Isekaing: From Zero to Zero Review

Have you ever played a game where your first thought is, “What the hell was that?” That’s the experience I’ve had playing Isekaing: From Zero to Zero. It is one of those experiences where it is so bizarre I’m not totally sure how to describe it, but I will try. Just warning you the images in this review may be a bit offensive, so continue at your own risk. As soon as you begin the game, you are treated to a theme song for the game that tells a bit about the story. I’m not used to videogames having their own theme with lyrics!

Isekaing is like a retro-style RPG, but most of the time you aren’t doing much other than reading tonnes of text, so it feels more like a visual novel that I was clicking through. The story revolves around Zoe Powell. The narrator explains that this is her last day in this world and poses the question: would she make different choices if she knew this? The intro talks about humans being stupid enough to assume that the entire universe revolves around them, and this accurately describes our main character. You soon see that she is a rude and incredibly entitled person who loves to swear any chance she gets, so I wasn’t too heartbroken to learn of her bad luck. Though this is only the beginning of her story, we will be stuck as Zoe for the rest of this adventure.

We see Zoe barging into the men's washroom, and a guy there is questioning why she is there. She quickly tells him to fuck off. The stock photo guy replies by saying, “If you are rude to strangers, one day God will punish you.” After this pleasant interaction, we see her walk outside and see a semi-truck with blades that look like teeth for a bumper and a sticker that says Isekai Express. It also has a skull logo with red swirled around it on the grill of the truck. After exclaiming, “What the fuck is this?" the truck (called Truck-kun) begins to talk to her, saying that it was told that she was being a very naughty girl. He informs her that it is her time to go and that her judgment awaits. Her biggest complaint is that she just set up her onlyfans page, and she’s just starting to get popular. The vehicle states that nobody can stop the wheels of destiny; we hear the truck start, and it goes to a black screen.

Now that she is dead, Zoe is being judged by God. She is found guilty of being mean to strangers, and the punishment is being forced to live in a pixel world. Before going to this new pixelated world, a placeholder image appears with stick figure-like drawings. She protests, telling God not to put her in an unfinished title because it’s probably early access and will stay there forever. After this, we see Zoe in a pixel world, as a baby. After insulting the woman who seems to be her mother, we get to see a time skip of 20 years.

She gets out of bed (in a church?) naked, proclaiming that she had such a great sleep, and it was worth dying for. It seems like we will be able to make some decisions, like what class Zoe will play as a farmer, forester, shepherd, slaver, beggar, alcoholic, housewife, and squire. But this decision is taken away from you as Zoe is unimpressed until she sees Rage Mage. This is a class where you unleash your anger on everyone that is around you, where the spell you use becomes more powerful. Now we finally get to select a personality trait from three options. Weaponised Words make people believe everything you say, no matter how ridiculous it is; Creative Mind lets you come up with unusual solutions to your problems; and finally, Brute Force is exactly what you expect. That is the one I opted for; I figure this would be how she handles all the situations anyway.

At times it feels like the text is never-ending and there was no player input for long sessions of dialogue. It was making me wonder if I ever get to do anything in this game. Eventually, you get to select a control scheme between keyboard, Steam Deck, or Xbox controller. There is a menu that you can open to change your options; this is also where you will save your game.

Isekaing: From Zero to Zero has decent visuals, with pixelated characters resembling those of an RPG Maker game. However, it's notable for the inclusion of unique AI-generated artwork throughout the game. All the posters and pictures hanging on the walls in the places you visit are this bizarre art; they don’t add anything to the plot; they are just there. Speaking of the plot, this whole story is basically just bad jokes that aren’t funny but are actually pretty offensive. The use of terms like "retard," rape-related jokes, and blatantly misogynistic lines, in addition to the constant use of profanity and poor grammar, is never appealing.

Pretty much every character you meet has a song to sing for you; these, like the dialogue with the characters, are full of grammar issues and are just strange AI-generated tunes. The game does allow you to skip the songs, which is nice because some of them are incredibly long and don’t talk about anything important anyway. There isn’t really any other music in the game other than the one “party” you have to attend. Besides this, all the airtime is filled with characters talking constantly (AI generated once again). I found Zoe’s voice to be incredibly grating; guess I’m just not a big fan of the stuck-up valley girl sound.

I have to say that my time with Isekaing: From Zero to Zero has been very weird and not really something that I would want to spend another three hours on. I guess I just don’t have the right sense of humour to really enjoy a title like this. However I will say that my highlight for the game is when I had to go into the options menu to turn down the background music when a character told me to as it was way too loud to have a conversation over; this was a clever addition. Isekaing: From Zero to Zero does live up to its promise of being a game that is different from anything I have previously played, but not the most enjoyable experience.