Genshin Impact (2020)

Great, consistent graphics style. Environments are gorgeous, especially the purples and cherry blossoms of Inazuma, and the lakes and architecture of Liyue -- the first sighting of Liyue after leaving Mondstadt for the first time was genuinely breath-taking. Some character designs are great, personal favourites being Kaeya, Candace, Dehya, and Alhaitham. However, character designs are beginning to seem stale, repetitive, and uncreative by this point, and it makes it hard to get excited for new ones. There are, however, a pretty good variety of personalities and outlooks represented in the cast. Unfortunately, the protagonist is basically a void who doesn't speak, Paimon, your ever-present 'helper'/companion, is genuinely infuriating, and I don't care for the copy-pasted "sleepy girl" (Sayu, Layla) and "overworked woobie" (Jean, Ganyu) archetypes.

The quality of the voice acting varies, but it's generally pretty great. Paimon's voice is like nails on a chalkboard and I would actively love an option to mute her and her alone.

I love the lore and storyline, and I'm genuinely invested in seeing where it goes.

I like the gameplay fine. Now that I've had a taste of Honkai: Star Rail's combat I'm not super into going back to Genshin's, but that's just me.

The four-player co-op is useful and fun for domains and bosses, but there's a ton you can't do in multiplayer that just seems silly. Why can't you do any quests while in multiplayer? Why can't you talk to NPCs?

Overall, I like it. It's gacha, so obviously don't play it if you're prone to gambling, FOMO, or have an addictive personality - if you're able to resist temptation, you should be able to grind for all the currency you need without spending anything. It definitely gets review-bombed and unfairly maligned because of sections of the community and immediate opposition to just the gacha aspect (understandably). If you don't participate in the gacha side of the game, then the amount of free content you get is INSANE and completely worth it.

That said, unless you're really interested in the story, open world, and characters, I'd still recommend Star Rail over Genshin, and that's coming from someone who usually greatly prefers fantasy and real-time combat to sci-fi and turn-based. It's far, far more generous with its currencies, daily tasks are much quicker to get through, and it's much easier to get through without excessive grinding.

This is the game that convinced me that gacha mechanics are an insult to the art of game design. For a game that has exploration as it's selling point, the side quests and NPCs are incredibly boring. Why? Because why make an interesting NPC, when you can take that interesting concept, and divide it into three sellable characters?

It was fun while it lasted. I built all the teams I could, for all the elements. Nothing feels challenging anymore. I have a fitting team for every type of enemy.

They released all the elements, and it's like they ran out of ideas. Wtf is pneuma and ousia?

I quit in version 4.1, I have no idea how they butchered the game after that, but from what I saw it's only getting worse and worse

played this on PC. Was okay for a while. tons of annoying gacha design, weird spendable items and currencies, and just a lot of shit, however underneath it all is a pretty fun openworld JRPG that is cute and fun to explore and fight stuff. I wanted to make it to the multiplayer unlock but didnt put the time in

I've pretty much abandoned this and doubt i'll return to it, having replaced this with Phantasy Star Genesis (which i also ) which is an overall more visually interesting game that is similar enough to this in enough ways without as much spam.

Admittedly being a bit late to this party, upon finally acquiring an old ps4, I downloaded this free-to-play gem that people and magazines have been buzzing about since its release back in 2020.

My main ambition was to get to the online part, giving me the possibility to play with my friends. In my research, I concluded that I needed just a few hours of work to level up enough should do it.

Originally I was very intrigued by the game since it was free-to-play
and was "inspired" by Breath of The Wild. I must first and foremost admit that I was quite disappointed by just how similar, or should I say rather ripped-off, it was from the Zelda game. I feel like it's ok to borrow elements and mechanics from other games and that's all well and good, but here it's just way to0 much and blatantly obvious. It made me frustrated and gave me a terrible first impression of the game, which might in hindsight have skewed my view of the game as a whole...

Giving it a couple of hours to try and get invested in the story, the world, and the characters, it all mostly fell flat to me. Initially, the story quests felt rich and engaging, but it all quickly fell quite off track and became senseless and uninteresting. (JUST LET ME GET TO THE ONLINE PART DAMMIT).

