Genshin Impact Review
I shouldn’t love Genshin Impact as much as I do. It has loot boxes with horribly low drop rates, a power-up system that limits the speed at which I can progress at higher levels, and a very annoying sidekick that only mentions itself in third person. Those flaws would ruin other games, but Genshin Impact is also a great RPG, set in a vibrant open world that’s more fun than most full-price games I’ve played this year.
need to know
What is it? Free-to-play RPG inspired by Breath of the Wild
Expect to pay: Free via microtransactions
Developer: Mihaoyou
Publisher: Mihoyo
From Review: i7 7700, RTX 2070, 16GB RAM
multiplayer game? 4 people cooperate
Link: https://genshin.mihoyo.com/
If Genshin Impact has a secret weapon, it’s that it’s not afraid to brush up on other games’ features, most notably The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Like Nintendo’s seminal game, there’s a huge world to explore, filled with secrets, puzzles, and cleverly hidden loot. Fortunately, there are few icons on the map, so a lot of exploration is self-guided. If I hope to discover all this, I have to climb mountains, slide through canyons, and pay attention to my surroundings. It might offend die-hard Nintendo fans, but Genshin Impact isn’t just casual copy-and-paste ideas. It expands and tweaks them to be perfect for a loot-obsessed role-playing game — despite what its roots in a mobile game might mean — to be a lot of fun to play.
whole new world
Genshin Impact is actually easier to understand if you think of Genshin Impact less like a free-to-play mobile game (also available on PC and PS4) and more like a single-player JRPG like Ni No Kuni 2 or Tales of Vesperia. You will play as one of two staggered twins whose interdimensional vacation is ruined by a mysterious god. Whichever twin you choose to play will be thrown into the medieval kingdom of Taiwat and set out to find their siblings. After being accused of murdering a local demigod, it’s a journey from being introduced to the Order to proving his innocence. Sure, Genshin Impact might be a Chinese game, but it walks and talks like a JRPG.
It’s cliché and not exactly appealing, but the story is still interesting. My partner Paimon annoyed me, but the rest of the cast was likable thanks to the expressive and energetic English voice acting. While some missions are forgettable fillers, I really like the ones that focus only on specific characters in my party. For example, in Fairy’s Quest, I played her sous-chef role in a cooking competition, making tough choices about what ingredients to include in a dish or having to make sure they were cooked correctly. It’s the kind of cute, light-hearted fun I find myself clinging to in my 2020 nightmare.
Genshin Impact strikes a near-perfect balance between the intrinsic joy of exploration and extrinsic rewards like loot.
However, this story is not the reason why Genshin Impact took over a few weeks of my life. This happens when the game inevitably tells you to level up a bit before moving on to the next chapter. In a game like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, I resented how the story was limited by my level because it felt like my mom arbitrarily forced me to go out for an hour to work out. In Genshin Impact, however, it’s a blessing to be told that you have to level up a bit before you can continue, as exploration is what Genshin Impact does best.
Not only are the two areas, Mondstadt and Liyue, huge, but they are definitely full of puzzles, encouraging you to keep an eye on your surroundings. There are hidden chests full of loot hidden in most corners, but you might see three torches and decide to use some fire magic to light them up and get a reward. Or you’ll find a wayward spirit that guides you to some hidden treasure, or find special collectibles that can be given to special statues to increase your overall stamina.
Some of these puzzles can be solved in seconds, while others are more involved – mysterious riddles or hidden switches that require clever use of your magical abilities. It’s a world full of treasures, and sometimes I look at the vistas and feel a little overwhelmed by all the things I can see and want to investigate. It’s not uncommon for a short trip from one destination to another to turn into a spiral bend, as I stop to investigate a destroyed village, then gather some nearby ingredients, open a treasure chest hidden in a crack, and then Only saw some suspicious-placed, unlit torches.
If I spend an hour wandering around, I’ll quickly collect tons of equipment that can be broken down for crafting or use, money and resources to upgrade different party members, and currency needed to buy loot boxes. I’ll also gain experience points for Adventure Levels, which is what unlocks more story missions and features like special dungeons, daily missions and even co-op so I can explore with three friends – though it’s limited to a handful of events greatly limits its potential.
(Image credit: MiHoYo)
I prefer this system over most open world games because it strikes a near-perfect balance between the intrinsic joy of exploration and extrinsic rewards like loot. In Breath of the Wild, for example, I might spend an hour wandering, but there are only a handful of useless gems to show.
I love how the combat fits neatly into this fun search and loot loop. Although my party consists of four characters, at any given time, only the one I actively control will appear on the screen. With a single press of the number key, though, I can quickly switch to one of the other three, instantly making me start crying at enemies or using their abilities to solve a tricky puzzle.
