Games take ideas and elements from each other all the time, learning and adapting things that work and appeal to players. Sometimes these collections of ideas and such can create games that come pretty close to perfection, and other times these collaborations can also highlight problems too. Here we have a game that brings together three distinct elements into their cooking pot; we have an enormous serving of open world, seasoned heartily with anime styled characters, and finally we have a sprinkling of gacha as well to spice things up. Enough with the metaphors, let's go ahead and take our first steps into this new world and find out if all your wishes are going to come true, or will they come crashing down in, Genshin Impact.
Our journey begins rather abruptly as a pair of twins with golden blonde hair are locked in combat with an unknown, powerful goddess. While the twins are trying to defeat the being, we get the chance to pick which of the twins we want as our Traveler and name them. The battle swings wildly out of the twins favor as the one you didn't pick gets cubed and you quickly follow. From here, the Traveler recounts this story to a new companion they fished up, Paimon, a small fairy-like character that will join you along the journey. At Paimon's suggestion, you two decide to head to a nearby city in hopes of getting some leads as to where your missing sibling may be.
As we continue towards the city of, Mondstadt, we encounter; a bard talking to a dragon, a young woman named Amber who belongs to the Knights of Favonius, and we meet the rest of the notable knights as well once we enter the city. The prologue does a good job of introducing us to an entire cast of characters and giving us a big threat to take down. The storyline here in Mondstadt is only one of many as each nation/region has it's own happenings going on within and it's own set of new characters to interact with. While the initial story in the first area didn't really grab me until the tail end of the quest line, I can say that for the most part other region's stories did a better job of keeping me interested the entire time (due note I have only completed up to the 5th region's story, Fontaine at the time of writing this). A problem I do have though is because Xbox players are getting this so late, we've missed out on some limited time events that had some snippets of plot/lore drop which we'll never get to experience first hand or even interactions with characters that can make canon interactions feel like we've missed a scene without their inclusion. I wish at the very least we could have these events back or the scenes instead of us having to rely on going to a video simply because we didn't have access to play the game until recently on Xbox.
A nice story to go along with the game is good and all but, what are we actually doing in the game and more importantly, is it fun? Genshin offers it's players a truly staggering amount of content and areas to explore along with the freedom to go nearly anywhere you want, when you want. The initial area of Mondstadt is a great starting point as it has lush green fields and small hills and tall cliffs to encourage exploring and the thrill of discovery. Within each region, you'll discover a large collection of chests, puzzles, challenges, and collectables just waiting for you to come across them. There are even small dungeons to be found too, some provide a short jaunt to get through to get a set of prizes while others are small combat arenas you must complete in order to get some upgrade materials or new artifacts to equip. Possibly one of the best things with Genshin's exploration is if you start to get bored of a certain region and want to check out a new area you can do just that with only a few restrictions for how you have to enter certain regions/areas. I would like to tell you that it doesn't get any better than moving from an area with rolling green hills to another that's got cliffs reaching towards the sky with yellow and orange colors mixed in or even a lush jungle accented with a desert but... it does get better beyond what's just on the surface.
One simple yet terribly complex thing that games in general try to get across to players is that your are changing the world around you. Often we only see this in a fairly basic form where we usurp a tyrant or remove a dangerous faction for a friendly one. While things like that are present in Genshin as well, there are changes you can do that can affect the world too. For example, on several of the islands in the nation of Inazuma, there is a ongoing lighting storm problem. While it is cool and exciting and even makes for a great laugh when you get zapped during a scene where you're talking to someone, it can get annoying and troublesome when you're trying to explore the area. You can actually embark on a totally optional set of side-quests to stop the lighting strikes and fix the issue yourself. I love these kinds of quests where it's totally reliant on the players own level of caring whether they want to do it or not and how it alters the landscape. These quests often provide you with some more lore and reasons as to why these events are happening to begin with and even give you more bosses to fight as an added bonus. Smaller changes that affected the world can also be experienced in the desert region where you can bring back life to a small set of oasis or make small patches of flowers bloom. It never gets old being able to look at an area and know you yourself altered that area and it wasn't even something the game forced you to do. Plenty of these changes are big enough where you can spot them way off in the distance too and that helps to add to that gratifying feeling.
