Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact
"エヘってなんだよ!? (What do you mean, ehe!?)" — Paimon
Protagonist(s): Traveler (Aether/Lumine) (both renameable) Genre(s): Action role-playing Platform(s): Android iOS Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Nintendo Switch Xbox Series X/S Release Date: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Android, iOS September 28, 2020 PlayStation 5 April 28, 2021 Nintendo Switch TBA Xbox Series X/S November 20, 2024 Engine: Unity Developer(s): miHoYo Publisher(s): WW: HoYoverse CHN: miHoYo Country: China

Genshin Impact (Chinese: 原神; pinyin: Yuánshén) is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed and published by miHoYo in mainland China and worldwide by Cognosphere, d/b/a HoYoverse for Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The game offers an action-based battle system and an anime-style open-world environment. The game is free-to-play and monetized through gacha game mechanics.

Gameplay

Genshin Impact is an open-world action role-playing game that allows the player to control one of four interchangeable characters in a party. The playable characters can be changed quickly in combat, allowing the player to use several different skill and attack combinations. The strengths of characters can be improved by increasing the character's level and upgrading artifacts and weapons that the character equips. Apart from exploration, the player can attempt to complete various challenges for rewards. After completing challenges, the game allows the player to increase their Adventure Rank, which in turn unlocks new quests, new challenges, and the World Level.

Why It’s Impactful

1. The graphics, as inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, look great. However, it is worth mentioning that this is a free product and the graphics in free games tend to follow simple visuals. The game uses cel-shading, like almost every anime game, which saves the quality of graphics more.
2. The game has many beautifully designed characters, such as Mona, Fischl, Keqing, Venti, Zhongli, Collei, Hu Tao, Ayaka, Arataki Itto, Ganyu, Raiden Shogun, Yae Miko, Wanderer, Nahida, Neuvillette, and Furina.
3. Incredibly precise controls. Character controls are easy to learn and react very well to the fact that you are moving.
4. Decent story that harks back to any amount of fantasy anime titles. A traveler wandering around the world questioning the gods about his/her long-lost sibling.
5. The game is completely free, even though the game doesn't even belong to the massively multiplayer online (MMO) genre. It is worth noting that there are microtransactions and loot boxes (banners), but it does not matter, you will get everything you want (the characters, the weapons, and more) after a long gameplay, being the absolute opposite of a pay-to-win game.
6. Although it can become repetitive at times, the gameplay is very fun to play, especially for an anime RPG. The game offers a large open world with a lot of content to explore.
7. The game offers an open world filled with mountains, buildings, magic, adventure, fantasy, all kinds of resources, and much more.
8. The voice acting is quite good whether you use Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or English voiceovers, despite the game's unfortunately poor lip-syncing (see bad qualities number 7).
