism about ZZZ. However, I have one friend who has been really into the game and asked me to play, so I decided to try it out and form my own opinions. As a precursor, I'm not a fan of gacha games. I do not like the concept of FOMO and how greedy these games tend to be. However, I can honestly say I'm really enjoying ZZZ so far. Each character feels unique, and more importantly fun to play. The design and setting of the game is also really interesting to me. I do have some negatives though. I personally think there is way too much text dump. I got so tired of it I started skipping most of the dialogue and only paying attention to the voice acted cutscenes. Also, I'm not a fan of the user interface. I feel like menu options are spread too thin and far apart, and I'm spending too much time searching for what I'm looking for. (I understand this will get easier the more I play, but it does not feel intuitive as a new player). Despite all that, I'm having a lot of fun. I don't even care about getting S rank characters because I'm still enjoying playing with the A rank characters that I have. As long as I'm enjoying the game as F2P player then that's all that matters to me. (edited for some clarity)
I see this game has game to relax when i have nothing to play and do,honestly i always play this game at like 3 am when i have nothing to do and i actually enjoy it,alot of people try to play the game in "grind mode" wich is not gonna be the best experience because the game is very slow pace
Grinding when there's content is fun. But yeah, when the wall comes, it's gonna hit. I think I'm prepared though, and I like the game a lot, so I hope to stick with it.
Im f2p and im level 52½ Im only missing 2 Srank (standard) (wolf man & soldier11) I got ellen first try and if i didnt pull her, id probably not be playing 💀 shes helping so much
You are right at lvl 40? Its just a tip of the iceberg man haha Anyway about nicoles kit. If you have energy for ex special. Just double tap E and swap. That will trigger quick swap and nicole will continue the animation while you are switched already on your main dps. And her special bullet animation gives a debuff of 3 seconds also, while not have energy for your Ex special just double click mouse attack button and swap that will trigger again the quickswap and nicole will do her spinning special bullet attack while you are already on your main dps. I mean the spining sitdown something of nicole is awesome and can help with many opening combo but its hard on PC man xD
you mentioning fighting games gave me PTSD from iyo, the expert of bad takes that can't go 5 mins without mentioning he's a fighting game player lmao. only 7 mins into your review but enjoying it so far.
Technically, for hidden moves, it doesn't tell you that Ellen has a followup ex (ex>ex) where she goes invuln. I think you need like 75% bar to do it. Also, really high end play, some fights do full on barrages of atks and a shielder feels almost needed, but you can get away with multi non retaliating dodges.
It does say it at least in her character trial that she can double EX, while Nicole's is purely hidden, I'm actually kinda bummed that there aren't more of them, but I guess they wouldn't be as hidden if every character had one
So... this is a very detailed video with quite a lot of interesting thoughts, but the majority of it has had very little to do with anything specific to being a F2P player. Perhaps I had the wrong idea of just what you were trying to convey based on the title? For my own part, as a purely F2P player, all of the guides assuming perfect W-Engines and Drives are utterly useless to me. I'll never have the economy to be able to afford pulling anything on the W-Engine channel and have no expectation of ever pulling any S Rank engines as a consequence, so much of the min/max stuff is silly nonsense for someone in my class. For my own part, my past experience in fighting games has served pretty well here. I don't know gacha games; I find them predatory in the extreme and want no part of their monetization, but I liked the character design and combat mechanics of ZZZ and thought I'd give it a try. So far I've been enjoying myself, but I'll dip out if they try to annoy me into opening my wallet too hard.
Heh. The devs did say fighting games were one of their biggest inspiration. No wonder Nicole has such an input. And I think Soldier 11 fire enchant has almost 100% application if you can manage her normal combo well. Another unique interaction: a party of koleda and ben
Yeah, it's inspiration. Some people think or want it to be more similar and I say... wait for the fighting game cameos and spin-offs 👀👀👀 I'd be all over that shit instantly.
Fun fact: Aloy's EN VA (Giselle Fernandez, not Ashly Burch) is in fact in ZZZ. She's Ellen Joe's VA. Fun fact 2: HSR has just announced a collab with Fate Stay Night for next year. Fun fact 3: Hoyo's other notable collab, aside from Horizon was with Evangelion in HI3. Looks like Genshin really is the stepchild.
what i appreciate from Hoyoverse's latest 3 game releases is that they didn't start their story with their own version of Fantasy China. even though it would be logical to open your first game area in a region which based on your company place. Genshin started in Mondstadt which basically is an European/German inspired area. HSR with Belobog. and now ZZZ with Sixth Street area.
Yo! Thanks for watching and sharing new algo friends! Here's a breakdown of Zenless' world and Prologue: ruclips.net/video/aVDNkEOYbyE/видео.html
noticed you mentioned choice swapping but yes its possible in a way, on Kbm you can by default press C to cycle to your previous character and space to the next, if you memorise your team layout you can infract switch to whatever character you desire without having to cycle through everyone. this will also active parry's like how space would, (Example, Your team: Soilder11, Anby, lucy - as anby, pressing C= soilder11 space = lucy, from lucy C= Anby space = S-11, so from any character you can cycle forward or back to play exactly who you want on the field
great video
For me it's opposite. I know who Jinshi, Changli, Baizhi, Mortefi are. Grace is... the maid? No, mechanic. Shark girl's name is, shark girl. And Waves has such satisfying and stylish combat mechanics, with higher difficulties bringing more mechanics in enemy movements, while in Zero it's simplified. Mash the button until your wrists fall off, and press evade when enemy sparkles, and higher difficulty is just more health and more damage. Even now, I can't wait to play Wu wa, while in Zero, oh man, I have to play them tv's again, damn.
i’m a F2P player at knot level 38, and honestly, even IF the game didn’t have these crazier mechanics to maximize DPS, ZZZ’s combat still plays like a better Arkham game (simple attack chains into super flashy counter attacks), and on that alone i adore it
Yes, it's just good fun, and the emphasis on animations sells that. The gameplay depth is definitely more in the RPG and team building aspect, but you can't say that the parry sound and animation doesn't feel amazing to land almost every time.
holy shit i couldnt nail what game it felt like i've played before but arkham is exactly it, and yeah like you said, a better version of it
(I originally wrote something longer but this explains it)
(original comment mentioned gadgets and flashiness of going from one enemy to another, oposite of ZZZ where you damage more enemies at the same time)
It's not better.
the amount of control, interactions, options and animations the character has in combat is far more in Arkham.
And the movement is more stiff in ZZZ than in Arkham.
@@gaboxl100
my phrasing was bit of a misnomer:
i meant more along the lines of “like *one of the* better arkham games”, i.e. in the same ballpark as City or Knight. Aside from that, i think we have very different definitions on flashiness lmao, Arkham is far more grounded and dare i say mundane compared to the shit you can pull off in ZZZ, and while yes gadgets absolutely give Arkham more complexity in some circumstances, to be completely honest even after playing every game in the series i still had the most fun and most consistent results just doing punch>punch>counter>punch>punch etc
@@Rednu
oh 1000% lol, and that’s what i was getting at with the comparison: both games have their most flashy and fun to watch moments right when you see that counter symbol
I've been playing gacha games F2P for my entire lifetime, so this experience playing ZZZ has been just a happy pill for me because I miss playing Hi3 but I am too far behind that I dont want to go back there anymore, so this game, although a little tough on free character choices, is still pretty good and sweaty like an action game should.
@@prixivus85 honestly they gave SO many free polychromes by the current “end” of the game that any F2P can have like 5 S rank agents at least: I saw a guy fully grind out all 300 pulls from the stable channel entirely F2P, and that’s the stable channel which isn’t even the best choice to spend polychromes
17:35 yes if u reach lvl 45 u will access to the hardest challenge, which is clear or die, no timer limit on it
looking forward to it lol
Incorrect, the hardest challenge is every time you raise your inter-knot level to promotion.