Since it's a gatcha game that focuses on the economy of characters, the plot felt made up so that new and cool characters are introduced in a constant stream. This at such a rate that I didn't feel like was able to build up any strong bonds with anyone.

Maybe if I would have continued to play I would have gotten more invested in the world and the story. But honestly, I simply feel like it is just not worth my time. I was also very disappointed to figure out that you could only play online in the dungeons and not fluff around and explore. If I want a wholesome experience without being manipulated by the slot machine-gatcha-capitalism-system, I could just spend some hard-earned cash on investing in a copy of Breath of the Wild and have an ACTUAL good time.

I have been really enjoying this game. The characters, environment, story and music are amazing. That being said, this game is not finished and it's less than a year old so its inevitable that some features need to be polished:

• the resin system

You use resin to fight bosses and domains so you can ascend your characters, weapons and artifacts but the resin takes way too long to fill up(24 hours). Considering how many materials you need for just one character (every character also has its special needs and wants), it's going to take you too long to even max out one character (unless you're rich and have money to spend on this game). My suggestion is that they cut the resin refill in half so that it's at least more friendly to f2p players.

• the gacha system

I don't have any experience with gacha games but I will say that I don't like the system in this game. After you finish all the quests, statues, abyss, and whatever, there is no big way for you to earn enough primogems to take part in the gacha wishing if you're a f2p player. Sure, most of the time there are different events that give you primogems but the only constant are the daily commissions which give you just 60 which isn't even enough for one wish(160 primos). Considering you can wish up to 90 times until you get a 5-star character and 180 times until you get the featured character, you need to save for months in advance.

• the rng for weekly boss drops

You need to fight bosses that give treasure once a week. Their specials items are then used to make weapons and level up character talents. The problem is that their drops are so inconsistent. Some people have gone months without getting weapon prototypes. I myself have so many materials to level up other characters but I have yet to see even 1 drop of a specific item that I need to level up my main DPS. What's up with that?

Overall, I do really enjoy this game and I don't stress about the gacha system way too much because I learned through trial and error that there's no good in being obssesed with and paying real money just so you can have your fictional waifu/husbando. The resin and rng are what needs to be focused on, in my opinion. I cant wait to see what they have in store next for this game.

Played on PC and iPad OS.

Controls aren't great on either, but the PC interface is a pretty lazy copy of the mobile interface. Needs an interface optimized for PC. No controller support for iPad.

Once the initial sheen of exploring the open world wears off and you level enough to experience the meat of the systems, it becomes a pretty miserly gacha game - especially compared to something like Azur Lane or Arknights. Combat is enjoyable but uncomplicated, and character power depends heavily on rolling dupes and feeding weapons + artifacts - so, grinding. A lot.

Character designs are mostly bad. Even low-tier characters look like they're designed to be full-on anime protagonists with way too many details.

Story is entirely uninteresting to me. Characters are typical anime tropes. Paimon is okay with Japanese VO but the English VO was pretty rough.

I am currently only a few hours into Genshin Impact. The game opens up with a beautiful anime-style cutscene, which gives me high hopes for things to come. You are given a bit of back story then go through a short tutorial segment. The control system is basic and easy to grasp from the tutorial provided.

So far, it seems each character has a different combat style or element they can control. Switching between each character in combat is exceptionally smooth, and I don’t feel as though I am wasting any time trying out each combat style against small mobs. Sadly, some mechanics feel very basic. When tasked with cooking a meal, I hoped for a Cooking Mama-esque mini-game but was sorely disappointed when all I needed to do was press a button once to stop a pointer on a gauge, easily getting a perfect score every time.

Shortly into the game, I was gifted with a glider, then thrown into an on-rails shooter style boss fight against an almighty dragon, this fight was unlike anything I experienced with the glider in Breath of the Wild. Unfortunately, this battle was not necessarily fun. As I held my finger down over the boss and watched its health bar quickly deplete, I thought… What’s the point? Put me back on the ground.

I can certainly see and feel the similarities Genshin Impact has to Breath of the Wild, but each character introduced brings a different mood, each town has a lived-in, natural atmosphere that is a joy to explore. It is, at the most superficial level, a copy. But anyone who plays will quickly see these titles have very little in common.