Reached chapter 3. Taking my time because I can't play the game 12 hours a day like the people that finished everything last week 
The story has been really good honestly, I like the lower stakes feeling and how they integrated the separate faction stories together, it feels natural and engaging, always keeping a hook to know more but giving you full fledged experiences where you can spend quite some time playing with the various characters.
The pacing has also been... mostly good after the hours long tutorial where you don't do much in chapter 1. ZZZ is a lot less loquacious than Genshin and HSR, the cut scenes are lovely and so are the motion comic segments. Now, there's still some filler when you're "investigating" in the city, and that can be pretty dull and sometimes rife with backtracking (even with the easy fast travel), plus the dialogue between Wise and Belle is pretty bad most of the time, it just repeats and isn't voice acted...
It's still bogged down a bit by the TV part, which makes more sense in some places like with the cops, but the missions are still very long and very simplistic, playing a Bomberman ersatz or doing the most basic switch puzzles for 20 minutes in a row... very meh. Plus you can't skip animations there, only fast forward and there's an awful lot of needed text and voice acting making it even slower.
And if you missed something and have to replay the entire mission, it hurts. A lot.
It's not nearly as much of a problem for non story modes, but it's still not particularly interesting paradigms, and the fact that it's always the same environment every time, no matter what you do makes it a lot less engaging than it could have been with more flair, odd when you consider that the rest of the game is so stylished. Although it also applies for combat arenas, playing for many hours in samey and bland construction areas and train stations under repair is pretty painful...
I'm glad that combat definitely opens up and asks of you to at least understand the bare minimum of your teams, longer rally commissions, longer hollow zero areas and bosses are all quite good.
But now the gear grind is here, and at a glance it's probably not as horrible as the other Hoyo games, but still. Hard to judge how long it takes to get characters up to speed - probably less than HSR since a lot of them will not need too many skill upgrades if they're kept as support, there's no awful speed tuning and the 4+2 pieces is far more flexible, but that one is wait&see.
The story has been really good honestly, I like the lower stakes feeling and how they integrated the separate faction stories together, it feels natural and engaging, always keeping a hook to know more but giving you full fledged experiences where you can spend quite some time playing with the various characters.
The pacing has also been... mostly good after the hours long tutorial where you don't do much in chapter 1. ZZZ is a lot less loquacious than Genshin and HSR, the cut scenes are lovely and so are the motion comic segments. Now, there's still some filler when you're "investigating" in the city, and that can be pretty dull and sometimes rife with backtracking (even with the easy fast travel), plus the dialogue between Wise and Belle is pretty bad most of the time, it just repeats and isn't voice acted...
It's still bogged down a bit by the TV part, which makes more sense in some places like with the cops, but the missions are still very long and very simplistic, playing a Bomberman ersatz or doing the most basic switch puzzles for 20 minutes in a row... very meh. Plus you can't skip animations there, only fast forward and there's an awful lot of needed text and voice acting making it even slower.
And if you missed something and have to replay the entire mission, it hurts. A lot.
It's not nearly as much of a problem for non story modes, but it's still not particularly interesting paradigms, and the fact that it's always the same environment every time, no matter what you do makes it a lot less engaging than it could have been with more flair, odd when you consider that the rest of the game is so stylished. Although it also applies for combat arenas, playing for many hours in samey and bland construction areas and train stations under repair is pretty painful...
I'm glad that combat definitely opens up and asks of you to at least understand the bare minimum of your teams, longer rally commissions, longer hollow zero areas and bosses are all quite good.
But now the gear grind is here, and at a glance it's probably not as horrible as the other Hoyo games, but still. Hard to judge how long it takes to get characters up to speed - probably less than HSR since a lot of them will not need too many skill upgrades if they're kept as support, there's no awful speed tuning and the 4+2 pieces is far more flexible, but that one is wait&see.
Thanks for pointing this out, seriously!