@@RevenantXVI nah. The promotion has been a breeze
@@YISTECH they are referring to when you promote all the difficulty for the missions goes up. im ik 40 and now all the quest i had not finished are saying lvl 48 character recommended
You explain things well. Hope your channel gets success.
I really liked your review. I agree with your takes on the combat, I've been very pleasantly surprised with ZZZ's combat, it's my favorite of all the gacha games i've played so far (Tower of Fantasy, Genshin, Honkai Star Rail and WuWa). The difficulty stuff you mentioned in particular, I agree and it's one of my favorite things about ZZZ. I wish there were more ways to flex in this game (multiplayer, or at least leaderboards) but I'm hoping it comes out later because damn, the combat is just top tier. It feels good to play characters in this game and actually get good at playing them, reminding me when I used to play fighting games and main a character.
One thing you didn't touch on in this video is the progression mechanics of this game. This game feels incredibly handheld in terms of progression. What I mean is, I can imagine there is a designer over there that has a spreadsheet where they know exactly how much XP any person can have at any time w/o paying and what range of XP they have based on how much money they've spent. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing.. it's just something I noticed, just how refined or controlled, the actual progression in this game feels. I think.. I like it. I don't actually, because I want to no life a game I play but it's made plain as day that no lifeing is not what they designers wanted and it's such a waste of time, I find myself just logging off after using my energy and spending my weekends doing my no lifeing on the game, when i've pushed enough XP from energy throughout the week to give myself enough content to spend 6+ hours on.
Your last point about your F2P experience feeling like a rogue like game, I felt the exact same way. This is the first time I've actually really enjoyed playing a gacha game as F2P. I had the same opinion, the game absolutely felt like a rogue like, where you're given enough resources to do everything and it's up to you on how to manage it. I REALLY wanted the cat girl because fast attacks with reactive dodges is the exact gameplay I love but I never pulled her, however i DID pull her weapon.. So i decided to fuck the event banners and dumped all my F2P poly's on the standard banner to try to pull her and, failed.. I did get soldier 11 out of it however and at level 40 did a two day transition of my main team into a fire team (I had Kodela from earlier) and now I am a few days behind but I have two good teams.. Not exactly what I wanted, but I made do w/ what I was given. I dunno, that part of the game has been very enjoyable to me.
Great video, I had no idea there were secret moves that were unlisted like you showcased w/ Nicole lol, that's so cool. I hope you continue to enjoy the game and keep making videos.
Hey thanks, really appreciate it! And yeah, progression in this game is incredibly meticulous in its design. I feel that 100%. I think, while it is kinda frustrating for people like you and me who are used to no-lifeing these type of games, it might have been part of the magic that prevented me from burning out on the game too quickly. WuWa might be a good game, but I burnt out on that super quick, and I think the progression design may have something to do with that.
@@Rednu Yea, maybe it's for the better. It was just very noticeable for me playing ZZZ. I'm happy to keep playing and logging out to play other games in the meantime, maybe it will work and I'll stick with this game for months to come.
50 hours in at level 41, when you get to level 35-s40ish, the wall really hits. Less commissions, less to no story objectives other than "Increase your Inter-Knot", battery takes excruciatingly long to recharge which is main source of inter credits when all of the above are no longer an option (you will get two attempts at resource runs). The further you go through the game, the less rewards will be present. Something I will give credit to Mihoyo for is the dailies are a godsend compared to their other titles.
I like the game a lot, it's extremely polished in comparison to Genshin (fuck their dailys) and HI3rd but obviously it's a gacha, meaning cashgrab. The goal of these games is to direct or tempt people into spending money without completely shutting off their experience of the game.
TLDR: Higher your level the more tedious increasing your interknot becomes. Sign in, do your dailies, complete resource runs, come back the next day tbh (unless you bump into some comissions).
To be completely honest with zzz
1. Clean in animation and gameplay
- as someone who has played many gatcha games, I gotta say I really enjoy how this game is actually different. It’s very enjoyable to watch this new jiggly art style. And it doesn’t hurt a lot of the characters in any way shape or form besides being a tiny bit silly, but I still agree that it adds SO much
2. Lovability: emotions and feel/writing
- even the NPCs feels great to interact with and the world building is just great. I literally roam the streets looking for North the Bangboo.
I also gotta agree with the ties into the real world, it also heavily ties into the connect-ability
3. Combat
The NPCs actually attack in patterns to mess you up.
Someone once commented it as “ Guerrilla tactics”. A great example is the sword and shield + ranger ethereal mini bosses. One will rush you while the other will teleport OR shoot from a distance. A enemy later in the story for the Victoria Houskeeping section with will ALL split apart and when you turn your back on one the others will do an extremely quick dive attack at you that’s hard to read even when looking at them. It’s just a really nice feel to know that the fights take thinking and the feeling that you get when you don’t get your favorite character hit once in the entire fight (btw I use Anby as my DPS and it’s hilarious)
4. Day cycle
Holy cow, it’s never talked about but the way the game uniquely requires a proper time and day to interact and complete quest really adds to the feeling. Idk if it’s just me but it also adds to the connect ability in a way.
Besides that I really just agree with your stand points.
Oh and I gotta say, the main criticism I hear is that the TV section is really bad. But I gotta be honest, to me it’s better that then running around the abandoned city complexes the entire time and forcing you too constantly look out for boxes or stuff that you might miss. People say it takes away from the time you fight but it actually SAVES time. Now you aren’t running around throughout the map fighting peons that stall and breaking boxes, they got rid of the possibly and theoretically longest part of the game and simplified it to a simulation through your bangboo and the TVS. And I really do appreciate the approach here. I didn’t come for an open world, nor did I stay for one.
I play this game now like a 5 days or so, and so many are shitting on it and i don't know why really. this is the first video i saw, where someone is really TALKING about it ,and not down right taking it apart. i am not the gacha kind of guy, also not really big on anime games because sometimes the "anime cringe" is just to much for me, but this game is sick imo.
A lot of people are comparing it to WuWa, which definitely delivers on the "hard combat" out of the two. A lot of CCs are also ex Genshin creators, who at one point loved Genshin which is a huge open world game, the antithesis to the TV system. I happen to value ZZZ as a full package and its proactive gameplay, and hate open worlds so... same for me. This game's a banger.
Honestly for a few reasons
-People hate Hoyoverse
-People dislike the Tvs
-People were expecting something different as it was advertised as more of a combat experience but theres a lot of other things in the game that if you happen to not enjoy it (TVs mini games etc) take away from the game
As someone who is on the negative side of this game, it just comes down to people who are disappointment are just being more vocal. ZZZ has a lot of good qualities and I think many people enjoy the game, they are just playing the game and not online talking about if the game is good or not so you hear more negativity
The story is trash and I literally cannot play it due to how the writing and characters are so unbelievably cringe.
But this is hardly unusual for Hoyo slop. Try gachas with legitimately good stories like PGR, Reverse1999, FGO etc.
@@zealgaming8161 Whenever I see the writing in zenless being compared to FGO and FGO being put in the same category as PGR and reverse1999, I am 100% sure they are an average FGO fan which means they consume the story through summaries on reddit, cause clearly no one sees how the damn game is written.
@@maxchaos44ok, as a dedicated FGO player I gotta agree with you on this one. The story and early events are shit and I ain’t going to defend it. The only reason why 90% of us stay until the story gets good (which is like 600+ hours in) is because there is no other Fate/ type moon related ANYTHINGto stick to while waiting for any other type of content.
FGO story does get better and right now FGO end game in NA is EXTREMELY ENJOYABLE, with the cost of the dogshit you gotta swim through, and it’s an entire Olympic swimming pool amount of trash.
“Good story” also shouldnt apply to a game that relies on 7 years of forcing yourself to connect to said characters and then FINALLY have it enjoyable at the later parts.
And cringe? You are calling FGO NOT CRINGE? My god… we reuse the same shitty jokes every event and the events in 2024 so far have been mid at best. Not to mention the amount of unusable trash servants while everyone here in ZZZ is usable (yes even Billy, Billy is strong as hell.)
