Inzoi Early Access Review: "Excuse me, but haven't we met before?"

We are going to start this review by making a precept that will be a constant throughout the text and that it is better to make clear from the beginning because comparisons are going to be very common and the sooner the better. Yes, inZOI is an evolution of The Sims (don't drink a shot every time I invoke this reference, or you'll finish the article as drunk as a pirate), in fact it is a blatant upgrade in which the publishers have not had the slightest hesitation in rescuing all the salvageable elements of this Maxis saga to "give it a glow-up" it and turn it into a next-gen delirium of human simulation.

That settled, let's see if the proposal from the South Koreans from Krafton convinces or remains one of those weird attempts to improve on a 30-year-old video game institution that nobody asked for.

inZOI's proposal is as simple as it is honest, our objective is none other than to generate a virtual avatar and immerse ourselves in the eventful life of a city with all that this entails, finding a house to our liking, friends... Who knows? Maybe love! Who knows? And generally explore this interactive world in its many options and tasks.

The first impression is overwhelming, the possibility of customisation is almost infinite and from the character editor itself, we can already glimpse the good work of the Koreans in the graphic section, which is excellent. The Sims managed, thanks to a very characteristic aesthetic, to convince us that graphically it wasn't so bad, when in reality it had a visual element that was little more than that of a mobile game. InZOI is all-in with next-gen graphics but, BUT, this is much more noticeable in the creation sections than in the gameplay. More on this later.

When it comes to creating our character, we can spend as much time as we want on it. Seconds if we choose one of the many pre-generated aspects that exist, or hours if we want to make an avatar in our own image and likeness? Or Ursula von der Leyen's, if we want to. The options are almost endless.

This same flood of options is applicable to the personalisation of everything around us, from our clothes, furniture, house, car... Everything can be changed to the point of exhaustion or nausea. In fact, if we get tired of the game's catalogue, we can use an AI tool, which works moderately well, to transfer images or objects to the virtual terrain and use them in our lives.

That feeling of unknown depth when it comes to customising everything, disappears quickly when we get into the game. To begin with, we have to decide whether to inhabit an existing house or start one from scratch. As in The Sims, we have a budget and we'll have to stick to it either way. In fact, we can also take on the role of a character with a pre-existing background and even a pre-existing family, but let's face it, that's not the option we've chosen and we'll be living life from scratch.

Well, as I was saying, once we have created our character and house, this means that we are minutes or hours after we have started, depending on how we have decided to proceed, we will realise that we are here, ok? And now? Well, we can do as much or as little as we want and it is important that we set our own objectives because the proposal of the game in this sense is quite open.

The first thing we will see is that the graphical splurge that we tasted in the character editors, is frankly diminished when we get to play for real. The visual environment is better than that of The Sims, but much less than expected. The character control is basically the same as in the Maxis' saga, a point and click system, with a drop-down option for the interactions with the person or object we want to interact with. It's true that there's an increase in the way you can interact with everything, but it's still a somewhat disappointing closed environment of options.

In this sense, and talking about what we can do with other characters we find in the game, inZOI has repeated ad nauseam that all the loose characters have an AI that helps to make their reactions more realistic and random when interacting with us. Well, as far as we have seen, this is at best only partially true.

Let's just say that playable characters have a problem when it comes to assuming their roles in the game and there is a sort of "flat rate" of actions that take a LOT out of an immersive, intelligent world. Let's take an example. If we suddenly start a fire and the firefighters arrive, they are perfectly fine sitting at the table making breakfast or talking to someone who is there. The result is poor and disappointing.

What is decidedly improved is the freedom of movement. In inZOI we can choose the city in which we will settle with different options and then we can move freely around the map. Well, maybe not freely either, because the reality is that the feeling of the world-atmosphere is constant, but certainly much deeper than in any of The Sims and with an acceptable degree of feeling of life. There are cars that we can buy and use and we have a mobile phone system to interact with the people we see.

In this sense the system is also quite limited and uses a reputation mode with the others, which will mark our relationship with them... Well, just like in The Sims. Once we progress up the friendship ladder, things can move on to love... Ah! l'amour! inZOI allows any kind of relationship between men and women and their possible combinations, as it should be, but no one should buy inZOI as a simulator with 18+ content because all sex and nudity scenes are censored or do not exist at all. We feel sorry for you, my peeping tom friends.

We may be at that awkward moment when it's time to remember that this is an offline game. Everything that happens in inZOI will stay in inZOI, literally with all the good (a little) and bad (a lot) that it has. Even so, we don't have to go crazy, because once we get over the empty feeling of the blank canvas that we have at the beginning, inZOI gives us a large number of things to do with our character and although the things don't usually represent a challenge as such when it comes to undertaking them, they are entertaining and laborious.

As for the game itself, well, a bit of the usual. Looking for jobs, friends, relationships... Yeah, I know what you're thinking: but I've already played that... And you're right! There are some cool new things in inZOI, but they are few, and mostly cosmetic. What is the core of the game is a bit like The Sims with additions like a dynamic weather or the option for your keko to play "alone" but nothing that really justifies putting in the hours and having a good time, leading to a feeling of lack of soul or emptiness that we honestly didn't expect, but that from the beginning is very apparent. We did like the feeling that time moves forward with our character and that allows us to "evolve" either as a family with growing children or as ourselves. Having explained all this, when in a review the explanation of the gameplay takes three paragraphs, it's really time to start worrying.

The music is another "homage" to The Sims, a mix of new age tunes with the curious property of being very relaxing, but at the same time enervating our soul to the limit of trankimazin, something that I personally always hated in Maxis' games and that here is rescued without even giving it a little spin to see how it could be varied. The voices of the characters are horrendous. It's another fictitious language of annoying noises that stops in a kind of mixture between Gru's minions and WoW's murlocks that I honestly don't understand how they have made it through the beta testing phases of the game. The sound effects in general are a bit forced, but I guess it's not bad.

After all that said and in summary, I realise that I probably sounded a bit too crude at times in my assessment of this game. It is possible that inZOI is not a great revolution in any aspect in terms of the lifesims we have played, but it is true that it brings a very crazy graphical element, especially in the character creator, and some other cool details that can motivate us to play a little... Yes, a little, because the reality is that I'm not sure that in 2025 this will be enough to keep the player in front of the computer for a long time, in fact, I'm afraid it won't be like that.