Thoughts on Genshin Impact post-launch?

Hey everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone else in the GB community had started playing Genshin Impact, and what your thoughts are on the game so far?

I'm about 6 hours into the game myself, and didn't participate in any of the beta's, so still pretty fresh on the whole experience. I'm having a pretty great time so far. I thought that the tutorial was a bit long and some of the characters talk a little too much, but once the game kind of opened up for exploration I started having a really good time. There are some elements that are highly influenced by BoTW (stamina bar, gliding, climbing, shrines/temples, cooking), but there are also a lot of things that it does differently such as combat, a leveling system, multiple playable characters, and a more focused narrative. Unlike BoTW, a lot of the content is locked behind leveling. You can't just jump into the world and go wherever you want without getting wrecked. It's also worth noting that it's probably the best looking anime-style game I've ever played. I can't believe it looks like this on a 11gb download (playing on PS4 Pro).

My main criticisms so far would be the climbing, and the myriad assortment of different currencies and leveling systems. Climbing feels really slow, but maybe I'll unlock things that speed it up later on. The currency and leveling stuff just comes with a free-to-play gacha game I guess.

That said, without spending any money I've been able to get 20 gacha pulls just with earned in-game currency, which unlocked 3 new playable characters, and the game gives you 3 via the tutorial quest-line, so I'm up to 6 already. I'm not sure if the gacha stuff become more important and mar the experience of the game later on, but so far it seems really fun.

Anyways, what do you all think?

@brittinius: I am surprised at how well it plays.

I forget who on the team in the latest bombcast noped out because of paimon but i don't blame him. English VAs of japanese style cutesy characters often make me cringe a little, and putting it to the japanese VA doesn't *improve* it so much as nail the effect better, for better or worse.

I'd recommend muting through it if it's not your thing and giving the gameplay loop itself a shot. I love what I played of it and definitely think it's a huge improvement for gacha games in general. It feels like an almost fully fleshed out single player rpg with the gacha elements being restricted to extra playable characters outside of the four you start with. I think that you can have a great F2P experience with it and get a lot of content out of the loop of combat and exploration.

The core combat can be a little button mashy at first but once you have to actually use the environment and weak spots to damage enemies I feel like the difficulty will jump up and become more of a challenge

That said, I have to say this while fucking hating all things loot based. The best thing that GI does in this respect is make it seemingly little of the core fun of the game actually related to the loot shit. I could see myself putting in like 10 bucks to expand my party but you can probably grind out enough in game currency not to even worry about it to get new characters

The game is surprisingly good! What's also surprising is just how much they went out of their way to lift design elements from BOTW wholesale, right down to the goblin camps and cooking. For a F2P game though there's really a lot of quality on offer here.

I will say though as a person who's unfortunately fairly familiar with gacha games, the rates in this game for characters, which will be the things that change your playstyle in meaningful ways, are abysmal. 0.6% for a highest rarity character ranks among the lowest in the industry and the earn rate of currency is also tuned to be very slow after the usual initial spike. So just know going in if you're the collector type that the gacha is rough.

All that being said, if you're just looking to play through and experience the game you shouldn't have too many problems doing so with the free characters they provide up until the endgame content. It's a really well polished game, not even just on the F2P grading curve, that I probably won't spend much more time playing because I kind of already played BOTW.

It's pretty great. I managed to unlock most of the map and hit AR13 before doing act 2 of the prologue.

Game is gorgeous and fun to play. I managed to pull Diluc, Barbara, Fischl and Chongyun, so I'm kinda set party-wise. I've got Lightning, Ice, Fire, and Water, and I'm just spamming elemental combos left and right. Even tanky enemies or ones above my level just get hit with constant Melts, Freezes, Vaporizes, and chain lightning.

Played it for about 6 hours. Don't think I'll go back. Yes, it's similar to Breath of the Wild, but it has none of what BOTW great. Puzzles are super simple. The elemental stuff is super basic and boring compared to BOTW. Also seems extremely easy. Only had characters die once or twice.

I'm...a bit shocked at how much is stuffed in here. The past year and change has seen me playing a lot more Japanese games than I have since the HD era shifted development power to the States and Europe and it's just wild to me how...intense (?) Japanese games are these days. I also have no idea how this game is free to play, but I think at this point I've encountered, what, 10 or 12 different currencies in just three or so hours of playtime? I'm sure there's a point at which this game becomes predatory on a certain type of game player/anime fan, but there's also no indication how long it takes to get to that point.