Long story short, ZZZ is not as shit as people make it out to be, and is extremely enjoyable.
Oh and don’t get me started on FGO game play, do you really like farming with Koyon light and Castoria over and over again? Is that really FUN?
What i liked about ZZZ was how easy of a pick up it was over most of its own titles. In HSR it feels like you have to be fully commited to your teams strategy like a well played card game, in HI3 everything thats shoves in your face from rhe UI and thw atory gets kiterally shoved at you like a buffet you never wanted, Genshin intimidates you with the exploration of suxh a amassive world to traverse. Wuwa gives you that survive ir be killed vibe which was totally diff grom ZZZ. I can just play, feel like a hero pulling off combos and parrying like a god and the flow is fata and smooth and most of all satisfying enough to make me go at it again (so far)
zzz becomes survive or be killed later
I spent so much time in Genshin and developed some form of ptsd with gacha open world. So when WuWa dropped I was just so haunted and tired by the fact of world exploration for scrap of gems.
The 1.0 world felt extremely bland, bleached out color (post apo settings so maybe thats why) with no real landmark on the map. Everything is just randomly put together and even after half a month of hogging myself through it I couldn't really remember what the regions are or what they are about. Cameback for 1.1 story quest, got Jinhsi but I dropped 1 day later since its just too much for me.
ZZZ dropped and its hooked me right from day 1. Yeah the endgame structure is just standard gacha endgame, some TV are hogged out too long and combat mechanics might not be as detailed as WuWa. But for the art and cutscene quality of the game it must be a 10/10 out of every F2P game I had ever played. It felt on par with something that came out a game of AAA budget or at least a paid JRPG like Persona (this part is I'm talking about the art only, just saying this before I got called a Hoyo glazer 😂)
TV >>>>>> open world for me too. fuck yeah. and yes, it's really the entire package of ZZZ that sells it.
I like open worlds but also love some more focused games, WuWa threw me off by low team-building aspect, what I love of Genshin is how important it is to pair characters in well made teams, WuWa has more skill expression but less team building, but If I want skill expression I might as well just play Dark Souls or For Honor (The only online competitive Hack And Slash game I can think of)
Nearly Interknot 50, just hit 49, and still having a blast!! Kinda out of content, but I grind what I can every day. Ready for the update!!
Woah im not even 30
@@NuggieNugs555 i always use the energy (the 240 + 60 you can get by drinking coffee) to get 3000 exp at the HIA
Im a be real this is the first gatcha that really pulled me in parrtially cause it feels lowkey persona ish in ways but also due to a lot of what you have said it doesn’t feel stupid unfair the story and characters a great and memorable just most things about this game feel pretty good and it may be the first gatcha i do pay into even if its only the monthly pass. I played genshin and while it sorta got me i couldnt do it with the open world stuff on top of it being a gatcha with a bajillion systems.
The linear aspect of ZZZ makes the extra systems feel less overwhelming and more like its part of a complete package im
Just pulled zhu yuan and am hyped haha
I’ll be honest, did not like the fact that there’s a dead spot in between levels 34-36 and 38-40 I hope they’ll fix this by adding more side quests in the later patches or at least make the challenge mode give you exp for the first run you do
Very fair criticism. I was also a little starved for content. It got me really acquainted with the trust system and got me to clear pretty much everything though LOL
Most people are not doing the companions quest and etc. lots of do there
@@wishes_._at this point the only thing I’m missing is the HIA coins
I dndt? To be exact. I ddnt do ch3 before I get to 34. So at the end of ch 3 I was 37 lmao
Tbh I think because around 38-40 is where the story "ends" for now, I feel like they are going to wait until next story beats
This is the best overview of ZZZ that I have come across so far. You my friend got your self a subscriber!
Just wanted to say great video.
It was interesting to hear someone else talk about how Elden Ring's build variety acts as an ingame difficulty slider which I definitely think makes it more accessible and appealing to a wider audience. That's why I definitely think I'm in the minority of people that prefer a more pure skillbased challenge like a souls level 1 run (or at least using a vanilla melee build and not being overlevelled). This is partly why I really enjoy the hologram fights in WuWa because it comes down to learning the boss fight (assuming you're in the appropriate level range).
I also really enjoy the minmaxing speedrun approach of ZZZ. The gameplay actually reminds me of FF14 raiding as opposed to your typical character action game (where it's more about style or difficulty) where it's all about optimizing DPS while managing easy to medium difficulty enemy mechanics.
While the current boss mechanics in ZZZ are straightforward, I can see the possibility of ZZZ adding in more difficult boss mechanics in the future akin to soulslike/WuWa bosses because of the built-in parry limit and a focus on positioning against some bosses.
Ideally I'd like to see gacha games implement purely skillbased endgame battle content (fixed or scaled levels) but I think that's a pipe dream because I don't think gacha devs want to alienate whales who pay for power (or at least pay to bulldoze all the content).
Finally someone said this. Wuwa's biggest flaw at is the relationships with the characters. It's the same problem Genshin had in it's early patches before character quests. I don't feel character aside from Jihnsi is at all that important. I don't even know what Chixia and YangYang is supposed to do. They appear as tour guides for new players.
Yep, most characters feel tacked on or pushed way to the side. Chixia I know has been nerfed in terms of nuance from CBT, she was supposed to pull a gun on Rover but the testers REALLY didn't like how Chixia wasn't pandering to them and I think this is the source of the gap that is felt between character design and writing.
its kinda totally not true. We did know a bit about few characters like Jianxin, Alto or Encoure. Lingyan is fully fleshed out. However he is the black sheep.
Jiyun - fully fleshed in the story and in his charater quest. he was a medic, he paticipated in rafting etc.
The last quest of Changli was full focus on her and Jinshi was focus on 1.1. 1
Yunlin whole story is in her quest...
In contrast I know a even fewer things for most chars in ZZZ. yeah we know S11 is loyal and loves cats... nice... Anby loves movies... etc
I have maxed trust with Ellen/Anby and few others. Its a boring and repetitive process after a while.
@@ixirion Notice that I have not mentioned any playthrough of optional character quests. I am saying this from the main story's perspective. Most are one-and-done and don't leave a strong impression. Jihnsi secretary, Verina, Taoqi. I am unsure how these characters will be relevant later on. Comparably it's more noticeable in wuwa.
@@foomiumperorosaurus8066 I finished the stupid Genshin event. At the end of the event we saw Kaya/Jean/Mona and 20 more charaters. We had few lines with each. Its ridiculus already.
it doesnt matter if its main story or not. its there IF you want you can play it. Jinshi will probably be in future stories cos She and Jue are connected. So she is basically Archon level char.
Funny thing, i havent even seen Yuanwu at all aside from that Huanglong Defense cutscene, i was like "who is this guy"
There are some great points in here - I definitely think your take on Elden Ring could be enhanced a bit more if it wasn't phrased around something as nebulous as 'difficulty'. You're essentially comparing Elden Ring to time-gated resource systems. If a boss fight isn't going well for you in Elden Ring, you can just go do something else, grind more, farm/use consumables, or even completely overhaul your build before trying the fight again. There is no external force blocking you from that being a possibility - so the choice ultimately ends up on you. The 'frustration' is yours.
I also don't think time-gated resource systems are a bad thing. I just think gachas inherently use the 'frustration' of undertuned resource drips to fuel fiscal returns. And yeah, sure, being f2p or a lower spender can still be fun to min/max your time, but an undertuned gacha is never going to properly 'reward' you for putting /extra/ time into it. That being said, ZZZ definitely has a strong start as a stingy gacha - and its polish is more than enough reason for me to do the 'bare minimum' it asks of me as we wait for 1.1.
Yeah, that's a great point. Having more ownership of the frustration makes it a lot more easier to deal with. I think this fundamentally makes games like WuWa disadvantaged, because the time-gate feels a lot more oppressive given its design. Proactive gameplay like what you find in ZZZ is a lot more tolerable and fun for me.
