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.

My receptions of Genshin as someone that played for a year

I'm not going to talk about the gacha, as its been discussed a lot throughout the lifespan of the game, and there is not much else to add.

- Story

Main story is alright at best, side quests are where the intriguing plots and characters are. Feels unpolished at times especially in cut scenes, where sometimes dialogue gets randomly skipped while the characters are still talking. The characters, even the playable ones, if you are so lucky to get them, are well characterized and are pretty solid. The playable ones usually offer a variety of voice lines and stories in their character profile tab, where we can not only explore them and how they feel about the world surrounding them, but also their relationship with other characters which is pretty fun to listen at, thanks to the great work the VAs have put in them.

- Graphics

Visually, the game is stunning, the character's design is top notch (if we exclude generic NPCs), and its gorgeous to look at the scenery and enemies alike. The shading and overall art style of the game is very pleasing to look at, as it follows a "cartoony" look, but without lacking any details that usually comes with it.

- Gameplay/Exploration

The exploration of the world of Teyvat can be fun at first, but after you've explored the area they immediately become more of a "chore", as they turn into a daily checklist of stuff to collect if you want to upgrade or maximize a character in a reasonable time, on the off chance that you get them.

- Gameplay/Combat

The combat of Genshin Impact is one of its strongest points. It's fun and mastering it feels extremely good. Weaving characters, creating energy to be funneled on your carries, dodging, enemy manipulations all feel extremely good. Thinking about all the combos and combinations, coming up with your teams as you challenge the Spiral Abyss toughest floors is always fun, and seeing your team run through it like an hot knife on butter is a good feeling. In terms of challenge though its very variable on the characters, weapons, artifacts and constellations that you have, so its hard to give a precise gauge on what's hard and what's not, as its a very personal experience, and the Abyss always changes every month or so, and depending on the blessings and enemies that you are going to face the experience is bound to be much different from the one that I'm used to at the time of writing.

- Gameplay/Dailies

The overall gameplay loop, of spending resin to do domain or "bosses" to get upgrade materials, is fine but can get tedious at time, especially after doing the same domain over and over since its the one that drops what you are after. Most domains don't offer incentives to use comps or characters of a certain element, usually they hinder you if you don't follow the rules which can be a bit annoying at times.

- Multiplayer

The co-op of the game almost feels like an afterthought, it does not feel good to play, you are only locked to one character instead of the 4 that you are used to. Characters still only have their two skills and that's it. You find yourself having a lot of downtime between your abilities, so a lot of time will be spent mashing your mouse 1/attack button while doing pitiful damage to the point where its not even worth it straining your finger and occasionally hitting the dodge button while weaving in an ability or two every 6s+ Co-op was the focus of only one event at best (which was just prop hunt) and that's it. It's huge wasted potential. In its defense, the Serenitea Pot, which is the player housing does use the co-op feature, but unfortunately only to show off your home, and wish we had activities to do with other people in there beside player made ones.

- Extra/Housing

Talking about the Serenitea Pot, that too feels like huge wasted potential. Having to choose to either buying stuff to progress your character or buying stuff you make your Pot look prettier is very annoying if you care about both. Also, when decorating your teapot you are very limited by the difference and "weight" that the game assigns to the furnishing that you are using, and its a very conservative limit. Creative people are sure to get their best out of said limit, but its painful to work around, especially if you like variety between your decorations. To add salt on the wound, if you ever decide to get creative and find out you are missing a specific piece of furniture to create you vision (eheh) be prepared to wait around 12-16 real time hours for it as crafting does take that long.

- Extra/Minigame that I would love if it was done properly

Lastly, I wanna talk about the new feature, fishing. The fishing minigame is OK, by itself, its a ripoff from the Stardew Valley fishing system almost 1:1. The problem comes from the transparency of it, and how it relates to progress. You can only fish a few specific spots in the whole map. There is a limited number of fish per spot that you can get before they run out, then they ender a 48h REAL TIME respawn. You can exchange fish for 1 weapon and its upgrades or other fishing gear. This means that they are tied to progress. There is a chance that a fish might spawn as an "Ornamental Fish" which means you can put it in your teapot to show off. Said fishes cannot be exchanged for your progression. Even though they are the "same fish" as the one you would exchange. It still counts as a -1 to the fishing spot total of fishes. So its not a bonus, its a -1 fish, which go on a 48hrs respawn. MiHoYo managed to create something that should feel "prestigious" and rare that you would want to expose to other people as a "-1 fish". As a detriment, instead of a bonus. Because they want to limit player resources. This is all made worse when you take into consideration that there is no surprise in the fish you find and barely any discovery since we can see which fish we are about to get. It takes the slowness of fishing and takes away the randomness of it, and seeing if you caught the cool ass 1% chance fish that you have been chasing for days. Because you can just see them and there's a limited number of them.

how's the co-op in this game? I got a friend who used to play WoW but is now long-since 'adulting' and think i might be able to lure them into playing this one with me if it scratches that wow itch! (and sounds like it probably would)

people complain about the resin timer but i dont see a problem as that's like a hardcap on a game to balance one's life so you can't overplay it. :D

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.

Surprisingly decent game. I sank around 80 hours into it and got to AR32, spent 0$ so far. The gacha rate is maddening and the resin mechanic makes grinding more frustrating but considering that it features:

• great graphics and soundtrack
• fun gameplay and element-based combat
• tons of characters with unique abilities
• an open world with huge map that encourage exploration via simple puzzles
• playable on PC, PS4 and mobile with cross-save between PC and mobile
• fully voiced story questline in multiple languages (CN, KR, JP and EN)
• featuring many popular voice actors at that
• more content in future updates

all for free, its easy to overlook on the game's shortcoming. IMHO, its not as good as BOTW but its definitely one of the biggest surprise this year.

Ok it is about time to have another update. If I had to guess, I think I have around 20-24 hours in the game right now. I am currently AR 23 and starting chapter 1 of the main story (the Archon Quests). The game is really fun, but it can be rather grindy (I'm talking about materials and exp, not the gacha for characters and stronger weapons, which was inevitable).

Expect to use exp materials on your characters a lot however, since leveling up can take quite a long time, and you will eventually get new characters to replace current characters on your party.

I got to say, this game is actually really good considering the fact that it is free and everything. I do notice similarities between this game and BOTW, (ex: GI's Hilichurls and BOTW's bokoblins), but I think it has enough of it's own elements to be considered a separate experience from BOTW (the best example being the interchangeable characters). The story itself seems unique so far although I may have to update this part as I progress in the game.

Now that being said, this is a free to play game, but it does incorporate gacha elements so the wishes you wish for is randomized (with a pity system) (also I have never played a gacha game before, so I have no idea what to expect). For the amount of content there is in the game, I think the gacha system we have is reasonable. I will update my thoughts in the future. So far though its pretty good.

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.

First hour impressions so far: I'm getting a ton of Breath of the Wild vibes from this game and I am for it since it's on PC, it's F2P, and Breath of the Wild is one of my top 3 favorite games(even though I emulated BOTW).

Reasons why it reminds me of BOTW:

• Climbing system relies on climbing anything and stamina

• Shooting with your fire arrows can burn down boxes and barrels with items inside

• Enemy campsites set up just like Bokoblin sites

Really neat F2P game so far, but you can't pet the dog as of now. Good thing we have this NPC though. Let me guess. He went off to buy milk and cigarettes.