I'm also not sure how interesting this game is going to be to play longterm. It doesn't feel great, just fine, and I've already cleared mobs of enemies twice my level with very little effort. I find the story so far to be just the sort of babbling on that I'm comfortable turning to Japanese, thumbing through all the dialogue before the line read is done and just mindlessly completing objectives. The game also seems loaded with trash which I always find pretty discouraging over time unless there's one big hook, like the writing in Outer Worlds, to distract me from the pointlessness of most of the content.

All that said, I enjoyed listening to the latest Bombcast and wandering around beating up on things big and small, and if there's a lot of characters with a decent amount of variance in their playstyles I could see myself playing this game for way longer than I'd have ever expected, especially since I've never played Breath of the Wild so I don't have anything to compare it to other than Yakuza 0, more restrictive Western style open worlds and my time with Final Fantasy XI decades ago.

Not my type of game nor style but I'm giving it a chance.
Although I do experience frame rate drops.

5 mins in, game breaking bug in the menu. Have yet to muster the courage to play again.

I've been enjoying it a lot, I'm maybe 4 hours in or so. Really surprised its free when it feels like (minus the gacha and anime) it could be by Ubisoft or something. I think the puzzle stuff is a little on the simple side but honestly the story and character progression is what BotW sorely needed and even if otherwise it fails to meet what it was clearly inspired by, I find myself enjoying this on a similar level. Just trying to avoid falling into gacha hell of trying for specific characters and enjoy it on my own terms.

@rubberluffy: Wow! Yeah, you had some great pulls! You pretty much have the perfect party. Besides the characters the game gives you, I pulled Noelle, Razor, Fischl, and Ningguang. I have three electro characters now lol. I desperately need a new pyro to replace Amber with because she's pretty useless in combat. Crossing my fingers for Diluc

Enjoying it so far. I've found that I possess the ability to just take gatcha games as they come, so I'm not overly bothered by what I freely admit are very low 5* rates. Right now I'm maining Razor, who just straight-up murders fools when he combos with Xiangling's fire.

Very curious to see how this game develops. And when I can play it on Switch (and if I'll get a decent framerate there). My new phone can handle it easy enough, but the touch controls, while fine, aren't how I want to play this game long-term. I sure won't be playing any archer characters that way, no sirree.

@justabard: It was Jason and i'm right there with him. The instant Paimon spoke I went into the settings and turned voice volume all the way down.

And it didn't work, he still talks audibly during ambient quest conversations.

You know, in Chinese Paimon isn’t so bad. Plus I can safely say that’s a language that’s almost entirely foreign to me so it kind of suits my playing of this type of game I’ve never played before.

If you look at it as a free to play Action-Adventure game, I think it's honestly kind of amazing. I say "amazing" in comparison to other games like it, but it also comes with the understanding that you're getting Zelda INSPIRED elements, not Zelda QUALITY elements.

I have yet to see what the actual endgame loop looks like, but so far the open world takes the right lessons from Breath of the Wild when it comes to exploration, and the combat at least makes an honest attempt to replicate the elemental aspect as much as a game about collecting characters can.

Speaking of, the Gacha element is... There. Either you're cool with that or it's an automatic turn off. Aside from a horrendous rate for SSR characters, the real money aspect seems surprisingly subdued, but... Like I said, it's a Gacha game. You're going to get(or buy) currency that you exchange for other currency and use that to gamble for better/more characters and weapons and it's okay if that isn't your thing.

I think it's a great podcast game, for what it's worth. I'm also of the opinion that more games should look to BotW for inspiration, and seeing this makes me hope more studios go for something similar.

I like it.

There is, however, the continual revelation of spyware-level "bugs" that keep being discovered. First it was the anti-cheat service that continued to run after the game was shut down. They patched that so it only is installed while the game is running. Then it looks like the game takes a look at the contents of your clipboard when it starts up.

https://www.dualshockers.com/genshin-impact-spyware-controversy-mihoyo-explained/

I was going to give the game another chance but I really don't think I want to even bother now. Maybe if it was a real game and not an excuse to print money via gacha mechanics.