@@slock5732 not to mention artificial gate you can't get around like say you only have Ellen ice team and get hit with ice resistant stage. No amount of getting better going to get you the clear speed you need and you can't magically pull out different element team until a long time later into the game.
I love wuwa and all, but timegates are kinda the worst thing to have in progression. All they need to do is give the players other things to do than just upgrading characters, and create a proper progression system that there is no need to rush.
I'm glad you remain positive about ZZZ rather than deride it like so many critics done.
I rather people be honest.
The game was absolutely not for me, the story is just as bad as Genshin/HSR and WuWa, combat is worse then both WuWa and PGR by a mile. The quality of the game however is insane. But that just makes it a really well polished turd.
Dislike the art style too, prefer a more realistic and mature tone.
I'm constantly cringing when playing ZZZ and the TVs are painful.
Also them saying we would get 180 free pulls was an ass move.
In WuWa devs gave out multiple 5* selectors and I had 4/6 of the standard nat 5* within a few days of playing.
@@zealgaming8161 PGR? Project Gotham Racing?
@@zealgaming8161 I wonder why they gave 5* huh? weird
@@111111hakar Punishing Gray Raven. It's an arena battler like Honkai impact or ZZZ. It's Kuro's previous game they made before Wuthering Waves and back then they where just a small indie studio who dis not know what they where doing. Playing PGR is like stepping into a time machine speeding towards as reach chapter cleared display increasing quality, going from absolute trash to holy shit 10/10 game.
Out of all of hoyos games, i love zzz the most.
thanks - your thoughts about this game are way more in depth and thoughtful than most of the gacha youtubers i've been "recommended"
Actually you can choice swap using the C key to switch to the previous agent
ZZZ’s Character Action like Combat (ie. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta) keeps me hooked as F2P.
Though we don’t have aerial combos it’s still fun to counter and dodge.
Gear is good but not a deal breaker for making characters fun.
Billy, one of the most low tier characters (but my favorite), is still fun without his signature engine. He just gets better when getting his Cinemas and WEngine.
I just hope we get more story and character events not only for new characters but for currently available ones as well.
I hope we get more Billy story now we’re with the Sons of Calydon.
And Anby with Obol Squad.
This breakdown was brilliant! I couldn’t identify why I love this game so much but now it’s been put into words. I actually put Star Rail on maintenance mode for this, it’s so stylish!
Subscribing rn!
15:00 You can switch to the previous character in your line up. It's not on the UI or in the tutorial. The default key is C.
If you want to maximize the control of who you want onfield, then it's an available option.
Yep, you can parry with C, but you cannot quick assist and swap to the previous character with it.
great take and very fair, i personally very enjoy zzz especially the story
haha you really understand this stuff, you are so right about the loop with these gacha games, they are generally more about building up your account than pure skill, yes some skill is needed but it’s fundamentally different than something like dark souls, it’s all about the grind, the skill comes in when account building and those mistakes are much harder to recover from than losing to a boss, there’s much more at stake.
I don’t necessarily think wuwa fights are cheesy by design. However they are plagued with bugs and inconsistency they make them feel that way.
Your video make me realize the main difference tho being the player agency in fights. ZZZ is similar so HI3 in that the fights aren’t souls like difficult, but are still challenging enough and at the high end encourage player agency to optimize their own combat.
HI3 was my first big gacha game after Brave Frontier back in the day and also my first gacha I spent money on. It sucked me in so much especially with the level of optimization you could do. I hit rank 1 in the very first whale abyss bracket at launch and it was a wrap from there. It being more about optimizing your gameplay than being about reacting to bosses to just barely finish is probably what appealed to me the most. And your explanation shined a big light for me as to why I didn’t enjoy wuwa as much. Great video.
Also, if it’s not too much of a pain, seeing your progress as f2p on that account and then having a separate whale account would be interesting. But two accounts is a lot to handle especially if you’re playing other games.
Really like the call to Elden Ring about choosing your level of difficulty for how you want to progress the game and how zzz gives something similar
great video rednu, hope to see you stream again soon
I completely agree with you about the names in wuwa, wasn't going to say it tho 💀
Hey brother, second gen Chinese here. I totally get what you mean about the names. It's just hard to bring up as a knock against WuWa without seeming like a weirdo lol. In its defense, WuWa is Wuxia, so it does make sense that everything is very "Chinese-coded". Clearly not an issue for many American players.
Personally, I get tired of it very easily. Watched too much Wuxia with my Dad when he was really into them. And I know it's ironic typing this while playing these games made by companies based in China, but I can't help but feel burned out when it comes to common Wuxia tropes. Definitely one of the reasons I dropped WuWa after 1.1 and checked out during all of HSR's initial Xianzhou arc.
ayyy I'm not alone! lol I feel like a lot of people, especially non-Asian, will feel weird having that criticism for WuWa but it's absolutely fair no matter who you are. The name "Nicole" is always going to be more recognizable and endearing to someone with a Western ear than something like Chixia.
Thanks for teaching me about Wuxia, I legit didn't know that genre had a name besides "Chinese Mystical Kung-Fu Shit" lol
the thing i hate about wuwa is they are not even using modern chinese romanization, like Jinhsi... what are we in the 19th century? who spell chinese like that? like is there really a point to use Qing era spelling that the british made up since there is no official chinese romanization yet? just use pinyin, Jinxi alot easier to read... it feel like they are trying too hard to make a referrence that 99% of the people (INCLUDING MOST CHINESE) would not even know. I only recognise it because I am a history buff. it just make no sense to have a referrence no one understand.
i do like your point that advancing in endgame ZZZ is more about learning to play your team properly than it is about learning the bosses.
good reivew! very helpful and honest.
21:00 this can be said of every darksouls and most fromsoft games, it can also be said about devil may cry too, it isn't okay to give them a "free pass" also magic builds are perceived as easier but it's a misconception, you still need to study every boss and be damn sure you won't die for casting. The only way to make bosses easier is to summon, the other ways of making the boss easier aren't really true, the boss can and will kill you off a single miss roll in elden ring, ds3 and ds2. An example is Lorian Prince, even alone you miss a roll and then you're on dead percent, his attacks are relentless enough that unless he chooses to let you heal you won't be able to heal, and since he teleports casting magic isn't gonna make it easier at all
A lot of bias comment about ZZZ being better than Wuwa. However, there are few things I strongly agree with you about Wuwa.
-World Exploration -> It's just as bland as Genshin, anyone says otherwise is coping hard. All it has is just optional mindless grind for echos that aren't guaranteed to be useable.
-Dialogue/Story -> I swear their writing tones sound very immature and just straight up essay, they are just copying the same style as Genshin. The beginning of both story of Wuwa are argony to go through, especially with the whole new mascot as your companion bs. This is my strongest complaining. I just don't get why they are so scared to make story for more grown up, those dialogues aren't anywhere close to normal people speaking to each other.
-Character Design -> I like them looking more mature but they are very alike in term of aesthetic beside Changli but even then her clothings look very basic.
for me, the aesthetics and combat reeled me in. Really love the world and the characters (and the characters are more mature-looking than other hoyo games)
though, i quit when i got the character that once i saw him on the trailer i was like "NOPE, NOT THE FURRY" -- so i got 2 Lycans, one on the beginner banner and on the Ellen banner, i was so bitter at the time (and also this was the time when Once Human, First Descendant came out) so i lowkey quit afterwards despite me loving the combat, and the design of the game
now, i came back.. and im pretty sure after the Ellen loss im guaranteed and mulling over wether i'd pull on Qingyi or Jane Doe's banner later on. I came back because im over FD and the 1st season of Once Human is over, and i just bit off all that bitterness (dumb reason, really) and play my account with what i have -- which is just Rina and an S1 Lycaon with some 4stars. So far im enjoying it and finally in midgame (lvl 31)
Yeah, even as a Kuro fanboy off of PGR, I was super annoyed that we didn't at least have character stories, like Jiyans and Lingyangs, for all the relevant, released characters.