Each character belongs to one of six elements that give them abilities and can interact with the environment and enemies in surprising and delightful ways. If it rains, an ice character like Kaeya can use his special ability to freeze enemies into solids, or I can use Lisa’s lightning strike to make them superconducting, so they continuously shock anyone nearby.
The environment also reacts to all this magic, so I can freeze water to build ice bridges or light grass fires, sweeping enemy camps and detonating powder kegs they’ve stored there. A lot of the puzzles also require some kind of magic, like using Amber’s rocket to ignite distant torches to reveal hidden chests, or using my protagonist’s earth ability to drop a heavy rock on the switch so the door will stay open .
It’s great to figure out all these interactions, but what’s really interesting is forming teams that can use each other’s elemental magic to create explosive combos that absolutely melt the HP bar for even the toughest of enemies. Since enemies are usually elements themselves, it’s kind of like a Pokémon, where I try to exploit elemental weaknesses while defending against my own weaknesses. For example, if I’m fighting a tall gnoll-style Mitacul, and he has a shield, I’ll switch to Faerie and throw her fire-breathing magic panda into battle so it can set the shield on fire. I would then switch to the main character and use her wind ability to turn those flames into a fiery vortex that almost instantly wipes out the shield – usually its wielder. Of course, many enemies will also try to use these tricks on you, so I have to keep an eye on my weaknesses too.
It’s a simple enough system that I got the hang of it in a few hours, but it’s never boring. The unpredictability of the weather, environmental features like hay or dynamite barrels, and the elemental abilities of my enemies themselves make things unpredictable and exciting.
lots of warnings
After 40 hours of playing, the significance of these loot boxes is almost baffling.
You can’t talk about how great Genshin Impact is without acknowledging its poor monetization practices beyond what you typically see in free PC games. Some of this is pretty standard stuff, like a battle pass with optional premium tracks that require real money to unlock. But Genshin Impact also sells loot boxes called Fates that cost around $3, well beyond the usual cosmetic skins. Fate will drop new characters or powerful new weapons for your team to use in battle. The rarest of these have only a 0.6% chance to drop – although there is some “regret” system that guarantees if you don’t get a top reward after opening up to 90 of them.
If you’ve played big mobile gacha games like Raid: Shadow Legends or Arknights, you’ll be familiar with these systems, but this is the first time I’ve played a PC game using them. As the kids say, it’s a little overhang.
The good news is that after 40 hours of playing it’s almost baffling small These loot boxes are important. You can earn a lot of the currency you need to buy them through various events, and the characters and weapons you can find just by playing the main campaign are enough to see and enjoy most of the things to do. In addition to the six characters I get for free from the story or through special in-game events, I also get eight other characters, the only thing I buy is a $5 subscription-like item that gives me an extra The premium per day currency.
(Image credit: MiHoYo)
Even if you are not as lucky as me, none of this will stop you from exploring everything you want. The characters you get for free are an eclectic bunch with a variety of different abilities that are useful both in combat and around the world. However, if you care about optimizing your team or maximizing individual characters, Genshin Impact will definitely blind you.
It’s an odd problem that I didn’t encounter until I reached level 40 and finished most of the story, but Genshin Impact’s endgame was pretty unbearable. Every character in my team and their weapons has an individual level that can be improved by giving them certain resources, but at certain thresholds, like level 20 and 40, you have to track down some rare resources by to “elevate”.
I really like the idea, the first few times I’m leveling up my character I like treasure hunting to find the right materials, but the problem is that most of these things are earned for killing certain bosses or completing special dungeons called Abyssal Realms of. Both of these activities (and a few others) cost you a renewable resource called Resin, but I can only get so much per day, and it’s super easy to blitz through my inventory.
This didn’t bother me early on as I was still immersed in exploring and completing the story, but now that I’m done with most of it, the only real goal remaining is to strengthen my character and take on some of the remaining Superman – difficult challenge. But the grind is so bad I don’t even want to bother.It takes me 20 minutes to use up my Resin, then I have to wait a full 16 hours for more, and everything I need to grind need it. I might spend all my daily Resin to get some upgrade material for my sword just because I don’t have enough money to upgrade it, but I can’t grind for it either because I just spent all my Resin.
(Image credit: MiHoYo)
Genshin Impact is very close to being a revolutionary free-to-play game beyond this exploitative, manipulative crap.
It’s not just the overall level of each character either. Their individual abilities also need to be upgraded in a similar fashion, and then there’s a skill tree called Constellation, which I can only upgrade by being lucky enough to get a copy of the character from a loot box. Considering that the rarest characters only have a 0.6% chance to drop, I’d probably spend tens of thousands…
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