So, one lesson has been made abundantly clear, over and over again: HoYoverse knows their action games. Even if Honkai Star Rail dropped flashy combos in favor of luxuriously animated turn-based combat, the Equalizing Test for Zenless Zone Zero is a full-cylinder assault on the senses trying to make a console-quality character action game.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: All of HoYoverse’s games have always been flashy in their combat. They’re polished in animations to a mirror shine, but the problem always comes down to how they actually handle. As someone who destroyed their hands practicing jump cancel loops in Devil May Cry V you do feel the limitations of a mobile-first interface in games like Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3rd– combos can often feel repetitive, with them being more about the effects than the actual properties of the attack.

Inject It Into My Veins

While the combat in Zenless Zone Zero still hasn’t fully reached console level, it’s crossed over to the point that I’m curious how it’ll even run on mobile. Your moves feel way more about what they actually do instead of something like elemental synergy. Heck, during my entire first hour of the game I didn’t even know elemental damage was a thing.

It feels like every care has been taken to make sure this plays like an action game first, and a gacha collector later. What would have been your “Elemental Skill” in Genshin is now just a heavy attack, with some characters like Anby having a launcher. Sadly, none of the characters we’d tried out have been given the gift of air combos just yet, but hey, we’ll take our victories where we can get them.

There’s also one thing that Zenless Zone Zero has massively improved over the rest of the HoYo catalogue: Canceling. While HoYoverse is no stranger to dodge-canceling to get out of moves, it feels like Zenless is more aggressively tweaked towards promoting the playstyle. Individual character moves can feel empty and sluggish, having that same long recovery that tag fighters like Blazblue Cross Tag or Marvel Vs Capcom 3 have to encourage exploring either dodging or tagging out.

In fact, if you don’t mind swapping out characters tag-canceling is even more fun- your outgoing character will stay on screen to finish their animation, but you’ll be fully actionable as the incoming character. I got to do an albeit brief version of the Devil May Cry special- using Anby’s launcher to pop enemies up into the air before shooting them with Billy. I know similar strategies are common in high-level play for games like Genshin Impact, but I can’t stress just how much better it feels in Zenless Zone Zero.

A lot of it comes down to the complete doing away of cooldowns. Accidentally tagging a character in other HoYo games can be a death sentence. Here, you can literally make it part of your combo rotation to swap out after a certain number of hits. It just feels clean to use and pull off sick combos.

If anything, my only gripe is how much of a tease the game can be about this- we’re so close to a Hoyo game just letting you go mad and juggle enemies, and I desperately wish that Zenless would have vaulted over the line towards a future full of Zenless Combo MADs. Still, it’s the responsiveness that Zenless Zone Zero has over its predecessors that wins me over the most. Unlike Genshin where I’m very aware of which characters I’m switching to, the move-first nature of Zenless Zone Zero makes each character feel like a piece of a complete moveset. It’s not so much that I’m switching to Billy, rather I’m just accessing the portion of my moveset that has good ranged options and a sick dash attack.

Counter, Strike!

Just like Honkai Impact 3rd, there’s quite a bit of emphasis placed on dodging. Instead of getting a time stop like you would there, though, now you get a full on counter. Each character has a unique counter move, turning every encounter into a highly-pressurized dance as you stop the combo train only to style on enemies by dodging their big attacks and punishing them.

It feels pretty effortless to get the counter going, too- I don’t have an exact frame number but the window is generous enough that you can pretty easily do it on reaction. The result is that rather than sit around fishing for a counter, it just integrates seamlessly into your combo, which thanks to the game’s lack of any kind of cooldown can go on for as long as you don’t get decked in the face.

As we covered last time, enemies also sport a stagger system- properly capitalizing on these also lets you tag in other team members for powerful moves too. It’s a visual treat to behold- that big orange bar telling you to pick someone to tag in is extremely cool, and using it to finish off enemies is nothing short of exciting. Admittedly I’m more a fan of its visual style than actual utility- for as much as I am a big fan of a high damage blow I’m an even bigger fan of the stylish tag-in leading up to it.

Smokin Sexy Style

Of course, a lot of the endearing qualities of Zenless Zone Zero feel partially enhanced by its intense sense of style. It’s absolutely committed to this almost breakcore-level of action. I can’t tell you how cool the level clear screens are- doing away with Honkai Impact’s canned victory animation and instead having dramatic slowdowns of your finishing blow.

Heck, even the dungeon crawling has been reworked to be as stylish as possible: instead of having to deal with the possibility of an empty room with nothing to do, it’s instead represented as a hall of monitors, which you just interact with like a board game. Did this space give you gold? Or was it an encounter? It’s a great example of simplifying parts people might complain about- since the combat sections, in turn, are just highly focused combat rooms.

Some might complain about the fact the story cuts away to comic panels, but I think it’s for the better- all through the game, you can feel like it was a rule that nothing’s allowed to stand stationary. As a result, every character is vibrant and expressive, always: a great way to make a lasting impression.

I need to stress that this was just a preview build of the game as part of its currently ongoing Equalizing Test. But Zenless Zone Zero seems to have made enough tiny tweaks to the HoYoverse combat formula that it’s gunning for my most anticipated game of next year. I do have concerns about how it’ll run on mobile, since the controls feel like they assume you’re on a controller. But from a purely combat perspective Zenless Zone Zero might have entirely won me over.

Zenless Zone Zero Equalizing Test features a work-in-progress, and doesn’t represent the quality of the final game