Each regions also hosts mostly new items to gather and collect and I can not stress this enough... collect everything and anything. It really doesn't matter if you have 100 sweet flowers, dozens of ore, or barrels full of chilies. I can almost promise you you're going to need more materials for a bevy of things. Two of the most important things that require a large batch of items are characters (which is actually a 2 parter) and upgrading your weapons. Every character has their own set of items needed to raise their level cap by 10 after their first ascension and another set of items for leveling up a character's talents; the character's basic, skill, and burst attacks. Weapons need separate materials for leveling them up too, but in order to improve a weapon's buffs they need to be given an exact copy of their own to cannibalize, the only exception being weapons you fish for. I know this sounds like a lot and it is and it may seem overwhelming but as long as you take the grind in stride and focus on just a few characters at a time, it won't feel as daunting as it first appears. Collecting these various items is also helped as you can select the item you want to farm, the game will mark a set of search locations the item appears in, and you can collect until you run out which then means you just need to wait until a daily reset for most items to replenish. It does take fish a full 3 days to return though once you've emptied a fishing spot, but do know fishing spots can be double dipped for daytime and nighttime fishing opportunities. While this does go hand-in-hand with grinding in any other game and has it's own natural drawbacks of being droll and repetitive, at the very least there are good tools inside and outside of the game to make it easier.
The world and how you can interact with it are of course only one half of the gameplay, the other side of that comes down to the combat and the characters you'll be playing with. Most of the combat you'll experience throughout the game will be fairly easy in all honestly. The greatest pain in the neck comes from enemies with shields you don't have the direct counter for or ones that love to teleport around. The scope of enemies thankfully does increase too as you venture out to new regions. While at first there are just bandits, slimes, and hilichurls (think bokoblins from the Zelda series) to be found. The roster expands as new and stronger human forces with powers and guns appear, machines that fly and fire missiles upon you, or even sentient mushrooms that... try their best. All of these foes do stay current with your level as your world level will increase over the course of your journey but don't worry, if you feel like the baddies are a little too tanky or hitting too hard, you can lower your world level until you feel more comfortable about returning to your current. If you are looking for more challenging fights though, Genshin does have a couple answers to that in the Spiral Abyss and the Imaginarium Theater. Both of these special challenges should be looked at more for end-game completions but the Spiral Abyss does have a set of challenges that can be done before the harder floors that you can certainly tackle and overcome as you progress through your journey.
A huge part of your enjoyment from Genshin is going to come from the characters you collect and play with along your adventure. Each character has their own personality, fighting style and preferred weapon type, and even their own element they can utilize. The game starts you off well enough as you/ll have your main character who can commune with all the elements (cryo isn't available for the Traveler just yet), Amber as your pyro archer, Kaeya to freeze your foes and display a different style to fighting with swords, and Lisa who uses lighting to fry foes who don't return their books. Besides just giving you some fresh blood to play with, you'll also begin to get an understanding that applying certain debuffs and/or elements to enemies and hitting them with a corresponding element can enact reactions which equal big damage to your enemies... and you if you're not careful. Besides just the elements, each character does have their own weapon type they prefer to use that's divided up into; swords, spears/polearms, bows, greatswords, and catalysts (magic books/devices for characters like Lisa). While they do a good job of giving characters their own style and attacks who use the same weapon type, unfortunately a lot of these slick weapon attacks damage numbers pale in comparison when you better understand the elemental reaction system and see how fast foes melt with proper combos. Seeing a cool animation will never get old, but it does hurt to know that the cool spear kick attack is doing peanuts compared to simply dousing a monster in water and then zapping them.
The characters themselves are created in the anime style and their general designs and big moves/attacks are flashy, fun, and do a good job of separating themselves from other playable characters. Currently there are a whopping 90+ characters that you could gather and play as, though we'll talk more about actually getting them later. Each character has their own unique look and attacks that can definitely change your opinion on them real quick and get you interested to get them into your party. Some good news, if you see a character you like but would like to take them for a spin is most do have quest where you get to play with them for a short while. These trials do a great job of giving you hand on experience with the characters but some of these quests/trials can't be experienced until significant time put into the game, so you may prefer to catch a video showcasing the character. With games like these, people who are just jumping in may be afraid that if they get older character they'll be at a severe disadvantage but the truth is thankfully much different than that. From what I've seen from others and experienced myself is that nearly any character can still be good and useful to your roster. There certainly are a handful of characters that stand-out as ones you should aim for for their synergy or raw power but besides those few, you can honestly just try to pick up characters who simply appeal to you. I would say almost undoubtedly you're going to spot a character and point at your screen while saying, 'I want that!', regardless of their strength or utility but simply due to their looks or simply their voice or general personality. But how easy is it to get that sharply dressed man with the gauntlets or the lady from the desert with a big sword, well...
