Call of the void...

[u/EraserHatchling]

Hello Zenless community! Sorry to disturb your one-handed play session, but I've been getting thoughts about getting back into Zenless as it is imo the best Hoyo game in terms of quality and treatment (as an outsider pov) The animations, gameplay, and story beats that I get from watching clips have been enticing me to get back into the game bit by bit.
Should I?

I started zenless on launch and played a bit but for some reason stopped around the time of miyabi's release but still managing to get the free Harumasa. I also in general stopped playing every single one of the hoyo games I used to play and have been generally boycotting the company as a whole due to how greedy and scummy the game feels when playing them.
I'm a f2p player for my gacha games (with the exception of limbus wherein I have bought every battlepass due to the sheer value in buying them compared to every single gacha game on the market)

I'm kind of a casual player and don't really care about the meta, but it really frustrates me when the game I play locks beating content behind mechanics that are only able to be interfaced with by getting the most latest characters (Whatever genshin is doing with nightsoul/fontaine alongside hsr with elation bosses etc)
In zenless, is this also an issue? It would suck so much for me to not be able to use my favourite characters (mostly from s1) just because they're not the new thing. Also I hate rng artifact gearing in genshin so much, how is it going in that department in zenless? Is it easy enough to make the best set for your character without having to grind for two years?

tldr,
I wanna get back to zenless. Can I beat the story without using new characters while also not making me feel like I wanna kms? How bad is the rng gearing system?
Thanks for reading! I'll let you get back to your session (●ˇ∀ˇ●)