I'm about 3 or 4 hours in and it's a pretty well put together game. It's definitely the best free to play game I've played. I haven't encountered too many obstacles other than lvl gating the main quests. I'll keep playing since I can cross play between my phone and my pc and that makes a lot of the mindless grinding and exploring a lot easier to handle on the phone while leaving the more hardcore gameplay moments for the pc. I just hope it doesn't hit me with 30 different progression currencies I need to collect and manage.

I'd love to find out but apparently it is impossible for me to download.

The PC controller mapping is a nightmare.

"Breath of the Waifu"

You have my attention.

Surprisingly good! I can take or leave the obvious waifu element to almost all the characters and I'm still wary about how much the gachi/lootbox elements will end up limiting gameplay or progress. But in terms of the hours I've put in so far it is incredibly expansive and in many ways a better take on the Breath of the Wild elements that they cloned.

Breath of the Wild exploration and freedom to climb/glide, tons of little things to discover and little environmental puzzle elements, tons of random encounters and temples, and a fairly good combat system with elemental combinations undergirding it. And (unlike BotW) it has leveling/upgrade systems that are typical in this type of game, but actually make the exploration feel far more rewarding. I have lots of characters to level and I'm finding things that are useful and not just a weapon I'm going to toss or lose. BotW exploration was amazing, which held it together, but finding the same upgrade orbs from temples and interchangable degrading weapons got old pretty quick.

I'm still going through the initial story/tutorial elements, so I'm waiting to see how much they give you for free versus having to subject yourself to the whims of lootboxes. If there are crucial gameplay options or elemental pieces hidden behind a 1% gachi drop I'm going to sour on the game really quickly. But at least so far the 5 characters I've gotten for free have given a lot of gameplay and combat variety.

@nodima: Mihoyo is a Chinese developer, not Japanese.

@turambar: Hence why I decided to give the language a shot once I realized that was the case. I do feel silly for calling this a Japanese game over and over earlier in this thread.

Ok but like, setting aside that first paragraph(not discounting, just let's put that in a box while we talk about something else), it IS a real game and even better than most if you define most as the shit on steam etc every day and they deserve money at some point, yes? Not saying gacha is my preferred method, or even second favorite, but that's a pretty bad faith argument.

I'm having a lot of fun. The controller inputs on pc are not good, hoping for remap options. I'm playing on keyboard and mouse which is not what I want to be using for third person action, but the controls are mostly fine except for camera movement up/down. It's gorgeous, I love the music, looking at later talents and different characters only excites me as what else I can do in combat late game but I'm already enjoying it fairly early on. Hope some issues get cleaned up like controls, stuttering, unlocking framerate etc.

I would love to throw small amounts of money at the game in the future for stuff, pure gacha pulls aren't my thing though when it comes to real money because I feel like that's endless(it is); rather have a battle pass or 5-10$ premium monthly thing etc.

Yeah like..whatever you think of Gacha mechanics and there is plenty to think and talk about on that regard this is a very robust product. It would be like claiming Overwatch is not a game either.

I'm enjoying it so far but the interface is a constant challenge and the controller on PC is frankly the most confusing thing I've ever seen? Confirm is mapped to B and cancel A which I thought was like.. a weird thing like Playstation Confirm/Cancel used to be but I checked on PS4 and the controls are just totally normal.

So what the fuck.

Not to crap on the game or anything, downloading it at the moment, but after watching a couple of videos I still have to ask anyone who has played it - do you do anything fun or interesting in it? 90% of what I've seen is people destroying immobile objects or fighting enemies with Dynasty Warriors AI. The world is big, but does the game do anything with it?

Yes, but you are going to be doing a lot of so-called "uninteresting" stuff to get to those points. The stamina is really meager to start and some of the support characters are pretty unintuitive compared to the two sword guys. Plus you get teased with a really cool spear-wielding girl that disappears after that - if you do enough side content in somewhat random order this can get weird as well, since I'd already pulled a character named Lisa but didn't arrive at her tutorial/trial level until much later on.

There is also a lot of currency, to the point I don't even think about it anymore. To the game's credit that's pretty viable, as the only time I've needed to seek out something specific has been "ascending" a character (every 20 levels is gated by increasingly rare loot) and so far that's just amounted to turning around and going to the mystical goods store or whatever it is.

