Zero Division is set in the gritty cyberpunk future. As is normal for these types of tales, corporations rule the world and hold everyone under their sway. Players control a group of operatives whose very existence was purchased by the corporations. They're clones, and they are sent on disposable missions. Should they die, their information is backed up, so the next clone can learn from their mistakes. These lucky semi-immortal "heroes" now have to take on the deadliest foes in the world for a chance to escape this endless cycle of cyber-samsara.

As far as gameplay goes, Zero Division is a Slay the Spire-style collectible card game mixed with an RPG. The closest thing I can compare it to is actually Steamworld Quest. You have three characters, each of which has a miniature deck of cards. Each character has their own distinct health points, attack and defensive stats, and specialized cards that only they can use in addition to more generic cards that anyone can equip.

When a game starts, your characters are dealt cards from their hands and can use AP to activate those cards for various effects, ranging from attacks to buffs to summoning holographic allies. On top of that, each character also has one or more special skills that can be activated without an AP cost. These skills range from passives, like the tanky Paladin not losing the ability to block after a turn, to active skills like the hacker Mirage being able to create a hologram of a character to draw aggro.

Obviously, synergy is the name of the game, and figuring out which cards work best for your deck is important. Zero Division provides a fair number of options. Most characters can fill more than one role if you have the right decks. Paladin can be built to tank attacks until the cows come home, but he can also be built as a buffbot who exists to power up other more combat-ready characters. The game lets you preserve cards by spending a special resource that gives you access to them in future runs, so once you've found a build you like, you can more easily go back to it. You can also use that same resource to upgrade character-specific cards, allowing you to spec for certain builds. Each character has a tree with two mutually exclusive choices, but you can swap between them at will.

Enemies have their own attributes as well, which requires you to plan around them. Like player characters, enemies not only have health/attack/armor stats but also unique passives that tend to require a careful approach. Some enemies are stronger in groups, requiring you to prioritize burning down their numbers before they overwhelm you. Another may gain armor and attack every time you play a card, quickly rendering them nearly unbeatable unless you plan carefully. Bosses are particularly nasty, with distinct actions taken in each round and more complex gimmicks.

Outside of battle, you can traverse a standard Slay the Spire-style node map, where each spot you visit contains enemies, an elite boss, special events, or shops where you can buy gear. New equipment comes in the form of additional cards and special relics that you can find. As previously mentioned, you can spend a special resource to keep cards through runs, but relics are lost. More importantly, you have a supply count. Every time you take a move, you lose supplies. Once you run out, the resources you get from fighting enemies drastically drops. If finish the stage at exactly zero supply or more, you get bonus items. It's a nice way to give you the freedom to explore as you like, while still encouraging you to try new things.

For the most part, Zero Division is fun. It feels more like an RPG that happens to have card mechanics rather than a raw Slay the Spire-style game, with the wide variety of mechanics and concepts all coming together to require more of a focus on a specific build. The variety in enemy types keeps fights feeling engaging and prevents the biggest numbers from feeling like the best solution. There's a constantly ramping difficulty with a number of different options, including the option to play the game in a more casual mode with fewer restrictions or a draft mode, where you can somewhat randomize your starting deck.

Unfortunately, there are a few things dragging down Zero Division's otherwise fun concept, but I can imagine the issues being handled with patches. Probably the most noteworthy is that the balance is very off. For example, let's look at the Assault archetype. Renegade, the first one you get, feels reasonably designed. She can take extra actions and gain bonus AP at a cost to losing AP in a future round. It sounds fine. In comparison, the second one you unlock, Rook, gains 1 AP every time you use a Strike-type card and comes with multiple Strike cards that cost 1 or 0 AP and also draw cards further. Not only is this basically the same passive with no drawbacks, but it also becomes trivially easy to set up infinite draw chains. It's probably the most egregious case in the game, but in most cases, it feels like the unlockable characters are superior to their starter counterparts. The ability to upgrade characters and keep cards makes this snowball.

The other problem is that I ran into a lot of bugs. For some reason, the tutorials would restart every time I closed the game and opened it again, boss fights would freeze or break, and unlocks would somehow become locked again. I had one perfect storm where I got to a boss with five different phases, beat it, and discovered I couldn't progress, but quitting that adventure locked one of the characters. It was aggravating enough that I felt stonewalled on progress, but losing one of the characters I liked was icing on the cake. It's rough enough that I'd advise caution until at least a couple of patches are out.

Visually, Zero Division is fine. It has the same basic visuals you'd expect from a CCG of its type, portrayed mostly through static pictures and some good — but not great — card art. Probably the shining moment is the bosses who actively interact with the board you're playing on, with missiles raining down, robots smashing floors, and even destroying the arena. It's mostly visual, but it's a nice way to make bosses feel more meaningful.

Zero Division is a game with a good amount of potential, but it still needs a few passes to get smoothed out. The core gameplay is fun and engaging, but some balance issues and bugs keep it from reaching its full potential. It's difficult to recommend right now, but it's the definition of a game to check out once it's had a little more time to bake. Despite my complaints, I am genuinely looking forward to returning and trying Zero Division again once it's more stable.

Score: 6.5/10