Basically, if they made an appearance and you could acquire them, there should have been missions to get to better know the characters.
It's a sad situation because I'm pretty sure they had a scrap a lot of the writing from CBTs.
Solid video! Really liked a lot of your takes! Just a couple of things to clarify in case you ever return to wuwa- If you're looking for a timed challenge with varied rewards based on the time of your clears, Tower of Adversity is what you're looking for, albeit ZZZ's alternative is a bit more robust. Another thing you might enjoy based on some of what you talked about, dodge counters in wuwa have i-frames, so if you're running into instances where you want to punish after a dodge, but an atk is coming at you, any character with a decent length dodge counter animation can do so. Yinlin's is actually insane.
Right, I forgot about the Tower. That one felt way more time-gatey than the Holograms. I'm not sure when I'll hop back into WuWa but you never know, I still have Yinlin whose design I really like after all.
@@Rednu yeah, the new hologram they added for Crownless is a really good fight to help you adjust to the idea of i framing with the counters. Run in there with Yinlin on field and her animation is long enough to where during some of his longer combos, you’re just dealing damage with i frames every other atk. It’ll be like a 6 hit combo and you’ll just face tank 3 of the hits while doing damage for free, similar feeling to ZZZs ex skill i frames, but constant due to it being tied to dodge counters
@@Rednu and Tower does feel a bit more like a dps check than shiyu does, so it definitely is time gatey, but it feels good in it’s own way. I think I find myself preferring Shiyu currently, but that might just be a newness factor, although I personally prefer Wuwa’s combat in the big picture. They’re both great imo
Insightful review. I never got into Wuwa, I quit the first day of launch because the world and characters felt so bland. Performance and server issues didn't help (to be fair I think thats been addressed now) but the immediate vibe I got was that I was not going to immersed into the stories or characters at all. And you have pretty much confirmed this for me with your own experiences of the game.
Fully hooked on ZZZ though, at 40 myself and keen to see where this game goes. I don't think you ever addressed the TV system, or did you? What are your thoughts on it? Some of it I thought was great, othertimes I thought it dragged or was just a complete miss imo (e.g. the investigation bangboo series, although the conclusion was REALLY interesting lore wise). I heard from another large CC that apparently in an interview they want to present the story more so through rally point style combat comissions, or tone back the TV in general.
Yeah, this video was getting long and I didn't get to touch on all the points I wanted to. But I much prefer the TV system. It's not perfect, I guess? But it's straight to the point, it expresses thematic concepts about the HDD and how Phaethon works, and I think it's cute. I think there may be just a little too many icons, it's hard to build a glossary in my mind, but that's a really minor gripe.
I much prefer it over the open world traversal that is in Genshin and WuWa. I have 0 interest in open world exploration, it only feels like a chore. The only exceptions are if I'm sharing the world in a multiplayer setting like in MMOs, or if the gameplay is SUPER sandboxy like in MGSV and Breath of the Wild, and even then, I dropped BotW towards the end and only stuck with MGSV because of the narrative. All of this is personal taste. I hope whatever they do, they do not ever do open world.
I also try Wuwa on it's first week and yeah the stutter is kind tickle me the wrong way the character design seem to only have 1 theme and from seeing some new character release recently it's still seem to be that way my breaking point is the ENG VA situation to me this signal rush and lack of quality control while the combat is good it wasn't enough to carry other problem for me since i have other good combat focus game on steam
other problem for me is at the core this game is just genshin but less tedious i finally quit that horrible addiction and i don't feel like touching it again
also the lore pacing that sheep and sheperd section is weird they take 20 minute to tell us that villager is selling each other out and not even tell us who is the culprit it was weird af
my last problem that seal this game away from me forever is tencent hold rather large amount of share for this game initial funding that a hell no for me
Yeah that Shepherd Sheep story was ass. It's horribly cliched and predictable here, and then you have the weird plotline where Rover is scavenger hunting for the meaning behind insignificant items for a passcode so that she could trump Scar with a plan she made off screen. That part was really cheesy.
TL;DR everyone gets to pick their preference.
A main problem of ZZZ is that it's straight up boring both in gameplay and in lore. Great if the characters have more lore written into them, not great if the only way to explore that is mindlessly smashing buttons to skip the endless yapping on the monitor and hack&slash the occassional oversized punching bag.
Performance/Server issues didn't do WuWa any favours on launch, but that doesn't diminish the game's quality, just the player experience on that day. Get over it, happens in other games too. The devs did work on fixing and sincere apology gifts. ZZZ also injected extra pulls into their player base after the conflicting launch feedback with the promised pull bait.
WuWa offers a VAST world to explore + combat has freedom of choice in how and when you combat enemies or bail a boring quest and go do something else.
ZZZ has what? 1 Room and 1 Street to explore with the amazing freedom of walking slowly... or even slower, lol. Some folks call it a blessing to crop out exploration grind, I'd call it a prison and all "quests" in ZZZ are just a glorified walking simulator. No puzzles or diversity aside from... the snake minigame, amazing.
Edit: Both these games are just launching though, let's hope for the best on both ends.
WuWa fans enjoy that the game actually offers very generous pulling chances unlike ZZZ. To enjoy a gacha, getting characters one enjoys is the main reason to play. The argument made here was that characters need story bonding to be enjoyed, but getting to play one aka THE GAMEPLAY might matter a lot more...
How restrictive and rewarding it is to "beat" the lategame combat sections is kinda the same bullcrap in all of gacha games, since it's ultimately luck + investment-based how "(un)fun" it is.
@@reviewreaper8508 yeah man i dont care. not playing WuWa lol
I loved that a few of the bigger enemy types just straight up get new moves in the higher difficulties. I hope that trend continues.
ever played Aether Gazer? that’s my favorite gacha by far. Combat never really gets old in that one for me, they do a really good job on character kits in that game, plus it really respects my time. I can do all the required stuff quickly but if I feel like playing for a few hours there’s enough to keep me busy and outside of the main story and a few events it’s all combat too. Almost no fluff content at all. it’s great. lol writing this is making me want to play
That Game is the fist Gacha that i play as F2P only and it's just perfect (also my permanent banner is blessed by the gacha god ^^'). I will never spend money on this game as a former genshin player because i don't feel like it's worth it, for example the weapon banner with the 75 / 25 is always horrible in hoyoverse game BUT in ZZZ it's just to get the best DPS possible and doesn't really affect the agent appearance that much (ugly glowing hair...) AND IT'S PERFECT BY DESIGN. I feel like i can completely ignore that banner and just stack + focus all my resssources on the limited char banner when i see an agent that i like in term of gameplay / personality or design (currently saving for Qingy after i looked for her gameplay and her appearance in the main story).
And BTW when i mean my permanent banner is blessed by the gacha god, i mean i'm at 140 / 300 pull and already i got 4 different S-rank agent and one S-rank W engine for one of them (average S-rank pity : 28), then i lost the 50 50 to Koleda on Ellen banner (i have enough to gurantee her but i prefer waiting for Qingy) but i got Anton M6 and Soukaku M6 and really like the gameplay of Koleda (stun machin) so no regret at all, it's even better this way, now i can guarantee any of the next S-rank agent.
So i have every Agent in the game except for Rina and Ellen (can't wait for Rina at 300 / 300 even if it will take a while and if don't get her before that).
Wow, grats on the account! That's a great roster. I'm jealous you can run an Anton team lol.
@@Rednu Thanks, i'm building some S-rank first and after that i will build him, then when Qingyi will be released i will do a Anton / Qingyi / Grace team with the S-rank Belobog Bangboo. Hope it will be a fun team to play (and a good elec team).
both ZZZ and Wuwa has their strengths and shortcomings and they're both designed to be played for a few minutes or an hour or two everyday so one can easily play both games
I always get all the sales when starting these gachas then never spend again. Ive got 9 teams all maxed out as they can get at lv 40. Im at Internot 39 and justbstalling before 40. No need to rush. I love the game, but after Zhu, I'll never summon for characters in this game again. I normally dont care about endgame, but this'll be the first Hoyo game where Ill max the characters and try beating the endgame stuff. Rip to Genshin and Starrail though.