This is a pretty hard game to describe without throwing in two huge caveats: one, most of my gameplaying is in addition to podcast listening, occasionally movies I've already seen, so it tends to fall into games as a service type stuff. Two, I didn't play Breath of the Wild so I don't have that direct comparison, but I can say that this game feels like a much lower budget, anime nonsense to the point of pointlessness, map density to the point of bafflement take on what Ghost of Tsushima was doing. The only direct comparison is this game basically has foxes that you follow to shrines and earn gifts, but if you played that game and thought it leaned too heavily on its exploration activities, this game will be a huge turn off right around the time you realize you've already put way too much time into it.

But if you like ticking boxes, opening loot crates, watching numbers go up, some truly beautiful orchestral music, thumbing through offensively charming and obtuse Chinese-to-English translations (this thing has a Three Act Prologue that has next to no stakes and yet it'd take me two hours to explain what I think is happening...or I could just say something pithy like Kingdom Hearts + Final Fantasy X) there is a point at which this game starts hinting at what it might be capable of, and even letting you get in on some of that, midway through the third act of that prologue that has me happy to finally have something to push MLB The Show aside that I can similarly mostly mash through.

That's a lot of yammering on to get to the real answer you're looking for, but I suppose I have Genshin Impact brain right now. The combat is only as diverse as your party, their elemental affinities and the weapons/charms you attach to them, which means some players are going to have a luckier start than others. But if the combat looks simplistic in most of the footage you've seen...it mostly is that, but there is also an abundance of AoE status affects, encounters and even full on cutscenes/major fights that will just pop up organically as you explore the world. It has a nice balance, I think, between mindless chest hunting and more thoughtful experiences like the combat challenges and tougher enemies like the Witcher 3-like Golems and Mages. It's still not ever been hard necessarily, after all this is a F2P Chinese Action RPG so ultimately it's a numbers game and if your numbers are equal or higher you win, but I've been impressed with the scalability of the combat complexity so far.

Lastly, I think most of the puzzles at a base level are pretty neat if a little simple, but again aside from Sucker Punch games I can't really think of a game I've played that had me constantly juggling different elements/super powers/stances based on the puzzle or enemy in front of me so it's a pretty fresh experience for me and mileage may vary for others.

@theonewhoplays: I recommend listening to the latest Waypoint Radio for a good explanation for the game. Unsurprisingly, this is an Austin Walker-ass game, and he does a great job of explaining its appeal. I downloaded Genshin immediately after hearing the pod and it’s been the best decision I made all week. This game is fantastic.

Where did this game even come from? I hadn't even heard of it until this thread and now I've seen articles about it on PC Gamer and other mentions of it here and there like it was some kind of highly-anticipated thing.

In any case, this seems way too grindy for me.

Holy crap, let me tell ya.

I had no intention on playing this at all. The day it came out I decided to see how closely it resembled zelda BotW. Also, I generally stay away from free to play, gacha games since i know the gist of how they basically "make" you have to pay to progress.

But wow, this game hooked me instantly. I'm not sure why or how but I've been playing it consistently since the day I got it.

Yea the English VOs can get annoying (that's anime) but I really appreciate them not thrusting the "You have to pay to get anything good" mantra down our throats. I just got to AR 20 last night, and like you used the free currency they give you and picked up 3 decent characters and some poopy weapons, which is fine. I bit the bullet 2 days ago and spent $30 real monies and got a 5 star character and a bunch of other stuff.
It's also not grindy at all like other free to play or any RPGs out there. I cruised through the story pretty nicely with only slight difficulty with some bosses. Only recently did I start coming across lvl 30-35 enemies which made me realize i need to go back and upgrade.

Also your complaint about how long it takes to climb, that will never change. Upgrade your stamina and you can hop up instead of just climbing.

This game definitely falls into that 'better than it has any right to be' category for me.

I only downloaded it to see what the game that made that dude smash up a ps4 was like, about 12 hours later and I have to admit that both my gacha and anime cherries have been thoroughly popped, I'm in.

Played it for a couple of hours. Pretty chill 'make numbers go up game', and the elemental system keeps the fights from being too simplistic. The game runs pretty terribly in ps4 pro unfortunately, but that might be due to the online world. Which by the way makes me confused as to why this isn't a Phantasy Star Online-style MMO.

