Zenless Zone Zero – Should you play casual or challenge mode in ZZZ?

There are a couple of important choices you’re presented with at the beginning of Zenless Zone Zero, but perhaps the most crucial one is choosing whether you play casual mode or challenge mode.

This choice completely alters how some gameplay aspects function, which means it’s important to choose wisely. Here’s whether you should play casual or challenge mode in ZZZ and everything you need to know to make this choice.

Should you choose casual or challenge mode in Zenless Zone Zero?

In ZZZ, you should choose causal mode if you want a story-driven experience with easy combat and challenge mode if you’re seeking a fair balance between challenge and story with difficult combat. The difference between the two essentially comes down to combat, but here are the exact details of each.

• Casual mode features a story-focused experience with generally easier combat to deal with. Although this mode is called casual, it feels like the intended gameplay mode for most players as it’s not super easy, but not too tough either. It’s essentially the most balanced mode you can choose.
• Challenge mode adds in tougher combat to provide more difficult fights that accompany the main storyline. This mode seems to be intended for more experienced players who are looking to make the game more challenging.

Regardless of which mode you pick, you can change your difficulty settings at any time. This means you can easily swap between them until you figure out which one is right for you.

If you don’t have any experience with gacha fighting games like this one, I recommend you choose casual mode. But if you’re a regular HoYoverse fan who’s delved into Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail or you’re familiar with other similar games like Wuthering Waves, you might enjoy upping the difficulty with the challenge mode.

The developers previously told Dot Esports that ZZZ is designed with accessibility for all players in mind, so this choice is designed to let you decide how you want to play. The casual mode is meant to be approachable for someone who has never played an action game before, while the challenge mode is difficult enough for those who are regulars with these kinds of games to still find it challenging.

Differences between casual and combat mode in Zenless Zone Zero

The main difference between the two is solely how tough each battle is—more specifically, how much health the opponents you face have. Enemies in challenge mode have more health than those in casual mode. Beyond this, there are no other differences between the two and you don’t get any additional rewards or loot for choosing challenge mode over casual mode or vice versa.

Ultimately, it’s best to just choose whichever mode feels right for you. And if you choose one mode but later decide it’s not a fit, you can always change it in the Settings.

Regardless of which path you choose, it’s worth working on getting 100 free pulls, claiming ZZZ codes, and deciding which S-Rank character you want for 300 pulls. All of these impact how the game plays out for you since they determine what kind of characters and loot you end up with.