I totally feel you regarding zzz boss fight does not make me feel the boss mech is ridiculous when I loss. Unlike some other games when I loss I blame the game for designing stupid boss with insane wiping mechs. With zzz I just know that I can success and I just need to lvl up some things. And it shows me when I loss, which part of my character building is lacking works. So I don’t feel frustrated.
I'm MOSTLY F2P myself. I bought the battlepass, the monthly and the 1$ "starter" bundle. I'm C2 Interlude and like, level 32 right now. I'm sitting FAIRLY comfy right now on my Soldier 11, Ben and Anby team
Man, as a former FGO whale, it feels like a breath of fresh air to play this game f2p. Greta job with the video, you touch on pretty much everything a friend of mine wanted to know about this game, so Im going to send it to him. Keep it up!
A good Gacha experience, for me, is when I can get by, reasonably, for free. I will then become a light spender when I feel like my time was not entirely wasted, or the production value, and quality, justifies small purchases. For example; after a week of playing Reverse: 1999 I had put down roughly $15 due to my sentiment of the game being positive, and the same goes for ZZZ and Arknights, and Path to Nowhere. I'm not huge on Gacha games, I hate spending money, but I'm not so far against putting a small amount into something I genuinely enjoy playing.
Based, first actually good review I’ve seen on RUclips. Subscribed, keep it up man.
@PositiveReinforcement. he doesnt say that
Amaaazing video! Thank you very much!
Thank you!
@@Rednu seriously, you didn’t include any filler irrelevant information and I was engaged throughout the whole vid due to great takes and gameplay tips of yours! Took me 1 video to sub.
In my opinion I think your take when it comes to when you were speaking on the how you view failure in zzz has a flaw and that is the fact that if failure mainly comes from the point of view of not beating the boss fast enough or not being on level makes it feel like that game has no difficulty apart from not being on level when being on level there is virtually no threat in the game so for that reason I believe there needs to be some trail and error and that gameplay to make players learn enemy moves to give them a reason to not build a character to basically fight a punching bag. Btw I’m internot level 36 I am enjoying the game.
If it's a matter of POV, then where's the flaw? The thing is, majority of people who play games like Diablo for instance, do not play for difficulty. They play to have the most braindead overpowered build so they can farm things super efficiently. It isn't about how to beat a boss, it's more about how fast can I clear this dungeon or boss. It's a different side of the same coin and everyone has their preference. I like both sides, and I appreciate Zenless because I think it executes on it flawlessly. I don't like WuWa enough because it tries to have Souls-like difficulty without the Souls-like agency.
I tried to respond but didn’t know how to get my words into text but I don’t believe the game is flawless because the game tries to represent a game with more complexity when it comes to fights when the creators of the game spoke of it and how the beginning of the game is and I’ve never played Wuwa because it’s not on console and I don’t a have a computer but it feels like more like grand blue relink than souls games when it comes to boss fights. And I also feel when it comes to as if the game is made to played like a clear and then what is the purpose of some of the mechanics that are in the game if you can just beat the enemy to death before they can become a real threat idk maybe I just don’t get it because I’m not at endgame.
I’ve also played Diablo so I get what you’re saying.
I feel like once you get towards the endgame you wouldn't be able to say that you can only left click and Dodge. Because you have to clear the bosses within a certain time limit and that requires at least competent usage of the system mechanics. Is there a lot of depth in those mechanics? No. But it's still a lot of fun because the animations are so sharp and there's plenty of death in team and character building.
@@Rednu I agree that the game has more in depth team building and I will see if it changes once get to endgame.
HOLY CRAP! Finally someone said it! Bravo! Everything resonates with me 100%!
I've always thought WuWa's hologram challenges are artificial difficulty, just like some music rhythm game that spam you with a screen full of key strokes. It's not made to be fun, it's made for people to flex.
I'm Chinese that moved oversea for 20+ years and I can't stand the names too! 🤣I know it's weird, but I play games in English and all the Chinese phonic sounding names are extremely difficult for me to get into.
Some people find that fun! We all value things differently and I enjoy proactive gameplay a little more than reactive. Also yeah, Chinese names always sound foreign to me lol. The Chinese people I grew up with were named Kevin, Kimberly, and John!
Was watching for ZZZ, then suddenly you mention Wuthering Waves character names (I really enjoy WuWa). My god, I despise the Chinese names in WuWa and I'm also Asian American. I remember people complaining on reddit only for others to put down the opinion. Localization is a thing to help foreign audiences... yet there are also several youtube videos of Native Chinese speakers correcting the pronunciation of WuWa names because so many fail to pronounce and grasp these names! WuWa has a okay story, better than Genshin. ZZZ has more soul & personality. Glad to meet a CC that shares the similar opinions~
Hopefully WuWa story will get better.
Their previous game. Punishing: Gray Raven is a 10/10 story imo.
WuWa on the other hand is somewhere around 6/10, which is around here most of the Hoyo slop is too.
it's a great breakdown of the game. For my take, I think wuwa is too heavily influenced by the Chinese culture and a lot of their conversation are using formal and classical format in conversation (beside chixia, she's informal all the way). Those who understand chinese and their culture do have connection to the story but those who don't will have some difficulty with their current localization effort. If you use the chinese language in the game, you will find that a lot of the terms have multi-layer meaning in them which is hard to captured in other language. So most probably their target audience is catered more towards the chinese community. I do agree that ZZZ game design and build are more complete, the UI/animation/character are more acceptable and polished by huge masses and it's a more casual game. Wuwa audience is probably a very niche audience that is looking for harder boss mechanics. I like those boss fight where you need to learn their pattern coming from playing Monster Hunter for a long time. Both games provide different experiences so it all boils down to what the players are looking for. I like both, but I still feel AAA games gives the best gameplay experience in terms of overall experience as you don't feel gated in any sense after you bought the game. Gotcha on the other hand, you can't really max out your character unless you paid ridiculous amount, you can play for free, but you must accept that you can't get everything in the game unlike AAA(not those that have paywall weird system).
Completely agree with you on the writing. I have been very impressed by how natural the dialogue in ZZZ feels. Maybe the best localization I’ve ever seen in a game. The dialogue in WuWa is laughably bad in comparison.
The writing is so good in this game. I love how they leave breadcrumbs at the start of chapters and tie it all up in the end. People say that there's too much yapping but have they seen WuWa?? That has yapping too, but on top of that, it's boring and predictable.
@@RednuYapping is fine but when you have to add new word for your dictionary every time something happen is tiring
zzz was nice little surprise. Also a fan of fgs and the snappyness feels nice. I agree saying the difficulty is a bit unfair but I just wish it was a bit more challenging cause you have fun tolls but not a whole lot to use em on.
I'll probably spend stuff when Ellen comes back or if the sf collab happens
I'm f2p got Lycaon as my first S-rank, then pulled Ellen so got the wombo ice team rn and it feels very satisfying.
right now as a f2p im lv 42 and still having a blast. yea it does kinda suck not having tons of missons to do anymore but i have fun tryign to 100% the outpost stuff
I agree that the dubbing as far as vocalizing is good, but honestly the syncing is the stuff of nightmares. I feel that they could have done much better. That said, absolutely in love with the design of combat states/flow APART FROM the excessive resistances that some enemies have. My teams are current Ellen Ice Team, and Soldier 11 Pyro Team. The issue with that is that I physically cannot kill Robots with my pyro team or my ice team efficiently.
BRO the dodge parry mechanic is NUTS, thanks for letting me know now I can sweat the game even more 😁
I think another reason why Elden Ring and similar games get a pass on their "trial by fire" boss design and combat difficulty because they aren't live service gacha games that have an essential grinding aspect that takes time to make progress through on top of a bunch of fights that feel like a grind by design. You're not going to "fall behind" or burn time on grind-y bosses that you could be using to build your roster in a game that is centered on your one player character and when a lot of your strength has direct or indirect ties to those bosses as opposed to putting in the time and resources to gather materials on the side.