I decided to check out the subreddit as I get closer to finishing the prologue because, as I've been saying, I'm having a good time while struggling to figure out the true scope of this game or what all this currency is accruing for...and it sounds like I'll be reaching a pretty hard stopping point sometime soon. Everything I've read in this thread makes the "endgame" sound so convoluted and off-putting. It makes Destiny 2's various mechanics read like the rules to Checkers by comparison.

To All the Players Defending Poor Design in Genshin Impact

That aside, stepping into the Stormbringer's lair and just letting that theme settle into its loop is a top gaming moment for me this year. I really, really enjoy that track and was happy to find it on Spotify to take a walk around the neighborhood with it on loop as well.

@theonewhoplays: interesting, I've had some audio glitches here and there and the odd frame drops but generally its been running fine for me on ps pro.

I have been playing a lot of Risen 3 recently (because I hate myself) so maybe its a relatively fine thing.

I heard it runs exceptionally well on pc.

Also going back to last weeks bombcast its pretty funny hearing that Jason noped out of it so fast. I get why, that character is insufferable. Hard skip on most dialogue.

@nodima: There is no "end game" in a gacha game. You use resin (the game's energy system) to grind for materials and accessories that strengthen your characters while doing repetitive tasks such as daily commissions and hunting for respawning chests, which slowly levels up your account as a whole. This structure is identical to how most other gacha games work, but is dressed in a different skin in this game.

You're thinking about this game as an open world action game with gacha mechanics instead of a gacha game that has an open world and action combat attached to it.

Yea I don't totally get the people complaining about the end game. Its definitely more of a service game where you reach the end of the bespoke content and then you can, you know, stop playing and wait till they add more. Im like half-way ish through the current story and feel pretty content for what I've got out of it for free but likely once I finish the existing main story and character stories I'm just going to put it down till they put out more content. I don't understand why people are desperate for an end game to eat their time. I felt similarly about Destiny, I mean short of the Raid, you're just complaining about finishing a game.

Genshin Impact is kind of a victim of it's own success. There's a huge marketing campaign going for it, and now you've got streamers and gaming news sites covering this thing and gushing over it. There is likely a lot of people who are coming in because of the hype and/or comparisons to BotW who have never really interacted with Gacha games before.

I mentioned earlier that if Gacha isn't your thing than I won't fault anyone for turning their back on Genshin Impact, because ultimately the problems with Gacha people have are... Real. Genshin especially seems to have some kind of shitty systems tied to it and I really don't want to argue against something I agree with.

The other side of that coin is that Gacha games are essentially a genre unto themselves. It may not be for you or me, or even our society, but it seems undeniable that there is a huge market for these types of games and everything that comes with them. It's not just the gambling aspect, but the limited resources, the daily grind, all that. I think that's why a lot of people who are familiar with Gacha games just kind of shrug it off. It's not that any of that stuff doesn't suck, it's just how these types of games are. There are a lot of these things, and some of them are crazy huge in China and Japan especially.

Genshin plays at having this free-to-play co-op BotW thing going for it, and does it at least acceptably enough that people are wanting more of that and less of what Genshin actually is: a Gacha game with a pretty and inventive face. Mihoyo did some pretty interesting stuff with their previous game, so it's entirely possible that Genshin does offer a lot of the experiences people are clamoring for down the line, but the aspects people are complaining about now are probably never going away.

It's the way of Gacha games so I'm not holding this against them really but a series of unfortunate dice rolls is probably pushing me away more than anything else. Not having that many characters and getting multiple dupes of ones that I only Kind Of like has a way of dampening enthusiasm.

If they can manage to keep this game going with reasonably timed updates, I think it'll stay going strong.

They've said that the 2 regions are not all the game will have, and supposedly there's 7 more planned (?!?!?!).

There's been some leaks of the chinese test server and looks like soon we're getting a few new characters (Geo Spear dude looks sick), as well as what might be a compass for oculi, which should make hunting them easier, which I really want since I have like the Anemo statue at 8 and the Geo at 7.

