Zenless Zone Zero Needs Some Compromises To Enjoy It on the Steam Deck

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While Zenless Zone Zero has been out for quite some time, it has recently made its way to Steam. The game launched on PC exclusively on the Epic Games Store, but the game had finally arrived on the Steam platform for us to download and install for ourselves. It could be the first of the other HoYoverse games to make its way to Steam, including Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, and it’s really exciting to see.

With that in mind, I decided to test the game out on the Steam Deck, since it also had just recently gotten the Steam Deck Playable badge. The badge notes that the game is perfect to play on the go, except that the launcher needs the touchscreen, a community control configuration would be better, you might need to manually bring up the virtual keyboard, and there may be some small in-game text.

Most of these issues are obvious in the game, but I wanted to take a look at performance. I have been seeing a lot of people talking about how it’s great on the Steam Deck, but I wanted to see how accurate that was. There were even some reports on ProtonDB saying that they were getting 60 FPS on high graphics. So, I wanted to see for myself just how great it is to play.

However, it’s not nearly as great as the reports say. There are two main types of gameplay in Zenless Zone Zero: walking around in the overworld and the contained fights. Both of these have their share of issues, and ultimately, it’s hard to recommend playing this at any frame rate above 30.

The overworld drops and stutters like crazy if you try to play at high frame rates. Even on the lowest possible settings, I was regularly getting drops into the 30s and sometimes below when I was running around. Thankfully, this is not the most important part of the game where we really benefit from the higher frame rate.

But combat doesn’t always fare much better. Yes, the contained levels mean it can hit higher frame rates like 60 FPS, but there are regular drops depending on the level's complexity and the type of attack each agent has. Some normal attacks and ultimate attacks were perfectly fine and didn’t drop the frame rate, while other specials are so flashy that they can make the frame rate drop into the 20s momentarily, causing some stuttering throughout combat.

Some of this is masked by the usual slight slowdown that comes from normal combat, like the pauses when attacks land, but it happens too frequently, and I could still tell when it was stuttering. It’s not the end of the world, but especially in larger fights, where you may have to dodge enemies, it can become a problem.

Because of both of these, I would recommend going on the lower settings with a 30 FPS cap. Zenless Zone Zero still looks pretty great, and the effects are still very flashy in combat, and we have way more stability than trying to push above it. Playing on the default medium settings is still doable at 30 FPS, but there may be a few extra drops here and there, which I want to avoid. I would still consider it playable, but it definitely needs compromises. Still, despite all of this, it can definitely be played on the Steam Deck, which is quite nice.

Zenless Zone Zero can be downloaded for free on Steam right now.

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