One of the other things Genshin has become known for besides their characters is how you obtain them and that's through the, gacha system. The long and short of it if you don't know how gacha works is, you put a token into a prize machine and maybe you get the ultra rare prize or maybe you get the common prize. Genshin's version of this is wishing on character and weapon themed banners where select characters and weapons have a greater chance of appearing when you wish. The wishes themselves are the tokens you use and can be gained by completing certain quests, picking up some from the monthly freebie shops, or most commonly by exchanging them for primogems. This special currency is gained in nearly every avenue of the game from opening chests to completing daily quests and even from outside sources like codes or web-events. While the way to get primogems can be plentiful, getting enough to make sure you have enough to make some worthwhile pulls for characters is where some frustration can swell up. Assuming you're a FTP (free to play) player, you'll very likely discover that you'll only be able to save up enough pulls to give yourself an honest shot for a featured character once a month if not more and since character specific banners are only around for 21 days, you really need to be frugal with your wishes. While there are some systems in place to aide players who are encountering bad luck like; soft-pity kicking in after 75 pull (I know that sounds like a lot but generally you should always be wishing/pulling in batches of 10) that ups your chances of getting a 5 star character if you haven't gotten one by then or implementations that help guarantee you get the featured character if you get the wrong 5 star. It can still suck to miss out on a character you wanted simply due to crappy luck and insufficient resources. I do wish Genshin would introduce another banner with older characters and/or ones that only reside in the good use realm and the cost to wish for them and the pity were lowered so players can wish more often, get new toys in their toy-box to play with, and getting the big reward is easier and could happen more often. Naturally the big cheat code to up your chances of getting what you want in games with gacha is to break out the wallet but I believe Genshin can be enjoyed for dozens upon dozens of hours as a FTP or lite spender. Plus even if you don't get who you want, you'll almost always come out with some new weapons or characters anyway to play with and they may become new favorites simply due to accident.
Phew, that was a lot I know but we've got one last thing to over before we wrap this up, the achievements of course! Believe it or not, but the achievement list here really isn't as bad as you may have been expecting. A good chunk of the achievos are tied to completing certain quests and reaching max levels for factions and for reaching max levels for the region specific statues. Likely the ones that will be beyond your grasp for some time will be clearing the 12th floor of the Spiral Abyss and maxing the factions. Completing the Spiral Abyss does require a strong set of characters that synergize well just reaching max rank for a single faction will likely take several weeks. Don't let that discourage you as this should be viewed as a marathon and not a race, it's going to take time and I hope you enjoy your time while you work towards getting the achievos. As an added bonus, Genshin also hosts it's own in-game set of achievements that are currently over 1400 at this time! So not to worry if you're looking for more achievos, Genshin has you covered in spades with a wide list of things to do and strive for if you want to continue achievement hunting. Some helpful tips I would suggest you use while achievement hunting is to use the interactive map that can show where all collectables are and you can mark them off as you collect them. Additionally, to better help with builds or give you better ideas, I would suggest, keqingmains.com or going to youtube for creators since there's plenty of folks who have been playing this game since launch and have loads of knowledge and good information.
Genshin Impact originally came out in a time that was pretty ideal for gamers and faced some direct scrutiny as many just thought of it as the anime version of, Zelda:BotW. Over the years, it really did a fine job of expanding the game in nearly every way and distinguishing itself from the stereotypes levied at it. Though it certainly still has some problems that persist and some things at it's core like the gacha system of getting new characters may forever keep some players from bothering to try. Despite these blemishes, I don't think they are anywhere bad enough that they should ward away a new player from jumping in and getting to experience a great game that really has a lot to offer the more you go. So if you're looking for a game where you can get lost in a beautiful and distinct world, engage in several quests that expand the characters and world, and if you want some new pretty but lethal anime characters to become obsessed about then Genshin Impact may be exactly what you've been waiting all these years for.
4.0