   • Many recognizable voice actors (Both Japanese and English) have made their way into Genshin Impact: Yuri Lowenthal (teenage Ben Tennyson from Ben 10 franchise, Protagonist/Makoto Yūki/Ryoji from Persona 3, Peter Parker/Spider-Man from various Spider-Man media, and Sasuke Uchiha from the Naruto series) as Dainsleif (the narrator from the trailer), Aoi Yūki (Madoka Kaname from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Futaba Sakura from Persona 5, Kurona Yasuhisa from Tokyo Ghoul, and Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen from the Japanese dub of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as the female traveller/Lumine, Maaya Uchida (Rikka Takanashi from Love, Chuunibiyou and Other Delusions!, Rei Kuroki from Vividred Operation, and Katarina Class from My Next Life as a Villainess!) as Fischl, Chiwa Saito (Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Metis from Persona 3 FES) as Jean, both Todd Haberkorn (Ayato Kirishima from Tokyo Ghoul, Death the Kid from Soul Eater, and Natsu Dragneel from Fairy Tail) and Kōki Uchiyama (V from Devil May Cry 5, Shigaraki Tomura from My Hero Acadamia, and Gin from Hotarubi no Mori e) as Razor, Rie Takahashi (Mirai Asahina from Mahou Tsukai PreCureǃ, Megumin from KonoSuba!, Takagi from Master Teaser Takagi-San, Peni Parker from the Japanese dub of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as Hu Tao, Kayli Mills (Alice Zuberg from Sword Art Online: Alicization and Emilia from Re:Zero) as Keqing, Laura Faye Smith (Rosalina from the Super Mario franchise) as Noelle, Keith Silverstein (Robert E. O. Speedwagon from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Masayoshi Shido from Persona 5) as Zhongli, Kimberley Anne Campbell (the titular character from Nagatoro-san) as Nahida, Anairis Quiñones (Echidna in Re:Zero) as Lynette, Amber Lee Connors (Shouko Komi from Komi Can't Communicate) as Furina, or Ryohei Kimura (Judar from Magi and Bumblebee from the Japanese dub of Bumblebee) as Tartaglia/Childe.
     • Surprisingly, both Aoi Koga (Paimon's VA) and Konomi Kohara (Mona's VA) have played both Kaguya Shinomiya and Chika Fujiwara from Kaguya-sama: Love is War, while Kensho Ono (Diluc's VA), Kosuke Toriumi (Kaeya's VA), and Soma Saito (Chongyun's VA) have played Giorno Giovanna, Guido Mista, and Vinegar Doppio respectively in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with Sean Chiplock (Mista's English VA) and Griffin Burns (Doppio's VA) also voicing Diluc and Tartaglia/Childe respectively.
     • This could be said the same for both voices of Hu Tao since she is voiced by two characters from Re: Zero: both Rem (Brianna Knickerbocker) and Emilia (Rie Takanashi).
9. The music is pleasing to the ear, lending the atmosphere of the event, be it while fighting or exploring the world. On the one hand, it can be reassuring, on the other, it stimulates the fight.
10. The sound effects are great when they appear on the menu or during gameplay.
11. The combat system is incredibly satisfying, at least with stronger characters like Venti, Qiqi, Diluc, and many more.
12. The characters are easy to like, even the weakest in terms of skills like Amber, who looks attractive but also stands out in terms of personality.
13. Speaking of the characters, there's a truly sizable amount of them. And what's truly remarkable about them is that none of them feel like clones of other characters. They're all unique in both design and personality. From the shy to the more abrasive and brash to the compassionate and caring, each character's personality is easy to grasp and different.
14. Unlike other RPGs, especially anime-like games, the game's HUD does not clutter most of the screen but is nicely arranged for an adequate version of the game.
15. The moment you set your birthday, you get gifts in this case, which is a nice springboard and extremely rare in games.
16. This game has frequent updates with many new features.
    • Unfortunately, the closer the game is to a new nation being released, the less content there is in the new updates, as developers are spending most of their time creating content for the next nation release.

