Genshin Impact was released on the 28th of September 2020 and by its 3rd day, has already had over 10 million players register, proving Genshin Impact is a triumph for regulars of free to play Gacha-styled games.
For the uninitiated, Gacha games are a genre of games nearly always exclusive to mobile platforms. The game is completely free to play, yet to unlock new characters or weapons at a not mind numbing pace, you must engage in the purchase of VERY expensive loot-boxes.
One of the more notable games especially in the West is Arknights, the game that YouTube and Facebook really love to advertise to gamer's as much as Raid: Shadow Legends, which unsurprisingly, is also a Gacha game. These game are popular to develop as they can be relatively simple to create, yet rake in unbelievable amounts of revenue.
"Pulls" are the gacha game equivalent of loot-boxes. Paying for 10 pulls at a time are encouraged by the developer for higher chances of rarer loot. 10 pulls in Genshin Impact costs roughly £13/$16
This style of game became popular as players could put hundreds of hours in on their mobile device. Unfortunately by the time the game gets too difficult to play (without the better characters and premium "pulls") they have little choice but to buy into the premium currency, since the freebies run out quite quickly.
This is a rather naughty psychological trick by the developers, to hook the player by giving lots of freebies as a gateway drug, only to promptly remove their 'fix' once hooked. Yet the fairness of Genshin Impact is where the game shines above the rest of other Gacha games.
While other Gacha games focus on the collection of the hundreds of different characters (mostly over sexualised female characters as their selling point), rather than the gameplay itself. Genshin Impact does away with this for the most part and creates an unbelievably immense and vibrant world for players to explore. The highlight of Genshin Impact the premium currency 'Primogems' used to buy 'pulls' to unlock more characters and weapons, are given liberally throughout regular gameplay.
Everything in Genshin Impact offers a decent amount of 'primogems' including exploring, but once the one off rewards run out, daily commissions and weekly dungeons will keep the 'freemium' currency coming.
The beauty is that everything you do grants you premium currency and even when you finish all the one-off rewards of 'primogems', general exploring, clearing daily and weekly dungeons as well as logging-in rewards, grant vast amounts of 'primogems'.
At the Time of writing, I am adventurer Rank 18 which is the overall player level, while characters are leveled up individually to increase stats to make them stronger.
I have spent no money so far, but have hunted for free premium currency every chance I have had. As such, I have been able to perform 94 pulls. This is a lot for a Gacha game as a free to play player, especially with only about 15-20 hours of play time.
But in truth, the luck of the pulls isn't great, only receiving one 5-star weapon and six 4-star characters in those 94 pulls. Luckily, this isn't a big issue. I have found this is more than enough to get through the game comfortably and does not detract from the gameplay, which is absolutely superb.
Setting up elemental combos with different characters can be done to single targets or for better effect can be set up across an area.
The combat while simple, revolves around a party of 4 characters with different elements which include; a basic attack, a special attack and an ultimate attack. All characters also have a certain 'element'. Combat revolves around mixing these elements, to inflict maximum damage against enemies of differing elements.
Each character's basic attack remains the same depending on the weapon they use, such as a sword or a spear. Yet, their special and ultimate abilities unique to each character, is what really changes how each character plays - making a pretty simple combat system a lot more varied.
Different elemental skills can be mixed to create interesting results and can also affect the environment around them. They not only helps in combat but also traversing the environment, for example; Characters with 'cryo' abilities can freeze water, enabling the player to walk across a lake rather than swim through it, While 'electric' characters can shock large wet areas and enemies for massive widespread damage.
While using elemental abilities to assist traversing certain areas as well as making solid footing in combat, it tends to be more of a hassle than it's worth.
'Traversal' is just as fun as combat, allowing the player to climb every surface outside dungeons and 'glide' by using wings to cross vast distances over troublesome terrain. This is where many reviewers are claiming Genshin Impact is a clone of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but the truth is; Genshin Impact is so much more.
The inspired mechanics are not the property of the Zelda franchise and Genshin Impact utilises these, alongside an amazing vast and varied world for players to explore for free.
As for the story, this is where Genshin Impact suffers the most, as the story is nothing to write home about. There is a main story 'quest' line, side quest, daily quests and random events in the world, which is a shame, as none of them truly are that interesting.
The main quest-line revolves around the chosen player character (one of two twins), trying to find their sibling who had been kidnapped at the start of the game.
You pick your sibling at the beginning of the game with the choice of being male or female
Somehow the sibling is quickly forgotten within the first hour, as for the next 15 hours everything revolves around trying to stop a godlike dragon from destroying the starting city. This wouldn't be so bad if you could rush through the main quest and get to what I assume the story is ramping up for. Yet most quests are locked behind adventure 'ranking'. Adventure rank levels-up by doing practically any activity, including exploring - but not quite fast enough, even when specifically grinding for XP.
The big issue to the storyline is that the main quest makes you work quite hard to unlock the next quest, but once you play a main quest, the tone, gameplay and script are just what you would expect from a minor side quest in any standard JRPG.
The prologue main questline has 3 missions and to start Act 1 of the Main quest; you have to be at adventurer level 20. No game should have a 20+ hour prologue, but this may change in the future. Due to current requirements, it is likely the developer may find players quitting before the end of the prologue. At the end of the day, less time played = less chance of a player buying premium currency. So it would be unsurprising to see at least the level requirements being dropped significantly.
The breathtaking world makes up for the above, but if you are looking for a deep story and aren't very interested in the exploring and grinding side of things, then it is best to give Genshin Impact a skip. On the upside it's totally free, so there is no reason not to give it a go to help make up your mind.
Rock climbing and the verticality of the open world is great to explore, but can be a pain in the first hours without upgraded stamina.
When the game has any dialogue appear, the writing is pretty standard for the JRPG genre and to a painful extent the traditional cringe one-liners, that exist too prominently in the genre, plague the entirety of Genshin Impact to little surprise.
My favourite character is Lisa, A lighting mage who absolutely destroys any enemy when setting up her abilities with my other charts elements.
The issue with her remains the fact that at least 2-3 times per combat encounter (which normally last only 30 seconds so in context this is quite a lot), she will dish out one-liners when attacking like 'You've been a naughty boy' or when being damaged makes very unnecessary 'moans' that do not match the tone, for example; she has just been bashed in the face by a shield bigger than her entire body.
The abilities of Lisa and other character's are more than flashy enough to help ignore the constant cringe one-liners.
These issues do not detract from the overall experience that Genshin Impact is trying to provide, since the core gameplay, the world and exploration are worthy of a fully priced game.
The added bonus is that, not only does Genshin Impact support online co-op with 4 friends, but also cross-platform play between consoles and PC, as well as cross-save between PC and mobile devices.
So if you play on PC and want to continue grinding out your adventure rank, you can just pick up your phone and continue on-the-go with the entire experience remaining relatively the same.
At this time it is unknown whether cross-save will come to consoles but nevertheless, Genshin Impact has gone above and beyond what is to be expected, not only from a gacha games, but many other free to play games.
Genshin Impact Is out now on PS4, XBox One, PC as well as iOS and Android