On the topic of names, I don't usually have issues with them the way you described in Wuthering Waves. I do often prefer it when names are thematic to the culture of a world, so to briefly mention another Mihoyo game, a lot of names (definitely not all though) in Genshin do feel as though they have relation to the culture that they're in, so a bunch of names feeling "foreign" didn't even cross my mind when I was still playing that game. I also personally find myself remembering names easily when I've gotten invested into a game, so if the game truly has me hooked then keeping track of everyone comes naturally because I at least have some level of attachment to the game and the things it brings to the table.
Granted, I also have a very good memory that I've used to make some of my friends concerned for my wellbeing when I list off excessive amounts of information relating to various roguelikes I play.
I'm definitely trying zzz now❤️ especially after that dev note
thanks for the review ❤
i got to say tho that i feel like you didn't give wuwa the right description cuz wuwa is not holograms
you have the tower of adversity which is the same content as the whole zzz game play and in your video you ignored it like it doesn't exist at all so yeah and it has illusive realm too which you don't need your stats at all and where you can try multiple characters and echos with special abilities that doesn't exist in the normal game
the thing about zzz combat is that it's so repetitive and not in the game only but it's kinda the same thing we had in every gatcha game so far
that content is the same as
tower of adversity in wuwa
the same thing as the abyss in genshin
same thing as all the game of solo leveling arise
same thing as pgr
and the stuff that it offers aren't that unique
I'm someone who enjoys having different combat systems and different styles in the same game that's why wuwa is perfect for me
it has tower of adversity where it's a dps check where you care about your rotations and team synergy and buffs and everything and requires some skills of dodging and counter attacking ....ex
and it has the illusive realm which doesn't care about your stats and builds
and it has holograms where it's a skill focused game mode
so i feel like it's so unfair to ignore everything and represent it with holograms only
and you can out level them too so it's not like you have to learn them or you can't do them i personally almost finished them all and I'm at level 80 and i play on mobile so
That's fair, I didn't mention the other modes. But the reason behind that is because I don't really like the combat that much. I feel like Holograms were so beloved by the community and I fell off on them hard. I'm trying to hop back in the game and gather my thoughts on why exactly I stopped, but again, I don't think preferences need to be fair exactly. At the end of the day it really is just preference, vibes, and feel.
@@Rednu 100 %
if the game isn't for you then it's not for you so no need to force it just cuz of the community
but i really think that you would enjoy wuwa
i feel like it's miss represented in way where people think that it's time consuming cuz it's an open world game
but you don't really need to invest that much time
I'm 100% confident when i say that wuwa requires the least amount of time out of all the other big gatcha games out there
You are right about wuwa, more so wuthering waves is a gatcha so you may not have all of the units you may need.
This video really points out something that i haven't considered or fought of. ZZZ is more fleshed out overall, in the character department that is, the story is funny at times and doesn't take it too serious.
That's the key of it all. ZZZ doesn't take itself too seriously, but it conceals depth. WuWa takes itself way too seriously, but to me felt incredibly shallow and tropey. ZZZ has tropes, but it doesn't pretend to be above it.
I have the opposite problem - its soo goofy that feels like toddler anime my littl pony or whatever XDD. Is Hoyo becoming a goofy company? the new event in Genshin is with Lego figurines.
@@ixirion you are overblowing it my guy, the game definitely has a goofy story and vibe to it, but it's more comedic than childish, and there are still serious and heartfelt moments that are genuinely aimed at adult audience, or at least 16+
@@comrad3892 yeah but the setting are what I am pointing. Everything is perfect if you are 5. colorful, flashy, there are goofy bangolos , goofy dog selling lottery, cats everywhere. The girls look around 12. We have teddy bear.
And then we have a story/combat that is mostly for adults in a sharp contrast.
HSR manages much better balance being occasionally goofy.
for me end result is just cringe.
Genshin new event was a horrible experience that made me question my life choices and why am I playng toy story.
At the end I will stick till 1.1 story and then delete. goofy dont mean funny. If I want I can watch goofy memes 24/7
The sad thing is that I like so much things they added like city full of life, competent and voiced protagonists, no Paimon, QoL, combat is ok etc.
@@ixirion idk man I guess I just like goofy stuff, and you like more grounded things, but calling it a game for children is in my opinion unfair. You can be older than 5 and still earnestly enjoy colorful settings with goofy characters and cute mascots running around, and by comparison I've felt treated like a child way more in Genshin than in the entire game of ZZZ, and I think it has a lot to do with us assuming the perspective of pheathon twins, that are very grounded adult characters in a goofy colorful world, and with other characters feeling way more real and lively
Amazing content I really like your Nicole tip.
Love the thoughts and how you communicated it so eloquently esp the ones wrt what difficulty entails in the games
subbed looking forward to your new videos man
team order doesnt matter when playing controller
because L1 and R1 change character depending on his picture in the hp bar (the order)
so i put my dps in the middle
my stun on left
And sup on right
when im using dps i press L1 to swap left and do some stuns them switch back to dps during quick assist using R1 to dodge
What about for Quick Assist? For PC at least, I can only swap to the next character.
@@ABDELWAHABx team position matter support ex special can be follow up with quick assist by "Next" character Soukaku for example when use her exspecial she gain a damage buff that damage buff can only be transfer to other character via chain attack or quick assist and quick assist only call for "next" character
Yes you can press L1 but you missed the fact that for quick assist (the one that is triggered by certain attacks and causes a character's portrait to appear in the corner) it will call in the R1 character no matter which button you press.
my only problem in this game is the amount of tvs you have to jump through to get action, other then that I love how the combat feels, the characters look cool, kind of a grown up version of genshins cartoony Anime style. What i am suprised about is the lack of free stuff. Maybe i am wrong here but i played Genshin when it came out and I played HSR when it came out and it feels like especially HSR showered you with free stuff and pulls and materials, zzz feels a bit light on that note. And if all the starting gifts are gone we will be back to 2 pulls every 3 days, that is prob where I am going to stop playing after a maxed out 1 or two teams. These type of games are not designed to be extremly enjoyable as f2p, never will be unless you devote half your life to the game farming it religiously for years and even then, lategame content in hoyo games is gatcha, because there usually is not too much to do besides that.
This game is a lot more stingy than HSR. Genshin.. I don't remember enough but I know ta least now it's incredibly stingy.
you can actually press c to swap the other way instead of space to swap the normal direction not sure why sometimes it doesnt work sometimes in fact you can even use c instead of space for counter instead so you can actually chose who you swap between.
actually using this i have swaped between two of my characters countering cuz one of my characters dodges instead of counter.
just cleared floor 17 with a 1+1 ellen on team 1 and soukaku on team 2...
I'll say the fun starts at around floor 14 and 16 where the difficulty spikes, enemies are attacking from all around you, they also hit really hard, with attack speed and frequency increased compared to previous stages.
my 6k hp character got 1 shotted in floor 17. I died non stop for an hour until I finally memorized & mastered the bosses attack pattern and also my own character's skill moves...
One thing I hope the dev do is to make this level of difficulty accessable way earlier in the game, don't just lock them behind the last few floors in abyss. This would make the game so much more engaging and they could have avoided so much negative reviews of the game being so brain dead boring in the earlier stages of the game.
wow this review feels really fresh, not only praising ZZZ but also having some criticism with WuWa, i basically agree with everything you said :]
The problem with WuWa's names... is actually not the names. Because Genshin and Star Rail and in the future probably ZZZ as well, have MANY Chinese names because they have characters from a Chinese-inspired region. WuWa just happens to have said region as their starting region, so most names of the starting roster are Chinese, and only Encore, Aalto, Verina, Scar, Camellya, characters who are NOT originally from Huanglong have a different style of names which will become the norm once we enter new regions.
