Is Zenless Zone Zero F2P-Friendly or Pay-to-Win?

Are you wondering if you can actually play Zenless Zone Zero for free or if it’ll have you regularly reaching into your wallet with pay-to-win elements? It’s an important question now that there are more high-quality gacha games than ever, so let’s dive into it.

Do You Have To Spend Money in Zenless Zone Zero?

The technical answer to this question for any gacha games —especially the ones that HoYoverse makes (Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, etc) — is no. You’ll never be forced to spend money to progress in Zenless Zone Zero, even as you find yourself in the endgame in a few weeks’ time. Your ability to dodge and parry is a big part of what will allow you to overcome even the hardest fights in the game, and while having the five-star characters will help, it’s not essential by any means.

That being said, gacha games all operate through the FOMO effect, whereby the hype of new units is pumped out both in the game and on social media to try to entice you to spend your pulls on them — and probably spend your money on the pulls as well. The temptation is always going to be there, and unless you’re very hardline about it all, you’re likely to fall prey to it at some point.

Are There Many Giveaways?

That being said, Zenless Zone Zero lacks the open-world exploration of Genshin Impact, and even the more structured exploration of Honkai: Star Rail. This could mean that we end up seeing a similar number of giveaways and free wishes as in Honkai: Star Rail, which tends to give away at least ten free pulls with each patch, on top of whatever events come into the game, all of which allow you to earn the premium currency.

We can’t say this for sure at this point because the game has only just launched, but at this early stage, it’s possible to get 180 free pulls in Zenless Zone Zero without spending a penny. That’s an awful lot of pulls, and while they’re split between three different banners, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re likely to hit at least one five-star unit.

You can also use the battle pass and the monthly subscription to gain premium currency and extra wishes for a fairly low price, so if you don’t mind spending twenty bucks a month, you can get a lot of wishes that way. We’ll keep an eye on the free-to-play-friendliness of Zenless Zone Zero, but at the moment at least, it doesn’t seem to be very heavy on pay-to-win elements at all.