Bad Qualities

1. The gameplay and mechanics are somewhat similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild and its sequel, leading to allegations of plagiarism. However, some game elements are different.
2. Enemies and monsters have problems:
   • All enemies, like Hilichurl, walk in the exact direction your character went.
     • Hilichurls dance similarly to Indians in pre-colonial times in South America, and their skin is black. This caused significant controversy in the Genshin Impact community with accusations of racism, though some people believed the dances were generic and that the game was being analyzed too deeply for an underlying meaning to generic enemies.
   • The designs and models of these hostile things, like any Japanese/Chinese media about magic, and wildlife, although beautiful, pleasant, and some are even cute, It also have its problems, depending on your familiarity with seeing things:
     • Dusk Birds They look like a bird from the distant future because the tail is long and curled like a chameleon.
     • Red Vulture looks like a non-avian dinosaur because the wings look like the skin is the wing.
     • Spinocrocodile has a twisted tail, causing confusion thinking that this is a rendering bug when in reality the design is intentional.
     • Scorpion looks like it came from another planet because it looks futuristic in appearance and even has four legs instead of eight legs.
     • Flying Snake looks like an Eastern dragon without legs and arms, but smaller and doesn't breathe fire.
     • Desert Stumber Beast It's just a generic alien from the Lilo & Stitch universe.
     • Shaggy Sumpter Beast looks like James P. Sulliver.
     • Tent Tortoise looks like a rejected Pokémon.
     • The Saurians, although adorable, the adult Yumkasaurus itself has a somewhat strange and childish appearance.
     • Holawaqa Ngoubou is so identical to the Great Leonopteryx (Pandora's animal).
3. The resin system is difficult to use as it takes 8 minutes to get 1 resin and reward collection requires a minimum of 20 resin. Honkai: Star Rail, a game made by the same company, made major changes to their equivalent of the resin system (called Trailblazer Power) that resolved these problems.
   • While the new challenges don't need resin, it can feel like a chore to play at times due to the artifacts and lack of respawnable chests.
   • Speaking of which, you can still put a lot of effort into fighting off the enemies and traveling, yet a lot of rewards feel underwhelming.
4. There was significant controversy during Genshin Impact's 1st Anniversary and Lantern Rite Festival 2024 (leading to the meme "Genshin could never", although this controversy only occurs in Mainland China).
5. As with typical gacha games, saving up for summons can be hard, as the 5* characters have very low rates and can only be pulled via their banner excluding the standard banner 5* characters, as this gacha game isn't as generous as other successful gacha games. There's also a constellation system where if you get dupes you can get upgrades for them, which prior to Yelan's release in version 2.7, many of the 5* constellations were underwhelming at best and added very little value with the exception of a few. To be fair, this is one of those gacha games where the lower rarity characters/heroes (4*) can get the job done for most casual players, whereas in some gacha games they end up designing themselves to where only the highest rarity characters are relevant gameplay and story content wise.
   • One example of a constellation that's very bad is C4 Xiao, as it adds nothing but a defense boost when he's below half of his remaining health. Not only does it add nothing to help his DPS, the 100% DEF increase doesn't mitigate his health loss at all from his elemental burst.
6. Some events that contained significant story content, new gameplay, and rewards are no longer available to new players, as they were removed sometime after being introduced. It's unclear why they are removed when they can easily be made replayable. Honkai: Star Rail makes most of its substantial events, like A Foxian Tale of the Haunted, playable.
7. The game only has to lip-sync for the Chinese voice over.
8. Paimon's voice acting is very high-pitched and she tends to repeat herself or re-explain things other characters just explained.
9. Archon Quest Chapter II: Omnipresence Over Mortals (especially Act III) is considered by players to be the weakest arc of the game.
10. Whenever the game updates, the storage size increases, which can be a problem for those who play on smartphones, as the app's size is huge, that it takes up almost the entire device's storage space. Therefore making it more difficult to play unless you free up space. Back then, most flagship phones started at 128GB (with around 20-30GB taken up by the OS/firmware) and it wasn't till around 2022 where the starting size would become 256GB for most phone brands including OnePlus and Xiaomi, as Samsung lagged at 128GB until 2023 where they gave the S23+ and S23 Ultra 256GB starting storage. You can reduce Genshin Impact's file size by deleting past quest files, but still. For context, most gacha games nowadays sit at an average of around 4 to 10GB in size. As of October 9, 2024, the game is at 21GB on Android.
    • On top of that, most flagship phones no longer come with microSD card slots since Samsung removed the microSD card slot on the S21 lineup.
11. The main story involving the Traveler looking for their lost sibling has not been updated very frequently, which is unfortunate. The story is only updated yearly as it takes a lot of development time to create one region.

Reception

Genshin Impact received largely positive reviews from both critics and gamers alike. Critics mainly praised the open-world direction, designs, voice acting, and combat, criticizing the monetization system. On Metacritic, the PC version received an 83/100 and the PlayStation 4 version an 80/100. Users, although still mostly favorable, the PC version received a 7.7/10, the PlayStation 4 version a 7.2/ 10, and the iOS version a 6.5/10.

On OpenCritic, the game received a rating of "Strong", an average score of 81/100, and 93% of critics recommend, based on 14 reviews. Daniel Tack from Game Informer gave Genshin Impact a 9.3/10, describing that the game is "a whimsical, wondrous land dripping with unbridled charm and appeal, combining a ridiculously compelling reward loop with unfettered, continuous discovery. In this world I felt like a child visiting theme park for the first time — dazzled, mesmerized, and completely swept away. I only wish the shimmering glow wasn’t marred by a ghoulish monetization model, but that’s something I’m willing to overlook for my ticket to this fascinating realm."

Shubhankar Parijat from GamingBolt praised the visuals, an open world, the mechanics of the game, the creators of which they were inspired, and that monetization does not force the player to pay. However, he criticized the characters, mostly Paimon, which he found annoying, and some technical issues. Ultimately he gave an 8/10, shortly describing "Genshin Impact is a game I can easily recommend. It would have been worth your time anyway, but given that it's free, it's even harder to miss."

Chris Carter from Destructoid gave a 7.5/10, saying "Genshin Impact could be a little more lively than it is when leveling, but the beauty of its world helps suck you in. You really can't beat free, so long as you resist the rather tame temptations to spend money."

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