I love this game a lot even with the stuff I absolutely hate about it like the progression currencies and it being gacha and the energy thing. But I do agree a lot with the fighting game background crossover. I've played Guilty Gear since Accent Core and yeah it is extremely fun and engaging to build your team and whatnot.
What does make me upset is the FOMO stuff they do because I really wanted Ellen to make a team with Soukaku (My favorite character) but I literally have no one else to run her with and now she's out of the prize pool for gods know how long so I lost the incentive to even spend polychromes on rolls and am just saving them now. I just hit knot level 30 in like 4 days without spending any money as well so I do like the game.
about 15:18, you DO have choice swapping, on keyboard its space for next and c for previous
You are very thorough in your review of this game, whilst also keeping it fair with WuWa and stating several times that a lot of this boils down to personal opinion. I'm so tired of seeing people criticize the first few hours of ZZZ as slow-paced, easy and boring, when Wuthering Waves has had the worst early experience ive had in a gacha, with extreme exposition dumping as early as 10 minutes into it and extremely easy enemies. If you're gonna give WuWa a shot and be lenient with its first few hours, why tf is ZZZ not getting that chance? Sounds like an inherent bias against Hoyoverse to me. On a side note, i respect how much time you're putting into responding to so many of these comments, as an early CC myself, that's a lot of effort, congrats bro.
Yo thanks a lot! Yeah I try to be fair and balanced as much as I can, but I'm always gonna have my preferences and biases. I think it's important to lay that out on the table because no review is objective.
28:01 well I made 170 pulls for ellen got here also at nearly lv40 right now 39 also free to play and have quite enjoyed her at the moment
I have been playing for 16 days maybe 3 to 5 hours a day and even 3 of those days i didnt play but im at internot level 36. I dont think it is hard to level or am i wrong ?
I play Street Fighter as well as Genshin, thanks for pointing out what makes this so much fun to play
I've managed lvl 41 in 37 hours, I'm enjoying it so far I'm splitting my time between ZZZ and HSR
Can you make vid, Comparing WuWa,ZZZ,Star Rail and Genshin?
Compare story,characters and gameplay.
Sorry for the following text dump, but I'll give my experience so far as a F2P player that has close to no experience with gacha games.
I heard mostly negative criticism about ZZZ. However, I have one friend who has been really into the game and asked me to play, so I decided to try it out and form my own opinions.
As a precursor, I'm not a fan of gacha games. I do not like the concept of FOMO and how greedy these games tend to be.
However, I can honestly say I'm really enjoying ZZZ so far. Each character feels unique, and more importantly fun to play. The design and setting of the game is also really interesting to me.
I do have some negatives though. I personally think there is way too much text dump. I got so tired of it I started skipping most of the dialogue and only paying attention to the voice acted cutscenes.
Also, I'm not a fan of the user interface. I feel like menu options are spread too thin and far apart, and I'm spending too much time searching for what I'm looking for. (I understand this will get easier the more I play, but it does not feel intuitive as a new player).
Despite all that, I'm having a lot of fun. I don't even care about getting S rank characters because I'm still enjoying playing with the A rank characters that I have. As long as I'm enjoying the game as F2P player then that's all that matters to me.
(edited for some clarity)
combat aside, its the all the different stories thats kept me playing zzz.
You do kinda have choice swap... On PC, pressing C instead of Space swaps to the previous character. So Spacebar for next, C for previous.
i got really lucky with my pulls, my 2 main teams are: Lycaon, Soukaku c6r5, Ellen c0r1 and Koleda, Lucy, Soldier 11.
Full f2p.
I want Koleda 😭
I see this game has game to relax when i have nothing to play and do,honestly i always play this game at like 3 am when i have nothing to do and i actually enjoy it,alot of people try to play the game in "grind mode" wich is not gonna be the best experience because the game is very slow pace
Grinding when there's content is fun. But yeah, when the wall comes, it's gonna hit. I think I'm prepared though, and I like the game a lot, so I hope to stick with it.
man its unfortunate that I only found your channel because of the Iyo drama vid because YT algo but I really like your vibe and take on zzz. Subbed 😎
dang dodge parry so cool.
Im f2p and im level 52½
Im only missing 2 Srank (standard) (wolf man & soldier11)
I got ellen first try and if i didnt pull her, id probably not be playing 💀 shes helping so much
You are right at lvl 40? Its just a tip of the iceberg man haha
Anyway about nicoles kit. If you have energy for ex special. Just double tap E and swap. That will trigger quick swap and nicole will continue the animation while you are switched already on your main dps. And her special bullet animation gives a debuff of 3 seconds also, while not have energy for your Ex special just double click mouse attack button and swap that will trigger again the quickswap and nicole will do her spinning special bullet attack while you are already on your main dps. I mean the spining sitdown something of nicole is awesome and can help with many opening combo but its hard on PC man xD
you mentioning fighting games gave me PTSD from iyo, the expert of bad takes that can't go 5 mins without mentioning he's a fighting game player lmao. only 7 mins into your review but enjoying it so far.
I've been hearing a lot about Iyo lately lmao
There is choice swapping in zzz. I believe the button is either v or c for the previous character.
Technically, for hidden moves, it doesn't tell you that Ellen has a followup ex (ex>ex) where she goes invuln. I think you need like 75% bar to do it. Also, really high end play, some fights do full on barrages of atks and a shielder feels almost needed, but you can get away with multi non retaliating dodges.
It does say it at least in her character trial that she can double EX, while Nicole's is purely hidden, I'm actually kinda bummed that there aren't more of them, but I guess they wouldn't be as hidden if every character had one
So... this is a very detailed video with quite a lot of interesting thoughts, but the majority of it has had very little to do with anything specific to being a F2P player. Perhaps I had the wrong idea of just what you were trying to convey based on the title?
For my own part, as a purely F2P player, all of the guides assuming perfect W-Engines and Drives are utterly useless to me. I'll never have the economy to be able to afford pulling anything on the W-Engine channel and have no expectation of ever pulling any S Rank engines as a consequence, so much of the min/max stuff is silly nonsense for someone in my class.
For my own part, my past experience in fighting games has served pretty well here. I don't know gacha games; I find them predatory in the extreme and want no part of their monetization, but I liked the character design and combat mechanics of ZZZ and thought I'd give it a try. So far I've been enjoying myself, but I'll dip out if they try to annoy me into opening my wallet too hard.
fire vid
I'm almost F2P and would love to have your guides for the characters
To be fair more content unlocks at level 45 or 50. So 40 isn't the 'end game'
Heh. The devs did say fighting games were one of their biggest inspiration. No wonder Nicole has such an input.
And I think Soldier 11 fire enchant has almost 100% application if you can manage her normal combo well.
Another unique interaction: a party of koleda and ben
Yeah, it's inspiration. Some people think or want it to be more similar and I say... wait for the fighting game cameos and spin-offs 👀👀👀 I'd be all over that shit instantly.
@@Rednu sadly MHY don't do lots of collabs. Imagine Ryu and Ken xD
They did Aloy, it's not 0% :D
@@Rednu 😂
Fun fact: Aloy's EN VA (Giselle Fernandez, not Ashly Burch) is in fact in ZZZ. She's Ellen Joe's VA.
Fun fact 2: HSR has just announced a collab with Fate Stay Night for next year.
Fun fact 3: Hoyo's other notable collab, aside from Horizon was with Evangelion in HI3. Looks like Genshin really is the stepchild.
16:58 story mode supposed to be ex meanwhile counterside: ARE U NOT ENTERNTAINT
what i appreciate from Hoyoverse's latest 3 game releases is that they didn't start their story with their own version of Fantasy China. even though it would be logical to open your first game area in a region which based on your company place. Genshin started in Mondstadt which basically is an European/German inspired area. HSR with Belobog. and now ZZZ with Sixth Street area.
I think at lvl 45 you unlock a new hollow zero area. I’m currently lvl44 though.