Well, while watching the Quick Look I realized I hadn't turned in Wishes in quite a while, so I got after it and pulled a Barbara, two Xiangliangs and a Qiqi which I've seen absolutely no people talk about so I'm pretty curious about her. Also realized I was sitting on hundreds of books so my party's mostly sitting around level 30-35 now, and I dumped all my junk into the few purple artifacts I have.

This game has a real way of refreshing itself right as it starts to feel stale, but I've made it pretty clear I'm new to what sort of game this actually is so I'm ready to be disappointed when the faucet dries up quick. I also realized via Jan's perusing the menus how much I'd been ignoring and pulled some neat weapons and got absolutely baffled by the Battle Pass at the same time I was beefing up my squad.

It still remains to be seen if I have it in me to play this game long term; it lacks the certain, simple charms of MLB The Show that make that my yearly service game, and clearly contains multitudes of the "what should I do today?" paralysis induction that turned me off of Destiny a few expansions in and the same with Destiny 2. It doesn't help that I find the story a total word salad so I'm thumbing through the vast majority of this dialogue. The game's design doesn't help by, as Jan pointed at, drawing some weird kind of delineation between the characters in your party and their actions out in the real world. It makes them feel less relatable, or makes me care about them significantly less, since they're really just Pokémon.

Lastly, probably until I'm actually done with whatever the story content is (I just took down the first major boss), I will say I had a good laugh at one of the more important characters in the narrative taking a moment to strongly emphasize the journey is greater than the destination, emphasizing that you really don't need to engage in the gambling nonsense to reach the "end game" of this any quicker than you're comfortable with.

It's a fantastic game so far. It's free to play and so far I have got damn near AAA worth of fun and spent no money so far and the asking for money is hardly there at all but you bump into it time to time. I am sure it gets more in your face later on (as all games of this kind do) but so far it's great.

Biggest issue is co-op sucks at the moment. It is good enough to do come world boss fights but you can only do a few of those a day (unless you spend limited items in-game or spend money) so that sucks. Hopefully multiplayer will allow collection of chest items and collectables.

Still pretty fun, but I'm not sure if the gameplay has hooked me quite enough to keep playing, especially since I bought every numbered Yakuza game yesterday (except 7). And gachas just suck. I might be convinced to give devs some bucks for a character or new content, but forget paying for the -chance- of getting something I want. That will never happen.

Damn, duders! This game kind of came outta fuckin' nowhere to me and having enjoyed mindless adventuring games with cute female characters, figured I'd bite. I really like the presentation, for what it's worth. In no particular order:

• Man, the art style is great! Really like the visuals. But then again, I said the same thing about KurtzPel and holy crap, that game's a shitshow.
• The music is real nice. It feels so familiar somehow but I can't put my finger on it!
• No Steam version. I mean, I'm glad it doesn't need another extraneous storefront I don't want, but come on.
• The guide character is irredeemably shit. Character design is irritating (I'm not a pedophile so the trying-to-hard-to-be-cute thing really doesn't do it for me), voice and writing are both shit, and it's pretty fucking obvious that the floating blob girl who speaks in the third-person has some connection to (or might just fucking be) the goddess from the first cutscene. How original.
• You cannot rebind your keys. There are no settings for adjusting camera sensitivity, acceleration, smoothing, or inversion. Let me say that again: fucking staples from the goddamn '90s are not in this game. Inexcusable. Are they serious? I was hoping to do some archery and shoot dudes with mouseaim, but with the unchangable controls and uninvertable camera, I can't even fucking play this shit. Maybe that's for the best.
• The keymapping (which again, you can't change) is shit. RMB to sprint? What?
• The character design. Really not feeling it. Characters either seem to be irritating underage girls or feminine boys. Some more adult females would be nice. Jean's jiggle physics are a nice start, as is the witch lady.
• The climbing just feels... off. Not just due to the terrible camera and horribly-slow pace of the animations. I just don't get it. Everyone can just Spider-Man up sheer-ass walls? At least try to put some kind of audiovisual and/or mechanical in-universe explanation. Climbing gloves, hooks, knives, hell, even just glowing magic around the hands and feet. Also, the act of scaling just isn't fun at all. Where are the cool-ass ninja moves of Warframe? The sword-wall-stabbing of Gunz: The Duel? Or just grappling hooks outta Just Cause, Bionic Commando, Lost Planet...
• Lack of character creation or customization, as well as the very notion of the party system. These two are related so I'll combine them. I don't particularly like any of the characters, not that it matters since I can't directly unlock/purchase them. Why can't I just, you know, create my own damn character? And instead of switching between dudes, just have my character switch between her elemental weapons? Spare me this Agents of Mayhem crap; tie classes/abilities/Supers to weapons and let me have one character whose design I like feeling completely boss by wielding all kinds of magic weapons, switching between them in combat.
• I'm glad there's a story, but I'm really not feeling the writing and voices. Acting's decent enough, I guess, in that sandpaper-ass "dubbed animé" feel.
• The bad side of free-to-play. Pay-to-wait energy. Multiple currencies. Gambling. Inability to directly purchase the stuff you want. Free-to-play isn't necessarily a dirty word, and it can be done in a non-scumbag way... it just isn't here.

