I'm begging MiHoYo to show me more Zenless Zone Zero than this

It takes some real detective work to figure out the mystery that is Zenless Zone Zero, the upcoming action (roguelike?) game from Genshin Impact developer MiHoYo.

A Persona-style calendar icon showed up in the latest trailer for the game during Gamescom Opening Night Live. Different times of day seem to affect which characters will be hanging out in its urban environments. You can choose to chill with them and presumably earn their trust, but I have no clue what it has to do with the roguelike parts of the game. Maybe it'll unlock new attacks or outfits to wear.

The middle of the brief trailer focuses on playable arcade minigames that resemble classics like Dig Dug and Snake. Maybe you will get to play these for bonus rewards when you're not taking on missions to fight with your crew.

Once the trailer finally gets to the arena action, it's already almost over. MiHoYo kills it every time with its slick combat animations. Characters smoothly dodge out of attacks and light up the screen as they parry the gigantic rock monsters. Much like Genshin, you can instantly swap between a group of characters to exploit enemy weaknesses and create powerful combo attacks. This is also where the character pulling gacha mechanics come in—which the trailer makes no mention of either.

And that's it. The new ZZZ trailer doesn't even gesture at how you go on missions inside alternate dimensions called Hollows, which are the procedurally generated roguelike dungeons that were available in its last beta. Until I can actually play the thing, my best guess is that it sounds like it'll work like a 3D anime Hades.

MiHoYo floored me with Honkai: Star Rail earlier this year. The turn-based sci-fi comedy game did a stellar job at giving MiHoYo's stylish combat a stage. ZZZ's overall structure remains unclear, but it carries forward the same tight combat from all of the developer's games. I'm extremely here for it and desperate to see way more than a minute-long trailer can show me.

ZZZ doesn't have a release date. Its previous beta was available last May. I'd expect it to have one final beta, like Honkai: Star Rail did, sometime this year and potentially launch soon after. If it's not out soon and MiHoYo continues to keep its cards close to its chest, I'm going to lose my mind trying to fit all these pieces together.

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

Read more
Project C4 teaser still
It's another day of Disco Elysium-related announcements trying to kneecap each other: Studio ZA/UM has put out a teaser for its first new game since 2019, and it's not Disco Elysium 2
A man in a leather jacket with a crystal dragon on his shoulder
Lost Soul Aside, a spectacle fighter where your dragon pal turns into a hoverboard, is coming out in May
A cat gets an affectionate head-scratch in miHoYo's Zenless Zone Zero.
Zenless Zone Zero developer finally embraces its divine domain as the god of jiggle physics, goes mad, adds them to cat balls
Elden Ring: Nightreign
What the heck is Elden Ring: Nightreign? Our big explainer covering new characters, loot, roguelike mechanics and more
Hollow Knight: Silksong — character art of Hornet, Silksong's protagonist, brandishing her weapon
Silksong's weary hollows tossed another scrap of hope from Xbox on high, as a blog post namedrops it next to other 'upcoming games'
A look at four heroes in SHape of Dreams, a new action roguelike by Lizard Smoothie.
Shape of Dreams' demo shows off an ingenious roguelike that wields Risk of Rain-tier finesse with action MOBA chaos, and I think I might be in love
Latest in Action
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The First Berserker: Khazan review - Blade Phantom
How to claim The First Berserker: Khazan pre-order bonus and deluxe edition DLC
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
An image of a Helldiver from Helldivers 2 shooting at a red dragon from Dungeons & Dragons.
'Ok, so dragon builds are a thing now': galaxy-brained Helldivers 2 player incinerates a bile titan with a hover pack and a flamethrower
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Assassin's Creed Shadows immersive mode - Naoe holding a tanto in her hand as two guards fall to the ground behind her.
Assassin's Creed Shadows' first hotfix addresses stability issues and a photo mode crash
Latest in News
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event