Honkai: Star Rail (2023)

The monetization is perfect. While the price of anything other than the $10 monthly subscription is so ridiculous it makes almost no sense to pay, you can simply earn your currency. Consequently, it is very easy to gain many characters for free. However, if you are rich, I can see this game absorbing your wealth endlessly.

The reason the monetization is perfect is because it makes doing content in the game feel very meaningful. You have a mission: gain access to a new style of gameplay and team composition. It takes a while, but the character collection here feels like putting together Exodia.

I could not imagine playing this game as a kid. As we all age, we gain a different perspective on time. At 40, one year is 1/40th of your life. At 10, one year is 1/10th of your life.

The mechanics that feel so comfortable for me probably encourage excessive spending for younger, more malleable minds. Heck, even I occasionally spend a bit more every year or so.

The issue people might have is that the time commitment this game demands makes it important in your life; perhaps the most important thing. And in the periods when it is that important, spending money will feel very easy.

There isn't any grand wall that blocks you if you don't spend money. it is entirely about min-maxing and character collection. A very tasty looking apple... although I actually much prefer this game's monetization to that of, say, Call of Duty or Diablo. Cosmetics are not a thing, and you can earn currency much more easily than by paying money.

The characters, builds, and world are all exceptionally well-designed. The endgame is really engaging, and making characters more and more powerful is very satisfying.

Playing the game for 30 minutes a day for a month will net you around $50-$100 worth of pulls. I tend to save up the 160 needed for a guarantee on a character I want for two reasons:

1. You are no longer gambling, so there is no chance of disappointment.
2. It takes that long to build up any character fully anyway.

This is a great game with a very engaged community. And while it is possible to create complex theories and mathematical spreadsheets, it is shockingly simple in some ways. You need to make important choices all the time. Overall, it is a very engaging game.

Considering I've always preferred fantasy to sci-fi and real-time combat to turn-based, you'd think I'd be a Genshin person more than a Star Rail person, but now that I've played this going back to Genshin means I'm spending my entire time thinking Man, I wish this was more like Star Rail.

The QoL improvements are genuinely and massively appreciated - off the top of my head, the dailies are so much faster to get through and have actual mini storylines rather than just "Go here and kill 10 hilichurls", you got more Trailblaze Power right off the bat than you ever did Resin (AND this just recently updated to be even more and to give you a reserve amount so you don't have to deplete it daily), you get far more free currency for events and missions (going back to Genshin makes this discrepancy very obvious, I'm usually pulling teeth to get 20 primogems at the end of a longass questline vs. Star Rail where I'm getting 60 jades for every part of one), grinding is so much easier because you can get exactly the material you need from everywhere whenever you want unlike Genshin's "this domain is only open on Wednesdays and you might get some random other item instead" shtick, the pity is much more generous and the Standard banner lets you manually choose a character you want after a certain number of pulls, etc.

On top of that, you can absolutely play this completely free with the characters you get from the beginning. The characters you get for free just from the early storyline are the Trailblazer (Physical damage, later optional Fire support/shield), March (Ice shield), Dan Heng (Wind DPS), Natasha (Physical healer), Asta (Fire buff support), Qingque (Quantum damage), Yukong (Imaginary damage/support), Serval (Electric damage), and Herta (Ice damage). On top of that, so far off the top of my head events have freely given you Sushang (Physical damage) and Dr. Ratio (Imaginary damage), as well as additional instances of Yukong and Qingque.

I've been playing for several months now, and Trailblazer and March are still absolutely mainstays in my team and very rarely leave it. They've carried me through most fights. Asta is also my go-to Fire element despite me having pulled several others by now, and Dan Heng was always in my team until recently too. I still use Dr. Ratio pretty regularly. You can absolutely build a core team of purely F2P characters and get through the current storyline just fine.

I personally don't play daily anymore, I don't feel pressured to grind for currencies unless there's a specific upcoming character I want to pull for, and I don't feel a need to grind for levelling/ascension resources unless I have a particular goal in mind for a character which only takes a few days to complete, if that. This helps me avoid burnout so I'd recommend doing the same if you're prone to that.

The only dip in story quality has been the Xianzhou trips - when I was playing through Belobog and Penacony I found myself actively and constantly wanting to play to progress the story, while with the first trip to the Xianzhou I enjoyed it but could easily go weeks without feeling the urge to continue, and the second time around I actively dreaded having to get through it.

The characters are varied and pretty engaging, and it hasn't quite yet fallen into the Genshin trap of a ton of the new characters looking the same as pre-existing ones because they're just recycling the same generic cute girl designs. My personal favourite characters so far are Sampo (and I really hope some of the theories about him are right because that'd be fascinating), Welt, Blade, and Aventurine. I actually also really enjoy the main character, Caelus/Stelle - both their design and colour scheme, and their personality. They're not a silent protagonist like Genshin's Aether/Lumine, and I love that - they have some genuinely hilarious dialogue and moments.

I honestly look forward to seeing where this story is going.

Shoutout to the music, too - the Belobog final boss fight theme is now on repeat in the Astral Express.