I really WANT to like this. I don't even know why I want to like this. I want it to be good. But goddamn.

I think a lot of what I want out of this game, Dragon's Dogma and Black Desert just plain do better. Not just conceptually, but technically. If they get their shit together and patched, you bet your ass I'll be back, though.

Hey I'm liking it! I'm not convinced it's really a good game, but the art/music folks killed it.

• I still just wander around and look at the environment. Not realistic but painterly! I love it. I was also impressed at the amount of environment they made.
• Sometimes the music kicks in and it's just right. Doesn't try too hard and the melodies are nice.
• Almost all the parts related to making it a game are suspicious or have an off feel.
• The character roster is like 70% the same short female child.

Well, I've reached what amounts to the "endgame" it feels like. I've still got Story and Archon quests so there's technically more to do, but every quest is starting to be gated at least one or two Adventure Ranks ahead of where I am when I receive them and after upgrading several purple weapons once, all seven characters I have to level 40 and the main character to 50, I'm suddenly very low on whatever currency you can think of and the only activities I really have to do are the same few dungeons.

...Which is why it's a good thing that I got some fun character pulls because if I hadn't, I could see this being the point where I accepted I got two or three fun, weird weeks out of this game and call it. But I've got this primary cast of Wind Traveler, Fire Xiangling (who I've also duped twice and completed the challenge dungeon for, so her Constellation is already at level 3 making her a fucking terror in Pyro-oriented challenges with an automatic AoE on full combos and 3x as powerful elemental attack), Ice Qiqi (my first 5 Star character) and Water Barbara.

What's fun about this group is A) how baseline strong Qiqi and my character are, B) that Barb and Qiqi's specials are on a similar cooldown and when combined automatically freeze almost any enemy in proximity to you, C) some combination of Barb's elemental and some artifact I have equipped to someone has me regaining health with almost every attack so I often feel totally invincible and D) again, Xianliang is just an absolute menace. There are times I have to deviate from that group which is always kind of a bummer and the combat challenges, at least for the couple hours I've messed with them, never change so they get pretty routine pretty quickly. But in that case I kind of appreciate that they gate access to these activities behind a currency because it means unlike Destiny I'm not going to accidentally spend an entire night grinding activities with no end in sight; Genshin Impact tells me I'm going to play this many activities in a session and then I can come back tomorrow (or next week, or whenever) for more.

Obviously some people are going to see that as nefarious, particularly if you're a completionist (or gambler) who can't resist trying to figure out what all the good weapons, characters and artifacts are, because it's clear the only way to do that any quicker than months if not years from now would be to spend ugly amounts of money on the mere chance to pull those things. But if you've got some self-control and plenty of other games to play, movies to watch etc., I think this endgame is fine because the core gameplay is pretty dang fun. Most of the "main game" was pretty misleading, as the combat never seemed all that challenging but by the time enemies are in their mid-30s and your World Rank is high 1 / low 2, you're having to deal with a ton of elemental effects and knowing what sequence of attacks offers the most, what's that term, damage per second? So it actually gets pretty tactical and engaging, though if I have one pet peeve I highly prefer Xianliang to Amber yet most of the fire-related dungeons are clearly designed around Amber's bow, so I'll often enter an area with the character I like carrying the element I need only to have to back out and switch so I can solve a puzzle (after retracing all my steps to get back to that puzzle). They should've accounted for stuff like that.